Monthly Archives: September 2007

I like Netflix and I'd like it a lot more if I could rent a movie from them that's been out on DVD for more than two years and not have the disc arrive looking like it had been through a yak stampede. And not playing on any of my machines.

Any day now, George W. Bush will set the record for having taken more days of vacation than any other Oval Office Occupant in history.

Back in the Reagan era when that guy was setting the old record, I wrote an article I can no longer find for a local magazine. It said basically that Presidential Vacations were just plain a bad idea from all standpoints. I mean, if you think you have a great guy in office, you oughta be ticked off that he isn't working harder. Fewer days off might mean he could pass a couple more items on your agenda. He's going to end his term without doing a number of things you hoped he would accomplish. Maybe less vacation would have made one or two more come about.

On the other hand, if you think the current prez is inept, maybe working harder would make him a bit more ept. Or if you think he's dishonest, putting in more hours might mean fewer instances where he hides behind the claim that he didn't know what his aides were doing, hadn't addressed some vital problem yet, etc. Bad presidents tend to cower a lot behind the excuse that they're busy tending to more important matters…and then they go fishing.

This isn't a slam at Bush so much as it is a bewilderment that anyone in any career of choice needs that many days off. I always liked Jay Leno's old line about how if you keep needing vacations from your job, you picked the wrong job.

I loved almost everything Allan Sherman did. Notice I said "almost." One of his less wonderful endeavors came about in 1964 when for God knows what reason, he got involved with a dreadful movie scam. It was an American release of an awful 1952 British monster comedy called Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. For the U.S., it was retitled My Son, the Vampire (to cash in on the fame of Mr. Sherman's My Son, the Folk Singer) and Allan recorded a terrible title tune for it. He also appeared in its trailer and filmed a little non sequitur scene which was spliced into the movie but spliced out for most TV airings.

The "Mother Riley" series was a popular, long-running British series. Mother Riley was an old vaudeville act featuring a gent named Arthur Lucan who was kind of the Dame Edna of his day. He went on to appear as the character in sixteen or seventeen movies made between 1937 and 1952. In fact, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire was the last of what had once been an extremely profitable series. (Lucan died in 1954.)

The vampire in question was played by Bela Lugosi during that portion of his career when he'd appear in just about anything for money. As the story is told, he appeared in England in 1951 in an acclaimed but unsuccessful production of the stage play of Dracula. Supposedly, when the play closed, Lugosi was left stranded and without cash, and he appeared in the Mother Riley movie to earn money to return home. It was not the worst movie in which he ever appeared — this was a man who worked for Ed Wood, after all — but it was sure close.

Eleven years after it was made, the movie got its first U.S. release with Lugosi unmentioned in either the advertising or even the film's credits. I'm guessing this was to mask the fact that it was an old movie since Bela had been dead for eight years by then. Allan Sherman was barely in it and the film was sold on the strength of his name, which must have led to some angry moviegoers.

Here's the trailer for the film which rather pointedly shows a little bit of Sherman and no scenes at all from the movie…

And now here's the opening minute and a half of the movie with Mr. Sherman's forgettable title tune. I hope he was well paid for this…

I've received a batch of e-mails asking me what I think of Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS. I think I agree with Eric Boehlert.

They're now saying the 10-2 vote in the Spector trial was for conviction with two people believing…well, I can't quite understand what they believed. Something about not being sure Spector had his hand on the gun when it was fired. In any event, a 10-2 vote to lock the guy up makes it more likely there'll be a retrial than if the vote had gone the other way. Or so they're saying.

The judge in the Phil Spector case has declared a mistrial. The jury was reportedly deadlocked 10-2 but so far, there's no information as to which way. I'm guessing ten for guilty and two who thought he was guilty but that it would just be fun to watch Nancy Grace's head explode.

A date has been set to discuss if there should be a retrial. Given the evidence and the defendant's history of threatening people with guns, it's obvious that he should be retried. Then again, it was also obvious he should be found guilty on the first ballot. So I think maybe I should get serious about that killing spree I've been planning in case he gets away with this.

In fact, I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't wait until he actually goes free. I mean, if a guy with a long track record for unstable, violent behavior can murder and only wind up with a hung jury then a decent, non-drinking, non-violent fellow like myself should be able to slay without even getting arrested. I should be able to murder someone and then if the police come, they'll check and see that I'm in show business and they'll say, "No point in taking him downtown."

Yeah, this might be the time. If you know what's good for you, you'll stay out of my way.

By the way: I hope that if Spector does get off, he will at least have the decency to announce that he will not rest until he finds the real killers.

The House of Representatives just voted 341-79 to condemn the ad in which MoveOn.org questioned the honesty and patriotism of General Petraeus.

Good for them…because we can't have people going around saying whatever they want about our leaders. I look forward to a similar condemnation of those Swift Boats Veterans ads.

As I've mentioned here a few times, my first memory of liking something I saw performed on the live stage is of a touring production of My Fair Lady that my mother took me to in downtown L.A. to when I was a wee lad. It starred a gentleman named Michael Evans who, I see this morning, has just left us. I don't particularly recall anything about his performance other than that he performed…but that was for me a magical road marker in my life. So I wanted to take note of his passing.

The Los Angeles Times obit mentions two things I found interesting. One is that it quotes a 1961 Times review of his performance. In previous mentions here (like this one), I said that I saw the show in 1959 or 1960. Well, maybe it was 1961, when I would have been nine years old. That sounds right to me.

The second thing is the mention of him appearing in the movie of Bye Bye Birdie, a film I've seen dozens of times. Evans played the classy gent who's competing with Dick Van Dyke for the affections of Janet Leigh…and I guess I knew that the actor who played that role was named Michael Evans. But I somehow never made the connection between that Michael Evans and the guy I saw playing Henry Higgins. I'm not sure why that should matter to a person at all but if I'd made that connection in 1963, it would have meant a lot to me. That was also the first movie musical I can recall ever liking.

Here's a link you won't want to watch all of right now. It's the entirety of the original, black-and-white Little Shop of Horrors starring Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles and a small but famous appearance by Jack Nicholson. I remember a time in the late sixties when this movie was practically unknown. It turned up every now and then on Channel 9, usually commencing at Midnight or later and my friends and I thought we were the only people on the planet who had ever seen it.

It was, of course, infamous not only for its bizarre humor but for the fact that director Roger Corman shot the whole thing in two days of interior shooting and one long night of exteriors. For some reason, that's not impressive enough and I've seen people claim it was shot in two days or even one.

Mr. Corman usually says he decided to shoot a movie in two and a half days as a lark. He'd previously made Bucket of Blood (with many of the same people) in five days and wanted to see if he could halve that time. Others who were involved have suggested that it was just a matter of Roger being cheap. A lot of the films he directed or produced are nice triumphs of creativity over budget.

You don't want to click on it now because it's an hour and thirteen minutes long and you have better things to do at the moment. But it's here if you want to watch it now or you can go to this page and download a copy to your hard disk or iPod. Don't say I never gave you anything.

Now that the New York Times has done away with its subscription-only section (assuring us that it was a great success even as they doled out pro-rated refunds to subscribers), it's possible to go back and read stuff you missed. Most of us missed Dick Cavett's column/blog. They call it a blog but it's really a column. Here's the link and if you go there now, you can read Cavett telling how everyone's favorite disgraced president Richard Nixon didn't like Cavett's shows of the time.

See that guy's picture up above? That's the late Jerry Juhl, one of the grand geniuses behind The Muppets. Today is the first anniversary of his passing and the reason I put his photo upside-down is because it's silly. Today is Jerry Juhl Day, a day that his friends have designated to remember the man…and the way they suggest to best honor him is to do something silly. I didn't know Jerry but I loved his work and if his friends say that's the way to honor his memory, I'm there. You can learn a little more about Jerry Juhl Day by clicking on the banner below. And use your feet when you do. It's sillier that way.

From some sort of entertainment news show of the past comes this little segment on how cartoons are/were made at Hanna-Barbera. It's most interesting for the glimpse of Jean Vander Pyl and Henry Corden recording voices for a Flintstones cartoon. (Actually, this is almost certainly a "pretend" session staged just for the news crew's camera.) Henry was the second voice of Fred and Jean was the only voice of Wilma during her lifetime. Nice to see them again for a moment. I could never talk to either of them without feeling like Barney Rubble.

Thanks to Paul Belanger for letting me know about this.

Fred Kaplan on the cost of the Iraq War and how no one seems to care how we spend the money, just so long as we spent it. I'm always amazed that to some people who favor high defense spending, the issue of how the money is used is a minor point. The fact that the contractors deliver a shoddy, unusable product — or that they don't deliver at all — is picky, picky, picky. You'd think we could all at least be on the same page that whatever we spend, we oughta demand the best possible equipment and service for it. Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you?

In which I finally, after all these years, become a cartoon character…

This is fifteen seconds that a talented gentleman named Alexandre Ramos Mastrella did of a scene from a comic book I did with Sergio. The week we did it, we couldn't think of any interesting characters so we used ourselves.

Bill Clinton was on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart the other night. As we've noted here before, interviews on that show are often edited. This version of their conversation is six minutes longer than what was aired. Even if you don't like Clinton's politics — and I don't like all of them, myself — isn't it nice to remember a time when presidents could speak in complete sentences? The second half of this chat is more interesting than the first.