Friday, October 19, 2007

A Modest Proposal

Any public official whose job could impact U.S. policies regarding torture should be asked if he thinks "waterboarding" qualifies as such. If he says he doesn't know, he should be waterboarded until he decides.

• Posted at 12:32 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link(s)

Let's watch (for obvious reasons) a little Joey Bishop, shall we? Here's a clip from his late night talk program, The Joey Bishop Show, from an episode that aired in February, 1968. This is the opening segment in which he banters with sidekick Regis Philbin and bandleader Johnny Mann. I doubt many people today would attempt to open a show like this without a pre-written monologue prepared by a large staff. Certainly, Mr. Carson never did except during Writers Guild strikes. (More about those later today.) But Joey sometimes came out and just did stuff like this...

By the way: One of the things that I thought harmed the Bishop show was that it was aired on a one-day tape delay. They taped on Monday the show that would air Tuesday night and so on. This killed any chance at topical humor — not that that was ever a mainstay of Joey's repertoire but guests sometimes said things that reminded you of the time lapse. Over on NBC, Johnny — who was not on a day's delay — was doing stuff straight out of that day's headlines. I always thought that must have made a major difference, especially on nights when there was some big, juicy news story that was perfect for Carson quips.

Apparently, Bishop's show had the delay because it was done on the West Coast. They did the show at 8 PM Pacific Time and I guess that cut it too close to air on the East Coast the same day. Johnny was then in New York so he didn't have that problem. When he took his show to Burbank for a week or three, he also went onto a one-day delay...until he was out here the day of a good-sized earthquake. That night, they dumped (postponed, actually) the show they'd taped the previous evening and broadcast a show taped that same day. That was the monologue where Carson opened with the famous line written by Pat McCormick, "The God is Dead rally has been cancelled." When Carson moved to L.A. on a permanent basis, he began taping at 5:30 so the show he taped could air the same day. But Joey Bishop's show was always out of sync with the country.

Here, from the same episode of The Joey Bishop Show, is a six minute segment with Joey and Sammy clowning around, having a well-planned spontaneous food fight...

After that show went off, Joey did a long stint as Johnny Carson's primary guest host. Here's a clip from a Carson Anniversary Show...

• Posted at 11:19 AM · LINK

Miles To Go

My old pal Joe Brancatelli runs Joe Sent Me, a website about travelling, mainly by air. With utter candor, he and his columnists cover what's up with the airlines, airports, hotels, etc. You need to be a member to access most of this, though there is some valuable free material available.

Even without a sub, you may be able to read his latest article. In case you can't, I'll summarize: Frequent Flyer programs are bad and about to get a whole lot worse. Over the years, the airlines have quietly modified terms and changed reward levels to make it less and less likely that you'll be able to cash in all those points you think you have to get precisely the free flight you want. Effective in December, Joe explains, Delta takes it yet another level and this is my paraphrase, not his. Their new rules seem to essentially come down to: "No matter how many points you accumulate, when the time comes to cash them in, we'll tell you what you can have and how much it will cost you, and many of our flights will not be available to you for points, no matter how many of them you have."

Joe thinks the new rules will make Delta's plan largely worthless to Delta Frequent Flyers, and that if they get away with it then all the other airlines will follow and that such programs will be useless. I was already thinking in that direction. I have points racked up on about a half-dozen airlines. More and more, they seem like more trouble than they're worth. Between e-mail and paper mail, I receive a steady barrage of reminders that my miles are about to expire and I need to do something with them, a.s.a.p. U.S. Air is always after me to swap them in for magazine subscriptions. Other airlines are offering me travel deals in which I cash in more points than I have, plus I pay $200 and I get a flight that I can purchase for $210 without the miles.

Even before Delta's new strategy to not give you anything free, I was feeling that Frequent Flyer plans were not worth the trouble. The few times I've tried cashing in mine, the bureaucracy and poorly-defined rules discouraged me. In this age of the Internet, I'd kinda like to just make my reservations instead of sending for a rewards certificate that will pay for that reservation on that airline if I qualify, if they honor their own rewards program and if I don't find a better deal at some other airline, which I probably will if I'm not paying for it with miles. I'm sure there are some freebees out there but they don't seem to be worth the hassle. So I'm looking around for a good charity where I can donate all my miles to fly soldiers to bang their spouses or something of the sort. It's not so much that I want to support some worthy cause. I just want to get rid of those points so I don't have to think about them and fret that I'm wasting something valuable.

• Posted at 10:41 AM · LINK