Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Fame Game

I'm always fascinated by the way people act when they see a possibly-famous person in a public place. This afternoon, I was in a medical building in Beverly Hills, taking my mother in for some dental work. I went out for a walk as she was worked upon, got into the elevator and found myself in there with two people. One was a lady I didn't know. The other was Mel Brooks.

Actually, I don't really know Mel Brooks. I've met him about eight or nine times, never for long enough that I expected him to remember me from one time to the next. Every time I'm around Mr. Brooks, I just figure it's easier for me to be introduced to him anew.

I started to say something to him then stopped myself. He seemed preoccupied and I didn't have anything clever to say...and anyway, we were on the third floor and heading down, so there wasn't a lot of time. The lady and I got off on the ground floor while Mel continued on down to the parking level. As the elevator doors closed behind us and Mel disappeared from view, the lady — who was about forty, I'd guess — said to me, "That was someone famous, wasn't it?" The following conversation then occurred...

ME: That was Mel Brooks.

HER: Who's Mel Brooks?

ME: Did you ever hear of Blazing Saddles? Or Young Frankenstein?

HER: No. What are those? TV shows?

ME: What about The Producers?

HER: The producers of what?

ME: The Producers was one of the funniest movies ever made and it was turned into one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time. Did you ever hear of The Two Thousand Year Old Man?

The Orphan Annie eyeballs I got back from her (utterly blank) made me figure there was no point in mentioning Sid Caesar or High Anxiety or any of the other things Mel has done. So I just told the woman...

ME: Well, that's Mel Brooks.

HER: Oh. I thought he was somebody famous.

• Posted at 10:25 PM · LINK

Go Read It!

A profile of a very funny boy named Chris Elliott.

• Posted at 11:34 AM · LINK

In the Crunch

We recommend you try a bag of Popchips (or as they type it, popchips). These are low-in-fat potato crisps. They call them chips, which suggests someone slices a potato and fries the slices. I think they're really crisps, which means that someone turns potatoes into potato flour and mixes in other ingredients and then stamps out little chip shapes and cooks 'em. But even though they may try to make their product look like something it isn't, the bag I sampled the other day was pretty good.

They don't fry them like regular potato chips. They don't bake them like Baked Lays. They say they "pop" them like popcorn. I have no idea what that means but it does make them quite crunchy and tasty without a lot of fat. You get about the same calorie count as Baked Lays but I like them even better. (One drawback: They're somewhat more expensive.)

I do not own stock in the company and I do not profit in any way if you buy them. I'm just telling you about something that I tried and liked.

• Posted at 9:14 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

In case you were wise enough to not watch the political conventions, here they are in the Cliff Notes versions...and these pretty much will tell you all you need to know. First, we have the Democratic Convention in a minute and thirty-seven seconds...

And now, here's the Republican Convention in a minute and thirty-eight seconds. The extra second is yet another example of how the media gives extra attention to the G.O.P.

• Posted at 12:44 AM · LINK

Catching Colbert

My TiVo has a devil of a time recording The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report since each episode plays many times and the reruns aren't all properly identified as reruns. If I just take a Season Pass for both, I get loads of repeats. Tons of 'em. There are various strategies whereby one can get a Wishlist Recording to snag all episodes except the ones whose descriptions contain certain terms that denote an unspecified rerun...but these methods don't work so well. At least, they don't work for me. Last time I tried it, it missed two Daily Shows but recorded an infomercial for Celebrity Ab Secrets.

Actually, The Daily Show isn't that big a problem. Its first telecast comes at 8 PM on my satellite dish so I set up four manual recordings — one per day for Monday through Thursday — at 8:00.

The Colbert Report first airs at 8:30 but one of my TiVos is recording Leno then and other is capturing Letterman. It next airs here at either 10:30 or 11:30, which varies too often and also conflicts with other things I record. So I've set one TiVo to catch the 7:30 AM rebroadcast the next day.

This all works well enough except that sometimes the 7:30 AM Colbert Report broadcast is at 8:30 AM, which I think they do just to screw with me. Also, sometimes there's a Friday night episode of The Daily Show and there are often weeks (like this one) where both shows are in reruns and...well, I can still wind up with a lot of reruns or I can miss episodes if I don't do a lot of hands-on programming. Of great help is this website which lists all the talk show guest lineups and also tells what's what with Mssrs. Stewart and Colbert.

It all defeats the "set it and forget it" joy of the TiVo. Each week, I have to remember to check that all the episodes are marked for recording and I usually have to unmark at least a rerun or two due to some scheduling oddment. I'll bet Colbert could so something about this if he wanted to.

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK