Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Today's Political Musing

Ralph Nader says that John Edwards stands out from all the other Democratic contenders. Is this the same Ralph Nader who in 2000 said he couldn't see a bit of difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush?

• Posted at 7:13 PM · LINK

Important Skidoo Announcement

Skidoo, a movie of mind-boggling inanity, is on Turner Classic Movies this weekend. Let's clarify when.

When I made the below banner, I gave the date as January 4, which is Friday. The truth is that its official airtime is 11 PM on Friday night on the West Coast, 2 AM on Saturday morning on the East Coast. So it's technically January 5 in some time zones.

• Posted at 12:31 PM · LINK

Jay Jay and the Governor

So...is Mike Huckabee trying to appear uncommonly clueless? This is in this morning's New York Times (not the Wall Street Journal)...

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today professed his support for the striking television writers union just a few hours before he was expected to board a plane to for a taping of the Jay Leno show where he will face a vocal picket line of striking writers.

Mr. Leno's program is returning to the air for the first time since a long hiatus for the strike. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Huckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing picket lines and believed that he the program had reached a special agreement with the union.

Although crossing picket lines might not be unusual for most Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee has waged an unusual populist campaign on economic issues, stressing his empathy with the anxieties of working people. On Wednesday, he said he identified with the striking television workers as an author himself and believed they deserved a share of the proceeds from the sale of their work.

...and then it goes on from there (link) to list some of his other recent inconsistencies.

So what's the deal here? I could maybe, possibly buy that Huckabee didn't know the show hadn't reached (or even tried for) a special arrangement with the Writers Guild. I mean, that suggests a pretty shoddy grasp of current events but it's possible. But do we think no one on the guy's staff knew? Go Google "Leno AND strike" and see how many hits you get that impart that little nugget of information. I mean, it isn't a secret. Don't you think that when Huckabee made the decision to leave Iowa, where the all-important caucuses are tomorrow, and fly to Burbank to do a TV show, someone said, "Uh, governor, you know you'll be crossing a picket line, right?"

This matters to me for the obvious reason that it's my union on strike here. But I also agree with those who say we don't demand/expect enough from our elected officials, especially our President, in terms of experience and smarts and just knowing what's going on around them. An awful lot of voters seem to think that if the candidate seems like a nice guy — someone you could have a beer with — or someone who'd go to your church and go often, that's enough. He can surround himself with people who know all the stuff he doesn't. I got an e-mail last night from a friend making the case for Barack Obama that way. Yeah, he may be a little inexperienced but that doesn't matter...

Gee, if experience doesn't matter when you run for President, where does it matter? I've worked for comic book editors who wouldn't let me write a story for them if I didn't have sufficient credits.

I have never bought the "I didn't know" defense from any President. Didn't buy it when Ronald Reagan said it about trading arms for hostages. Didn't buy it when Bill Clinton said he didn't know about all those fund-raising violations. It's theoretically possible they didn't know but they should have. Either way, it's not an appealing trait for someone who can do so much damage if he makes the wrong decision.

It sounds to me like Huckabee is trying to have it both ways. The other day, he showed that attack ad on Romney to reporters but said he woudn't run it. So he got its message out but tried to claim some moral high ground for not disseminating it. Today, he's going to cross a union's picket line to get some teevee time but claim it was because he didn't know there would be a picket line from a union he says he supports. It's like Tom Snyder used to say: "It isn't what they do sometimes...it's how dumb they apparently think we are."

• Posted at 11:38 AM · LINK

Ratings Rumble

Ah, now we know the reason I couldn't find that Garfield article in the New York Times article. Because the piece was actually in the Wall Street Journal. Here it is — from June 1, 1993...

Cartoon cat Garfield is not only lazy and a glutton; it seems he has also been trying to cheat on his Nielsen ratings.

During the past three years, CBS has repeated seven times an episode of the Saturday morning animated program "Garfield and Friends," in which the cat opens the show saying, "Hi everyone, and a special welcome to Nielsen families."

The several-second greeting seems innocuous enough, particularly to Nielsen-naive kiddies who probably don't understand the reference to the ratings service, Nielsen Media Research. Innocuous or not, however, it's strictly forbidden as far as Nielsen is concerned, because of the potential it has to distort the television ratings.

In theory, the gimmick makes it more likely that viewers will remember to punch in with the Nielsen "peoplemeter" or to record their viewing of the cartoon in Nielsen's paper diaries.

CBS says it didn't know about the greeting. The felonious feline got away with the trick until Saturday, May 22, when a sharp-eyed viewer from rival NBC (presumably an adult) noticed the message and immediately protested to Nielsen, which then told CBS to desist.

A spokesman for Nielsen said there is no way to gauge whether the gimmick affected the ratings of the 9 a.m. program, which is top-rated among the two-to-11-year-old set. The show goes into its sixth season in the fall.

The ratings company won't take any action against CBS other than sending a letter to all of its clients notifying them of the situation. But a spokesman says, "Maybe we ought to string them up by their paws."

Lee Mendelson, "Garfield" executive producer, calls the greeting "an innocent joke," and says it never would have been included had the producers, United Media/Mendelson Productions and Film Roman & Claws Inc., known it was a problem.

Mr. Mendelson says he's mystified by the brouhaha. "Of all the problems in the world, I wouldn't put this at the top of the list," he says.

I'm pretty sure the article got the quote wrong. Garfield said, "...all you lovely Nielsen families." It also erred on the name of Jim Davis's company, which is Paws, Inc. And I do recall being told that Nielsen had agreed to drop that week's ratings out when they averaged the season, thereby voiding that week...which didn't affect the numbers at all. But the reporter was right on one thing I forgot: NBC didn't complain until the seventh time this episode had been run.

No one got the least bit mad at me, by the way. The reaction at CBS was bewilderment because even though it may technically be against some obscure Nielsen rule, that kind of joke does pop up from time to time on shows and no one ever complains. We had a not-dissimilar line in another episode and no one noticed or objected.

Thanks to the many readers of this site who took the time to go look for the piece and forward me copies. The first five were Vern Morrison, Bill Stiteler, Roger Green, Eric Newsom and someone whose handle is Proquest.

• Posted at 10:52 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

As a few of you know and even fewer of you care, I wrote the Garfield and Friends cartoon show for something like eight years. I forget exactly how long. Anyway, it was a lot of lasagna jokes.

During the show's life on CBS, it had three different openings and three theme songs. I cannot explain the third one, which was an odd rap thing that no one associated with the show liked and which didn't last long. The first one though went like this...

That animation was done, by the way, by a gifted artist named Kevin Petrilak. The song was written by Desiree Goyette, who was also the voice of Nermal on the show, and that's mostly Desiree's fine singing voice you're hearing. I came up with the idea of having Garfield say a different line at the end of the main title each week, which was easy to do since his mouth didn't move. I wrote dozens and dozens of those, a couple of which got us into trouble. One week, I had him say, "And a special hello to all you wonderful Nielsen families out there." Apparently, you're not supposed to do that. NBC accused us of trying to rig the ratings (I am not making this up) and there was actually an article in The New York Times about how the Nielsen company had decided to void the Saturday morning ratings for the week because of it. (I can't find my copy, either on paper or in the online N.Y. Times archives. If someone here has Nexis/Lexis or some other service that can track it down, I'd love to get the text of that article.)

A year or so later, NBC got out of the business of programming animation on Saturday morning. The first AM this was effective, the end line to our opening was Garfield saying, "Don't bother watching NBC, kids! There are no cartoons there!" There were more complaints from the Peacock Network but nothing they could do to us. Besides, it was true.

Anyway, that was our first opening and I liked it. I've decided, however, that I like it even better in Spanish...

• Posted at 2:01 AM · LINK

Food, Glorious Food

I've added three new pages to the section of this website called Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More.

This link will take you to the first of the three new pages. You might want to browse back through the earlier pages if you haven't read them or even if you have. I've entered a few revisions and new observations and illustrations on some of those pages.

Something else I should mention: The premise of Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More is for me to write about restaurants that I went to and which I have some anecdote or comment about. Got that, people? These are places I went to. Me! Still, every week a couple of people write me and say that I left out some place they used to dine...and then they mention some restaurant I never went to, sometimes an eatery I never even heard of. And they act like I've committed some sort of egregious factual error by not discoursing extensively about that place they thought had the best burritos in town.

I'm sorry I never went to your favorite restaurant. Blame my parents. When I was young, I usually ate where they took me.

• Posted at 1:42 AM · LINK

January 3, 2008 • Current • January 1, 2008