Category Archives: Uncategorized

Two weeks after he passed away, an obituary for Rickie Layne finally turns up in the Los Angeles Times. [Registration might be required.]

Happy 85th birthday to Abe Vigoda who, according to his website, is still alive.

China has passed a law against films that combine live-action footage with animation. You read that right. Here are the details.

William F. Buckley writes, "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed." I'm sure a lot of people do doubt that, but it's interesting that he thinks so.

A number of people have written to try and convince me that "Portgate" (can't have a scandal without a "gate" nickname) is a much greater outrage than I think. Among my correspondents are several folks whose opinions I respect and their arguments, plus some of the latest revelations in the matter, have me thinking they may be right. Note that I wrote "may be."

As you might imagine, I also got a couple of insulting messages. I don't think, these days, you can type the name of an elected official on the Internet without getting one of those. And I had a nice Bizarro World exchange with someone who has previously accused me of not giving Bush the benefit of the doubt, but thinks the White House is braindead on this one.

Here's a news story about the deal that I found remarkable. Note that this is from the Washington Times, a newspaper that routinely twists itself in knots to portray the current administration as flawless…

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was not aware a Dubai-owned company was seeking to operate terminals in six U.S. ports and that his agency was leading the review until after the deal's approval, an administration official said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff's spokesman, Russ Knocke, told The Washington Times the issue rose no higher than the department's assistant secretary for policy, Stewart Baker. "[Chertoff] was not briefed up to this until after this story started appearing in the newspapers," Mr. Knocke said. Mr. Chertoff is the third Cabinet official to acknowledge he did not know his agency had signed off on the plan as a member of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). Both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow have publicly said they were unaware of the deal. But Mr. Chertoff's exclusion is more noteworthy because his department headed the CFIUS review and is in charge of security at all U.S. ports.

My first thought on reading this was, "So what? It's Michael Chertoff, the man who didn't know New Orleans was underwater." But it looks like everyone in the Cabinet was blindsided by this one. Even if the port deal was uncontroversial, this is not how we want our government to work, especially in the not-unimportant area of Homeland Security.

Michael Kinsley makes a good point on the new prescription drug program. I'll quote one paragraph here but go read the whole thing…

Thus Bush's only major domestic accomplishment in six years as president has not achieved its intended purpose of cementing the affection of senior citizens for the Republican Party. Many Republicans are sobbing with frustration, too. It is one thing to put aside your principles and spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society if it is going to help you to win elections (so you can pursue your dream of smaller government). It is another to sell your soul and not get anything for it. No one looks more foolish than a failed cynic.

Health care costs in this country are insane. The bill for my four days in the hospital recently came to $30,251.68 and that doesn't yet include doctor fees. I did not have surgery or a lot of special equipment. That was the price tag for just laying in a hospital bed for four days, eating the fabulous cuisine and having intravenous antibiotics pumped into my system. My insurance will cover most of the tab but even my out-of-pocket costs could wreck the lifestyle of some family living near the edge, just barely able to make routine expenses. (I've heard from a number of people who had what I had but who were in a hospital for three or four weeks with it. Imagine what that cost. By the way, I consider myself fully recovered and my doctor seems to concur.)

During the Terri Schiavo controversy last year, there were a lot of folks who were deeply concerned about prolonging the breathing of a total stranger whose life was probably, in any meaningful sense of thinking or communicating, already over. I wonder how many of those people are concerned that every day, out-of-control medical costs are killing people who are much more "alive" than Ms. Schiavo was by the time any of us heard of her.

I think you still have to watch advertising to read articles on Salon if you're not a subscriber. But you might find it worth it to read this piece by political cartoonist Doug Marlette. He writes about the Danish cartoonist flap and death threats and things like that.

I was e-mailed by a reporter the other day who wanted me to answer the question, "How do you feel about cartoonists being threatened with death for drawing cartoons?" I don't think he understood my answer, which was that I'm opposed to human beings being threatened with death for anything they do, short of inflicting death or physical harm on another human being. It's not just cartooning that shouldn't result in death threats. Death threats are a bad thing in almost every situation except maybe cutting ahead of me in the checkout line at the market.

Anyway, the reporter thought I was unwilling to take a stand against censorship so I wrote a more formal statement of the obvious, about how it is inhuman for anyone to be harmed or punished for expressing an opinion, however offensive it may be to some. I actually think most people in the world believe that. Some just believe there are exceptions for certain things they hold dear.

You have to wonder what they're so afraid of. When I was attending U.C.L.A. many moons ago, there was a gentleman who showed up outside the Student Union every Friday around the lunch hour. He was an aspiring derelict who'd deliver a semi-coherent discourse about what was wrong with the world. I heard a little of it once and I couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about…something about false prophets and bold men on horseback dressed in rags. This all led up to his big finish, which was always the burning of a Bible. He had a seemingly-endless supply of them and I don't recall if he told someone or if I imagined the reason, which was that he'd spent the previous twenty years as a travelling salesman. In every town, he said or I theorized, he'd swipe the volume the Gideons had placed in the top drawer of the bedside table and take it home for, I guess, possible future burning.

The Bible-burner was around for months, generally ignored. If he drew an audience at all, it was of students who wanted to laugh at his hysterical manner and wild-eyed fanaticism. But then someone took umbrage at the guy's finales and for a few weeks, there were petitions out and articles in the school newspaper about some proposal to ban the burning of sacred religious symbols or books or I don't know what the exact wording was. All I know is that it got the Bible-burner a lot of undeserved attention and that the folks who wanted to make him arrestible made even less sense than he did. One who harangued me to sign his petition seemed to have a genuine fear that the sacred tome was in some kind of actual jeopardy and had to be defended against one drunk with a Zippo lighter. I feel that way when people want to make it a crime to burn an American flag…or when it actually is a crime to deny the Holocaust.

In Austria, a British author was just sentenced to three years in prison for doing that. While one can understand why some countries are sensitive about the subject, I don't think the evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz is so flimsy that it can't withstand a few people arguing against it. Using violence or imprisonment to stop an idea from being questioned or ridiculed is to demean the power of that idea. If something really is an eternal truth, it shouldn't matter if someone argues against it or draws an insulting cartoon about it or burns a copy of it. Instead, let's make it a crime, punishable by death, to mock or burn my work. That's the kind of stuff that needs protection.

Back when ABC, CBS and NBC had cartoons in their God-given spot on Saturday morning, those shows were occasionally truncated or otherwise abbreviated for "educational content." The FCC mandated that certain quotas of pro-social material be broadcast along with the Hanna-Barbera madness and the commercials for foods with high sugar content. A lot of half-hour shows became 25-minute shows so we could get little short segments that lectured kids on good nutrition or history. For a brief time, ABC had little consumer tips and I seem to recall writing a few of them that were vetoed because they would have rebutted certain commercials that were then being broadcast.

I only recall two kinds of spots that I thought were at all worthwhile, let alone entertaining. One was the Schoolhouse Rock segments that popped up on ABC, usually in the fringe time slots. They were cleverly written and well-animated and to this day, I'll bet a lot of folks my age can still sing, "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here." Last year, I attended a party where the great jazz musician Jack Sheldon performed with his combo. The number one request, and the number which caused all the adults present to flock around and applaud with glee, was when he sang "I'm Just a Bill," a number he performed for Schoolhouse Rock.

The other segments I liked then — and remember, I was more or less an adult in the seventies; I was writing some of the shows these spots appeared in — was a series on CBS called In the News. They were short summaries, ranging one to two minutes in length, of what was going on in the world, illustrated with news footage. I thought I was pretty well informed from my reading of newspapers and my viewing of adult newscasts, but the In the News segments often outlined a story with such clarity and lack of sensationalism that I'd find myself going, "Oh, so that's what that's all about."

The In the News segments were narrated by the gent whose photo I've posted above right…Christopher Glenn, a reporter that CBS usually had assigned to radio projects. I believe he also wrote — or at least, supervised the writing of — the spots which ran from 1971 to 1986. What prompted this posting is that I see that Mr. Glenn is retiring after more than 50 years in broadcasting, the last 35 of which he spent at CBS. Obviously, he did a lot of other things for the network but every time I hear his measured, authoritative voice on one of them, I'm reminded of what a fine job he did with In the News, and how it was one of the few things I didn't mind interrupting my viewing of Road Runner cartoons. A lot of those who today are doing more elaborate, allegedly "in depth" news reporting for an older audience could learn a lot from what he did for kids.

This is scary. A new model of the Toyota Prius, available only in Japan at the moment, has a feature that will automatically parallel park the car for you. It involves a rear-mounted camera and some sort of on-board computer that figures out when the wheel should be turned and how much. Here's a video that displays this feature in action.

I'm watching tonight's Larry King Live, which is an hour with Ed McMahon plugging his book on Johnny Carson. As explained here, I didn't care for the book but this interview is pretty good and you might want to catch one of the reruns tonight. It was obviously taped ahead because almost every time Ed starts to tell a story — and sometimes, even before he starts telling one — the producers cut to an appropriate clip or photo. But what really makes it work is that Bob Costas is the guest host, reminding us that he's the best interviewer working in television these days.

The Los Angeles Daily News runs an obit for ventriloquist Rickie Layne.

I'm obviously not a fan of George W. Bush but the latest controversy — this thing about outsourcing the operation of several U.S. ports to an Arabian company — seems like errant criticism. One can make a good argument that we shouldn't be handing a job this sensitive over to an outside supplier at all…that it should be done by the United States government. But none of the folks yelling at Bush today seem to be making that case. They weren't bothered when it was a British company that was running the six U.S. ports…but now that the company's being acquired by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, all Hades is breaking loose.

Bush didn't help himself with the way he let this be announced. Donald Rumsfeld was put in the embarrassing position today of telling reporters he'd just heard about the deal over the weekend, even though it was approved unanimously on February 13 by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, of which he is a member. And someone has to tell George W. that since his approval ratings started occasionally hitting 39%, even some loyal Republicans won't rubber-stamp everything he wants to do.

But really, what's the problem here? Is the company qualified to handle the job? If they are, they should be allowed to do it. And if they aren't, they shouldn't have the job, no matter what country is involved. I think Bush is getting a bit of a bum rap on this one.

Jane Mayer tells us how an attempt to change U.S. policies on torture failed.

People keep writing me to ask when a certain favorite TV show of the past will get released on DVD. The answer is that every show that was around long enough to now fill out a DVD set is probably on some company's "we'll get around to this eventually" list. A gentleman who packages such things for one of the major DVD houses told me recently that there's a bit of a glut on the market and there may be some slowdown. There also may be some drop in the budgets for special features ("Some people are starting to say it's not cost-effective") but no one is suggesting that there isn't still money to be made packaging runs of old shows. Here, with his permission, is an excerpt from a recent e-mail to me…

We still have clearance problems with a couple of shows that we want to put out. Mostly, it's a matter of music rights but there are a few shows tied up in disputes over who owns the home video rights. The point is we're even working on solving those because we want to put everything out we can. It's mostly now a question of when. When would be a good time to release this? Some months, there are just too many DVD sets out and your product can get lost or you'll wind up competing with yourself to have too many sets out. In some cases, there's reason to believe a certain show might get more attention down the line, like if there's a movie coming out based on it. We also have shows we want to put out, and we will put out, but we're having trouble locating negatives or good complete prints of a few episodes. All we have readily available are syndication prints that are missing a few minutes in each show. We don't want to use those unless we have to.

Coming out May 2 is the first season of That Girl, complete with audio commentaries and a documentary featuring Marlo Thomas and series co-creator Bill Persky. I recall the first season of that show being quite enjoyable, especially in the way Ted Bessell would play sexual frustration and how unbelievably sour Lew Parker was as That Girl's father. From our friends at Shout Factory.

On May 9, Paramount is bringing out the much-awaited DVD of the show variously called Sgt. Bilko, The Phil Silvers Show and You'll Never Get Rich — by any name, one of the best comedies ever done for television. Alas, this is one of the shows that has had clearance problems so they can't just release season by season. Instead, they've picked 21 episodes that they could clear, plus they have the never-aired pilot (which has Jack Warden playing Henshaw, the character played in the series by Allan Melvin) and a staggering number of special features, rare clips, commentary tracks, etc. This sounds like a must-get, and we can hope that if it sells well enough, that might give Paramount the financial incentive to try and mop up those clearance issues and do real season-by-season sets. You can advance order this one here.

There's already a one-DVD sampler release of a few old F Troop episodes and I guess it must have sold well since Warner Home Video is putting out the entire first season of the show on June 6. One hopes it will sell well enough for a quick release of the second and final season. (There were only two, and only the second was in color.) Always liked F Troop — one of the few sitcoms that ever made me laugh out loud.

What's nice about these three releases is that they're all of shows I can't watch just by turning on my TV. I mean, the Andy Griffith Show and M*A*S*H DVD sets are nice but my satellite dish gets two episodes of Andy Griffith per day, each of which run twice, and six episodes of M*A*S*H, four of which air twice — plus every so often, some channel airs a marathon. One time, my "TiVo Suggestions" feature got carried away and recorded 40+ episodes of I Love Lucy over one weekend. (I think my TiVo has a thing for Vivian Vance.) So buying a complete season of that show isn't that big a deal.

One of my few disappointments when I got DirecTV and the eight zillion channels that come with it was that about four zillion were running The Jeffersons. I was expecting lots of shows I wasn't previously able to see and all I got was six chances a day to watch Weezie and George yell at each other. I mentioned here a few months ago that I didn't understand why someone hasn't launched a couple of networks that run some of the hundreds of old TV shows that are not currently on TV Land. No one in the business seems to have a theory as to why this hasn't been attempted, especially now that the DVD market has prompted many studios to go into their vaults and do restoration work on their old shows. Dom DeLuise's Lotsa Luck is out on DVD. So is Good Morning, World. So is Nowhere Man and Have Gun, Will Travel and even Mister Peepers. None of these shows are currently rerun on TV channels as far as I know. If people are willing to shell out good money to own all of them, don't you think someone would watch them once a day for free?

Over on Tom Spurgeon's fine site, The Comics Reporter, I explained (in this letter) about a bordered cover format that Marvel tried out in 1971. Tom asked about it, I answered…and I also explained about a cover border format that MAD Magazine test-marketed in the seventies. Folks are now writing me, asking where they can see an example of this MAD experiment so I thought I'd post the above.

Someone at MAD got the idea that it might boost sales to establish a decorative border format on their covers. Someone else, I guess, wasn't convinced this was a wise idea…so several issues were printed both ways. Some percentage of the press run had the yellow border on the cover, the rest didn't, and sales were charted. After a while, the bordered covers went away, never to be seen again. Which should give you some idea of how the test turned out.