Hey, let's get an end-of-the-year wrap-up from Uncle Jay…

Here's Jason Linkins with the Ten Worst Media Moments of 2008. Hard to believe he got the list down to ten.

Anyone here remember Blue Chip Stamps? As the economy sinks deeper into the tar pits, I've been waiting for them or something of the sort to return…maybe S&H Green Stamps, which were the big deal for a time. I have a dim memory of my mother getting Green Stamps at some of the local merchants and pasting them into the little booklets. She was saving up for some item that cost eighty zillion stamps and she had acccumlated around thirty zillion of them.

Then one day, all the places she shopped were suddenly converting to Blue Chip Stamps! It was a crisis and a half, fueled by rumors that the Green Stamps empire was going under. Whatever was going to happen, it was obvious she was never going to get the eighty zillion Green Stamps so she hurriedly raced through the catalog, picked out a lower-value item and hurried in to get it. I think it was a pair of tweezers or something that valuable. The scene at the Redemption Center that day was like in It's a Wonderful Life when everyone is storming the bank, trying to get their money out before it fails.

Meanwhile, she began rebuilding the family nest egg, amassing Blue Chips and gluing them into their little booklets, saving up anew for whatever she hadn't been able to get with the Green Stamps. She finally got it, whatever it was, but it was a lot of work.

Then, around 1966, she used Blue Chip Stamps to get me my first typewriter — a blue Olivetti-Underwood Lettera 32. It looked a lot like this. In fact, it looked exactly like this…

I remember a brief moment of horror when we got it at the Blue Chip Redemption Center, which was located on Pico Boulevard near Westwood, right next to the Picwood Theater. The catalog just said "Underwood," which was an old, reliable brand of typewriter…and that's what my mother thought she was getting me. She turned in her books of Blue Chip Stamps, all of them pasted in so neatly. Then we waited for the instrument of my future career to come down the conveyor belt, out from the mysterious back room where all the Blue Chip goodies were kept.

We were unaware that Olivetti, an Italian company, had recently acquired the good old American name of Underwood…so when a box emblazoned "Olivetti" rolled down the belt, she felt baited-and-switched. And for a moment there, I feared that my new typewriter would only type in Italian, which would have meant I'd have to end every noun in a vowel. The clerk at the Redemption Center assured us that it was not an Olivetti. It was an Olivetti-Underwood…and sure enough, there was the name "Underwood" in teensy letters on the carton. We were both skeptical but I carried it home and the darn thing did indeed type. In English.

You couldn't touch-type on it. The keys required too much pressure to respond to anything but forceful thrusts of index fingers. But then I didn't touch-type back then, back before I learned the skill in high school. It's funny. Back then, Typing 101 was kind of a joke class…like a glorified Study Hall. It was something your counselor stuck you in because everything else in Period Three was full and he had to put you somewhere.

In fact, at University High, the Typing classes were even held in the same room where you'd sit if you had a period of Study Hall. Upon reflection though, of all the hours I spent in classrooms at Uni, the ones I spent learning to type have probably come in handier than any others. I almost never have to balance a Redox equation these days and I can't recall the last time I was asked to dissect a frog. It's been at least a year. On the other hand, I type every day of my life, sometimes for most of my waking hours. In fact, I'm typing right this minute, thanks (in part) to Blue Chip Stamps. If they ever make a comeback, I'm going to see if I can pick up another Lettera 32. Whenever my computer crashes, I yearn for that machine.

Each year, your Library of Congress names 25 movies to the National Film Registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, to be preserved for all time. They've just announced this year's picks and once more, obviously because of dirty politicking and/or payoffs, they've overlooked Otto Preminger's Skidoo. But what they did select is a pretty decent roster that includes The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, Flower Drum Song and even The Terminator. That's right: Future generations will be able to learn bad impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger and repeat all those wonderful catch-phrases on which he's built his governorship.

One surprise on the roster is Disneyland Dreams, a 1956 home movie made by a Connecticut family that won a free trip to Mr. Disney's then-new tourist magnet. It runs a half-hour and offers a fascinating look at what the place looked like back then, as seen from the POV of your average attendee. This is not professionally-staged and shot Disney P.R. footage and as such, it's taken with a genuine sense of wonder and reality. The film also chronicles the other portions of the family's memorable trip (including side trips to Knott's Berry Farm and Hollywood) and has a certain folksy charm and air of innocence.

Never saw this homemade treasure? Well, you can. You can watch it online or even download your own copy of it on this page. I'm not sure I'd have thought of it for the National Film Registry but I can understand why it's there. Naturally, I'd have picked Skidoo but this isn't a bad choice.

I missed this a couple months ago and just saw it. Roger Ebert lists a whole bunch of guidelines to which he believes film critics should adhere. Some of them seem like deliberate swipes at specific colleagues, especially Ben Lyons, but that doesn't mean they aren't all (or nearly all) valid.

One that jumped out at me was…

Trailers. Have nothing to do with them. Gene Siskel hated them so much he would stand outside a theater until they were over. If he was already seated in the middle of a crowded theater, he would shout "fire!" plug his ears and stare at the floor. Trailers love to spoil all the best gags in a comedy, hint at plot twists in a thriller, and make every film, however dire, look upbeat…

I sometimes feel that way about trailers…but for all the same reasons, I sometimes felt that way about watching Siskel and Ebert review a film, spoil all the best gags in a comedy, describe plot twists and show us some of the same clips that were in the trailer.

Ed Asner, a past president of the Screen Actors Guild, comes out in favor of his union taking a stronger position. Apparently, he's decided that he now likes spunk.

Here's a quickie. In his retirement years, when health permitted, Stan Laurel was a busy correspondent, writing brief letters to anyone who wrote to him. One of his pen pals was Jerry Lewis. Laurel was personally fond of the comedian, though he reportedly told many friends that he really didn't understand much of what Lewis did on the screen. Jerry repeatedly offered Stan work — to appear in his projects or, at least, contribute gags. Laurel declined the offers but occasionally sent Lewis an idea which went unused.

This film clip was shot in 1960…in Miami where Jerry was making his movie, The Bellboy, at the Fontainebleau Hotel. I'm not sure if this was televised somehow or if, more likely, Jerry mailed a 16mm reel of film to Stan. (Stan owned a 16mm projector, which he'd received when he and Hardy were on that infamous episode of This Is Your Life.) Anyway, it's Jerry more or less dismissing an idea that Laurel had given him of a title for the movie.

Standing next to him is Bill Richmond, a pal of his who co-wrote a number of Lewis pix and who occasionally did his Stan Laurel impression in them. In fact, he did it in The Bellboy, which explains why he had the costume there. And I'd write more but it's already taken you longer to read this than it will for you to watch the clip…

Vanity Fair offers an oral history of the outgoing Bush Administration. Even buying the interpretations of many within that administration, it ain't a pretty picture.

I have yet to make good on taking my friend Bob Elisberg to lunch. That's why he has time to write articles for The Huffington Post like this one, which explains why Dick Cheney is about as popular as cholera.

You might want to read the interview with Cheney in which he said, among other things, "…you can get just about any result you want out of a poll." That's true. Unfortunately, you can also get any result you want out of foreign intelligence reports when you're horny to start a war.

The fine comedy writer Marvin Silbermintz just sent me links to two great clips on the CBC Digital Archives, which is a website full of goodies once broadcast on Canadian TV.

In this link, a young comedy writer named David Letterman talks about his work, long before anyone had ever let him host a talk show. This was back in '78. He also spars a bit with his fellow guest, director Otto Preminger. It runs a little less than seven minutes.

And in this link, Buster Keaton (from back in '64), reflects on his career, including an eloquent discourse on how to make a good throwing pie. The sound goes in and out so it isn't your speakers. This one runs close to 25 minutes.

Then, on my own, I found this clip of Gilda Radner and Lorne Michaels discussing their new endeavor, Saturday Night Live, for about nineteen minutes. I also located this one which is a few minutes with a young Jay Leno and this one with John Candy working as a field reporter for a Canadian TV program. There are probably other goodies there but some of us have things to do today.

There's been yet another study — like the last nine thousand studies on this topic didn't prove the point — that "abstinence" sex education doesn't work and that "virginity pledges" aren't kept. (I wonder how many of those studies pause to consider opportunity. I had a friend in college who loudly and sincerely vowed to remain "pure" — his term — until his wedding night. And he staunchly kept that vow right up until the first time a woman was willing to have sex with him.)

Anyway, this morning the popular political blogger Atrios writes…

While the fact that virginity pledges and abstinence-only sex "ed" don't stop teens from having sex is unsurprising, I doubt that even proponents are particularly surprised. They aren't interested in abstinence, really, they're interested in making sure "bad girls" get punished for having sex by being subject to the appropriate consequences. So it actually works as designed.

I think that's right…but he's missing part of the equation. A lot of parents love the idea of their kids taking "virginity pledges" because then Mom and Dad can pretend that when their daughter doesn't come home 'til 2 AM, it's because she and her friends got so engrossed in Bible Studies that they didn't notice the time. And if and when she gets pregnant outta wedlock, they're not responsible because, you know, they got her to take that wonderfully effective pledge.

Every time one of these studies is done, it yields the same result…and the kind of parents I just described ignore the study because it tells them something they can't accept. I guess that's why the folks who do the studies keep doing them but they're wasting their time. Those who don't want to believe will never believe.

Here's Walt Disney as the Mystery Guest on the 11/11/56 episode of What's My Line? Years ago, I met an animation art dealer who had acquired, at great expense and trouble, a 16mm print of this appearance. He was in the business of authenticating Walt's autograph and this was the one example he had of a Disney signature that he was absolutely certain was Walt's. As you might imagine, there are a lot of forgeries around…including many that came from Mr. Disney's office but were signed by someone else.

Note if you will that Walt says something about not wanting to disguise his voice with a falsetto because that would be "The Mouse." I'm not sure if he was afraid of being too recognizable if he did a voice in Mickey's range or if he just didn't want to be seen on TV with that voice. With one or two minor exceptions, he always avoided doing Mickey in front of audiences or cameras. The Disney organization was thrilled to have Clarence Nash demonstrating how he spoke for The Duck. They even kept him on the payroll to do that. But Walt seemed to think it was undignified for him to be seen talking like Mickey Mouse and there's very little footage of him speaking in that register.

Also: By 1956, he'd pretty much given up doing Mickey's voice, passing the mantle on to Jimmy MacDonald and occasional others. One of the last times he spoke for "The Mouse" was in the wraparounds that were animated for The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. The little films where Mickey welcomed viewers or told them to make sure to watch tomorrow were Walt's last real performances as his studio's superstar.

Here he is trying to stump a panel that included Mr. Jerry Lewis…

Here's a profile of my Congressperson, Henry Waxman. In the next few years, you're going to hear a lot about this man.

I think he's terrific. A few years ago, I ran into him at the Souplantation and told him as much. My Very Conservative Friend Roger once made the comment that he wished his Congressman was just like Waxman in terms of integrity and militancy…but of course, applying it all towards an opposite set of goals.