Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Going, Going...

Bidding on eBay for Gary Coleman's pants (as explained here) is currently over $200,000. As you may recall, back when people were offering $700,000 to $1,500,000, eBay declared all those as "bogus bids" and deleted them. Apparently though, an offer of $200,000+ for a pair of sweatpants signed by an out of work child star does not warrant skepticism.

The auction closes in a day and a half. So you still have time to top that offer.

• Posted at 11:05 PM · LINK

This Just In

Here's everything you need to know about the Republican presidential race:

Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses which made him the front runner...

...until John McCain won the New Hampshire primary, which made him the front runner...

...until Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary today, which makes him the front runner. At least until the next primary.

Rudy Giuliani hasn't won a primary yet but the news apparently isn't all bad for him tonight because John McCain didn't win. On Larry King Live, Ari Fleischer — who used to do this kind of spinning in the service of George W. Bush — said, "This is what Rudy needed." Apparently, what Rudy needed was to finish with 3% behind even Ron Paul and Fred Thompson. To be fair, he did beat "Uncommitted" by a point.

• Posted at 10:17 PM · LINK

Waiting for the DGA...

I hereby officially predict that a deal between the AMPTP and the Directors Guild will be announced tomorrow. On what do I base this? Simple: I have an extremely busy day tomorrow. I don't have time to deal with a DGA deal tomorrow — all the pieces I'll have to write, all the discussions I'll have to have — which is why there will be one. That's about as sound a basis for a prediction as anything right now.

Actually, I have heard nothing from anyone in a position to know how close to a deal they might be so just sit tight. Either they'll make a deal this week or they won't. I'm going to be very busy next week too, so it could happen then.

• Posted at 9:09 PM · LINK

Debatable Topics

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting piece up on "judicial activism" in the court decision to not compel MSNBC to include Dennis Kucinich in this evening's Democratic debate. Basically, Kucinich sued on a "breach of contract" basis and the matter seems to have been settled — he was not included — based on the merits of that specific principle. But a lot of people who wanted him in the debates — either because he's their guy or they think he'd wound the other Democratic candidates or maybe because they just like short people — are charging "judicial activism." That is, as Greenwald notes, something a lot of folks charge any time a court decision does not yield their preferred outcome. I think he's right. The law does not always give us the results we'd like to see and it isn't always (or even often, I suspect) because judges are trying to engineer the results they'd like to see.

I caught a little of that debate, by the way. Tim Russert seemed to be trying hard to get the candidates to bash one another and they refused to do much of that...and even gave Russert a bit of hard time for trying to start trouble. At least in the portion I saw, it didn't seem like any candidate "won." The victory seemed to be for those who want to see the leading Democratic contenders stop firing at one another and to link arms to get one of their own elected. Apart from that, it wasn't of huge interest. In hindsight, the best argument for including Kucinich was that he might have gotten some squabbles going and livened things up. Of course, they could have done that by bringing in Gallagher to smash a watermelon.

• Posted at 8:18 PM · LINK

Vox Populi

Never mind all these polls about who's going to be President of the United States. Let's look at the really important one, the one that tells what you folks thought of the movie, Skidoo. Here are the final totals...

As you can see, almost half (47%) of those who voted did not watch the thing. A hair under 27% of you enjoyed the experience with 4.3% of you calling it a "fine motion picture." A slightly larger amount called it "one of the worst movies I've ever seen" and everyone else was kind of bewildered, which is where I came down on the issue. This poll has a margin of error of ±100% because the movie did, as well.

Since I wronged some of you by encouraging the viewing of this film, I'll suggest some good ones to watch on Turner Classic Movies. Tonight, they're running What's Up, Tiger Lily?, which was the very funny movie for which a team of clever actors redubbed a sixties Japanese spy flick with funny dialogue. Woody Allen was the front man but I hear the voice and wit of my pal (and a frequent patron of this blog), Frank Buxton.

Early Thursday morning, they're running the rarely-seen Taxi!, which was one of Jimmy Cagney's first movies. It's quite melodramatic but Cagney is, of course, electric in the lead. Matter of fact, they're running a number of rare Cagney movies that morning and more later this month.

Lastly, if you like Danny Kaye, you can view or record The Secret Life of Walter Mitty on Friday evening and The Court Jester early Saturday morning. Some or all of these should make up for causing you to watch Skidoo.

• Posted at 11:36 AM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

Millions of you are writing this morn to point out to me that there's a copyright date on the To Tell the Truth clip with William Gaines. It says 1970. There's also a plug in there for the 1971 Chevy Impala. So apparently Bill was not "telling the truth" when he said that Dick DeBartolo had been writing for Mad for seven years. This should serve as yet another reminder that you can never trust anything a publisher tells you.

• Posted at 11:22 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

From an unknown year: William M. Gaines, publisher of Mad Magazine, appears on To Tell the Truth. My thanks to Kliph Nesteroff for telling me about this.

My only guess as to the year is that at the end, mention is made of Dick DeBartolo, who worked on To Tell the Truth and also wrote for Mad. Gaines says that Dick has been in the magazine for seven years without missing an issue. DeBartolo first appeared in Mad in issue #103, which was dated June, 1966...so if Bill's being accurate, this episode would have been around 1973. (DeBartolo has kept that streak going, by the way. He has now been in Mad every issue since then for a total of 399 consecutive issues over 42 years.)

Dick, by the way, sent me a note I ran here some time ago about this segment on To Tell the Truth. Here it is.

And here's the clip. You may notice that the audio is a little out of sync. So was Bill Gaines.

• Posted at 12:17 AM · LINK

January 16, 2008 • Current • January 14, 2008