Today's Video Link

Posted on Friday, January 6, 2012 at 1:43 AM

Hey, it's been a long time since I posted anything here I wrote. Here's something I wrote. It's one of the first episodes we did for The Garfield Show, my main endeavor of the last few years…if you don't count redesigning this blog and feeding Max the Cat out back.

This is "Mother Garfield," a first season episode. The show is produced in France for the international market and it airs in the U.S. on the Cartoon Network…usually. They run it for a month or three, then they take it off for a while to rest it, then they put it back on for a while. I hope somebody knows when it's on because I sure don't.

When they do run it, they run episodes from Season #1 and Season #2. At the moment, production is almost complete on Season #3 but I don't know when they will air in this country, either. They should start appearing soon in other lands.

"Mother Garfield" features the voice of Frank Welker as Garfield and all the birds, and the other voices are by Gregg Berger and Wally Wingert. Hope you enjoy it…

VIDEO MISSING

Big Box Blues

Posted on Friday, January 6, 2012 at 12:43 AM

Several folks sent me the link to this article by Larry Downes about why the Best Buy chain may soon go the way of the passenger pigeon, the dodo bird, Egghead Software, The Good Guys, Circuit City and Michele Bachmann's candidacy. It's all a piece with what I've written about here in the past when Egghead, Good Guys and Circuit City went under. They couldn't survive because no one there knew anything. (Come to think of it, that probably applies to Bachmann, too.)

In my visits to Best Buy, as with the other similar-type places that sold electronics and computers, I've always been stunned by how little the staff knows about what they're selling. It's not hard to imagine the reason. All the marketing surveys and studies that management does must tell them that the number one thing customers care about is price. So to get prices down as low as possible, they pay their sales crew as little as possible…which means that folks who know stuff don't stick around. The last time I was in a Best Buy, I asked the manager (the manager, mind you) of the computer department which of the external hard drives they sold had eSATA connections. He looked at me with those "first season" Barney Rubble eyes of his and asked, "What's eSATA?" I was going to suggest he go Google it but I was afraid he'd ask me, "What's Google?"

Yeah, there's a logic to trying to get prices down. The problem is that's a contest that brick-and-mortar retailers are never going to win. It will always be cheaper to buy something if you search the Internet. Where places like Best Buy might be able to compete is in offering what you can't get buying from Amazon: Someone to talk to.

I remember back when I was buying a lot of electronics, my main source was an outlet of Good Guys over on La Cienega that was open 24 hours. I'd go in there at 2 AM or 3 AM and there were always people in the story and half the time, one of them was Ben Stein being somewhat brusque to some salesperson. In spite of that, I bought there for two reasons. One was the power of immediate acquisition. I could walk out with the item instead of waiting days for a U.P.S. guy. In fact, I could take it home, decide it was wrong and return it before an Amazon order could have arrived. Good Guys, unlike Best Buy in the article, was real good at exchanges.

The other reason was that they had a guy there named Ron, and Ron really knew computers and TVs and digital cameras and all the kinds of things I was buying. I could tell him what I was looking for and he'd show me three or four products and give me the pros and cons of each. He'd show me how to operate something and there were a couple of times when I got my purchase home, then called him up at the store at 4 AM to ask a question about installation.

The last time I bought from him was on what he told me was his last day there. Even with the commissions on all the stuff I'd bought including a big screen TV, he wasn't making enough to stay in that job. The next time I went in there, the salesguy I got didn't know which ink cartridges went with which of the printers they sold. When I figured out the right kind, they were out of them but the fellow thought they might be getting more in, next week. Or the week after. Or maybe the week after that. So much for the joys of Immediate Acquistion.

If I'm going to get that kind of service, I might as well buy on the Internet. It's cheaper, they usually have what I want in stock and someone brings it to my doorstep in three days. So while I might miss Ron, I don't miss Good Guys and I'm not going to miss Best Buy. I have a feeling I'm not going to be missing Best Buy very soon.

Mark Nelson, R.I.P.

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 9:14 PM

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The Magic Castle in Hollywood is set to reopen at almost full strength on Friday the 13th following its unfortunate Halloween Day fire.  But that good news has been more than negated by a jolt of bad news: The death of every member's friend, Mark Nelson.  Mark had recently been the Chairman of the Castle Board of Trustees but that title doesn't even begin to describe his contribution to the Castle and the world of magic.  Put simply, he was the guy who would help anyone with anything; who was always there to tackle any project and do the work that had to be done but no one else wanted to do it.  He was a fine performer with an all-encompassing knowledge of stagecraft and performing…but he was also there to help anyone else with their acts.

He was in a sense, the voice of the Magic Castle.  He had a great professional announcer voice and I once directed him in an animation project.  And it was Mark's recorded voice you heard when you called the Castle for reservations or information.  (I believe he replaced the great Harry Blackstone Jr. when that fine gentleman passed.)

I have not heard what the cause of death was.  Mark had so many ailments and illnesses in recent years that it could have been any of at least a dozen things.  He had not been heard from in many days and that was so unlike Mark – to not show up to do his duties – that a friend drove to his home to investigate.  Finding several days of newspapers piled up outside, she phoned his family in San Francisco and they in turn phoned 911.  When police arrived at Mark's home here, they broke in and found him.  He had apparently been dead for several days.

I can't think of anyone who didn't like the guy.  I can't even think of any reason why anyone might not like the guy.  He was about as friendly and generous a human being as anyone I've ever met, always willing to help anyone.  (I joined the Castle as an Associate – i.e., non-magician – Member.  It was Mark who sponsored me for elevation to full Magician status.)  What a shame to lose a guy like that.

Richard Remembered

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 7:40 PM

Here's a good obit about Richard Alf, one of the founders of the Comic-Con International.

Go Read It!

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 2:53 PM

Here's a good, long profile in the New York Times of Stephen Colbert. It really is impressive how he is able to improvise so well "in character" as he does…to the point where some people out there actually don't understand it's a character.

WordPress Woes

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 1:44 PM

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Okay, so here's my latest problem: The above screen shot is the way this weblog is supposed to look…with blue bars on either side.  And from what I can determine, it looked this way to about 97% of you if you came by here in the last week or so. For some reason though, about 3% of you were seeing it without the white in this area. The blue background was showing through, making the text difficult to read.

I did all the necessary tests and validations and everything told me I had it all configured properly and that shouldn't happen. But it did. I got a lot of distressed e-mails from folks who thought I'd put black text over a dark blue (at top) background because I wanted it to be close to illegible. Stumped, I finally e-mailed a friend who's supposed to be an expert at this kind of thing. The reply I got him from said, in part…

There's nothing wrong with your CSS. It all validates fine. The problem is that 3% of your users are using browsers they shouldn't be using. Most of them are probably old and incapable of reading modern CSS coding. They may not realize it but they're missing a lot of things on the internet and in the next year or so as more and more sites abandon old coding and deprecated tags, those browsers may not be able to read most sites at all. A few of them are probably also using one of the dreadful recent browsers for the Mac that don't know how to handle some basic commands. I don't know why they did that but one of them can't even read the friggin' Time magazine site. Tell those people to upgrade for their own sake or go find some other site to read.

And the trouble with that advice is that as some of the 3% have written to me, they can't upgrade that easily. Usually, the stated reason is that they're on very old computers and can't afford at this time to upgrade their hardware…and the old hardware won't run new software.

Well, I've decided that before I give up on that 3%, I'm going to fiddle with the software here. The difficulty is that since none of my three computers or my iPad or my iPhone sees the "problem," I have no way of knowing if anything I do fixes it.

I have replaced the blue background with yellow for the moment. I'm going to eventually go back to it but for now, yellow is in its place. So anyone who had the problem of the blue showing through is, at worst, now reading this over yellow so it should at least be legible. I'm going to be fiddling over the next week or two when I have the time. If you had the problem and anything I do causes white to appear in this space instead of yellow, please drop me a line and let me know. Thanks.

Today's Video Link

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 11:50 AM

Stu Shostak is still trying to get New Year's Eve guests out of his home after his gala six-hour broadcast that evening. But he took time out to send me this link to a video of about two minutes of old Los Angeles. It says 1954 on it but there's a shot in there of Grauman's Chinese Theater and it's showing The Robe, which opened there in September of 1953 and had surely closed by '54.

Amazingly, a lot of my city hasn't changed much. Look fast and you'll see a couple of shots of Owl Drugs, which was a local chain back then. The big one, which is visible for a few seconds at 1:07, was at the corner of La Cienega and Beverly Boulevard. In the late seventies, I lived on that block…and there's still a drugstore there. Now it's a CVS Pharmacy as every building outside the state of New York will soon be. (In New York, everything will eventually be a Duane Reade's.) Here's what that corner in L.A. looks like now…

Here, I'll give you one more. In the video which you're about to watch, there's a fast look at a Ralph's Market at around 1:02. That's Westwood Village back then and that building is now a Peet's Coffee and Tea, which is kinda like Starbucks but with nicer furniture. Here's what it looks like today…

Okay, here's the video. It's less than two minutes but I spotted an awful lot of places I knew and know. Thanks, Stu. If all of your guests haven't left by Washington's Birthday, give me a call and I'll help you throw them out…

Today's Political Musing

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 11:36 AM

Ron Paul's campaign manager says their campaign believes that Rick Santorum has "a daring lack of viability" as a candidate. Isn't that the guy in third place saying the guy in second place doesn't have a chance?

Recommended Reading

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 11:33 AM

You know how politicians will promise one thing when they're running for office then do the opposite once they're elected? Jonathan Bernstein says that doesn't happen as often as we think it does.

Richard Alf, R.I.P.

Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:29 PM

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When Shel Dorf and Ken Krueger died in 2009, I wrote on this blog that they were the two most important people involved in the founding of what we now call the Comic-Con International.  You know the Comic-Con International: That nation unto itself that many of us attend each summer in San Diego.  Well, a close third in importance to the con's founding was Richard Alf, who died earlier this evening at a hospice in La Jolla, California at the age of 59.

Richard was a tall, friendly fellow and I do not recall him ever not being in a great mood and smiling.  He was something of a wunderkind: As a teenager, he began dealing in old comic books and he was so successful that when the first San Diego Con was being assembled, Richard was able to front much of the money that was needed to launch the project.

He was on the first committee and very much involved.  The organizers paid several visits to the home of Jack Kirby where they received encouragement and advice.  Richard is the tall guy in the back in this photo taken on one of those visits.  Kirby is in the center and Dorf is in the back on the right

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Richard served as Chairman of the convention at least once and worked on all the early ones before stepping away.  I'd see him at the most of them, though.  He was enormously modest when praised for his role in starting it all…and yet he was enormously proud of having had any sort of role.  At recent cons when they've celebrated the anniversary of that institution and also the anniversary of Comic Book Fandom, we all got to see and talk with Richard and he seemed to be having a great time.  But then he always seemed like he was having a great time.  Sad to see it end.

Shrink Rap

Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 5:11 PM

My one-time writing partner Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist. Hmm…I drove him to that. Well, if I did, he should be grateful because he's very successful in this profession…though it's one that is often not depicted in a favorable light in films and television. He discusses this situation for Psychology Today.