The AMPTP (the combine that represents the major motion picture and TV producers) has made its "final offer" to the Writers Guild of America, and the Writers Guild has rejected it. This news story will give you a general overview and this press release from the WGA basically tells them to shove it, only in […]
Here's another piece by Terry Jones, who is so much more than another member of Monty Python who looks good in a dress. […]
When I was younger and I stayed up 'til 5 AM working on a script, everything was funny. It might not have been funny the next morning but at 5 AM, everything — including the punctuation marks — was hilarious. Now, it isn't. What's changed? […]
Ken Plume sends a slight correction to my earlier SCTV item. Tony Rosato and Robin Duke were not officially a part of the 90-minute SCTV done for NBC late night. They appear in some of those shows because a few sketches done for the earlier, 30-minute syndicated show were rerun in the 90-minute incarnation. My […]
I just clicked over a news page and I saw this headline… U.S.: Suspect sought to blow up buildings …and my first thought, so help me, was: "Well, they ought to be able to find someone for that job." […]
I haven't posted an Amazon link in a while. This one will give you the chance to order the first of what we hope will be many DVD volumes of the SCTV TV series. This set contains the first nine of the 90-minute episodes done for NBC, which were very fine shows indeed. They featured […]
Alexandra Polier is the young woman whose name was briefly splashed across the press as an intern who had an affair with John Kerry. Some of us thought this rumor would never go away but this one proved so groundless that it did. (It turned out she wasn't even an intern.) Ms. Polier decided to […]
If you have the Biography Channel, you might be interested in a couple of shows that are airing in the coming weeks… On June 4, they're rerunning "Lost in Las Vegas," which is really not a biography at all. It's a 2-hour documentary on two gents who have worked up an act impersonating the Blues […]
Eric Idle has written and recorded a very funny, nasty tune about the current political situation. It's called "The F.C.C. Song" and you can play or download an MP3 file of it here. It contains many of those naughty words that the F.C.C. doesn't think should be on your radio so don't listen to it […]
As a devout wallower in Watergate, I was sorry to see that two of the few honest men in that whole sordid affair, Archibald Cox and Samuel Dash, have just passed away. As the whole scandal and its investigation unfolded, there were many attempts — from both Nixon's supporters and his detractors — to portray […]
Fingerprints don't lie. Unfortunately, human beings have been known to put the wrong name on them. Here's the story of a man who suffered because of this. […]
My brain must have been in idle when I wrote the preceding piece on Memorial Day. As Mitch Dutton and a couple of other folks have reminded me, Memorial Day is all about honoring war dead. It's not supposed to be about the wounded and maimed. As all my correspondent-correcters noted, we have Veterans Day […]
And I hope you're having a memorable Memorial Day weekend. Today's Doonesbury strip lists all of our Iraq-related military casualties as of the date the strip went to press, set in very tiny type to get them all in. Garry Trudeau is being accused of making a "political statement," which I suppose is like accusing […]
My pal Sergio made a guest appearance in yesterday's installment of the La Cucaracha newspaper strip. The idea is that one of the characters in the strip, Memo, is working at the National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Awards event in Kansas City, and he sees Sergio there. As it happens, the Reuben Awards get-together is taking […]
You're in a strange city. You go into a restaurant. You want a glass of Coca-Cola. What's the one word term you use to denote what you want? Well, it depends where you are. […]