Category Archives: Uncategorized

The best argument against moving up the start of Daylight Saving Time, as Congress did, is that it's confusing our TiVos. Here's a page that explains this in a way that will probably confuse you. Bottom line: You don't have to do anything. Here and there, the time displayed on your screen may be wrong but you won't miss American Idol.

A writer friend of mine, Marc Scott Zicree, takes us on a tour of three of his favorite places to eat in Los Angeles. But that's not why I'm linking to this video, no sir. I'm linking to it because they happen to be three of my favorite places to eat in Los Angeles…

This afternoon, I had to drive something to the post office. Which would have been no big deal except that when I went out to my garage, I found that the battery in my car was dead. Some idiot (i.e., me) hadn't fully closed the right rear door on the passenger's side when he (i.e., me) last drove the car, which was Tuesday afternoon. The dome light had been on for over 48 hours and that had run down the battery.

Actually, it still wasn't a big deal. I called Triple-A and a man was there in fifteen minutes to give me a jump and send me on my way, just in time to not get to the post office before it closed. But I got to thinking…

Obviously, I need to be more careful about this in the future, especially since this is probably the third or fourth time I've done this in my life. (In my defense: Once, it wasn't me, it was my assistant when she took the car to be washed. And once, it was because I closed the car door on a seat belt that was hanging out.) But I'm curious why this is even a problem at all with cars…or is it just with some cars?

Almost everything I own that "charges" has some sort of battery meter, often with a little warning buzzer if it gets too low. Why doesn't my car have a little meter that stops the battery from being drained if it's about to get too low to start the car? Do some cars have that? It would seem like a feature that could be installed for around five bucks, which means they could make it a $300 option and we'd all pay.

Here's an idea that I thought of once while waiting for the Auto Club in this situation. A car should have two batteries. One, which we'll call Battery A, works just like your standard car battery: As you drive, it charges and it's what starts the engine in the morning. But you'd also have Battery B, which is a smaller battery, just big enough to start the car twice. It gets charged the same way but it doesn't power anything on its own. It just holds a charge, waiting until it's needed.

When the moment comes that Battery A is dead — say, because you stupidly didn't close the right rear door on the passenger's side two days earlier — you flip a switch. Or maybe there could be an automatic connection…but either way, Battery B goes online in the car and it starts the engine. Then once Battery A is charging again, Battery B goes offline or you take it offline…and later, it recharges so it's ready the next time you need it.

Why don't they have this? Or do they have it? What am I missing here? (Even though I used to sometimes fix my old '57 T-Bird myself, I'm not too savvy about cars. When I had to look at the engine, I used to try peeking through the ignition keyhole.)

Yes, I know there are little packs of drycell batteries one can buy that will jumpstart your car. There are cables that will connect you to an AC outlet via your cigarette lighter. I even have a little portable powerpack that I could have used to jump the battery if I'd remembered to recharge it in the last year or two. I'm wondering why no one just builds something like that into vehicles. They're putting DVD players into back seats now. Couldn't there be an extra battery in the trunk somewhere? Or at least a little gauge that stops the main one from draining to the point where it's useless?

Three weeks ago here, I linked to a Washington Post report on the dreadful conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Facility. That referral brought a few e-mails from folks who wrote, in essence, that it couldn't be true; that this was just another Washington Post lie to try and embarrass the Bush administration. In short order though, the entire story seems to have been validated, heads are rolling and everyone is scurrying to fix the problem.

Today on one of the cable news networks, I saw a number of sound bites from various folks in the chain of command over all this, all hiding behind the "I didn't know about it" excuse. I don't understand why they think that gets them off the hook. If you're in charge of making sure that our soldiers have decent medical care, aren't you admitting you've failed at your job to say you didn't know that they weren't getting it?

At last, we have some semi-decent footage of The Banana Man. I covered his history here and here but basically, this was a great old vaudeville act started by a man named A. Robins. He originally billed himself as "The One Man Music Store" and his act consisted of coming out and taking all sorts of items — musical instruments, mostly — from his pockets. At some point, he became known more for pulling out bananas and the act became more commonly known as The Banana Man. And at some point, Mr. Robins retired and sold or otherwise passed the act on. A man named Sam Levine did it in the fifties and well into the sixties, appearing on almost every live kids' show, often multiple times. It is not known if anyone else did the act between Robins and Levine but the guy who I recall seeing on Captain Kangaroo, The Mickey Mouse Club, The Ed Sullivan Show and anything hosted by Paul Winchell was apparently Levine.

This video clip starts with some brief footage of what may or may not be Mr. Robins in the 1947 feature film, Mother Wore Tights. The folks who posted this say it's Robins and they may be right…but some sources say he gave up the act in the early forties.

Most of the clip is a late TV appearance by Levine, probably on the Captain Kangaroo program. It was never as wonderful an act when he did it without a live audience and he seems a little slower and less energetic than I remember him, probably a function of age. I think though you can tell that if it was done faster and in front of a bunch of kids, it would bring down the house. (At the end, he turns his trunk into a train and pushes it off stage. I remember him always riding the train off stage, probably pulled on a cable by the stage crew. I don't know why he didn't do that here.)

This could even have been his last performance. Legend has it that once Captain Kangaroo went to videotape in the mid-sixties, it was no longer necessary to bring The Banana Man in to do his act every few months. Since he always did the exact same things, they just reused the old tape and paid him. Then at some point, the Good Captain got a new set and they called up and asked Levine to come back in and do a new performance for them. He said he couldn't; that his props had gotten too old and fragile and that he hadn't the energy (or enough other jobs) to refurbish them. Another story is that the Captain Kangaroo people didn't want him back because the props and costumes could not be laundered and so they fouled the studio with their aroma. ("I've heard of acts that stink but…")

It still isn't the ideal clip but footage of The Banana Man is amazingly elusive, especially when you consider how often this guy was on TV. I'm glad we have this much. It runs close to eight and a half minutes.

Fred Kaplan (him again) on how the Bush administration hasn't been doing right by our returning veterans. Does anyone besides me suspect that if a Democratic administration was doing this it would be cited as proof that their party hates the military?

Unless there's Breaking News, like they dig up Anna Nicole or something, Larry King Live will devote its Friday night show to memories of Johnny Carson.

This Sunday, early in the A.M., Fox Movie Channel is running three of Laurel and Hardy's lesser efforts back to back: The Dancing Masters, The Big Noise and The Bullfighters. As we often say here, even Laurel and Hardy at their worst is still better than most comedians at their best.

Not long ago, we made a big fuss here because Turner Classic Movies was about to show (for the first time in a long while anywhere) the Billy Wilder movie, The Big Carnival, aka Ace in the Hole. A lot of you wrote to thank me for letting you know about it. Others wrote to curse the fact that they'd missed it. The cursers have another shot at it when TCM runs it again on Saturday, March 17. We'll try to remember to give you another reminder before then but may forget.

This coming Sunday evening, TCM is running The Benny Goodman Story starring Steve Allen. It isn't much of a movie but I'm fascinated by the fact that Steverino filmed it during the day while he was still doing an hour and forty-five minutes of Tonight live every night. This is not humanly possible.

Lastly for now: If your cable company or satellite dish gets The ReelzChannel, tune in my buddy Leonard Maltin's series, Secret's Out. It's a great show about movies for people who care about movies, as opposed to current movie stars. Each episode runs about nine thousand times a week so you have no excuse for missing it. That is, unless you can't get that channel on your TV. Then we forgive you.

Dave Foley, formerly of NewsRadio and Kids in the Hall, is hosting a new 15-minute variety show on the Internet. It's called Can't Sleep With Dave Foley and he hosts it in the middle of his night in his bathrobe. There are guests, there's music and some of the episodes have what you might call "adult content." Ben Varkentine told me about it and I'm linking to the first episode which guests Lewis Black and musicial group Rilo Kiley…

If you like that, you can watch Episode 2 or Episode 3. That third one's recommended for Mature Audiences…as if there's anyone mature surfing the Internet.

Jacob Weisberg itemizes what he calls "The Four Unspeakable Truths" about the Iraq War. I think there's an important dialogue here that this country isn't having because of these taboos.

One of my best Conservative friends often rails at what he sees as a pernicious "political correctness" on the part of the Left that prevents, for example, a lot of valid points from being made about minorities because the observations are mislabelled as racism. I agree with a lot of his examples. Where we part company is that I see as much of that on the right. One cannot say or even suggest, for instance, that the death of any U.S. soldier was unnecessary or due to leadership incompetence or that it's anything but the noblest of sacrifices. I think everyone is now of the mind that something has been seriously wrong with the whole invasion of Iraq, or at least the aftermath of that invasion. It might be nice if we could discuss what exactly it was.

Denis Collins, Juror #9 in the Scooter Libby Trial, takes us inside the jury room.

Let's talk about Mel Blanc. Better still, let's let the fine voice actor Gregg Berger talk about Mel Blanc. This is a clip someone shot from the audience of one of the Cartoon Voice Panels I hosted at last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. The camerawork and the ethics of taping and posting this stuff are all a little shaky but it's a good story.

I'm the big guy at the podium. Another great voice actor on the panel, Michael Bell, had just told a story about working with Mel on a Hanna-Barbera show — Speed Buggy, I think. Michael enjoyed the experience except for the fact that Mel, who was playing a talking car in that series, tended to spray large quantities of saliva in the air when he simulated the engine sounds of the character he voiced. Bell explained how he went home drenched in Blanc spit and then Berger told the following anecdote…

Now, here's something weirder. This is a video about which I know nothing other than that it purports to be footage of Mel Blanc's vocal cords as he demonstrates some of his character voices. I don't know how or where this was made or even why. I don't even guarantee it's legit. But Bob Bergen, who's the current voice of Porky Pig, sent me this link and it's too bizarre not to share it with you all…

Okay, so Jay Leno's in reruns this week. But if he were doing a show tonight, he'd do that joke.

I'm not sure how the conviction of Lewis Libby will affect the world, other than that Jay Leno will have a joke tonight about how some convicts will have a nice, spanking new Scooter to ride around the yard. Of course, we doubt that Mr. Libby will spend one night behind bars. His lawyers can easily run out the clock on appeals until George W. Bush is a lame-enough duck to issue a pardon. I wonder if the conviction means anything beyond being another in a long list of slaps to the Bush/Cheney mob.

The saddest thing to me about all this is how cynical we've all gotten with regard to the judicial system in this country. Those who'd like to see Bush 'n' Cheney brought down were so sure that Libby was, as they say in Doonesbury, "Guilty, guilty, guilty!" Those who've cast their political/emotional lot with the G.O.P. are so sure there was no harm, no foul, no case. We have this unfortunate tendency to believe that the correct verdict in any case is the one that serves our political wish list. Obviously, someone is not innocent just because they're more or less on my side, just as they aren't guilty just because they're on the other team. But it sure doesn't play out that way in Internet debates, does it?

Let's take a look at the CBS Saturday morning lineup for 1965. What strikes me about it is how unbelievably cheap the whole thing must have been for the network. CBS had purchased the Terrytoons library years earlier so they owned Heckle & Jeckle and Mighty Mouse and weren't paying anything for those two shows. Tom & Jerry and Quick Draw McGraw were old cartoons which probably didn't cost much. Tennessee Tuxedo was produced for CBS but it went on the air in '63 and I think by 1965 was all reruns.

The only show of the six that I think even produced new animation for 1965 — and they probably didn't do much — was Linus the Lionhearted. That was a fairly expensive program but Post cereals ate most of that expense. The series was done as a kind of loss leader to promote the characters who were associated with Post cereals and appeared on their packaging. I don't know how much CBS kicked in but I'll bet it wasn't much. This promo also probably didn't cost the network more than — what? — maybe fifty bucks for editing old footage and putting in a bad announcer track.

Anyway, here it is: A whole Saturday morning schedule that probably cost less for the season than one episode of any current series…

Last year, we made a fuss over the Creamy Tomato Soup that was part of the rotating selection at the Souplantation chain. (In some states, Souplantation is known as Sweet Tomatoes. By any name, it's a place where you go, pay a flat fee and tank up on salad, soup and baked goods.) I suggested you all try it and if you liked it, call the company's Customer Service line and tell 'em so. I phoned up a couple of times and a lady there told me they'd gotten "a lot" of calls but she knew of no plans to add my favorite soup to their permanent lineup.

About two weeks ago, I happened upon those old posts and on a whim, I called up and asked it they had any plans to ever bring the Creamy Tomato Soup back again. The person who answered the phone there said it didn't look good.

Well, guess what. Creamy Tomato Soup is on the Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes lineup for the month of March.

I suppose the person on the Customer Service Line just didn't know, because these things are scheduled some time in advance. But never mind that. The soup's back and I have to get over there and have a few bowls of it and see if I still like it. The last time I tasted it was before my Gastric Bypass Surgery and there are a number of things I enjoyed then that don't taste as wonderful now. Most of those are foods with high sugar content so there's a good chance the Creamy Tomato Soup will still be wonderful. That is, unless they've done something treacherous and changed the recipe. If they have, I'm blaming Cheney. It would be just like him.

This page will show you if there's a Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes near you. I do not own stock in this company but if they make the Creamy Tomato Soup permanent, I may buy some.