Category Archives: Uncategorized

I'm not going to bed until I finish this script.

Lately, folks have reported to me occasionally that when they click to watch one of my YouTube embeds, the player plays the previous YouTube video that they watched on this site. This is not because I have set up the link wrong. It's something having to do with certain browsers and the way they handle the YouTube links. You may need to refresh your browser or even to flush out the cache. But it will work.

I'd also like to say how much I like the way this blog looks when I can look at it and see Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy. I should have started this series years ago.

Michael Moore has endorsed the placement of his award-winning documentary Fahrenheit 911 on YouTube — all two hours of it. I had mixed feelings about the film when I first saw it and spent a fair amount of time prowling websites that pointed up alleged inaccuracies. For the most part, I was unconvinced the film was any less accurate than the norm for media these days…just a bit more honest about its maker's mindset.

I especially did not buy the argument that because of one or two spots where his critics did seem to catch Moore tampering with the truth, one could not believe a single thing the film said about anything; that in fact, the opposite was therefore probably true. There is such a thing as a film or book that has so many errors or deceptions that you can write the whole thing off as worthless as a source of information. But I don't think Moore got anywhere near that level and even if he had…well, if I caught you coming up with phony proof the world was round, that would not prove the world was flat.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting you watch it; just letting you know it's there if you never wanted to give Michael Moore a nickel but wouldn't mind watching a little for free.

A year or three after 9/11, I happened upon a couple of websites that archived video from that world-alerting day — mostly the live TV news coverage. I downloaded it all to my hard drive and every now and then, I watch an hour so of it…usually commencing with the first report of the first plane having hit.

For a while, I didn't understand why I was doing this. No particular event in the news seemed to trigger my visits. Just all of a sudden, I'd feel like I wanted to go to that directory and watch some 9/11 news coverage. But I think I eventually figured out what I was doing and why. I'm trying to put it all in a little more perspective, examining it all in light of what we know now and how we feel. On September 11, an oft-heard phrase was "Nothing will ever be the same again." I didn't buy that then. I mean, in one sense "nothing will ever be the same again" after the newest champ is crowned on American Idol. But in the sense that we meant that dire pronouncement on 9/11, I think we were wrong. A lot of things we didn't think would ever be the same again are the same as they ever were. Alas, this includes some of the mistakes…but I think even the most optimistic among us expected more terrorism than we've had the last ten years.

The news video of 9/11/01 still has the power to shock and enrage, and I'm sure it always will. It should. But I find that each time I take myself back to it, the horror and anger are a little different. For me, at least, they're more reasoned and less visceral. Watching it as it happened, we knew it was the start of something bad but we weren't sure what or how bad. Would there be an attack like that every day or every week from now on? Was this the opening salvo of World War III? Would nuclear weapons be detonated somewhere before the week was out? We just couldn't know…and that was one of the most chilling aspects of 9/11. Today, of course, we know all that could happen tomorrow…but on 9/11, it seemed highly possible that some of that was but hours or days away. We certainly know that we'd have ten years of a different kind of destruction in this country. The self-inflicted kind.

So that's why I watch the old news clips, I guess. I like that my attitude about them is moving from raw instincts to reported facts. I have a different slant on it all with a different mode of reaction and it's no longer like watching a horror movie for me. It's tragic but it's also more of a learning experience.

You can watch any and all of the specials tomorrow — there are thousands of them — or you can make your own. Here's a link to an online archive of news footage from that day. If I were you, I'd pick out the channel I first turned on when I heard about the "accident" and watch the same coverage. You might be surprised at how different it all seems now in some ways…and how it doesn't in others.

I checked this person out and she's anonymous (to you, not me) but legit…

Bully for your piece about cancelling one's online subscription to get a cheaper rate. I work in the Subscriber Retention division of a big online company. This is not an office. It's just a headset attached to my home computer but when you try to cancel your subscription to our service, your call is routed to me and it's my job to talk you out of it. I have a series of speeches on my monitor which were written for us. It says on the top not to use them verbatim but to paraphrase and put them into our own words.

The first line of attack is to act puzzled and hurt. Why would you leave us? What have we done wrong? Don't you realize how many people love our service? You would be amazed that this works with some people. They don't want to hurt my feelings so they stay with us.

If they mention the price, I am then to go to Speech 2, Speech 3 or Speech 4. Each comes with a lower rate. Very few people ever hear Speech 4. If there's any chance of getting them to not cancel, they grab the offer with Speech 2. If not, they say so firmly that they want out that it ends there. They don't even want to hear another offer.

Speech 3 is interesting because while it involves a lower rate than Speech 2, it also commits you to spend more money with us by extending you for an additional two years. Some people say they aren't getting enough out of our service to warrant what they're paying but they then sign on for two more years for 35% off.

For the few people who make it as far as Speech 4, it's one year at about 60% off and I'm allowed to throw in a few extra months. I always make this sound like it's something I'm not supposed to offer but since the caller seems like a nice person, I'm going to risk getting in trouble with my boss and offer something I shouldn't. Sometimes, the person who calls is my boss or is working for my boss. They make such calls from time to time to check up on us and see how we're doing our jobs. One time, my employer told me I had him convinced that I was breaking the rules and might get fired to offer him the 60% off.

I did this for another company before. That was a sex-oriented site with many photos of nude women. We only had three speeches there and the discounts if you went all the way weren't that great. But in Speech 3, I told the caller (a man, of course) that I was hoping he could at least continue to subscribe to the site until my pictures were posted. I am the last person you would ever want to see naked and if I ever did take such photos and they put them up, everyone would instantly cancel at once. However, I have a good sexy voice and I sound like I'm in my twenties (I'm 48) and I told the callers I would soon be on the site under the name Heather. A lot of them would decide to stick around for that. Some of them would even ask what I was wearing at that moment.

My pal Joe Brancatelli, who operates the best damn travel site on the web, suggests one should never set up a subscription to auto-renew and if possible, should pay by check instead of credit card. That shifts the game. If you're auto-renewing, they've got you and don't have to offer you any better deal. If they have to sell you again each year, they'll start bombarding you with special offers and better rates. Probably good advice. Anyway, my thanks to "Heather" for the above message and I'm sorry she didn't tell me what she had on when she wrote it. I'm guessing the radio.

Speaking of the Muppets: Did you ever wonder how they did that scene in The Great Muppet Caper when Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo and all the others are riding around on bicycles? Well, here's how.

I subscribe to about two dozen different websites and online services. A few weeks ago when I decided to cancel one, they offered me an unadvertised lower rate to get me to stay. This intrigued me and I decided to see what would happen if I tried cancelling the others. This morning, I tried cancelling ten of them with the following result.

Seven of the ten offered me a better rate for the exact same access. These included all four where you can't cancel online but have to phone an 800 number. It makes one suspect that the reason they do that is because they want the chance to have a human being talk you out of cancellation by offering you a special deal. I couldn't help but note that the folks on the end of those four calls were all very nice, friendly talkers who acted like I was disappointing them by wanting to leave, treating me like a member of the family they'd hate to see go.

In the other three cases where I was offered a better rate to stay, the deal came with just a click or two. I clicked on the link to cancel my subscription and up came a better price to keep me around.

I opted to not cancel any of the seven subscriptions. But just by starting the process, I wound up saving myself around $50 a month. Of the three that didn't offer me a lower price, I cancelled one. I guess in light of the lowered costs on the others, it didn't seem like it was worth the money any longer.

Whether you'll have the same rate of success, I can't say. It will probably depend on whether the rate you're now paying for a given site is the lowest they ever offer or if since you subscribed, they've introduced a lower fee to snag new subscribers. Some of the lower prices I was offered are advertised deals but some aren't.

So that's what happened with ten of my online subscriptions. When I get the time, I'm going to try cancelling the other ones to see what happens. I'll bet I save at least another fifty smackers.

A Tweet this morning from one of my favorite political writers, Eric Boehlert…

Imagine if in 1983 the Dems' pol strategy was to keep the country in recession in order to make sure Reagan wasn't elected? #unAmerican

Our pal Will Harris did a nice interview with Mel Brooks you might want to read. One tiny quibble: Brooks says that when he was writing for Your Show of Shows, he first saw Richard Pryor performing in New York. Your Show of Shows went off the air in 1954 when Richard Pryor was 14 years old. All the bios of Pryor (and the man's autobiography) say he moved to New York and started performing there in 1963. But it's a good conversation, well worth your time.

Last December, as reported here, Carolyn and I went to a Writers Bloc event that was quite wonderful, even if it didn't turn out to be precisely what was advertised. What was advertised was Mel Brooks interviewing Dick Cavett about the latter's then-new book. What it turned into (not that anyone was complaining) was an evening of the two men interviewing each other in a ratio that skewed heavily in Mel's favor. I'm guessing he did about 80% of the talking.

And now it's changed form again. It's been cut down to a one-hour HBO special called Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again and it debuts tonight. Depending on how expertly it was edited, it could be quite wonderful.

Yesterday, I drove my mother to a couple of doctor appointments at the hospital that has become her home-away-from-home. She's 89 and is there so often, we've discussed switching her voter registration to that address. Her caregiver drives her to the kind of appointments where she just goes in and someone draws blood or clips her toenails. I take her when there are doctors to talk with and possible decisions to be made.

When she's hospitalized, as she intermittently is, I spend a lot of time at this place…so much so that one afternoon, when I got a hamburger there in just about the most awful cafeteria you could imagine, the cashier gave me the employee discount. I told her, "I don't work here," and she said, "Oh. I guess I'm just so used to seeing you…"

Spending time there means waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more. And then there's the waiting. Like anyone who's busy, I resent waiting and try to find ways to put that time to use. For a long time, the best I could do was to take along a notebook (the kind with paper) so I could jot down ideas for scripts.

I couldn't even make phone calls and handle business-type matters. I get pretty decent cell coverage everywhere but not in this particular hospital. My iPhone, as with my BlackBerry before it, cannot get a signal inside.

One of the reasons I bought an iPad was so I can do something resembling work in situations where I have to sit and wait. At the very least, I can play Sudoku. When I'm sitting with my mother waiting, I sometimes call up a Video Poker game on the iPad and let her play. Her eyes couldn't see the one on my iPhone but the iPad screen is large enough for her. It would be so helpful if I could get on the web while at that hospital so I could surf, blog and answer e-mail…but since I can't get a 3G phone connection, I sure can't get on the Internet.

But wait…

So yesterday I'm waiting 45 minutes for a prescription for her. I have never understood why it takes 45 minutes for a pharmacist to take a tube off a shelf and slap a label on it but I guess it does. Anyway, I'm playing Sudoku and figuring out where my sixes go, which is always the toughest part. Suddenly, a little window pops up that says in effect, "Click here to connect with public wi-fi." I clicked and I suddenly had a pretty strong public wi-fi connection. My e-mail downloaded as fast as it does at home. My webpage loaded instantly. All was right with the world.

When they called me to the window to pick up my mother's ointment, the pharmacy assistant saw my iPad and asked, "Did you notice? The public wi-fi just went online here. It's a new service for our patients."

Behind me in line, a woman shrieked (happily), "Public wi-fi?" She hauled out her smartphone, did some fast configuring and then began announcing proudly to all, "I'm on the web! I'm on the web!" And all over the pharmacy, people hauled out their cell phones to see if they too could get on the web. Most of them apparently could.

I don't know what a public wi-fi connection like that costs but I'll bet it's cost-effective in terms of good will. We were all darned happy there yesterday. We've all spent a lot of time at that place waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more.

What has Albert Brooks been up to lately?

Lately, I find myself working 'round the clock, staying up 'til all hours. I used to have the virus checker on this computer set to run a scan each night at 5 AM, a time selected because I'd always be asleep then. The last few weeks, I've sometimes been at this keyboard at 5 AM so I moved the scan time to 7. Once or twice, I've still been up working when it started.

My "day" has become more vaguely defined. Much of my effort lately is on The Garfield Show for which I am soon to wrap my responsibilities for the third season. The production company is in Paris so I start receiving the morning e-mails from them around 11 AM their time, which is 2 AM my time. Meanwhile, we both consult with Garfield's creator Jim Davis, who's usually in Indiana and who gets up and goes to work indecently early. He'll start writing me at 6 AM his time, which is 3 AM where I am. So at an hour when my body is suggesting it's time for bed, I'm answering correspondence from France and Indiana, and I've even had the occasional phone conversation at that hour.

This is not a complaint. I'm just writing about something that I'm all too aware has happened in my life…and it isn't the first time. When I was "on staff" on sitcoms or variety specials, I often found it necessary to work until the wee small hours. On Welcome Back, Kotter (my first real staff job in television), I often got to sleep at 4 AM or 5 AM…and would have to be up, showered, dressed, breakfasted and back at the studio for a 10 AM read-through.

That has always been for me one of the key differences between writing for TV and writing things like comic books or magazine articles. For the latter, I'm usually able to write when I want to write. There are deadlines to be sure but to meet them, I can usually finish the material tomorrow. It doesn't have to be done tonight. In television, especially when working on something currently in production, I keep finding myself in the position of having to write a certain script tonight.

Writing to a tight, drop-dead deadline can be exciting at times…and also empowering when you're in one of those situations when you're aware of the following situation: Things are so time-sensitive that what you write will probably wind up reaching the audience in pretty much the way you write it because there won't be much time to change it. It becomes a trade-off in my mind. I may resent how the exigencies of some show force me to stay up tonight until I finish a script…but hey, my script is going to get produced and there's no time for them to bring in another writer to rewrite me. There probably isn't even time for them to ask me for much of a rewrite.

In the best of all possible work situations, there wouldn't ever have to be such a trade-off. I could go to bed tonight when my body told me to, not as dictated by some deadline and I could retain the kind of control that I get when the schedule precludes rewrites. Sometimes you can get both. But when I'm sitting here at 5 AM struggling to retain some perspective on whether what I'm writing is as good as it would be with a clearer, well-rested head, it helps to remember two things. One is that what I'm writing will be produced. And the other is how good it will feel when I finish it and can go to bed.

The MDA folks are saying they raised $61.5 million yesterday with a six-hour telethon sans Jerry Lewis. Years ago when I worked on a different telethon, I learned that the "take" is not necessarily a real number; that the organizers can find a way to put almost any number within reason up there on the final tote board. They can, for example, throw in money that has been pledged to the charity, not necessarily via the telethon. I'm not saying any particular telethon's announced gross is bogus. Just that there is a certain amount of wiggle room.

Last year with a telethon with Jerry that ran more than twenty hours in some markets, they raised $2.6 million less. Assuming both numbers are equally accurate and/or measured by the same rules, that would make this year's quite a success. I wonder if in light of that, any charity anywhere will even consider a telethon longer than six hours in the future. The Chabad Telethon, which is on Sunday, September 25, will be three hours. Those used to be six but when they cut it to three a year or two ago, the same thing happened. They collected a little more money in a lot less airtime.

I was a bit amazed to hear that MDA had raised that much moola this year. I heard so many people lament how dreadful it was that Jerry was ousted, how there was no point in watching the telethon if Jerry wasn't there, etc. But then I realized: Most of those folks probably wouldn't have donated or even watched if he was there. If there'd been no controversy and if Jerry Lewis had just hosted as he always does, the tune-in probably would have been about the same…maybe less.

For a week or two now, Jerry and his spokespersons have been saying that he'd hold a big press conference the day after the telethon because he had "a lot to say." I don't know if that was ever going to actually happen but one suspects it's a bit less likely because the telethon didn't flop, at least in a monetary sense, without him. Then again, a lot of what makes Jerry Jerry is that he doesn't always do what you'd imagine a person would do. Or should do.

Commencing yesterday, I'm going to post a photo of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy every day I post on this blog for as long as I can. I have the first 200 already selected and formatted but if you have one, by all means send it in. For the time being, I'm only doing horizontal compositions so some photographs may not be suitable.

I'm getting a lot of messages from folks suggesting other stars worthy of the honor…and most of them are. But I just like the way my blog looks when I can look at it and see Stan and Ollie so that's who it's going to be. There's nothing stopping you from posting pictures of your favorite star on your blog…or if necessary, starting a blog. And I'm amazed how many people didn't get that the Bud Collyer thing was a joke.

There are a lot of great comedians that I love but there's a special place in my heart — and whatever part of the body laughter comes from — for Laurel and Hardy. I'm not even that big a fan of slapstick and they're still my favorite performers. Even in their weakest films, I just like watching them. I am hardly alone in this feeling.

A ten-DVD set will be released next month in America of most (not all) of the talkies they made for the Hal Roach Studio between 1929 and 1940. In the past, we've told you about a 21-DVD set that was available and playable in Europe. This is not the same set. The European set contained all the Roach material. This one omits some films. It also contained the silent films as well as many "colorized" versions of later films. They're not in this one, either.

I'm not complaining. What is included is a ton of really, really wonderful comedy…and I'm told the prints have been fully restored and are outstanding. The U.S. set also contains several examples of the "foreign" versions Stan and Ollie made of their films where they spoke lines in Spanish or French. There's also a longer-than-you've-probably-seen-before version of the feature Pardon Us and two versions of A Chump at Oxford.

The latter was originally made as a four-reel comedy. Roach briefly experimented with that length (he called them "streamliners") but the marketplace didn't want films of that duration so Laurel and Hardy were called back to shoot two more reels for A Chump at Oxford, expanding the film to six. Both versions are included in this set. There's also a DVD of oddments and extra features, and I believe both Chuck McCann and Dick Van Dyke told me they'd been interviewed for this. Here is a link to order this set from Amazon. I have the European set (and an all-regions DVD player) and I'm buying this one, too.

Laurel and Hardy have not done well on DVD in this country, a fact I attribute to poor, half-assed marketing of their work. We're very happy someone finally seems to be doing it the right way.

We're currently in production of Season 3 of The Garfield Show and no, I have no idea when these new episodes will air in your country. It probably won't be for a while.

I don't have a list of all the episodes yet. Matter of fact, I haven't even decided on the title of the one I'm writing this evening. Anyway, there seems to be a new Internet sport. People go on the Wikipedia episode page for the show and enter phony titles for Season 3 episodes. They'll probably be removed shortly but right now, there are three up there that are bogus.

Attention, Lord High Masters of Wikipedia: Any episode info that gets posted for Season 3 is not to be believed until I verify it here. When it's time, I'll post a list. Thank you.