Saturday, March 29, 2008

Interactive Al

This seems to be New York Times Day on this weblog. In connection with their profile of Al Jaffee (to which I linked earlier in another paper), they have an "interactive" gallery of some of Al's fold-in cartoons. This is the best use of Shockwave Flash I've ever seen on the 'net.

• Posted at 10:13 PM · LINK

Go Read It!

Here's a good article on everyone's favorites, Bob and Ray. Thanks to Paul H. Hill for telling me about this.

If one of the photos looks familiar, it was cribbed from this here weblog. It's a screen capture I did from a game show that ran on GSN. And since they copied my picture, I'll copy one of their links. It's this one, which will take you to a website with 200 Bob & Ray radio shows you can download and enjoy.

• Posted at 8:35 PM · LINK

Remembering Dave

An obit for Dave Stevens in The New York Times. I was going to write "Hey, they got his name right" but actually, I spoke to the reporter a few days ago and he struck me as smart and thorough and everything you'd want a New York Times writer to be. They do have people at that newspaper who get things right.

• Posted at 8:26 PM · LINK

Correction Made

The New York Times has finally figured out Joe Shuster's first name. Maybe someday they'll figure out that their first two years' coverage of the Iraq War was equally accurate.

• Posted at 12:08 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Pat Paulsen was kind of the Stephen Colbert of his day. He was best known as "that comedian who keeps running for president," a bit he did with such deadpan perseverence that a lot of people probably thought he was more serious about it than he actually was.

He also did a lot of routines that came under that category of spontaneous stunts — a category later dominated for a time by a Mr. Andy Kaufman. One Paulsen effort — and you'll catch a brief glimpse of it in this video — was walking on water. Paulsen would go on TV shows and explain, with utter intensity and a face straighter than you could possibly imagine, that he could walk on water. Then, after a very long build-up (the kind Kaufman often gave his routines), Mr. Paulsen would attempt to demonstrate his skill and...well, you've never seen a human being get so wet in your life. He got wetter than wet but it never dampened his insistence that he could walk on water...and sometimes (not always), he eventually managed to do it. It was a hilarious bit even if the Mike Douglas audience didn't always know what to make of it.

Paulsen became famous, of course, for his appearances with The Smothers Brothers. He maintained such a bland, emotionless presence on camera that TV execs seemed to shy from him, presuming Americans would never love someone that cold. He did have a brief (13 weeks) series on ABC in 1969 that I remember as being quite brilliant...but when it went away, so did he to a great extent. Which was our loss because he was a very funny man, indeed.

His family (I think it's his family) has decided that Pat should be running for president again this year, and I think that's great. So what if he's dead? He'd still be better than most of them and he'll get as many electoral votes as Ralph Nader. Here's a link to the campaign website and below is a little tribute video about Pat's life and times...

• Posted at 9:17 AM · LINK

$$$$$

Jack Klugman is suing NBC over his share of profits from the TV series, Quincy, M.E. The show was on from 1976 to 1983 and you have to figure that if that series didn't make truckloads of bucks, nothing could. I mean, it would be like McDonald's claiming there was never any money in selling burgers and fries. Still, at last report, NBC Universal was saying with at least a semi-straight face that Quincy was $66 million in the red so there were no profits to share with the guy who played Quincy.

Does NBC mean this? Of course not. It's just a corporate game wherein they're saying, "Hey, Klugman! If you want your money, you're going to have to fight for it. And we're going to make it so difficult and expensive that maybe you'll forget about it or at least settle for ten cents on the dollar!" They do this because it works. A lot of folks in Klugman's situation don't go to war over the money. Most do settle for a fraction...which is what Mr. Klugman will probably do, too. Companies like Universal save billions (that's billions with a "b") taking the position they take.

I mention this because it is not unrelated to why we all just went through that nasty strike. The people who told us there was no money to be made off the Internet are the same people who are telling Jack Klugman there were no profits from Quincy, M.E. They didn't expect the Writers Guild to believe that either, but they hoped we wouldn't go to war over the money...and they hoped that if we did, we'd settle for a fraction. It's a silly, often destructive game but that's how it's played.