It's not embeddable here but I wanted to call your attention to a documentary that's available for viewing on YouTube. It's called Burger Town and it's a great look at the fast food hamburger business in Southern California, past and present. It's full of old commercials and interviews with restaurant employees, as well as footage and stills of classic burger shrines. It runs about 48 minutes but if the topic interests you, it's well worth the time.
I don't care that Miss California had breast implants or that she posed for racy photos. I also don't care what she thinks about Gay Marriage. I don't know why anyone cares about anything besides how she looks in the bikini and even that's no big deal these days.
I thought we were coming around to the idea that beauty pageants were about beauty...and nothing else. Once upon a time, there were people in this country who pretended that to become Miss Wherever was to be a role model for young women everywhere. In truth, it was all just an exercise in creating a celebrity who could open boat shows for a year and make money for the pageant operators.
But of course, it would be shallow and undignified to admit that the contest is just about lovely young ladies in minimal attire...and if she's going to be cutting the ribbons at gas station openings, it would be nice if she could talk a little. Also, you can't fill a two-hour TV telecast with just swimsuit walkthroughs — so they stuck in talent competitions and the embarrassing little "question" segments where the competitors have 45 seconds to tell us how they'd achieve world peace. And not only do I not care about all this, no one cares about beauty pageants anymore. Miss America pageants used to be prime time major TV events and now they're on low-audience cable channels between reruns of The Jeffersons and infomercials for Kevin Trudeau's latest health scam. The Miss U.S.A. contest, which is where Miss California shot off about same-sex marriages is even less-watched.
Carrie Prejean may be a right-wing bigot but give the lady credit. She found a way to get a little fame and maybe some fortune out of a largely-ignored beauty pageant that she didn't even win. If she hadn't said what she did, all she'd have to show for the experience was the sash, a supply of Revlon products and some lovely parting gifts. Now, she has a chance to get some speaking engagements from right-wing groups and to be a martyr for their cause if, as seems likely, she's stripped of her title on Monday. There may be a book deal there or a job on Fox News. Whatever it is, it's more celebrity than any beauty contest winner has seen since...well, since Vanessa Williams lost her crown due to naughty photos.
Lesson to be learned? The only way to get anything out of being Miss Anything is to have a scandal. If all the contestants figured that out, those pageants might be worth watching.
Paul Begala on how Dick Cheney's unpopularity helps the Democrats.
I think Cheney has achieved something truly amazing in politics. He's even lost the support of people who agree with him. There are a lot of them out there...folks who like torture, like shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor, like his notions of a strong America and so on. They probably like everything Cheney stands for except his tolerance of gay rights, which goes largely unmentioned, but they don't like Cheney. He's just done too much damage to their cause. I feel the same way about a lot of folks who more or less support what I support but do it in a clumsy, offensive manner. Maybe it comes with being vice-president because Joe Biden is drifting in that direction for me.
My pal Lee Wochner has a sad story about Dom DeLuise. And it prompts me to expand on what I wrote earlier about why I decided I had to do something about my own weight.
Obviously, there are about a dozen fine reasons to not be 100+ pounds too big...and it doesn't really matter which is the most important. One that doesn't get a lot of attention is that you just don't fit into the world you're in. I was probably less concerned about shortening my life than I was with just causing problems while I was around — chairs I didn't fit onto, aisles I couldn't pass through, bumping into people, etc. Dropping tonnage has had all sorts of benefits to my health and sleeping and feet and such...but I'm also conscious that I can get into a seat on an airplane without needing a belt extender and crushing the person next to me.
Greg Ford has written a pretty good career overview of the man we call Tex Avery.
I wish there was a way people could see his films — and those by Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, etc. — in something resembling the way they were meant to be seen. The cartoons weren't made to be seen on a small screen in your home with no audience around. They also weren't meant to be seen in film festivals, one after another.
My first real exposure to Tex Avery cartoons as an adult was when the L.A. County Art Museum hosted an evening of them with Tex there to speak after the screening. They had brand new prints and they had a lot of them. After three, the bright colors and frantic pace began to get a little tiring and after five, one started to notice a certain amount of repetition. After seven or eight, my friends and I fled to the lobby...where we found Tex holding court, talking to a gang of admirers. As he saw us join the throng, he joked, "More people who can't sit through too many of my films." One of my friends started to apologize that we weren't back in the theater, studying every frame of every cel. Tex said, "Don't be sorry. I had to leave after three." None of us thought the films weren't brilliant and hilarious. We just couldn't take them in mega-doses.
Hans Klok bills himself as "The World's Fastest Magician" and no one who's seen him perform would waste a lot of time arguing that one. Nor will you if you watch this video of his recent Vegas engagement. I never got to see it live but a magician friend who did said it was like a "greatest hits" cavalcade, blasting through every state-of-the-art trick around, save for those clearly owned by others. My friend was stunned at the sheer budget, watching Klok roll out one expensive trick after another, allotting sixty seconds for a feat that another magician might have milked for ten minutes. (Klok is currently touring Europe. Assuming he's doing much the same show, his greatest feat is probably just getting all his props from town to town.)
Here's a 31-minute version of Mr. Klok's show in Vegas. It's in four parts which should play, one after another, in the browser I've embedded below. Nothing up my sleeve...
May 10, 2009
