It's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the Republican Convention. Notice what a good sport Governor Tim Pawlenty is. Notice how Bob Smigel, who speaks for Triumph, occasionally gets tired of doing the accent and doesn't bother. Notice how this man actually got press credentials to go in and have a rubber dog insult delegates, point out that Sarah Palin's speech included statements that were not true, and talk about the nominee's privates. If Keith Olbermann had used a puppet, he'd still be anchor.
Hey, let's watch an old cartoon. This is "Piano Tooners," a Van Beuren effort starring Tom and Jerry. This is the human Tom and the human Jerry, not to be confused with the cat/mouse duo that later became famous in MGM cartoons by Hanna and Barbera. The cartoons of the human guys who went by those names were made from 1931 through 1933. The one you'll see if you click below was released November 11, 1932.
The most interesting thing about it is probably the attempt to create a character who's basically Betty Boop rolled into one. And why not? Ms. Boop was pretty darn popular in 1932. The voice of the knock-off here sounds like Mae Questel but is more likely a woman named Bonnie Poe. Questel was the main voice of Betty but others did it from time to time, including Bonnie Poe. (The same was true of Olive Oyl: Usually Questel but occasionally Poe or someone else.)
Van Beuren's Tom and Jerry were briefly popular but their success faded, as did their studio's. It shut down in 1937 and its library passed from hand to hand. At some point after the feline/rodent version became popular, the titles on the old Van Beuren cartoons were changed and Tom and Jerry became Dick and Larry…though not on all prints. When Sheriff John ran them on his Los Angeles kid show in the late fifties, they were still Tom and Jerry. This one is one I think I actually remember watching then. It's a little better when you're six years old and there are commercials for Bosco before and after.
Here's a little less than four minutes of Henny Youngman being Henny Youngman. I said everything I had to say about Henny Youngman in this article so if you want to hear of my occasional encounters with The King of the One-Liners, read that.
From the same 1972 episode of The David Frost Show as this clip, we have Stephen Sondheim performing a song of his called "Boy, Can That Boy Foxtrot." It was written for Follies but was cut and replaced by "I'm Still Here." Like most of Mr. Sondheim's discards, it had a considerable life after death. It turned up in several revues of his work — most notably in Side By Side By Sondheim, and Nathan Lane sang it in the movie, The Birdcage.
Here's a young S. Sondheim performing it…and proving the old adage that most composers would never hire anyone who sang their songs as poorly as they themselves do.
Are you familiar with The Monty Hall Problem? It's sometimes called The Monty Hall Paradox.
Here's how it works. You're on a game show not unlike Mr. Hall's legendary Let's Make a Deal. There are three doors. One of them conceals a new car. The other two have goats behind them. You get to pick a door and you will win the prize behind it. Obviously, the idea is to go home with a car, not a goat.
So you pick your door. Then the host (who knows where the car is hidden) says, "Let's see what's behind one of the doors you didn't pick!" He opens one of the doors that conceals a goat. You feel lucky you did not pick that door.
The host then asks you, "Before we reveal the prize behind the door you selected, would you like to swap? Would you like to take the other door instead of the one you picked?"
The problem: Should you swap? Would it make you more likely to win the car, less likely…or would it make no difference?
Most people say it would make no difference. Amazingly, they are wrong. You double the odds of winning the car if you switch.
Just why this is so is hard to explain. There are dozens of videos on the 'net in which folks attempt to explain why one should always switch and most of them are incomprehensible and confusing. The one below is the best one I've come across.
If you'd like to see an interesting test of this situation, this webpage allows everyone to play the game and it tallies up the results. As you'll see, those who choose to swap win twice as often as those who don't. I know it's counter-intuitive but if you think about it, it makes sense.
You get the feeling I have an obsession with baby pandas? This is a slide show of photos of one's first few months. Nowhere on the web do I see any info that explains where these pics were taken but it may be the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Chengdu, China. I also don't see any explanation as to why the baby was apparently raised in an incubator and not by its mama. One possibility: When a mother panda has twins, she often neglects one baby and it dies unless someone else swoops in to take care of it. Perhaps that's what happened here.
In any case, you're going to enjoy the following two minutes of panda growing. If you do, I may assemble a similar video out of my baby pictures. I was equally adorable.
From a 1972 episode of The David Frost Show: Four performers from the Broadway show, Follies — Harvey Evans, Kurt Peterson, Virginia Sandifur and Marti Rolph — do a number from the original production.
Watching New Orleans evacuate has made me angry all over again about what happened during Hurricane Katrina a few years ago. Even if Gustav doesn't do anywhere near the same kind of damage, that will not mean the man-made errors of the past have been corrected.
This video runs about eleven minutes. If you don't have the eleven minutes, just know this: Most of the destruction that occurred there was not because a hurricane hit the city. It was because a hurricane hit the city and many of the levees that should have protected the city proved to be structurally unsound. To add injury to injury, the post-storm response was simply inept and made a bad situation worse.
I don't know why people aren't more upset about this. We blamed all sorts of people for not being better prepared for 9/11 but the folks who dropped the ball in and around New Orleans were barely faulted. Worse, even though everyone knew another hurricane would be along soon (with more to follow), they've taken their own sweet time about prepping for it. Here's the video. Everything in here has been affirmed by official reports and as far as I can tell, there is little dissent to those reports.
One week in 1968, Jerry Lewis was guest-hosting The Tonight Show and he caused a ruckus. There had recently been some item in the news about an incident of racial segregation in Mississippi, and Mr. Lewis made a remark that went roughly like this: "I was just taking a cross-country flight and I fulfilled a lifelong dream by going to the bathroom over Mississippi."
Obviously not a great joke…and the next day, Lewis found himself the target of protests. Mississippi officials denounced him, the NBC affiliate in Mississippi announced it would not air The Tonight Show for the rest of the week, and movie theaters down there yanked his most recent film. (Appropriately enough, it was a movie called The Big Mouth.)
Our embedded clip is the first four or so minutes from the program the following night. Jerry comes out, sings a song and then does a quick apology for the offending jibe. As I recall, he was slammed a bit more in the following week but the storm blew over and was forgotten. There still, however, are some folks who haven't forgiven him for The Big Mouth. Here's the clip…
The legendary ecdysiast (i.e., stripper) Gypsy Rose Lee was immortalized in the Broadway musical, Gypsy, which was vaguely based on her life. At one point in the mid-sixties, Gypsy Rose had a short-lived talk show and on one episode, her guest was Ethel Merman, who played her mother in Gypsy. Here's seven and a half minutes of them together, including some fascinating rehearsal footage.
Don LaFontaine, aka "The Movie Trailer Guy," is a legend in the world of commercials and narration. You wouldn't believe how much it costs to hire this person…and clients gladly pay it because his voice sells. In fact, they fight to hire Don even though there are plenty of actors out there who can give you a "Don LaFontaine" sound for less money. He also has a pretty good reputation in the industry for generosity, both with cash and in recommending others for jobs he thinks they need/deserve more than he does.
This would be a good time to think good thoughts about Don. At last report, he was in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in critical condition due to a blood clot lodged in his lung. We sure hope he makes it. Here's a nice little five-and-a-half minute profile of the man…
Okay, time for an old commercial. This is for Funny Face Drink Mixes, which were kind of like Kool-Aid. No, come to think of it, they were exactly like Kool-Aid, which I also couldn't stand. I wrote about Funny Face Drink Mixes here and here. This spot is for the original line before Chinese Cherry was replaced by Choo Choo Cherry and Injun Orange got changed into Jolly Olly Orange. Later on, Paul Frees provided the voices of all or most of the Funny Face Drinks but these ain't him…
