Friday, July 13, 2007

Con News

In case you haven't heard, the four-day memberships for Comic-Con International are sold out. They still have individual days, as well as a "three-day" pass that gives you Wednesday evening and all day Thursday, Friday and Sunday. That's not as horrendous a situation as it might seem because I know a few people who opt to skip the Saturday mobs and sight-see that day. In any case, I would suggest that if you're going to the con you either register in advance or don't go.

For what it's worth — and this far in advance, it isn't worth much — the weather folks are predicting sunny skies, highs in the low seventies and lows in the mid-sixties.

• Posted at 4:53 PM · LINK

Friday Afternoon

In one of those periodic revelations that seems to occur in order to juice up the monologues of Leno and Letterman, Senator David Vitter has been revealed as a patron of prostitutes. Obviously, there's a certain entertainment value in the embarrassment of the rich and powerful, especially when they've been so sanctimonious in scolding others for lesser offenses...but there's also something sad about it. In this case, I think the sadness has to do with Vitter viewing his actions as excusable (or at least forgivable) in a way he would never allow with regard to someone else, especially a political opponent.

I was going to write a longer piece about this but I stumbled across a comment on the weblog of Matthew Yglesias. He articulates my feelings here better than I could.

• Posted at 3:57 PM · LINK

Saving the Cat

Down near U.S.C. in Los Angeles, there's a car dealership known as Felix Chevrolet, although they also sell other makes there. Its lineage dates back to 1922 when an entrepreneur named Winslow Felix opened a car lot in downtown Los Angeles. Mr. Felix was a friend of Pat Sullivan, the entrepreneur whose studio made the Felix the Cat cartoons...and there are many stories about how he granted what was apparently permanent permission to use the cat as the dealership's mascot. One tale has Sullivan getting a free car out of the deal. Others have him getting new cars at dealer cost or less for the rest of his life. Sullivan lived in New York for most of this period so I'm not sure how that would have worked.

In any case, Winslow Felix had the name in perpetuity and the proprietors of Felix have received not one car or dime for over a half-century. A new Felix neon sign went up in 1958 when the dealership moved to its present location at Figueroa and Jefferson Boulevard...and it became something of a local landmark.

The business has gone through many hands and that area has changed a lot. There are developers who want it to change further. The current owners of Felix Chevrolet have no plans to close the place or even take down the sign...but the rumblings are there. So lately, folks who are out to preserve L.A. heritage have been rallying to protect Felix from any future threats to his survival. As this article in the L.A. Times notes, the city's Cultural Heritage Commission has just voted to declare it a historic-cultural monument.

That's not the final word but it's a defeat for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa...like he needs more bad news these days.

I love Felix and I love Los Angeles history...but I'm not sure this one's worth a fight. It's a nice looking sign but historic? Cultural? I don't know about this one.

• Posted at 1:27 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's an unsold pilot that Paul Winchell did in the sixties for a kids' game show called Quick on the Draw. I've seen it listed as 1962, 1963 and 1964, and beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

I think Paul did about nine hundred pilots for kids' game shows and one or two of them — like Runaround in 1972 — even sold. You can kind of tell why Quick on the Draw didn't make it. The contestants don't even look like they want to be there and the only good moments come from Winchell doing his old bits with Jerry Mahoney. The show was directed by Gilbert Cates, who directed about half of all TV shows done in the sixties.

One interesting thing (to me) about this is the part where Paul, as he occasionally did, is supplying the voice while someone else is operating Jerry. A lot of it seems to be ad-lib and whoever's working Jerry is darn good to keep up...but as a devout Winchell fan, I could always tell when someone else was at the controls. Paul had a certain way of shaking a dummy's head when it was "talking" to add a little extra animation to the figure and also to distract from the fact that the lip sync could never be too precise. His assistants learned it too but no one did it quite like Winch.

The two parts of this run a little over 22 minutes and the second cuts off before the show ends. I doubt you'll make it all the way through but you might enjoy the Paul/Jerry opening chat, which was one of Paul's oft-performed routines. That cuff link gag was the close to the first joke I ever learned. If you do want to watch both parts, I've made up a little YouTube playlist so you can go right from one to the other.

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK