Over on Slate, Jack Shafer raises an issue that has interested me: How much of our current reporting, especially about Iraq, 9/11 and the Saudis, is based not just on anonymous sources but on anonymous sources of extremely dubious merit.
And also on Slate, Daniel Gross notes some of the economic predictions made in the aftermath of 9/11 that have proven faulty.
Tab Hunter comes out of the closet for the nineteenth time.
David Plotz itemizes a number of popular misconceptions about 9/11.
A lovely, talented man died this morning in his native Texas. Larry Hovis was one of those people who could do anything: Sing, dance, write, act, produce. He was also an artist and handyman. When I knew him back in the seventies, his hands were like sandpaper from the work he was doing with wood and metal in a home workshop.
Larry was born February 20, 1936 in Wapito, Washington but he grew up in Texas and always considered it his home. At age seven, he and his sister had a "kid act" singing and dancing on local radio and at state fairs. When he got too old for that, he put in several years in a vocal group (including an appearance on the TV show, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts) and went on to a fruitful career in musical theater, mostly in and around Texas, while he went to school. Soon after he nailed down a degree in Philosophy at the University of Houston, he was "discovered" by Capitol Records, recorded a few songs for them, then moved to New York. There, he appeared in The Billy Barnes Revue and in a short-lived flop — a revue called From A to Z starring Hermione Gingold and featuring sketches by Woody Allen. That was in 1960. By 1963, Larry had relocated to Los Angeles where he landed the recurring role (two episodes) of Gilly Walker on The Andy Griffith Show. This in turn led to a recurring role in the spin-off show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and then a tour of duty on Hogan's Heroes as the hapless Sgt. Andrew Carter.
When Hogan's Heroes went off, Larry didn't miss a beat, moving over to become a regular on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. During this time, he also began to write for variety shows and other comedians, and to delve into the producing of game shows. For most of the seventies, he bounced around between several careers — writing, producing game shows (Liar's Club, for one) and doing guest spots on TV shows. Whenever he could, he also got back into musical theater. I saw him give a wonderful performance as the TV crusader, Melvin P. Thorpe, in a touring company of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
In 1989, Larry was hired to produce a TV show called Totally Hidden Video for the then-new Fox network. It was supposed to be a TV show where unsuspecting people were caught in pranks but a small scandal erupted. The claim was that the camera was not "totally hidden" and that some of the "victims" were actors who were paid to pretend they were caught. I had lost touch with Larry by then so I never heard his side of it but a mutual friend told me that Larry had "taken the fall" for others. Disgusted by the whole experience, the friend said, he had decided to leave television and move back to Texas. There, he wrote, performed in and directed plays, and taught Theatre at Texas State University in San Marcos.
I didn't know Larry that well but we worked on a few projects that never went anywhere, and I could tell he was a very bright man, and just as nice as he came across on TV. I remember that a friend of his was then struggling to hold onto a disc jockey job and had called to ask if Larry had any joke books that could help raise the humor level of the broadcasts. Larry sat down and spent a whole weekend writing fresh (and very funny) material for his friend and just told him, "Send me a few bucks if you get renewed." On the Liar's Club game show, Larry was both the producer and one of four celebrity panelists. The panelists had to give funny "bluff" answers to questions, all of which Larry wrote, and he made a point of never saving the best jokes for himself. He was a fine, generous human being and I'm sorry to hear there's one less of those in the world today.
Six weeks after the great Richie Rich and Casper artist passed away, The New York Times notices!
Fred Kaplan on how 9/11 handed G.W. Bush a historic opportunity…and how he squandered it.
You may want to hold off ordering that DVD of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Several of the DVD-buff message boards are reporting things like what they're saying over at DVDTalk…
Monty Python fans have yet another reason to fret. We've received numerous reports of problems with Universal Studios Home Video's DVD release for Monty Python's The Meaning of Life: 2-Disc Collector's Edition. Apparently there are some compression issues which effect 2 out of every 5 consecutive frames, this results in a shaky or blurry image on some DVD Players (not all).
In other words, it may or may not play well on your machine. Stay tuned for more details, and thanks to Kevin Boury for calling this to my attention.
John Cleese says that the members of Monty Python are presently too busy to do anything together. And the big castle that was seen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail has become a big tourist attraction.
Also: The DVD of The Meaning of Life came out recently but I don't have it yet. It's loaded with special features including several deleted scenes, an intro by Mr. Idle, an audio commentary by Mssrs. Jones and Gilliam, trailers, outtakes, a "Making of…" documentary, etc. Even if it didn't have all that extra stuff, I'd buy one. You can buy one from Amazon by clicking here.
The New York Times' new conservative columnist isn't a lot more positive about George W. Bush's war plans than their old liberal columnist. In the meantime, the house editorial says some pungent things about the character of the current administration.
I am told there's a good review of my book, Mad Art, on page 19 of the new New York Times Book Review. I haven't seen it yet.
By that, I mean I haven't seen the review. I've seen my book, Mad Art. I've even suggested you see my book, Mad Art, which you can order by clicking here.
If and when the review is posted online, I'll put up a link to it. Thank you, Earl Wells, for letting me know about it. Something like this could even get me to rethink my new career…
Here's William Saletan with one logical way to look at the speech Bush gave last night. Another is that it might be simpler just to give half of the 87 billion directly to Halliburton.
I'm not sure I even know how to describe the Degree Confluence Project. Its goal is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. You'll understand better what that means if you visit the site. (Don't thank me for this one. Thank David Feldman, King of All Imponderables. I'm just passing it along.)
And as Marv Wolfman reminds me, there's a cover gallery online for every issue of MAD Magazine. It's right over here.
Jason Bergman sends me this link to a gallery of covers for Vogue Magazine. Great stuff.
He also sends this link, which will sort the above gallery to just show you the Vogue covers by Carl Erickson, one of our great stylists. Greater stuff.
And he sends this link to a complete gallery of covers for Playboy Magazine. Revisit that year when the women really looked good. (Hint: You were 14 at the time.)
Due to good weather, all of the announced events for Sergio Aragonés Day had to be cancelled. Instead, a small group of Sergio's friends went to his home where he cooked us a big paella. Above is a picture of said paella. You can find out more about this exquisite feast by going over to Sergio's website.