Sunday, January 11, 2009

Ditto

I agree with Ken Levine about Woody Allen movies.

• Posted at 8:54 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

In the interest of occasionally presenting viewpoints with which I don't agree — something few blogs do, let's note — here's an article by Fred Barnes making the case that the presidency of George W. Bush has been a rousing success. I don't think it's much of a case, and I think some of the "achievements" Barnes lists are deeds for which Bush and/or his staffers ought to go to prison, but there you are.

• Posted at 10:35 AM · LINK

Checking Out

When I was a kid, I sometimes went with my Aunt Dot when she did her marketing. This pretty much consisted of pushing the cart and playing the following game, which I could never win. Every time she noted a price increase on something, even if it was only up a penny, I'd have to guess how much the product cost back when she was my age. One time, I think I asked her, "Gee, did they even have money then?"

We'd go to a Safeway about three blocks from her home...and the first thing she'd do was to select something to eat while shopping — a bag of cookies or chips or dried fruit or something. She'd tear the bag open, stuff it in the "baby" seat of the shopping cart, then nibble as she shopped, offering snacks also to me and even to other shoppers she happened to talk with.

That always made me uncomfortable. I had the idea that you're supposed to pay for the food at the market before you open it and eat it. When I mentioned this to my Aunt Dot — a very sweet, nice lady, by the way — she'd dismiss my concerns. Everyone does it, she said, even though I never saw anyone else do it. And she was going to pay for the item along with all her other purchases, as of course she did.

I assumed at first that since she was a grown-up, she must know what she was talking about...always a very bad assumption on my part. I think I was around ten when I began to realize that wasn't always the case; that older didn't mean smarter and neither did being my aunt. One day in the Safeway, a young lady who worked there approached Aunt Dot and asked her very politely to not begin gorging herself on the Triscuits until after they'd been purchased at the check-out counter. With a touch of startled indignance, Aunt Dot replied that she was going to pay for it.

The clerk had a gracious undertone of "Please don't make trouble for me, lady" as she said, "I'm sure you are...but some people don't. Every day, we find opened, half-consumed packages around the store and the boss gets upset with us. You put us in an awkward position because we can't tell who's going to pay and who isn't. If the boss sees you, you're not going to get yelled at. I am."

It was as much how she said it as what she said. Aunt Dot, like I said, was a terribly nice lady and she hadn't realized she'd been making possible trouble for someone. She never did it again and I've never done it. Even if I'm famished, I wait 'til I've paid for an item to dive into it.

I'm telling this story because lately, I've started seeing this a lot in markets...people opening packages, munching on chips or swigging beverages for which they've yet to pay. Is this now becoming customary? Do stores now expect it or tolerate it? This may be a mental block I can/should get over.

• Posted at 10:28 AM · LINK

Go Read It!

The alphabet for Jack Kirby fans.

• Posted at 9:14 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

As a follow-up to yesterday's Video Link: On October 23, 1984, Paul McCartney appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson again...and this time, Johnny Carson was actually there. Paul was out promoting his then-recent film, Give My Regards to Broad Street.

One of the first things you'll see Carson ask him is about a little mystery. The night the Beatles made their first, historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Ed thanked a number of folks for making it possible, including Johnny Carson. Johnny never knew what that was all about and you'll see him ask Paul, who doesn't have a clue. I believe a prevailing theory among Beatles historians is that Mr. Sullivan was confused, as he tended to be; that he'd meant to thank Jack Paar and had mixed up the names of the previous host of The Tonight Show and the new one.

As for why Ed would have wanted to thank Jack Paar: Here's an excerpt from this article in which Mr. Paar talked about his days on television...

Mr. Paar reminded the audience that, legend to the contrary, it was he, not Ed Sullivan, who first showed the Beatles in action to an American television audience. In January 1964, five weeks before Mr. Sullivan introduced the Beatles live, viewers of the Jack Paar Show saw a film of the Beatles sending a teen-age English audience into shrieking, delirious orbit just by shaking their hair and chorusing "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

The segment was shown in full again last Thursday. "In my seven years on NBC, I never, ever had a rock 'n' roll act," Mr. Paar commented. ''I was interested in the Beatles as a psychological and sociological phenomenon." He added that his was the only television show to which no one under 21 was admitted because "kids tend to take over the audience."

I offer that as a point of information not only as to why Ed might have thanked Paar, but also as to why Jack Paar didn't remain on TV after the mid-sixties. Around the same time he did that interview, I saw him give a little lecture and he was very charming and very witty but he also seemed shocked and angry that anything had changed in the world or show business since 1961.

So here's John and Paul. The audio isn't very good on this but you should be able to make everything out. If you don't want to sit through the whole thing, you still might be interested in the last few minutes when, after teasing the audience, Mr. McCartney finally takes up the guitar and sings a little. The video is in three parts and in the unlikely event that I've configured things properly, they should play one after the other in the browser below. Thanks again to Shelly Goldstein...

• Posted at 12:07 AM · LINK