Yearly Archives: 2021

Today's song from my mixtape is "Spooky," which was recorded by dozens of artists but the best known version was a 1968 hit by…well, I'm not sure precisely what name was on the label when it first came out. A gent named Dennis Yost was the lead singer and his band went under the name "The Classics" or more often, "The Classics IV," the "IV" meaning "four." So I've seen the record attributed to Dennis Yost, to Dennis Yost and the Classics, to Dennis Yost and the Classics IV or sometimes just to The Classics IV. Most likely, all those names were correct at some point.

This video appears to be Yost and his band singing it on some TV show where they were billed as "Classics IV" with the number four all over the set. But someone has dubbed in the actual record so the sync doesn't match exactly…

I don't know much about Mr. Yost except that he had a lot of medical problems in the seventies and eighties that impaired his singing…and then in 2006, he fell down a flight of stairs and suffered severe brain injuries. A lot of performers rallied to his aid and staged one or more benefits to help him and he died a few years later. But a lot of radio stations still play "Spooky," especially around Halloween.

More interesting to me is a gent named Harry Middlebrooks, who I've met briefly on a few occasions, though never for more than a few words. Middlebooks co-wrote "Spooky" but I knew him as a local performer popping up at clubs and occasionally on television. In the late seventies, I was dating a lovely lady who always wanted me to take her to see Middlebrooks performing at a steakhouse/bar on Ventura Boulevard called Chadney's. He was almost always joined by a fine lady vocalist named Terry Gregory who went on to become very popular in the world of country music.

Every time we saw Middlebooks and Gregory, Harry would at some point play "Spooky." If you were a piano bar-type performer and you'd had a hit of that magnitude, you'd play it every night too…or at least every time your ASCAP check arrived. Here's a fairly recent (I think) video of him playing it at some club somewhere…

• The arrest and/or banishment of many successful, powerful men in recent years reminds us that sexual predators do not always look like what we imagine sexual predators look like. And then you have Ron Jeremy to remind us that sometimes, they do.

John Oliver's eclectic art collection may be coming your way. Okay, so "eclectic" isn't exactly the right word but I can't think of what would be. In any case, it's going on tour, winding up in January in the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco…

Since the day I got my first TiVo, which was way before anyone else I knew even knew what they did — the way I watch television has continually changed. It was so liberating to be able to watch a TV show when I wanted to watch it instead of when "they" wanted me to watch it. I could also pause it, rewind it, freeze-frame it, skip ahead in it, etc. I finally felt like I owned a television set instead of it owning me.

The way it's evolved, I program my TiVo to catch shows that I think I might want to watch. Once they're recorded and on my Now Playing list, I can not only decide when to watch but also if. I sometimes have a show that resides there unwatched for months because I'm never quite motivated enough to actually play it…and I eventually decide "Maybe I don't want to watch that" and I just delete it. Or I watch one episode of many, then delete the rest of the many.

I just deleted, largely unwatched, CNN's History of the Sitcom. Given their History of Late Night TV produced by much the same crew, I knew it was tackling way too much history in way too few hours and that it would be maddening in its omissions. Also, there's such a thing as Too Many Commercials and CNN achieves that oversaturation way too often. I guess since they sometimes have to air some Breaking News Story with commercial-free coverage, they figure they can make up for it during other, more interruptible news.

I made it through one episode and even skipping through ads, it was annoying…though not as annoying as the "history" consistently missing the joy and point of most of the shows they chose to cover…and wincing at so many important ones they omitted. All of it seemed to be done in service of a message, which was that situation comedies of the past often did not reflect the attitudes we perhaps should take in 2021 towards women, racial minorities, gays and other groups. I think we all know that.

Perhaps we can separate the way people are depicted on TV from the way we treat them in real life. I never thought Get Smart reflected the way America's intelligence system ought to operate or that psychologists should act more like the star did on The Bob Newhart Show. There is and always will be comedy that can be viewed as insensitive to someone and there's a time and a place for it, especially if it's funny.

Anyway, I don't know if all the episodes of The History of the Sitcom were as joyless and clueless about its subject matter as the one I viewed but I had no desire to watch the others and find out. Whenever they get around to doing it, I look forward to not watching CNN's History of Everything Else on TV, which I expect is coming someday. I'm guessing they'll give it twelve hours, 11.5 of which will be commercials.

For years and years, one of your best online sources for Disney news and history has been Jim Hill Media and he also covers other theme parks and related forms of entertainment.  Recently, Jim happened upon the above postcard which is a scene of the backlot at Universal Studios in Southern California.  In teensy type on the back, it says, "Panoramic view from Hollywood Visitors Village looking north over the New York street area."  Jim thought I'd like to have this postcard and he was right.  Thanks to him, I was able to purchase it.

So now you're wondering why I want it.  It's because if you look real closely on the left side of the "panoramic view," you can see some exterior sets for the finale of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Which means this photo was shot in late 1962.

If you click above on the postcard image, you can see an enlargement of a section of the entire image.  And yes, it's grainy but that's how how something like this looks when you blow it up as much as I blew this up.  I'll guide you through a little of it…

See that red thing in the postcard image?  That's the fire engine that figures big into the climax of the film.  It's parked in front of a building for Santa Rosita Savings and Loan. Here's a frame grab from the movie…

That's the building "Milton Berle" crashes through. You can match it up with the enlarged image of the postcard. And then here's another frame grab…

There's the pet store that "Spencer Tracy" (obviously doing his own stunts) crashes into. You can't see much of the pet store in the postcard image but you can see the awning of the business next to it on the right side of the postcard detail.

There are some other identifiable items there. The tall structure atop the fake Savings and Loan building might have something to do with shots of the folks on the fire escape but I suspect it's mainly a camera platform from which to film the view from the fire escape or ladder looking downwards. Or maybe to throw things off of.

I think this is a neat "find" and I thought I'd share it with you. If it tickles you a little as it tickles me, don't thank me. Thank Jim Hill. Thanks, Jim Hill!

Here's a complete episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from near the end of that fabulous run. Mr. Carson did his last episode on May 22, 1992 and this hour is from March 5, 1992. It will perhaps remind you, as it reminded me, of Johnny at his best in his final years. The guests are Don Rickles and author Calvin Trillin, plus they have the cast of the Broadway musical, Five Guys Named Moe.

This was two weeks before that show started previewing in New York and the cast performed about ten minutes from it and, I suspect, sold a lot of tickets. Really great stuff. The show, which had its origins on London's West End, opened in New York on April 8 of that year and ran about thirteen months and 445 performances before going on tour for a long, long time.

If you just want to see the numbers from Five Guys Named Moe, click here. If you want to see this whole Tonight Show, click below unless there's one of those little banners there than I put up when a video embed becomes unavailable…

Amanda Marcotte on how some — I don't think she means all — of those who refuse to be vaccinated or wear masks are doing so because they see it as a way of sticking it to their political enemies.

If she does mean all, I think she's exaggerating. But sure, there are people who are anti-mask/vaxx just because they despise the folks who are so vocally advocating for mask mandates, vaccine passports and maybe even vaccine mandates. "You can't tell me what to do" is not an unreasonable position as long as you are open to the possibility that the person trying to tell you what to do might be right. When it causes you reflexively to do the opposite just to show your independence, it becomes a stupid reason to do anything.

Here are some tips on parking. They're for Los Angeles but most of them should apply anywhere.

I'll add one: For a while in recent months, I was going to Physical Therapy twice a week at a place where metered street parking was the only option. In that area, streets were cleaned Monday and Tuesday mornings. You couldn't park on one side of the street on Monday before Noon and you couldn't park on the other side of the street on Tuesday before noon. That halved the number of available spaces during those hours…so I learned to not make appointments during those hours. And if I made the appointment for Noon either day or even 12:15, I got there just as half the parking spaces in the area were open and available.

Jordan Klepper visits an anti-vaxx rally and, as he usually does, finds a number of people who are willing to sign releases to let him put them on TV making really bad, clueless arguments for their cause. I don't think these are always fair but I admire his courage to go there, engage and risk someone taking a swing at him…

You've probably read or seen a lot of news stories about the Biden Administration not doing a good and compassionate job of evacuating people who need to be evacuated from Afghanistan. If, like me, you aren't sure how to view the whole thing, at least consider the different view of the situation that folks like Kevin Drum and Eric Boehlert have.

And check out Fred Kaplan's interview with Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for much of the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. How often do you see our leaders admit they made serious mistakes?

…and I'm not sure why you would be but power was restored in my neighborhood at 12:38 and it remains on.

I have learned that when we have one of these outages, I should allow a one-hour grace period before I assume it won't go off again. I don't start resetting clocks nor do I open the refrigerator for one hour.

I lack many things in life but today, the most obvious one is electricity. Electricity is always a nice thing to have, especially when everything in your life plugs in (if only to recharge) and you have a script due.

The L.A.D.W.P. site is giving 7:30 tonight as an estimated restoration time…which I hope is just a placeholder announcement for a real, earlier restoration time. But we shall see, we shall see…

It will probably surprise no one who reads this blog that I think everyone in my state should vote NO on the current, money-wasting political stunt recall. This is part of the new dynamic in American politics: When we lose an election, we never accept it as The Will of the People. We don't care about The Will of any People but Ourselves…so we insist the vote was rigged and we really won or we try to overturn it. We certainly don't respect the outcome the way we insist outcomes be respected when they go our way.

Gavin Newsom has been a pretty good governor but like every single elected official who has had to deal with The Pandemic, he has had to make decisions based on incomplete, subject-to-change advice and information. It's kind of a game of Political Gotcha that when Our Guy says things that prove to be inoperative — like when Trump says that the virus will magically disappear in a few weeks and/or can be treated with hydroxywhatever — we overlook that. But when The Other Guy says something that turns out to be wrong or even arguable, that's proof positive of his incompetence and/or dishonesty.

There's no one else on the ballot right now with any experience and the Republican ones who've stated their positions on masks and vaccines (and most have not) mostly want to go all Florida on us, switching to the policies of a state doing way worse than we are.

Vote NO on the recall and leave the second question blank. I already did.

This may be the last of these here, at least for a while. It's the opening number from Fiddler on the Roof — in Korean…

• And everyone who auditioned to host Jeopardy! and didn't get the job will receive lovely parting gifts and a copy of the home game.