Category Archives: To Be Filed

My pal Dana Gabbard suggested I post a link to this. It's a long Washington Post story about the various Republican candidates for president and how and why they got into the race…and how a few got out. Take a look.

Will Oremus thinks the taxi industry is doomed; that even if they can hurriedly reinvent their business to be more like Uber or Lyft, it's too late. I don't have any particular opinion on that but I do think that unless they are regulated out of existence, ride-sharing enterprises like Uber are here to stay.

I've been taking a lot of Ubers lately. My knee is almost to the point where I won't feel irresponsible getting behind the wheel of my car. Actually, I did get behind its wheel this week just to start it and discovered that either (a) my battery is dead or (b) my battery is dead and my alternator is on the fritz. The car wouldn't start but every light on the dashboard came on and flashed to a disco beat. I'm not going to deal with this until I'm ready to drive again because if it's just the battery and the Auto Club can jump it, I'm not ready to then drive around for a while to get it fully recharged. Or if I have it towed-in and repaired, I'm not ready to go pick it up and drive it home. But soon.

Anyway, I've had naught but good Uber experiences lately. Even had a driver who told me a list of his favorite comic books and included Groo the Wanderer among them. He said this after, in response to his query, I told him I wrote comics but before I'd told him which ones or he knew my last name. Guess who got a good rating.

But I would have given him one anyway because it was a fine ride in a nice car and I can't think of any way a taxicab could have topped it — except maybe to have better insurance if we got into a collision, which we didn't. They've all been like that lately. If I ran a cab company, I'd sure be worried.

Matt Taibbi writes about Ammon Bundy and his band of self-proclaimed patriot thugs. You may be surprised to find out that Matt thinks they're pretty pathetic and stupid.

A music video with Josh Groban, Lindsey Stirling and the Muppets…

Anne Pluta says that the trouble with Donald Trump voters is not that they are uninformed but that they are misinformed. Biggggg difference. Uninformed people just plain don't know. Misinformed voters think they do but they're wrong — and they're usually determined to never admit it. Relevant quote…

In 2000, James Kuklinski and other political scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign established an important distinction: American citizens with incorrect information can be divided into two groups, the misinformed and the uninformed. The difference between the two is stark. Uninformed citizens don't have any information at all, while those who are misinformed have information that conflicts with the best evidence and expert opinion. As Kuklinski and his colleagues established, in the U.S., the most misinformed citizens tend to be the most confident in their views and are also the strongest partisans. These folks fill the gaps in their knowledge base by using their existing belief systems. Once these inferences are stored into memory, they become "indistinguishable from hard data," Kuklinski and his colleagues found.

Furthermore, in 2010, political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler found that when misinformed citizens are told that their facts are wrong, they often cling to their opinions even more strongly with what is known as defensive processing, or the "backfire effect."

This is why I've given up having political discussions with certain friends and probably why some of them would say they've given up having them with me. Never mind that we can't agree on what should happen in this country. We can't agree what has happened. I say unemployment is down since Obama took office. One guy I know is certain it's way, way up and the stats I'm citing are just government lies. Those arguments never go anywhere. It's easier just not to have them.

Michael Grunwald thinks all the talk about America going to hell in one of them handbaskets is ridiculous; that while some things could be better, they're already pretty good and heading in the right direction. The economy is up, crime is down, etc. I generally agree.

The folks who opposed Obamacare from Day One are still running around insisting it's a disaster that's gotta go. Jonathan Chait says they're in denial; that it's working fine and what is a disaster are their efforts to destroy it. And after all these years of shouting "Repeal and replace," they still don't have an actual replacement plan…at least not one they'd like better.

We mentioned here at the end of November that Pat Harrington, Jr. — a fine comedian and human being — was in bad shape due to Alzheimer's. His wonderful life and career came to an end last night at 11:15 PM. He was 86.

He was Pat Harrington Junior because his father was a vaudeville star. Junior worked constantly as a comedian, comic actor, game show host and panelist, voice actor and occasionally even a dramatic performer. He first came to prominence as a member of Steve Allen's comic troupe along with Don Knotts, Louis Nye and others, and for his appearances on Jack Paar's show. Often, he assumed the character of Guido Panzini, an Italian golf pro. He was so convincing in the role that at one point, the immigration department checked, found no record of Panzini's entrance into this country and went looking for him.

Later generations knew Pat (Jr.) as Dwayne Schneider, the building superintendent on the situation comedy, One Day at a Time. It won him an Emmy, dozens of other roles and countless fans. Among his many voiceover jobs, he played the Inspector — the Clouseau-like character in the DePatie-Freleng cartoons — and supplied the Groucho-like voice of the stork in the Vlasic Pickle commercials.

Pat was widely (and probably unanimously) loved by other comedians and just about everyone he ever worked with. He was a genuinely nice, funny man with an endless supply of jokes, most delivered with expert timing and a wide range of flawless accents. He was also a very good audience for other funny people. Not all comics are.

He was a founding member of Yarmy's Army, a club for comedians and other funny people that somehow admitted me. It was a joy to see Pat at the meetings. He was one of those people who made you feel happy just because he was in the room. At the next meeting, I'm sure we will all tell stories about him but it won't begin to make up for his absence.

Fred Kaplan on that alleged Hydrogen Bomb test in North Korea. Fred says the problem isn't the bomb. It's the guy who claims he has one.

Alan Alda remembers the late Wayne Rogers.

Specsavers is a British retail chain that sells glasses, contact lenses and such. Their new commercial features John Cleese as Basil Fawlty…though I'm not sure how we're supposed to know it's Basil Fawlty, as opposed to just John Cleese being a big jerk…

[UPDATE, EIGHT MINUTES LATER: Six people so far have written to me to point out that they play the Fawlty Towers theme and that Fawlty did the branch-thrashing bit in the series. Guess my mind was elsewhere and that it's been too long since I saw the show.]

The other day, North Korea claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb. There is some question as to whether this is true and we should hope it isn't. As Daniel Larison notes, no one in our country seems to have any idea what, if anything, we should do about this.

Why do major motion pictures cost so much to make? Well, Gavin Polone thinks it's because crooked studio accounting has made profit-participants figure, "They're never going to pay me my share so why should I try to save them money?" An excellent point.

Jonathan Chait says that people are wrong if they think Marco Rubio is a moderate. He's just trying not to be as hysterical as Trump or Cruz while pushing pretty much the same far-right agenda.

Our pal Frank Ferrante is performing his show, An Evening with Groucho, this weekend at the Pasadena Playhouse. Some seats may still be available and if they are, you can order them here.

I've praised and recommended this show so many times that further comment may be unnecessary. Basically, it's just what the title says except that at the matinees, it should be called An Afternoon with Groucho. And if we really enforced truth-in-labelling laws, maybe An Evening (or Afternoon) with a Guy Who Does an Uncanny Impression of Julius "Groucho" Marx and Creates a Fantasy Where He's Still Alive and Performing and is Very Funny. Something like that.

Here's a piece in today's L.A. Times that will tell you more about Frank and how good he is. Just in case you don't believe me.