I made a boneheaded error the other day here, saluting Joe Simon on his 92nd birthday. I should have saluted him on his 94th birthday, which is what yesterday was. I saw 92 on some other website and it reminded me, "Oh, I have to write my Joe Simon posting," and I didn't think.
So happy 94th birthday, Joe. You look years younger. Two, anyway.
Here's an odd little bit of film. Some time in the fifties, Bob Clampett and his Time for Beany crew whipped up this little short promo pitch for a charity for the radio and television industry. It's a racy little routine that reminds one of the "horny wolf" cartoons that Clampett and Tex Avery made in the forties. I assume this was shown at some sort of industry dinner or gathering.
This was done after Stan Freberg and Daws Butler left the show, the precise date of which no one seems able to determine but it was probably either late 1953 or early 1954. In this film, Don Messick is the narrator, Irv Shoemaker is the voice of Cecil, Jim MacGeorge is Captain Huffenpuff, Walker Edmiston is Beany and the Wolf, and I think that's Joanie Gerber playing the old lady. In the credits at the end, I see a name — Naomi Something — who I'm guessing is the Marilyn Monroe-type actress playing Little Red Riding Could. And you can also spot the name of Lloyd Turner, who was the main writer for Time for Beany around this period. Lloyd had an amazing career that stretched from gag writing for Warner Brothers cartoons, all the way through writing comic books for Western Publishing and on to story-editing and writing All in the Family and other top TV shows.
Jack Hitt discusses the Reagan "Star Wars" missile defense system into which this country has poured zillions of dollars and loads of hope with no reasonable evidence that the thing can ever work.
You know, I understand why someone would want to believe there could be a magic genie that could protect us from that kind of attack, just as I can understand why some folks are so gung ho about the U.S. spending so much on hardware for defense. What always puzzles me is why the question of whether the hardware will work is treated like some nitpicky technicality. It's almost like some people think spending billions on planes that won't fly or defense systems that won't defend is still better than not spending as much on protecting this great nation of ours.
Okay, so how many times today are we going to hear someone joke about how the Supreme Court just voted 5-4 to give Al Gore's Nobel Prize to George Bush?
This one got right by me in the article I linked to yesterday morning — the one about how NBC will soon be relocating their studio...
"The Tonight Show put us on the map" said Burbank Mayor Marsha Ramos. "Without that line from Johnny Carson, about 'beautiful downtown Burbank,' most people wouldn't even know that we exist. When The Tonight Show leaves, there will be a portion of our heart that will be empty."
As several of you reminded me, Mr. John Carson did not coin the term "Beautiful Downtown Burbank." It gained national fame on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, especially as uttered by the show's announcer, Gary Owens. And it actually originated years before that on Gary's radio show here in Los Angeles. He used that term many a time and introduced it into the Laugh-In library of catch-phrases.
I called Gary earlier today to double check and he said he'd been flooded with calls about it and had done several TV and radio interviews in the previous few hours. A lot of folks are sad that NBC will be vacating those historic premises and, of course, some are irate that the Mayor of the city doesn't even know who gave the town its famous nickname. Maybe Congress can vote a resolution condemning her. That would be a lot more important than addressing the problem of Iraq...or as we call it, Beautiful Downtown Baghdad.
This site is about to do some of you a huge favor. If you live or have recently lived or worked in the state of California, that is.
Go to this page and enter your name. This is not a scam or a hoax or a trick to sell you penis enlargement creme. It is the Unclaimed Property Search for the State Controller's Office. Via circuitous means, money that is owed to you may have wound up in their coffers and they'd like to find you and send it your way. This they cannot do this unless you tell them where you are and fill out a mess of forms...which may be well worth the effort. Then agan, it may not...but you won't know until you go to that page and do a search.
Some tips: Unless you have a very common name, do not enter your city. Some of the money waiting for you may be c/o the address of your union, a past place of employment, an old residence or mail drop, a union, a lawyer, a business manager, etc., so your current address may not yield a match. Also, you might try entering variations on your name — Robert, Bob, Rob, etc. and try it with and without a middle initial.
And, most important: Enter the names of dead relatives and anyone else to whom you may be an heir. I have a deceased uncle in there who has $1700 waiting for him or whoever is legally entitled to claim it. I think it's me.
I pointed this website out once before and a lot of you got a lot of money, especially if you were a current or past member of either the Screen Actors Guild or AFTRA. Some of the amounts may be too trivial to bother with but just entering friends' names in the last twenty minutes, I found a couple of large sums due to folks who could really use the loot. So let's spread word of this around. If you don't want to bother explaining it to everyone you know, just send them a link to this item. (Right click below where it says LINK and then you should get a menu that will enable you to copy the link. It'll say either "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link" or something of the sort, depending on your browser. Then you can paste that link into an e-mail or two.)
October 13, 2007
