Category Archives: To Be Filed

And Stu Shostak has another fascinating guest today on his program! It's the lovely actress (and now, writer) Terry Moore, who's had one of the most amazing careers in Hollywood. It included some popular movies like Mighty Joe Young, Man on a Tightrope, The Great Rupert and Between Heaven and Hell. Most notable was Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Like most actresses of her day, she transitioned to television, racking up dozens of guest roles, including parts on Batman, Bonanza and Burke's Law. And then there was the personal stuff that filled the movie magazines. She was married five times…six if you count the elusive zillionaire, Howard Hughes. I'm a bit fuzzy on the history here but as I understand it, Ms. Moore married Hughes and never divorced him, though she went on to marry other men. Stu will presumably sort all this out as he also questions her about her many films and TV appearances.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. Howard Hughes worked the same deal when he bought hotels.

This is not an entire reprint. It's an excerpt from a longer post I put up here on 5/4/05. A friend asked for it again and I am glad to comply…

Hey, here's a cute little story I have to share with you: Very early Thursday morning, I was in the Emergency Room at U.C.L.A. Medical Center with my mother…and I must say, she received superb treatment. Everyone was nice and efficient and, well, if you absolutely have to be in such a place, that's the place.

My mother was on a gurney surrounded by one of those flimsy curtains they have in hospitals. Next to us, there was another gurney with another woman on it, and I could not help but overhear what was transpiring over there. The lady, who was maybe sixty, had been brought in with some sort of balance problem — an inner ear disorder, I believe I heard the doctor say. Whatever it was, she could not stand without falling. She had fallen twenty-four times in as many hours, and was clinging to that gurney for precious life.

The doctor — same one who treated my mother — was a charming, authoritative man. He looked like Pernell Roberts, sans toup and spoke like Ricardo Montalban, sans accent. Having treated her and decreed that the problem was gone, he asked her to stand. She was too scared to do this. "I'll fall over," she said.

He assured her she would not. A male intern came over and the doctor promised that they'd stand on either side of her and prevent her from falling. She refused. He promised her there was no way she could fall. She said no, she couldn't. The doctor told her she couldn't stay there on that gurney forever. She didn't answer. She just clutched the side of the gurney and held on, tight and trembling.

Calmly, and with a disarming friendly manner, he engaged her in conversation. Where was she from? What did she do? Did she have any hobbies? Two minutes into this chat, she happened to mention that she'd once been a champion ballroom dancer.

The doctor brightened. "Oh, it's been so long since I've danced with someone who really knows how. Would you dance with me?"

The woman looked at him (I assume — I was just listening) like he was nuts. "D-dance with you? Here?"

He said, "Why not? Just a few steps. Do it for me…please."

I don't know if it was because he was so charming or because he was a doctor but, sure enough, the woman slowly turned loose of the gurney and allowed him to help her to her feet. Within moments, I could see them dancing around the small amount of open space in the Emergency Room. There was no music, of course, but the doctor hummed and they waltzed about for maybe a minute. Just as I was about to ask if I could cut in, the doctor stepped lightly away from her, leaving her standing there…on her feet, in full possession of her balance. If you'd seen the expression on this woman's face — tears of joy as she realized she was not falling — you'd have witnessed one big reason why people become doctors.

The headline on this video states that "L.A. Crawls With Up To 3 Million Feral Cats." I'm not sure who arrived at that number or how and it does seem high to me. But it may be so and even if the actual number is a third of that, that's way too much…

The number of them I feed is two, down from a high of four. When people ask me why I do it, I tell them, "Because they're out there and they're hungry" and I wonder why anyone would ask that question. (Then again, I'm trying to not feed the raccoons that come around because a lady at the Animal Control Board — or whatever that department is called — convinced me that feeding raccoons was not in the best interests of the cats or even the raccoons themselves.)

I think it's great that people go out like the woman in that video and feed feral cats. I know another person who does it — a gent I've helped with donations a few times. I wish these animals didn't have to rely on the kindness of strangers. I wish the city would spend some dough on this problem.

Then again, I wish more that the city would do more about the homeless human beings.  We have three or four who routinely sleep on the sidewalk around the other end of the block I live on, and I occasionally see them rooting through my trash cans. Given how those people go largely without any official aid, I'm not surprised there's no civic effort on behalf of pussycats.

Something I don't think some people understand about feral cats: Every time I mention the ones I feed, someone writes me and asks, "Well, why don't you adopt them and bring them indoors?" Most cats cannot be un-feraled. I tried that with one and she was miserable, howling all night. Also, the aroma of her litter box practically drove me into living outside under bushes.

Bob Barker used to close The Price is Right by urging people to have their pets spayed or neutered — a tradition Drew Carey continues. That's a nice sentiment but the real problem is not the animals who are someone's pets. A cat kept indoors is not going to get preggo unless you arrange it. The problem is all those cats who belong to no one…who live outside. The two cats I feed are both fixed. I personally trapped one of them, took her in and paid to have it done. The other one has a notch in her ear indicating that someone else did it. Perhaps that's why I'm not feeding two dozen of 'em out there.

I need to stop writing and go to bed.

A tip to any aspiring comic book writers: If the guy who draws the thing ever says to you, "I think it would be great if this character always spoke in rhyme," don't — repeat: — don't agree. Not if you ever want to get some sleep.

So how is it that the Spam Catcher on my e-mail can always tell when a message is a fraud to try to get my banking information from me but it can't seem to tell that a message is in Chinese or Japanese?

During his recent book tour, John Cleese may have become the most-interviewed human being of all time. Well, maybe the most-interviewed human being known for his silly walks. Anyway, here he is on a show for the Dutch Public Broadcasting System. It starts in Dutch but it jumps to English when he comes out. There are some awkwardly-edited clips in there but the conversation is pretty good, covering much ground not covered in the other eight hundred and ninety-seven John Cleese interviews I've featured here…

Most restaurants don't pay their workers very well. Often, the only way those workers can survive is to be subsidized by public assistance. Hannah Levintova explains how much that costs us and it's another form of corporate welfare. In the meantime, there are many people out there who oppose the minimum wage or even the whole concept of having one. Most of them probably also oppose things like food stamps and government-funded low-income housing. Something is wrong with this picture.

Here at this blog, we have a fascination (and ongoing horror) with the number of people who are found guilty by our judicial system and sent to prison — and often, Death Row — though they are almost certainly innocent. DNA testing has freed a lot of them but DNA testing is a fairly recent invention so it's fair to say that this country has probably locked up and even executed an awful lot of innocent people over the years. There are also cases where DNA evidence can't exonerate someone because there simply is no DNA evidence. Dahlia Lithwick has the chilling story of one such unfortunate individual.

Some of the finest comedy writing today is being done on signs that people put up on telephone poles.

My pal Neil Gaiman has some brief but wise words for aspiring writers…

Noam M. Levey says that the Republicans are quietly giving up on destroying Obamacare. This is not to say you won't still hear recent Obamacare sign-up Ted Cruz and others pledging to "repeal every word of Obamacare" since that's still a good applause line with some crowds. Still, if Mr. Levey is right, the G.O.P. is realizing that goal has to go away. Too many people now have health insurance via the once-dreaded Affordable Care Act.

I'll bet they're all imagining a campaign commercial that goes like this…

There's a photo of a loving family…three gorgeous kids, their mother, their father…a voiceover says, "This could be any family but it's the Hotchkiss family of Anderson, Indiana…"

The image of just the father fades out. "These children lost their father last month. He had [name of disease] and he lost his health insurance…"

Dissolve to photo of Republican incumbent seeking re-election. "And how did he lose his health insurance? Because [name of candidate] and others like him/her voted to take it away…" Bonus points if they then cut to news footage of candidate vowing to kill Obamacare.

Would this be fair? As fair as most of what we see in campaign ads.

Here's an "interview" with Jon Stewart. It's in a format I don't particularly like — the kind where the interviewer picks selected quotes out of a conversation and uses them in an article. As usual with that form, we get way too much of the interviewer and not enough of the interviewee…but some of the quotes are worth hunting down.

Twelve hours ago, I was at a memorial gathering for my great friend — and a great friend to many — Gordon Kent. Gordon left us about six weeks ago and in his lifetime, he touched so many lives that we had to do something like we did, which was to buy out his favorite restaurant for an afternoon and invite in 100 of his best friends. We can't have lunch with him there anymore but at least we could do this.

If you knew Gordon and weren't invited, my apologies but the place could only hold that many and nearly everyone who was invited showed up, including an amazing number who came long distances to be there. He was truly one of those people without an enemy in the world.

The mood was great. The food was great. The speakers were great. The emcee was me. Paul Dini and Misty Lee handled most of the arrangements. I want to thank everyone who was there for contributing to very wonderful, moving event. None of us will ever forget it, just as we'll never forget the guy it was all about.

I have much to do today so, sudden obits aside, this should be all I'll post today…and really, what other blog done wholly by one individual shows any sense of guilt for going an entire day with but one post?

A quick report on my shoulder problems: Getting better in teensy increments.

Bill Maher had Judith Miller on last night and was, as he so often is, briefly confrontational with a guest. Ms. Miller reported a lot of untrue things in the New York Times that helped grease our way into the Iraq War on a lot of false premises. Her version of the whole thing roughly boils down to "Okay, so I was wrong but you can't blame me because everyone else was, too." Maher was ill-equipped to rebut her assertions so he let her get away with a lot of whitewashing.

The other day, I tweeted a joke about how few parking spaces they have at Trader Joe's markets. Many people wrote to agree with me that this dissuades them from going to Trader Joe's. Two or three people wrote that they never have any trouble finding a parking space at their Trader Joe's in New Mexico or Arizona. That's my mistake. I keep trying to go to Trader Joe's in the state where I live.

Very early Tuesday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Callaway Went Thataway, a rather undistinguished Fred MacMurray comedy from 1951 written and directed by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. I am not suggesting you watch it but if you do, you'll see a rather young Stan Freberg, his later co-star Jesse White and cameos by Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor and Esther Williams.

The Turner Classic Movies website is now offering a lot of great movies (though not that one) you can watch "on demand" and online, providing you subscribe to almost any cable provider that carries TCM. The exception seems to be my provider, Time-Warner Cable, a subsidiary of the same company that owns Turner Classic Movies. This, I do not understand at all.

[UPDATE, a bit later: Several e-mails have informed me that Time-Warner (the mega-corporation) no longer owns the cable company that bears its name.  I hadn't heard that and am surprised.  I thought they owned everything except Disney.  Silly me.]

You could do stupider things with ninety minutes of your life than watch John Hodgman interview John Cleese…