Timothy Noah reviews the O.J. Simpson If I Did It book...which I guess has now been retitled, If I Did It. It's a two-part review. Here's part one and here's part two. I agree with what Noah says about the text revealing Simpson as a very sick man with great anger towards his murdered spouse. I don't agree that the new character who's been introduced into the scenario — a friend named "Charlie" who helped Simpson commit the murders — is real.
I recently purchased one of these. It's the Sony DVPCX995V 400-Disc DVD Mega Changer/Player — a carousel that holds 400 DVDs. I have it in my office, all loaded with about 250 of my favorite movies and another 150 or so DVDs from my stack of ones I've had sitting here and never gotten around to watching. The machine is a bit slow and clunky but it does work. My plan is to keep taking out movies I will probably never re-watch and insert better films...to the point where I eventually have it all or mostly filled with fave flicks.
Here's one silly little problem I have. As you may know, a DVD of a movie sometimes has the name of the film encoded into it. Some players will read and display this encoded name, and my DVPCX995V builds a whole TiVo-like menu of them. I push a button on the remote and get a screen I can scroll through of all the movies in my player and then select the one I want to watch. In many cases — most, actually — there's no title encoded so I have to enter it manually. That's okay. My problem is that frequently, when there is a movie title encoded, I want to change it on the screen...and the Sony player won't let me. I have to live with their encoded name on my menu.
In some cases, it's not all that coherent. The name encoded on A Fish Called Wanda is "fisch_wanda." So that's what pops up on my menu and I can't change it. On Dr. No, the encoded title is blank...so a blank title appears on my menu and I can't change it. There are several encoded titles that misspell the name of the movie. Anyone have an idea how I can change this? Or how I can recode the DVDs to strip out that disc info? I have a hunch I'm outta luck on this.
Other than that, it seems like a great little machine. If you're thinking of getting one, wait a few weeks. I'll play with the one I got and let you know if I change my mind about it.
Time for a clip from some Milton Berle program or another. This one's four minutes and you can ignore the first minute or so, which is kinda lame. But then Arnold Stang enters. We love Arnold Stang. He was a great cartoon voice actor. He was Top Cat and Herman the Mouse and many others. He was a great character actor. He was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And he's still with us. (I had the honor of directing him once on a cartoon show and he still sends me a Christmas card every year.) So let's watch Arnold.
Radio Master Paul Harris did a great interview yesterday with Noel Blanc, son of Mel. Meanwhile, Stu Shostak has a great interview up this week with Bill Marx, son of Harpo.
So you have your choice. You can listen to the son of the Man of a Thousand Voices or the son of the Man with None.
Matt Taibbi has written a long article about how military contractors are raking it in because of the Iraq War. Just in case you need something else to make you angry about this whole mess.
September 1, 2007
