Every year around this time, a mess o' blogs link to my Mel Tormé article…and this morning, it's reprinted (slightly abridged but with my permission) in The Rocky Mountain News. So I might as well link to it here.

Dahlia Lithwick on how Dick Cheney is smugly confessing to all sorts of crimes for which he will never be prosecuted. One would like to think that the Obama administration is just waiting until the day when George W. Bush can no longer issue pardons…and then we'll start hearing about investigations of war crimes and profiteering. But I don't expect that to happen. The "rule of law" only gets enforced in Washington when someone wants to use it to get someone who's in power.

Over at The TV Time Machine, Jim Benson has a good interview with Lee Mendelson. It's all about the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas and other Peanuts specials that Lee produced.

As I mentioned yesterday, the great musician Page Cavanaugh has died. He was 86. Here's a little biographical video that was made for his 85th birthday. It'll give you a good idea who he was and why some of us loved what he did.

The L.A. Times has posted a review of that production of A Christmas Carol that I saw the other night. (In it, they link to what I wrote here.) They've also posted this report on audience reaction and anger.

Apparently, what I saw Monday night was officially considered a "preview" performance and last night was the actual opening. Based on what the Times reporter saw, it sounds like they got a few bugs out but nowhere near all of them. Putting aside the issue of advertising stars who aren't there, I don't think there's anything wrong with the production that couldn't be cured by about a week of dress and tech rehearsals…but of course, they're not doing that. They're doing the show, sometimes twice a day, for audiences paying full price and expecting a finished product. I hope some of them get one.

There's nothing in particular I want for Christmas but I especially don't want a set of Pez Dispensers that look like the original cast of Star Trek. And just in case they have them, I don't want a set of Pez Dispensers that look like any later cast of Star Trek, either. I'm getting the feeling no one else does, either. Yesterday, I saw the Shatner/Nimoy/et al set for sale in a Ralph's Market, marked down from $19.95 to $16.95.

I was once a casual collector of Pez Dispensers. Somewhere in this house, there's a box with about fifty of them and (probably) a lot of very stale candy. It was a childhood fetish but it was bolstered about fifteen years ago when I met a high executive of the Pez Company and he put me, for a glorious year, on the Pez comp list. I was already receiving freebees from most of the major comic book publishers but for twelve months there, I could go out to the mailbox every so often and find a crate of comics and a crate of Pez…the greatest fantasy of most nine-year-olds. You get your comics for nothin', get your Pez for free…

But at some point — about the time I would have had to start paying for them — I lost interest in collecting Pez Dispensers. I also lost my taste for the candy…and now, I've given up candy altogether so I may never Pez again. Which is a relief because otherwise, I might feel the need to own Pez Dispensers in the shape of Kirk, Spock, Uhura and the rest.

The one thing that interests me about these is that they're likenesses of real people. Back when I paid attention to such things, I recall the Pez Company had a firm policy of not making Pez Dispensers of actual humans. They had offers from a number of celebrities to be turned into Pez Dispensers for little or no money. They also had inquiries from wealthy folks who wanted to pay to have Pez Dispensers made of themselves. To all of these, they said no.

I see that in recent years, they've made dispensers of several TV and movie characters like this. Have they changed this policy or is the idea here that it's a Pez Dispenser of a fictional character, Captain Kirk, and not of William Shatner? On the other hand, given some of the things Shatner has done as himself, I'm not sure the distinction even matters…

As we've been noting here, the Screen Actors Guild is fast losing the momentum they'd need to mount an effective strike. Celebrity members are coming out in droves against that strategy and there's a bad fracture between the West Coast and East Coast wings of the union.

The latest development is that the announced strike vote has been postponed. It was to start January 2. Now, it's being delayed until after an emergency national board meeting on January 12-13. This will mostly consist of lower-ranked union leaders attacking their president, Alan Rosenberg, and SAG's national executive director, Doug Allen.

There's a good argument that these two men are not in the wrong; that the offer they've rejected is a bad one and not even the equal of what the WGA and DGA accepted. In many ways, this is exactly the time that SAG needs to take a stand in New Media and establish its right to a bigger share. If I were a SAG member, I think that's where I'd be…but I'd also recognize that developments, especially with the split with AFTRA and its acceptance of this deal, have undermined our position. It's near-impossible to imagine a scenario where all of SAG gets on the same page, links arms and takes a stance to demand something better.

So it all comes down to the big question: How does SAG get off this limb with a minimum of structural damage? The answer is probably going to involve dumping on Rosenberg and Allen, and installing co-negotiators (or just plain different ones) who can accept the deal that has been denounced as insufficient. This would be followed by all sorts of renovations on the SAG infrastructure, including a plan to do member outreach and to repair relations, to whatever extent is possible, with AFTRA.

But a strike sure doesn't look possible. If you were Management, how scared would you be of this union staging a mass walkout?

I've been eating Chef Boyardee products since I was a wee lad. Whenever I think of my Aunt Dot, I think of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Sauce with Meat. Darn near the only thing she could cook was to boil some Buitoni brand spaghetti and pour a can of the Chef's meat sauce over it. It was a pretty decent meal.

That sauce is apparently still made, even though I never see it in stores out here. A few years ago, I saw a store on the Internet where one could order it and I got a few cans, just to experience it again. It was still a pretty decent meal…not as good as the best pasta in my favorite Italian restaurants but I've had worse in places that allegedly whipped their sauce up from scratch.

In our clip today, you get a look at Hector Boiardi, who misspelled his own name and launched an empire. You may learn that, like me, you've been putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable when you pronounced his name.

In this commercial, he touts their packaged spaghetti dinner — an item which, like the corresponding product from the Kraft company, has kept an awful lot of people alive during times when they could barely afford groceries. Back in the sixties, there was some U.S. Congressman who wanted the government to buy tons of these packaged meals and to make them available free to any family below a certain poverty level. This never happened but I can think of dumber things our leaders have done to try and eliminate hunger.

How often did your Congressperson and Senators participate in 2008 votes? And how often did they vote their party's line? Here's a chart that will tell you.

Fred Kaplan tells us that we're getting out of Iraq just in time to get into Afghanistan.

A great musician has left us. If you aren't familiar with the song stylings of Page Cavanaugh, you should be. For decades, he's been a fixture of jazz clubs and lounges in Southern California, though he occasionally performed in other cities and in movies. This obit will give you the details of his career better than I could. So I'll just add that I always enjoyed hearing Page make his elegant, friendly style of music. He was, in every sense of the term, a class act.

Jim Bahler, who operates Jim's Comics in Wisconsin, writes about the article I linked to on the slow demise of VHS…

That was a very enjoyable article; quite well written. However, I must take exception to a few of the statements that were made.

Video tapes may be gone from Los Angeles, but here in the midwest, Home Depot and at least one other major chain, one which caters to the rural, farming population, carry VHS tapes. Each store has at least two 4 foot sections of video tapes. But no, I don't buy them. However, I check out the video tapes at Goodwill whenever I'm there. Having an interest in steam trains, I was extremely pleased to buy over 25 VHS tapes last summer for less than one dollar each. There are a lot of "specialty" VHS recordings that will probably never make it to DVD — titles like Nolan Ryan: Feel the Heat, With Love and Respect: A Reunion of the Lombardi Green Bay Packers, and Time Out With Britney Spears. Certainly, there are collectors of these three subjects, among many other subjects which will most likely never see the light of day on DVD. I doubt that VHS players will die as quickly as the article implies. As with vinyl records, there's too much material that's on VHS and not on DVD.

I guess I'm too old to master the "nimble navigation of DVD." With VHS tapes, I could take a tape out of my tape player, watch something else, put the tape back in right where I left off. I can't do that with DVDs — it can be very difficult to figure out which "chapter" I was in the middle of, when I pulled out one DVD to watch another one. Even if I can discern what chapter I was watching, I still have to go forward or backwards to return to the same spot I left off. I find this very time-consuming and a royal pain, and yet the article states, "Fast-forwarding and rewinding to any particular spot was the worst new tech irritant." The article applied this to VHS; I'd say this about DVDs.

With VHS, you could write down the number of feet or the time/mark you stopped at if you wanted to go back to a particular spot, and you could write it on the video cassette label for later reference. Yes, I know VHS tapes are worthless — I went to an auction this summer where I purchased between 2 and 3 thousand VHS tapes that a fellow had recorded from TV shows — a mixture of movies, A&E, History and Discovery Channel material, primarily. Each tape was recorded EP style with commercials eliminated, so there's a lot of programs on each tape. Each tape shows the time/mark as to where one show ends and another begins. I paid a total of $2.00 for all those tapes, so yes, they're worthless. But enjoyable material, nonetheless.

I grant, also, that the quality of any VHS tape is quite inferior to DVD's, and that Blu-ray is better than standard DVD. But the article goes on to conclude that the "days of DVD's (are) numbered (due to) Blu-ray." Well, not necessarily. Articles in the trade magazines have discussed how Sony fought so hard to win the battle for their Blu-ray discs that they have not evolved their players. Toshiba, however, has evolved their DVD players to the point where they are selling overseas a DVD player that allegedly upgrades the picture quality of a standard DVD to full high definition. It's my understanding that these are being sold in limited numbers in the United States, and that they are quite expensive at this time, in the area of one to two thousand dollars. (Much like early video players.) If this is successful, we won't need to pay an extra ten bucks per disc for Blu-ray discs, and we can just enjoy what we've already bought on standard DVD. Gosh, what a thought!

Anyway, many thanks for creating the most enjoyable blog. Keep up the great work, and have a great holiday season!

There are advantages to VHS over DVD…just as Beta was probably a superior format in most ways to VHS, save for the fact that it got out-marketed and went away. There's also a certain advantage to sticking with a format after others have abandoned it. I have a friend who began collecting the old RCA Selectavision laserdiscs after they stopped making the players and the discs for them. For very little money, he got a couple of players (because he knew once one broke, he probably couldn't get it repaired) and a very nice film library. Of course, he can't buy or watch recent movies that way but he doesn't particularly like recent movies.

I long ago came to the conclusion that we are all merely pawns in the Format Game; that, as I've said, all of home video is a massive conspiracy to see how many times they can make me buy Goldfinger. I dunno if I'll go Blu-ray. That's a decision that will probably be made around the time there are things I want that are available only on Blu-ray. (Actually, I already have one. I did an on-camera interview that's only on the Blu-ray release of the 1966 Batman movie and they sent me a copy of it…but I have no Blu-ray player. Yet. Fortunately, I don't care enough about seeing myself to purchase one just for that.)

It's maddening, I know…but if VHS works for you, great. I'm not throwing my player out, and I probably have 300 tapes for which there are no DVD versions. But there are powerful forces out there that want us to abandon the old formats and purchase Goldfinger anew…and I don't know how long I can fight them.

There are evenings in the theater and there are evenings in the theater. Last night, I had an evening in the theater. My friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee had an extra ticket for the opening of a new production of Mr. Dickens's A Christmas Carol at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood — the same venue where the Academy Awards are held. It was to star Christopher Lloyd as Scrooge, supported by John Goodman, Jane Leeves and Jane Seymour with "A Special Appearance by" Gene Wilder. Unmentioned in most of the advertising was that Mr. Wilder would not be there; that his performance would be handled by a pre-recorded hologram.

Several years ago, some actors I knew wrote a play about a play where everything that could go wrong on stage went wrong on stage. It was called Footlight Frenzy and it was quite hilarious. Alas, in one of those coincidences that haunt the entertainment business, it came out almost simultaneously with another play about a play where everything that could go wrong on stage went wrong on stage. It was called Noises Off, and it was a bigger hit to the point where few people saw Footlight Frenzy…a shame since it was the funnier of the two screw-up plays.

It's now in second place with Noises Off in third. Opening night of A Christmas Carol at the Kodak, so many things went wrong that the audience couldn't keep from laughing and ultimately, neither could the actors.

Our first inkling that things would be far from perfect came when we sat down in the theater and opened our program books. Out tumbled one of those little slips that told you there'd be a cast substitution. This one was unusually chatty and I quote it in full…

The role of Christmas Past is now played by Jane Noseworthy.

Jane Seymour had to withdraw from the play after contracting a severe bronchial inflection. She felt that she wouldn't be able to perform to the best of her abilities and be able to give the audiences 100% while suffering this illness. The producers and Jane agreed that it would be in the best interest of all parties for her not to continue with the production.

We all sighed and remarked on how the producers had done a good job of more or less keeping this a secret until we were inside and seated. (Ms. Seymour's name was still on all the posters all over the Kodak Theater.) We also noted the irony of an actress named Jane withdrawing because of a respiratory problem and being replaced by an actress named Jane Noseworthy.

Under the first announcement, on the same slip of paper, we also learned…

The role of Marley is now played by Barry Cutler.

Gene Wilder was to have appeared as a special effect using a hologram; the producers decided that it would not be effective in the production.

This was probably the first time much of the audience learned that Gene Wilder was never going to be on the stage at the Kodak at all…and now, even his hologram wasn't going to be there. In light of what happened later, it's pretty obvious of the reason: They simply couldn't make the hologram work.

Another ominous sign: A Christmas Carol is set in the Victorian era. Someone might have kept that in mind when they picked out the music being played before the play commenced. It was "Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt. (During intermission, we got "The Most Wonderful Time" by Andy Williams.)

Then the show started and so did the problems. Most of them were the fault of the tech crew. A pre-recorded narration, using passages from Dickens, was supposed to cover each scene change but they were rarely able to get the sets placed during the allotted time. Time after time, the curtain came down on a scene, the voiceover would play…and then it would finish and we'd sit there staring at a curtain for a minute or two while the crew raced to get a set set up. Finally, the curtain would rise…and sometimes it would then come down again because the stagehands were still out there arranging things. Or sometimes, they'd dart off the stage.

One time, they started playing the narration while Christopher Lloyd and the Ghost of Christmas Past were still on stage with another minute of dialogue to go before the scene change. Twice, they brought in the wrong backdrop…and only brought it in halfway. Some scene pieces were in the wrong place and you could see actors scrambling to get on and off stage because entrances and exits weren't where they were supposed to be.

In the first act, there's a scene where Scrooge returns to his home and he's supposed to see an image of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, on the knocker on the front door. I guess this was going to be done via some sort of projection but we never saw it. When the stage crew set the scene, they left the front door wide open.

There was a long wait and you could hear whispering in the wings, which I guess was because they were trying to figure out what to do about this. The decision was to press ahead, so Mr. Lloyd entered and muttered some incomprehensible ad-lib dialogue about Marley, then entered the house. Apparently thinking his microphone was now off (it wasn't), he began to complain to someone backstage, "The door was open!"

And on it went. Things began to get a little better in the second act. John Goodman made his entrance as the Ghost of Christmas Present and got a tremendous ovation. Through sheer energy, he began to elevate the proceedings…but then we had a series of missed cues and some forgotten lines and we were back into a live Bloopers show. Christopher Lloyd did a magnificent job of pretending all was normal and carrying on but by the last few scenes, even he couldn't deny the obvious.

After the ghosts renovate Scrooge's soul, there's a moment when he needs to get out of his nightshirt and into his street clothes hurriedly. Lloyd dashed behind a screen to change and suddenly, there came the loud and unmistakable sound of modern-day Velcro® and a burst of laughter from the audience. You could hear Christopher Lloyd giggling and also struggling with the costume change…and finally, he announced, "If I didn't know better, I'd think the spirits were screwing with my clothes!"

For the rest of the play, everyone was snickering and Mr. Lloyd — sounding less and less like Ebenezer Scrooge and more and more like the Right Reverend Jim Ignatowski — was doing body language and gestures that said to the audience, "Yeah, I know…let's just get through it." There was much laughter in places that should not have evoked laughter. At the end, he and the cast got a tremendous standing ovation for sheer persistence and courage under fire. Lesser performers would have walked off the stage in mid-performance, headed across the promenade to the food court and applied for jobs at Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick.

This was the first of fourteen performances through January 4 and I assume things will get better. They'd pretty much have to. Christopher Lloyd is a fine actor and if he'd had half a chance to be as even half as good as he could be, he'd probably have been quite good…right up there with great Scrooges of the past like Alastair Sim and Quincy Magoo.

There could even be a memorable performance in this production. As it was, the first night was memorable but not in the way that was intended. As we exited, the audience was still chuckling and itemizing the errors. I overheard one gent ask his companion, "Was there anyone who didn't screw up?" The answer was, "Yes…Jane Seymour."

Here we have the opening and closing credits for Trickfilmzeit mit Adelheid, a German kid's show that went on the air there in (I believe) 1974 and featured a kangaroo host named Adelaide. But these titles are of interest because the German studio did animation of many American cartoon characters whose adventures were being translated and included. Most of them are Jay Ward characters (like Rocky and Bullwinkle) or Total Television shows (Klondike Kat, for instance) but Mr. Magoo's also in there. Have a look-see…

The slow, agonizing death of VHS tapes. I can remember back when I went through this with Beta and all the VHS owners were smug about how they'd chosen the format that would endure forever. I won't add to their mourning by saying, "Well, now you know how it feels."