Monthly Archives: November 2006

Joe Lieberman seems to have retained his Senate seat. This is horrible. It could lead to a lot of man-on-dog sex.

Rick Santorum seems to have lost his Senate seat. This is horrible. It could lead to a lot of man-on-dog sex.

…and if someone had done an exit survey at my polling place in the last fifteen minutes, they would have come to the conclusion that 100% of the voting turnout consists of tall males wearing New Balance shoes. It was just me and some other guy but we were the only ones there. A precinct worker was very thorough in telling me how to work the voting apparatus so as to make certain that my ballot could be counted. Years ago, I might have been annoyed at the Kindergarten-level explanation but now I appreciate the attention to duty.

It was a grueling struggle to get to my polling place. A whole half a block. And now, I'm home watching Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on MSNBC trying to anchor election coverage without any news to report apart from voting irregularities. They have Tucker Carlson participating in the analysis along with Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who was a lawyer for the Swift Boat Vets and an advocate for Bush in the 2000 Florida mess. I have the feeling that Olbermann will not sit silent if stupid or dishonest things are said by either. (Carlson is already starting with the view that a loss tonight might be great news for Republicans. Somehow, if they won big, I don't think he'd be saying that was bad news for the party…)

I think I'll turn it off and start watching again when there's some news. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are doing a live hour on Comedy Central at 8 PM, Pacific Time and I'm going to TiVo that in full and watch it later because it's more fun to surf the coverage.

Oh, wait. This is interesting. They just had an interview with Tom DeLay, who was on a live remote. Olbermann was sitting next to Chris Matthews in the studio but didn't ask a single question, didn't challenge DeLay's claim that all the polls were showing this will be one of the closest elections ever. (Neither did Matthews.) Wonder if that's the new MSNBC policy…Olbermann isn't allowed to talk to any guest who wouldn't voluntarily come on his show.

Okay, back to work. I'll check in later.

I awoke this morning to the following thoughts…

• Thank God…no more of those repulsive political commercials. Until the next election.
• Voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida. Who would have imagined such a thing?
• Hey, we just went through another October where the big October Surprise was that there was no October Surprise.
• Or maybe it was that Karl Rove arranged for John Kerry to say something dumb that Republicans could twist into an issue.
• The Katherine Harris concession speech oughta be a keeper. Unless the Rick Santorum vow to fight on and never give up tops it.
• Somewhere at this very moment, there's a pollster who's going to be proven so far wrong tonight that he ought to get out of the business…but won't.
• And lastly: Dick Cheney says he's going to spend Election Day hunting. Good day to stay off the streets.

Vote early. Vote often. And if when you're watching the returns, you see that a person you voted for is at some total that ends in a "1," point at the screen and say, "Hey, that's me!"

This possum just dropped by to urge you to exercise a precious right that we as Americans have…the right to vote. People in many nations cannot vote. Felons cannot vote. Even possums cannot vote. But if you're an American and not a felon — which applies to at least a third of you reading this — you can vote…so you should.

You also have a right to have your vote counted and to have it counted accurately. This may or may not happen and even if it does, the procedures may be so slipshod that you'll never be certain. So just look at it this way: If your guy wins, the election can be presumed to be honest and if your guy loses…hey, get over it, you sore loser.

I may or may not be blogging this evening, depending on whether I think I have anything useful to say. Not that this usually stops me but tonight, I'll have to compete with a lot of talking heads on TV who won't have anything useful to say. You might find it more enlightening to just go to the previous item here and play the "Banana Phone" number over and over until it's time to go to bed. Matter of fact, I think I'll do that now…

You know what the commonest thing is to find on the Internet? I mean, besides porn and people who want to sell you erection-inducing drugs, which is sort of the same thing. Right: It's homemade music videos of the song, "Banana Phone." At last count, there were 7,338,841 of them and that's not counting the one you'll probably make one of these days, whether you want to or not.

Why is everyone making videos of "Banana Phone?" Easy. Because none of them are very good so it's not hard to think, "Hey, I could do the best 'Banana Phone' video on the web." At the moment, this is probably the one you have to beat. I have every confidence that you will.

Well, I think Schwarzenegger will win another term…and by a pretty large margin. His opponent, Phil Angelides, has run about as poor a campaign as you could without committing some public act of sexual depravity with a nun, plus getting caught robbing the collection box while you mock the troops. Arnold, who was pretty unpopular in this state two years ago, has made an incredible comeback, partly by embracing a lot of Liberal causes and partly by lowering expectations of his own performance and then not doing anything too foolish. I thought he was a terrible governor back then. Now, I'm not sure I have any real quarrel with anything he's done lately. I'm not even sure who I'm going to vote for in this race.

The ballot propositions in California and Los Angeles are rather maddening. An awful lot of them are the kind that seem like really good and/or necessary moves if you just hear a one sentence description. The devil, as they say, is in the details and I suggest you do a little research and not buy anyone's summary of anything. Proposition 90, for example, sounds like a move to prevent the government from seizing your land for anything other than a legitimate government-related purpose. I'd get behind that but the actual proposal (read it) would lay the groundwork for anyone whose property is impacted by any government action to sue for any theoretical loss…another one of those "goes too far" correctives. I'm voting against it but study up on it before you vote either way.

We have a lot of bond issues, most of which are proposals to spend money for education, spend money to clean up our water, spend money to fix levees so a Katrina-like disaster can't occur here, etc. In another time and state, these matters would be paid for out of the general fund with current dollars, rather than to float bond issues that will probably be covered with whopping tax hikes in the future. But that's how the game is played these days, isn't it? Elected officials don't want to curtail spending and they certainly don't want to get tarred as tax-raisers. So the answer is to manuever the tax increase so someone else will have to take the responsibility for it…and put bond proposals on the ballot that we, the voters, will feel we have to accept. I'm going to vote for some of them but I wish I didn't have to.

Everyone is saying the Democrats will take the House of Representatives so I'm assuming they will…by a narrow-enough margin that some Republicans will claim it as a moral victory for their side. The Senate? Who knows? I'm sick of pundits who pick and choose the poll that fits the story they want to tell…and I don't even think most of them are biased to one party or another. I think they're just looking to say something more than "Too close to call" about a lot of races that are too close to call. As Jack Germond once said of folks whose job involves making political projections, "We aren't paid to say, 'I don't know.'" Since no one's paying me, I'll say it: I don't know.

What I will predict is that we're going to hear a lot about vote fraud in any race decided by less than about three points. This is one of the many sad legacies of the 2000 presidential mess. We no longer trust any election that doesn't go our way…and in some cases, that distrust is probably warranted. (Most of my Democratic friends are hoping, of course, that their team wins big…but I have one who's hoping the Dems win control of the Senate by a couple of squeaker elections that are filled with irregularities. Just so he can tell Republicans, "Get over it!" The guy has a point. I don't think we'll ever clean up the process and arrive at a system everyone can trust until such time as someone is willing to entertain questions about an election that went their way. This will not happen in our lifetimes.)

But let's close with the important prediction. Tomorrow the new James Bond DVD sets go on sale so I'll predict that a lot of us who've already bought Goldfinger twenty times on home video will be stupid enough to go buy it again. I might, just so I can put this DVD on a shelf with my three other DVD versions, my Beta version, my two VHS copies, my regular Laserdisc, my reissue Laserdisc, my Criterion Laserdisc, et al. I'm leaving room for the Blu-ray version and the I-Pod download version, and I'm still hoping to go full circle and see it issued in a one-reel, silent 8mm Castle Film. Some day, I'll have to actually watch the movie and see if it's any good.

A little over a year ago, the New York Times put most of their opinion columns and online archives behind a subscription wall and called it Times Select. It suddenly cost fifty smackers a year to read Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman and the others and I, for one, shelled out for it…but just for the first year. A few weeks into that year, I discovered that everything I cared about was being posted for free in many locations around the web…all it took was a wee bit of searching.

I wrestled a bit with my conscience about not re-upping my sub. I think they have every right to charge for the material, just as I have every right not to pay it…and if I don't pay it, I shouldn't be able to read it. I finally decided it wasn't worth the fifty bananas and now I do without…to some extent. I do read the excerpts some sites quote under "fair use" and, shame on me, if I come across a Frank Rich column quoted in full somewhere, I do not avert my eyes. All I can say in my defense is that it's probably the most dishonest thing I do, aside from accepting money for Groo.

This week however, I can walk in the sunshine like an honest person. I'm not likely to be paid anything for Groo in the next seven days and I can read all those columnists, sans guilt. This week is Free Access Week over at Times Select…a fine time to catch up on all the Krugman you may have missed.

And you can wonder if the reason they're doing this is because it's now been around thirteen months since they started this deal and I'm probably not the only charter subscriber who disappeared on them when Year One was up. What kind of drop-off did they experience? I'll bet it was formidable.

The opening to The Flintstones in Hebrew. Maybe it should be The Flintsteins. Yabba Dabba Jew!

I love it when Costco sells something really odd. A $3400 dinner with Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola is really odd.

Last Friday afternoon, Carolyn and I went to the grand reopening of the Griffith Observatory here in Los Angeles. It had been closed for five years while some $93 million was spent to make it a little larger and a little shinier. For the most part, it was a restoration as opposed to a remodelling, and some of the reviewers are saying that the place now looks pretty much the way it did when it first opened in 1935. I wasn't around then so I'll take their word for it.

The thing most visitors seem to be talking about is the procedure one needs to follow to visit the Observatory. You used to be able to just drive up there but the operators anticipated a huge crush of visitors when they reopened. So for an indeterminate time, you can't just motor up the hill. You have to go to one of two parking lots some distance away and take a shuttle…and you need to get an advance reservation for the shuttle. On the way up, they show you a little orientation video that mostly informs you where the restrooms are located.

This special section of the L.A. Times will tell you all about the renovation and the new features. If you're thinking of visiting, you might want to study a bit and decide what you want to see. I felt a bit disoriented there, unsure what to do in what order, surrounded by people who seemed to be in the same quandary. Some exhibits weren't yet open and the Wolfgang Puck cafe couldn't get their stove to work, which I guess is to be expected the first week. I assume things will get better but even if they don't, it's great to have an important L.A. landmark open again and looking good.

A poll can be a valuable indicator of how an election will probably go. A poll can also be wrong. The day before the big election in 2000, Zogby said the New York Senate race was too close to call and predicted "I think we're looking at a one point race." The next day, Hillary Clinton beat her opponent by twelve percentage points.

News sources don't like to say that any race is over because they think you'll stop paying attention to them. So if there's any possible way to claim that a race is tightening, they say that. But if the poll has a four point margin of error, a shift of two points is meaningless. If someone is working for a party or a candidate, anything they say about their internal polling is especially meaningless.

The other thing you shouldn't fall for is the self-serving reason for victory or defeat. If I was interested in reducing the capital gains tax, I think I'd be out there now saying, "A Democratic win on Tuesday will be a mandate to reduce the capital gains tax." Matter of fact, I think I'll start spinning for something useful. You know, a Democratic victory on Tuesday means that America demands more Groo comics. I'll bet that if our publisher bought ad time on the cable news networks, I could get some pundit to echo that idea. Even if they don't, no one can prove me wrong. And it makes as much sense as some things we'll be hearing this week.

Look who was just on my back porch eating the cat food.

I could watch Buster Keaton in anything…though some of the work he did late in his career makes that rather difficult. Not so with a batch of Alka-Seltzer commercials he did in 1958 and 1959, when he was in his early sixties. Your link today will show you six of them in a row, and the best one is the last of the six.

The first five also feature the voice work of Dick Beals, who has been mentioned before on this weblog…here, for instance. And here and here and a few other times, to boot. Dick is still working and still sounds just like he did then when he did the voice of Speedy Alka-Seltzer and every adolescent boy in all of animation. He and Buster make a great team, as you'll see. And doesn't Buster have the perfect face to be selling an antacid?

Ray Arthur, who's one of my frequent e-mailers here, is a Film Commissioner for the Ridgecrest Regional Film Commission, He writes the following in response to my wondering if it's worth it for Los Angeles to surrender its streets to location shooting…

The short answer is, yes, it's worth it!

Since 2000 we've seen a steady stream of film production leave not only the Los Angeles basin but the entire state of California. It started with modest incentives from Canada and has developed into multi-leveled cash giveaways and tax credits from a dozen countries and 26 states, all successfully gaining for a piece of the Hollywood pie. An easy way to understand country tax credits, provincial tax credits, discount crew wages and, at times, the dollar exchanges that create the total Canada incentive package is: for every three MOWs, movies of the week, that ABC produces in Toronto…they get the fourth one free. Estimates from FilmLA (L.A. city/county film commission and the California Film Commission) show that in the past five years the state, primarily L.A., has lost 10,000 jobs and $30 million in revenue from runaway production.

Part of the problem is that Governor Schwarzenegger has been unable to create a California film incentive package. AB777 languished in the State Assembly for two years and died a quiet death last spring. Why? For two basic reasons: the promoters of the bill/package were unable to overcome the label that it was a tax break for Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise. This was entirely false in that all the credits were for "below the line" crew, i.e., others than the 10,000 who lost their jobs. Secondly, the Assembly & Senate wouldn't consider giving a tax break JUST to film. The Republicans said, "If it's good for film, it's good for aerospace, high tech, etc." Then the Democrats said, "If it's good for aerospace and high tech, it's good for agriculture and manufacturing." Without a multi-industry buy-in, which was cost prohibitive, it was dead. While all of these industries have their problems, none have the specific type of problem the film is battling.

The L.A. Times editorial notes that, "the State doesn't charge a dime…" And that's true, because that's about the only incentive the State has. The editorial also uses the number $2.6 million a day as revenue from a feature film. I've never seen that number but I really like it!!! I think that was a total, not daily, estimate. The CFC is currently revising (read: COLA update) estimates for daily on location film production. The $$ number that most film commissions throughout the State of California use for an average size feature film, and Die Hard 76 is not average – it's huge, is $46,000 per day. That's actual disposable income into the community in which they're filming. For Die Hard, multiply that, not just by the number of days they're tying up LAX traffic but, by the total number of shoot days they're in L.A. Let's say that's 60. That's $2,760,000. And that's before the "3 to 7 times" multiplier that economists use for local disposable income. Also, that's JUST the dollars that are left in the community. Had Die Hard shot in Toronto you would have lost that income, plus the wages of 75% of the crew on that film who would have been replaced by Canadians. $2.76 million is a number that reasonable people will disagree as to the level of inconvenience with which a neighborhood/city should endure.

It's easy for me to sit in Ridgecrest, by God, California, with my $3 million in filming (down from $7 million by the way) and suggest to several million Angelenos that they look at the big picture. That the inconvenience is worth the sacrifice. But when you add the negative economic impact of the past five years, with the inability of the State legislature to take this problem seriously, I submit that is the case.

One could raise the question, "Why can 12 countries and 26 states produce quality feature films for 25% to 40% less than Hollywood?" But that's another discussion for another time.

As I read the Times editorial, they were not arguing against the concept that the government should make concessions, or that the community should endure some inconvenience to keep productions in town. They were suggesting that this particular trade-off probably didn't make sense. Since it's impossible to predict and quantify the negatives, I don't know how someone could say with any certainty that the losses and problems won't outweigh the benefits on this one. Closing off access routes to the airport sounds like something that could really cause a lot of people a lot of woes…and I wonder where the airlines and airport merchants were on this one. Seems to me that if a lot of flights are delayed, or if a lot of seats go empty because passengers missed their planes, the airlines stand to lose a lot more money than the movie will bring into the local economy.

There's also the question of how many of those financial benefits will directly or indirectly reach those who are going to suffer so that Bruce Willis can dodge fireballs on the 105 freeway. And I think the Times felt there had not been sufficient "public input" into the decision of whether this accommodation should be made. I'll bet it was a done deal before most of those who will be impacted even knew about it and therefore had the chance to object.

It's possible that this is a good deal for the community, just as it's possible that the movie wouldn't have gone to Toronto or some other town if they didn't get every possible consideration. For a multitude of reasons, including a desire to use locations that would have been identifiable as Southern California, they might have opted to stay in town and spend even more here. Some very expensive movies do film here despite lucrative offers to go elsewhere.

I'd be curious to know what proposals, if any, the local film commissions have refused lately. There have to be some that looked like they'd do more damage than good. One hopes the new Die Hard movie won't turn out to be one of them…and maybe these projects need a little more public scrutiny in advance. I can think of a few businesses out that way that can't help but get harmed by having those streets closed off.

Thank you, Ray, for the perspective. I'm always amazed that I can write about almost anything on this site and hear from someone who knows more about it than I do. Not that there's any shortage of such people or topics…