Monday, August 13, 2007

Facing Front

Stan Lee's doing an online chat on Wednesday. It's on Talk to America, which is — and I quote: "The Voice of America's premier global webchat." You can submit questions in advance via this page and maybe win a comic autographed by Stan the Man. Thanks to Joel O'Brien for letting me know about this.

• Posted at 10:49 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Stuart Taylor Jr on an issue that ought to matter to more people than it does. It's the astounding number of people who get convicted in our courts, tossed in prison — sometimes for long stretches, sometimes even on Death Row — and are later proven innocent. Since a lot of these people look like they could have done it — i.e., they're poor and/or minorities and/or have records of proven crimes — much of the public isn't much bothered. It's like, "What's the big deal we threw the wrong Hispanic guy in the slammer?" A few years ago at a party, a guy I sorta knew caused jaws to drop when the topic drifted around to someone who'd just been freed from prison after 10+ years served for a crime he didn't commit. The partygoer said, and he didn't seem to be kidding, "They shouldn't have let him go. All those guys are guilty of something."

The thing I think some people really don't get is that if someone is wrongly convicted, the guy who really did it gets away scot free. That's really the Perfect Crime: You did it but you didn't get caught...and since someone else did, no one's looking for you. In fact, if evidence did come out that you'd dunnit, the authorities would probably try to not reopen the case because that would be embarrassed, if not sued.

There are many things we could argue about with regard to our judicial system. I just don't know why so little attention is paid to what seems to me like the single most inarguable point, which is that if you're going to convict people of crimes, you ought to convict the people who actually committed the crimes.

• Posted at 12:41 PM · LINK

Life Imitates...Well, Not Exactly Art

Snakes on a plane. For real.

For a second there when I read this story, I thought it was just Karl Rove going home to Texas.

• Posted at 11:09 AM · LINK

Mike Wieringo, R.I.P.

Newsarama is reporting that comic book artist Mike Wieringo has died from a heart attack at the age of 44.

This is one of those moments when this weblog's reputation works against it. I didn't know Mike Wieringo at all and have nothing to say about him other than that I'd always heard he and his work were well-liked. But if I don't post something, I'm going to get deluged with e-mails — they're already starting — telling me about it or asking me if it's true or even asking if the reason I haven't posted something is because I have something against Mike Wieringo. Obviously, none of these is the case. He was just one of those many folks whose path never crossed mine.

I'm sure the condolences of all go out to the friends and family of this much-respected artist. And a tiny, separate note of sympathy is due to all of us who are over the age of 44 and feeling just a bit older because of the news.

• Posted at 11:05 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Okay, let's watch a little Johnny Carson. Here are three clips in a row. The first is Richard Nixon chatting with Carson in one of those conversations where, obviously, lines have been written in advance, and the host is cuing those lines, to make a politician seem wittier than he really is. I was told that at some point during the Vietnam War, Johnny had a change of mind or heart and he decided to not do that any longer. He would not have politicians on because, he said, he felt people like that should be quizzed by newspeople and not by comedians, and that it was doing the public a disservice to contribute to the establishment of a false image. This new policy was not set in concrete and he occasionally strayed from it...but for the most part, Carson stopped having guests who were angling to be on ballots.

Then comes a clip from the famous night that George Gobel had to follow Bob Hope and Dean Martin. And then we have a rooster taking a dump on Johnny's desk. Conan O'Brien has recently had on a duck named Quackers who does the same cute trick, proving that late night television has only evolved so far in all these years.

This is a LikeTV embed, which means that the clip may roll on and show you other things after the material I'm spotlighting. Watch the other stuff at your own peril. (It varies every time you load the page so I can't predict what it will be.)

• Posted at 1:51 AM · LINK

More on Merv

Something else I should have mentioned in my piece on Merv Griffin. All the obits are saying that Merv was a good interviewer...and he generally was. But comedians often didn't like chatting with him on his show because of something I once heard Milton Berle call "The Frank Gorshin Rule." It flowed from a time when Frank Gorshin was on and Merv asked him, "Are you working on any new impressions?" Gorshin made the mistake of saying, "Well, I've been working on Charles Bronson."

The reason this was a mistake is because Mr. Gorshin had not yet perfected his Charles Bronson impression to the point where he was ready to do it in front of America. He didn't even have lines to go with the impression. Nevertheless, Merv pounced on the chance to debut Frank Gorshin's Charles Bronson impression and badgered the poor mimic into doing it. It wasn't very good and Gorshin was humiliated.

Merv did this kind of thing often. One time, he had Morey Amsterdam on...and as you may recall, Mr. Amsterdam sometimes played a few lines of music (and only a few) on a cello during his act. I'm not sure if he was ever much of a cello player but by the time of this particular appearance with Merv, Morey was way out of practice and genuinely unable to play more than a few bars of nothing. Merv, however, challenged him. He said something like, "Morey, you always promised me that some day, you'd play a real cello solo on my show here. Well, tonight's the night." And despite Amsterdam's insistence that he was rusty, Merv had just such an instrument brought out and The Human Joke Machine was forced to perform with it. It was one of the most embarrassing moments I've ever seen on a talk show because Morey couldn't play the thing and he couldn't even find a way to be funny about not being able to play it. Merv finally realized what he'd done and tried to alibi for Morey by saying the cello they'd supplied was woefully out of tune. But from the way Morey Amsterdam was sweating, that obviously was not the problem.

Anyway, The Frank Gorshin Rule, as it was explained to me is that you never say you can do anything around Merv Griffin unless you're prepared for him to make you do it on the air. If you said, "Next time I'm on your show, Merv, I'll juggle for you," you were going to juggle immediately whether you liked it or not. Berle told me about this and added that it came in handy. If there was something he wanted to be asked to do on the show — sing a certain song, tell a certain anecdote, whatever — all he had to do was tell Merv he wasn't prepared to do it. Suddenly, it was a Command Performance.

A few weeks after he told me this, Berle was on with Merv and I made a point of watching. Just as that segment was ending and Merv was about to introduce the next guest, Berle said, "I'm going to practice and some day when I come on here, I'll do a card trick." Griffin immediately brightened up and said, "Well, I bet the audience would love to see one right now." Uncle Miltie protested he wasn't prepared but at Merv's urging, the audience applauded and demanded a card trick. And lo and behold, Berle just happened to have a deck with him...

• Posted at 1:44 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Joe Conason makes the point that while George W. Bush has acknowledged the need for America to reach out to the world's Muslim population, a lot of those seeking his job think that the way to get there is through Muslim-bashing.

• Posted at 1:21 AM · LINK