Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Strike Update

Well, the DGA didn't announce a deal today so we'll put another $50 in the jackpot. I've received a number of e-mails asking what I think this means and what I think it means is that they haven't finalized a deal yet. Speculation beyond that is really flying blind. As I said, I thought predictions that a deal would be announced on Monday were premature but not impossible. Another week is not impossible, either. Heck, it's not even impossible that the DGA won't be able to make a deal at this time. I wouldn't bet on that but you never know.

In the meantime, Jonathan Handel says some of the same things I said here but says them better and with more authority and less optimism.

• Posted at 10:47 PM · LINK

Follow-Up

A reader named D. Radboud, who I assume is not of my country, sends the following in response to this post...

To add some information on the website you linked to in your post, HEMA is an almost 100 year old department store in the Netherlands. I would compare it to Marks & Spencer in the UK. I can't think of a US equivalent just now. This is the kind of place where people buy their household basics, as the site illustrates I guess. The kind of place can buy their own unfashionable underwear and socks without being embarrassed, so to say.

The place is also famous for some specific foodstuffs, in particular its smoked sausage. One story I heard from a Dutch artist, working for the Dutch edition of Mad, was that when Bill Gaines would come over to the Netherlands to discuss business, he would take a special cab ride every day from his hotel to the nearest HEMA to get a hold of one of the sausages. No, these are not health food by a mile.

Which almost goes without saying because Bill Gaines's idea of "health food" was to put organic lettuce on his bacon cheeseburger. Thanks, D. Sounds like Target or K-Mart or Wal-Mart or one of those U.S. chains.

• Posted at 2:48 PM · LINK

Just Before Bed

I don't know what I'm doing up at this hour, either. Well, yes, I do...finishing a writing assignment. Oddly enough, my partner Sergio Aragonés is also up. He just e-mailed me the last page of a story we're doing together. When you work with someone long enough, you sometimes find yourself oddly synchronized.

A little more than a hundred of you have voted so far in our little poll. Mitt Romney was way ahead after about fifty votes and now John McCain's pulled into the lead. I realized I neglected to put Alan Keyes in there and it's too late to add him. So I think I'll just look at the total votes for Duncan Hunter and divide by three.

Good night, Internet! See you in the morning. The cleaning lady will be here in five hours.

• Posted at 4:55 AM · LINK

Go See It!

I'm going to send you a website that may take a minute or so to load...and I'll warn you it may be noisy.

I'm not entirely sure what it sells because it's in another language. Looks like some sort of e-commerce site to me. In any case, it's one of those "you gotta see it" websites. My buddy Daniel Will-Harris sent me to it and now I'm sending you. You'll send other people.

Here's the link. You've been warned.

• Posted at 1:57 AM · LINK

Another Poll!

Let's see what kind of pundit prognosticators visit this site. The following poll has nothing to do with who you'd like to see get the G.O.P. nomination either because you think he'd make the best Chief Exec or because you think he'd be the easiest to defeat. Put preference out of your mind, imagine you have serious money riding on this...and vote for the name of the guy you think is most likely to get the nomination.

This poll will be up for one week and then I'll ask the same question about the Democratic field. I'm just curious what the readers of this site will say. If I had to wager, I think I'd have to go eenie-meenie-minie-mo between about four of these choices.

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's another of those mysteries of life that few people will care about but I happen to be among the few...

In the fifties, when the Time for Beany puppet show debuted, its cast mainly consisted of Daws Butler and Stan Freberg, two great cartoon voice actors. Daws provided the voice of Beany. Stan was Cecil. After several years of this, they left and the show's producer-owner Bob Clampett replaced them with other actors. Beany was done by either Jim MacGeorge or Walker Edmiston (they switched off) and Cecil was done by Irv Shoemaker.

In the sixties, several years after the puppet version had gone off, Beany & Cecil came back in a new animated version that Clampett produced under a deal with Mattel Toys. For this show, MacGeorge provided the voice of Beany and Shoemaker spoke for Cecil. Butler and Freberg were in no way involved. In fact, they and Clampett weren't even on speaking terms.

As part of the show's commerce, Mattel put out dozens of Beany & Cecil playthings, many of which were in the toy company's "chatty" line. These were dolls that talked when you pulled a little ring. Today's clip is for a commercial for Beany and Cecil dolls that talked. But here's what's odd. The voices of both dolls were not recorded by MacGeorge and Shoemaker who were concurrently doing the voices on the cartoon show. The voices of both dolls were recorded by Daws Butler. You can even note how Beany sounds like his Elroy Jetson voice. For Cecil, he approximated the voice that his old partner Stan had done for the puppet show.

Why did Daws do this? There's the mystery and it was one of those things I wondered about when I was a lad. I was able to recognize voice actors and I couldn't figure out why they hired Daws. He certainly wasn't cheaper than the other guys would have been. He surely wasn't picked by Clampett.

When I met Daws, I asked him and he said, "I have no idea. They called me to do it so I went out and did it." I also asked Bob Clampett. Bob was a pretty sharp guy but on this one, he just looked baffled and said, "You know, someone told me that was Daws on those and I never knew how that happened." Both men have since passed away and I don't know of anyone else I could ask...so I guess that's it. Just one of those puzzlements with which we all must live. Here's the commercial...

• Posted at 12:11 AM · LINK

January 17, 2008 • Current • January 15, 2008