Saturday, August 14, 2010

Nifty Fifty

Here's someone's odd list of The 50 Greatest Saturday Morning Cartoons. Even though it contains one series for which I wrote every episode, one show I wrote many episodes of, one show I story-edited and wrote a lot of, and two series where I wrote the pilot and then removed my name, I still think it's a pretty screwy batch of selections. Robert Rose sent me the link and wrote, "...any list that doesn't include George of the Jungle clearly has some problems. Agreed. So don't take it too seriously and don't believe about 80% of the "created by" credits they assign.

• Posted at 9:17 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's a master at work: Shelley Berman performing one of my favorites among his many fine routines. A whole new generation knows him from Boston Legal and Curb Your Enthusiasm and that's fine. But they really oughta know him for this kind of thing. If you do, you'll want to check out his Facebook fan page and his newly-redesigned website. And if you see on either that he's performing near you — something he doesn't do nearly enough of these days — go. He still does brilliant material like this...

• Posted at 3:06 PM · LINK

Everything's Archie

George Gene Gustines in the New York Times writes about the empire that is Archie Comics. I'm linking to this piece because it's relevant and it's timely but most of all because it quotes me.

• Posted at 3:04 PM · LINK

Stan the Man

A legend of local (Los Angeles) TV, Stan Chambers is retiring and I would like to second everything that Ken Levine says about the guy. For longer than I've been around, Stan's been around and you knew that if anything happened in L.A. — a big fire, a flood, a police shoot-out, anything — you had to rush to turn on Channel 5 because that's where Stan Chambers was. What's more, he would be closer to the action than any other reporter...probably the first one to get there and the last one to leave.

We've had a lot of news folks in this town who've been criticized, usually rightly, for sensationalizing the news or doing a sloppy, inaccurate job of covering it. I do not recall anyone ever faulting Stan Chambers for anything, even though he covered the highest of the high-profile stories. He also, to his credit, covered the low-profile stories with the same dogged professionalism. Wish all news people could be like that.

• Posted at 2:58 PM · LINK