Sunday, November 2, 2008

My Mistake

As some of you might imagine, I write some of the many obituaries that appear on this site in advance, before the person has passed away. I just wrote one that I expect to need within the week...and I accidentally hit the wrong button and posted it.

It has been deleted. It was only up for about thirty seconds. But if you saw it during that period, just pretend you didn't see it. Sorry.

• Posted at 9:40 PM · LINK

Political Stuff

The L.A. Times says that the folks making the case for Proposition 8 in California (the anti-gay marriage amendment) are basically lying to make that case. Is anyone surprised?

• Posted at 8:32 PM · LINK

Correction

I've fixed it but a couple of posts ago, I accidentally said there were 438 electoral votes at stake instead of 538. What happened was that I composed a message that was correct, then I decided it was too long and I decided to trim it down. In the untrimmed version, I was writing about a person who'd projected (in our little contest) that Obama would get 438...and when I cut that part out, I left in part of the wrong sentence and...well, I've corrected it. Thanks to the 538 of you who've written in to point this out.

• Posted at 2:23 PM · LINK

Today's Bonus Video Link

This is a bit of a cheap shot but it's also funny and it's something that John McCain was almost asking for. It's a short film of the Maverick family — the folks whose ancestor gave his surname to the dictionary — saying and even singing about how much it pains them to hear McCain call himself one.

I'm not sure if McCain ever deserved that label but I'd like to think so. At least, I'd like to think I wasn't fooled when I believed what I used to believe about him. But a couple of years ago, he decided that the only route to the presidency involved kissing up to what Jon Stewart calls (and McCain even agreed with him was) "crazy base world." So the Senator from Arizona fell in lockstep with their wishlist, which meant anchoring himself to the least popular President in the history of mankind.

There are many reasons McCain's doing as poorly as he's done... and a bad, dishonest campaign is certainly high on the list. But it may be as simple as the fact that Americans really, really hate what George Bush has done to this country so they're fixin' to vote for the guy least likely to continue his policies, end of argument. I don't know if being a real "maverick" could have gotten McCain the G.O.P. nomination but the fact that he isn't seen as one is probably costing him the general election.

Here's the video link, for which I thank Bob Elisberg. I am not, by the way, embedding this because I think it's going to change anyone's mind. I think we're long past that moment. I just thought the video was worth seeing. It's a shame that James Garner is said to be ailing. I mean, it's a shame because we love James Garner and he's a great actor and from all reports, one of the nicest guys in the business. But wouldn't it be fun if he was up to making a video in this election? For either side?

• Posted at 12:12 PM · LINK

Planning Waaaay Ahead...

Ignore this message if you're not going to be in San Francisco on Saturday, February 28, 2009. That would mean you're not going to be attending the Wondercon in that city that weekend.

If you are attending the Wondercon (or even if you're just in Frisco for other reasons — like, say, you live there) this might interest you. I often wax enthusiastic here about Frank Ferrante and his wonderful show, An Evening With Groucho. In it, Frank somehow turns himself into Groucho Marx for a couple of hours, during which he tells the man's life story, sings his best songs and insults almost everyone in the first eight rows. A great theatrical experience if I do say so...and since it's my blog, I get to say so.

Frank is doing two performances in San Francisco on 2/28/09. They're at 5 PM and 8 PM at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. If you wanna go, order tickets now because they seem to be selling quickly. One reason for that may be that I've bought out an entire row for the 8 PM performance...but also, Frank is popular in that town from the work he does in his "other" job, starring in Teatro Zinzanni. So if you want to come as close as you're ever going to come to spending an evening with Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, act now.

• Posted at 11:40 AM · LINK

Sunday Morning

I'm going to stop looking at the polls. We're down to thinking fluctuations of one or two points matter when in fact, they're all just "noise" and well within the margin of error. You could get some deadly form of ping-pong whiplash looking at the Senate race in Minnesota: Franken's up two points, Coleman's up one, Franken's up one, Coleman's up three, etc. That one could easily go either way and no poll today or tomorrow is going to change that. (It may rain Tuesday in Minnesota. None of the polls have even tried to determine if maybe one candidate's supporters are less likely to go out in the rain to vote for him.)

You should stop looking at polls and you should especially stop looking at Zogby. Mr. Zogby seems like a nice, serious man when I see him interviewed but his poll has achieved something, at least with me, that is rare in this world. I not only don't believe him when he has my candidates behind. Everyone does that to some extent. I don't even believe him when he shows my candidates winning. Zogby's been so consistently random and erratic that when his polls tell me something I want to have be so, I can't even gin up a little, "Well, maybe he got this one right."

We have many hundreds of entries in our little prizeless contest to guess Barack Obama's electoral total. You still have time to enter or change your guess (I'm sticking with 349) and the details are here. Guesses made so far range from 0 to 538 and there are possible numbers no one has guessed so take a chance. This is your golden opportunity to win nothing.

I did receive one complaint that it showed "hidden bias" that I was asking folks to predict Obama's total and not McCain's...or maybe the correspondent thought I should ask you to predict both. There's no hidden bias here. I've said I think Obama would be a much better Chief Exec than John McCain and I have an Obama-Biden banner posted, as well. And predicting Obama's total is the same thing as predicting McCain's since together, they'll total 538. Mr. Barr and Mr. Nader ain't cutting into that number. I just picked Obama because I had to pick one...and anyway, his total looks to be the more interesting of the two.

• Posted at 11:01 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The image is a little dark but you'll mostly want to listen to this one, which runs three minutes. And let's thank Phil Pollard for sending me the link.

Raymond Scott (1908-1994) was a composer and musician who created a lot of popular music but who holds a special place in the hearts and ears of cartoon buffs. Carl Stalling, who did the music for most of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, liked to use Scott compositions in his work, especially after 1943 when Scott sold his publishing company to Warner Brothers Music. Thereafter, Scott tunes were heard often in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, especially the song in this clip, "Powerhouse." Stalling usually employed "Powerhouse" whenever the on-screen action involved automation or robots or anything of that nature.

This clip is from the April 16, 1955 edition of Your Hit Parade, a long-running radio-then-TV show which each week presented musical acts and performances of tunes that were then climbing the charts. I don't think "Powerhouse" was at that moment but Mr. Scott was the orchestra leader on the series so he was often featured. He called his group the Raymond Scott Quintette, even though it always had six guys in it. He's the one tickling the ivories, as they say...

• Posted at 8:13 AM · LINK