Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Linking Rings

Here's another blog you might want to visit, especially if you're interested in the TV business in general and the animation business in particular. Gordon Bressack has many awards, loads of credits and a whole lot of beefs. If you enjoyed Animaniacs and/or Pinky and the Brain, you might enjoy his blog as he was one of the folks responsible for those shows.

• Posted at 10:56 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's chief of staff, has some strong words about what went wrong with the U.S. prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay. They're worth reading because recent polls suggest the American people are split about the future of the place. 50% want to close it down and the other 50% think it should remain open but only to house bonus-recipients. (Thanks to Bruce Reznick for this link and probably a dozen others I haven't given him credit for in the last month or two.)

• Posted at 9:49 AM · LINK

Early Wednesday Morning

Like an awful lot of people, some of whom loathe each others' politics, I'm rankled by the huge bonuses that AIG has paid or is paying to its current and past execs. This is kind of an ongoing outrage with me. For at least the last decade, every time I work for a huge corporation or even read about the inner workings of one, I see the following situation: Some executive type came in, did absolutely nothing right and (often) many things that harmed the firm...then got out with salary, bonuses and maybe even a golden parachute, altogether totalling many millions of dollars.

And that isn't even the most annoying thing. The most annoying thing is that in every one of those companies, you could see this ongoing attempt to shave a few crucial bucks off the take-home paychecks of competent, hard-working lower ranked employees. It's almost like the janitors have to lose their health insurance to pay for the severance package of some incompetent vice-president. Clearly, a lot of stockholders are unaware this is happening at their companies...and a lot didn't care, as long as the price of that stock was going up.

Still, amidst all this outrage, I find my opinion drifting in the direction voiced here by Nate Silver. Mr. Silver thinks we're on the verge of warping the Rule of Law to renege on what were, at the time they were made, perfectly valid contracts. That bothers me, too. Everything about this whole mess bothers me.

• Posted at 12:48 AM · LINK

Make-Up Test

This will take a bit of time to load but it's worth it. It's a demonstration of the kind of retouching that is now routinely done on glamour photos. Play around with it a little and you'll be amazed what they can do and what they do do. Thanks to Daniel Will-Harris for pointing me towards this.

• Posted at 12:30 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Let's go back to 1989 and the annual Chabad Telethon, back when it was hosted by Jan Murray. He was terrific even though, as you'll see in this clip, he sometimes mangled the names of the acts he was introducing.

This is a number by the original Limeliters plus one. The original folk group (formed in 1959) consisted of Alex Hassilev, Lou Gottlieb and Glenn Yarbrough. Yarbrough left the act in 1963 but would "guest star" occasionally in their appearances thereafter, as he did with this one. Several different musicians filled the third slot after '63 but in this performance, it's John David. Give a listen...

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK