It's not embeddable here but I wanted to call your attention to a documentary that's available for viewing on YouTube. It's called Burger Town and it's a great look at the fast food hamburger business in Southern California, past and present. It's full of old commercials and interviews with restaurant employees, as well as footage and stills of classic burger shrines. It runs about 48 minutes but if the topic interests you, it's well worth the time.
Slipping Beauty
I don't care that Miss California had breast implants or that she posed for racy photos. I also don't care what she thinks about Gay Marriage. I don't know why anyone cares about anything besides how she looks in the bikini and even that's no big deal these days.
I thought we were coming around to the idea that beauty pageants were about beauty…and nothing else. Once upon a time, there were people in this country who pretended that to become Miss Wherever was to be a role model for young women everywhere. In truth, it was all just an exercise in creating a celebrity who could open boat shows for a year and make money for the pageant operators.
But of course, it would be shallow and undignified to admit that the contest is just about lovely young ladies in minimal attire…and if she's going to be cutting the ribbons at gas station openings, it would be nice if she could talk a little. Also, you can't fill a two-hour TV telecast with just swimsuit walkthroughs — so they stuck in talent competitions and the embarrassing little "question" segments where the competitors have 45 seconds to tell us how they'd achieve world peace. And not only do I not care about all this, no one cares about beauty pageants anymore. Miss America pageants used to be prime time major TV events and now they're on low-audience cable channels between reruns of The Jeffersons and infomercials for Kevin Trudeau's latest health scam. The Miss U.S.A. contest, which is where Miss California shot off about same-sex marriages is even less-watched.
Carrie Prejean may be a right-wing bigot but give the lady credit. She found a way to get a little fame and maybe some fortune out of a largely-ignored beauty pageant that she didn't even win. If she hadn't said what she did, all she'd have to show for the experience was the sash, a supply of Revlon products and some lovely parting gifts. Now, she has a chance to get some speaking engagements from right-wing groups and to be a martyr for their cause if, as seems likely, she's stripped of her title on Monday. There may be a book deal there or a job on Fox News. Whatever it is, it's more celebrity than any beauty contest winner has seen since…well, since Vanessa Williams lost her crown due to naughty photos.
Lesson to be learned? The only way to get anything out of being Miss Anything is to have a scandal. If all the contestants figured that out, those pageants might be worth watching.
Recommended Reading
Paul Begala on how Dick Cheney's unpopularity helps the Democrats.
I think Cheney has achieved something truly amazing in politics. He's even lost the support of people who agree with him. There are a lot of them out there…folks who like torture, like shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor, like his notions of a strong America and so on. They probably like everything Cheney stands for except his tolerance of gay rights, which goes largely unmentioned, but they don't like Cheney. He's just done too much damage to their cause. I feel the same way about a lot of folks who more or less support what I support but do it in a clumsy, offensive manner. Maybe it comes with being vice-president because Joe Biden is drifting in that direction for me.
Wide Bodies
My pal Lee Wochner has a sad story about Dom DeLuise. And it prompts me to expand on what I wrote earlier about why I decided I had to do something about my own weight.
Obviously, there are about a dozen fine reasons to not be 100+ pounds too big…and it doesn't really matter which is the most important. One that doesn't get a lot of attention is that you just don't fit into the world you're in. I was probably less concerned about shortening my life than I was with just causing problems while I was around — chairs I didn't fit onto, aisles I couldn't pass through, bumping into people, etc. Dropping tonnage has had all sorts of benefits to my health and sleeping and feet and such…but I'm also conscious that I can get into a seat on an airplane without needing a belt extender and crushing the person next to me.
Tex Support
Greg Ford has written a pretty good career overview of the man we call Tex Avery.
I wish there was a way people could see his films — and those by Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, etc. — in something resembling the way they were meant to be seen. The cartoons weren't made to be seen on a small screen in your home with no audience around. They also weren't meant to be seen in film festivals, one after another.
My first real exposure to Tex Avery cartoons as an adult was when the L.A. County Art Museum hosted an evening of them with Tex there to speak after the screening. They had brand new prints and they had a lot of them. After three, the bright colors and frantic pace began to get a little tiring and after five, one started to notice a certain amount of repetition. After seven or eight, my friends and I fled to the lobby…where we found Tex holding court, talking to a gang of admirers. As he saw us join the throng, he joked, "More people who can't sit through too many of my films." One of my friends started to apologize that we weren't back in the theater, studying every frame of every cel. Tex said, "Don't be sorry. I had to leave after three." None of us thought the films weren't brilliant and hilarious. We just couldn't take them in mega-doses.
Recommended Reading
Bruce Bartlett on what the U.S. has to do to get serious about the current budget crisis. He thinks someone oughta propose some real solutions.
Today's Video Link
Hans Klok bills himself as "The World's Fastest Magician" and no one who's seen him perform would waste a lot of time arguing that one. Nor will you if you watch this video of his recent Vegas engagement. I never got to see it live but a magician friend who did said it was like a "greatest hits" cavalcade, blasting through every state-of-the-art trick around, save for those clearly owned by others. My friend was stunned at the sheer budget, watching Klok roll out one expensive trick after another, allotting sixty seconds for a feat that another magician might have milked for ten minutes. (Klok is currently touring Europe. Assuming he's doing much the same show, his greatest feat is probably just getting all his props from town to town.)
Tomorrow on C-SPAN
I just set my TiVo to record tomorrow's White House Correspondents Dinner. My understanding is that the pre-show (arrivals, interviews, etc.) starts at 8 PM and the dinner itself starts at 9:50 and runs (officially) until 11 PM but will probably run longer. Those are all East Coast times. I'm on the West Coast so I'm recording from 5 PM until 9PM. That oughta do it.
Recommended Reading
Joe Conason previews the looming G.O.P. attacks on Obama's attempts to fix health care in this country. Back when Hillary Clinton was spearheading such a move in her hubby's administration, I actually read most of the proposals and came to the conclusion that while there might have been an honest case to make against them, her opponents weren't bothering to make it and had just taken to outright lying about what was in it. It was like, "We have to stop 'Hillarycare' because it would allow foreigners to come to your house and kill your puppies!" That kind of thing. And the press would report the attack without asking the speaker where in the proposal it said anything of the sort.
I think the health care situation in this country is at least as threatening to our lives as anything the terrorists have a chance of pulling off and it's a lot easier to fix. I dunno if what Obama and his crew will come up with will be the right solution…but if it isn't, I hope it gets defeated or reconfigured because of what's in it and not because of its spurious Killing Puppies provisions. Or even because, you know, it would be scary to have "Government" come between you and your doctor when it's so much more comforting to have Blue Shield in that role.
Recommended Reading
Matt Taibbi on populist anger…and how it never interferes with the filthy rich getting filthier and richer.
Today's Video Link to Japanese Singers Performing "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"
I enjoyed yesterday's video link so much that we're doing it again…with Go-Bang. Thanks to Brian Liebowitz for telling me about this one.
Recommended Reading
As I Twittered the other day, I think Bristol Palin should take an abstinence pledge…to abstain from lecturing people about abstinence pledges. Just about the only thing that woman is known for is that hers didn't work so well. Frankly, I don't think they accomplish much except to allow parents to put blinders on and pretend they've done something that will prevent their kids from having sex. It's so much easier than teaching them how to be responsible.
There are many articles out there about the utter silliness of Bristol's position but maybe the most interesting is one by Meghan McCain, daughter of You-Know-Who. I agree with most of it except for when, regarding abortion, she says, "That's the kind of trust my parents have always placed in their children — yet the GOP still needed to get involved and have a say in what I did with my body." Someone explain to this lady that her father is part of that group; its most recent leader, in fact.
And I still think that if it had been a Democratic candidate whose daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, every single vocal Palin supporter would have been out insisting that it proved the candidate was an unfit parent and therefore unfit for public office. I don't think that but they would have.
Card Quest
In 1995, we did a set of Groo Trading Cards that folks still avidly collect. It's not hard to amass a complete set but it is tough to find these things called "sketch cards." There were fifty of them, I think, inserted randomly into the little packets of cards.
One side of each sketch card was printed. You can see what that looked like above at the far left. Then on the other side of the card, Groo creator Sergio Aragonés drew anything he felt like drawing. The other image above shows you an example.
A couple of avid Groo collectors (there are such people) are attempting to locate the whereabouts of as many sketch cards as possible. Do you perhaps have one? If you do, dropan e-mail and tell him all about it. You'll make the man so happy.
Recommended Reading
Fred Kaplan thinks Barack Obama knows what's wrong with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there's a difference between knowing what's wrong and being able to fix it.
Thursday Afternoon
Every time I mention torture on this weblog, I get an e-mail from someone saying, in effect, "We can't fault the Republicans because some Democrats knew about it and gave at least tacit approval." Okay, fine. I think torture is illegal, immoral, destructive to our standing in the world and probably of little use except to extract false confessions. Its supporters seem to think it's useful for gaining information — or at least, it might occasionally be useful. And since it might be, we need to ignore that it might be illegal, immoral or destructive to our standing in the world.
That certain Democrats may have signed off on it does not change anything except that we have an even longer list of people who are ethically and judgmentally unfit to be in government. I dunno how true it is that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on waterboarding and such and then nodded her head in compliance. But if she did, she oughta be outta there along with everyone else who knew about the practices and didn't raise a cuticle to stop them. Nowhere in our system of government is it written that breaking the law can be overlooked if it's bi-partisan.