The other day, animation maven Jerry Beck told me that the old, vacated F.A.O. Schwarz space in The Grove is currently housing — though only until the end of the year — the first Turner Classic Movies store. The Grove is the new upscale shopping mall appended to the wonderful Farmers Market tourist attraction here in Los Angeles, not far from where I reside. In fact, it's so close that I walked over there today to lunch and check out the TCM shop.

Interesting place. It's one of those stores where you get the idea that no one thought they'd make a profit…or even not lose a bundle, but they had some reason for opening it, anyway. There isn't even that much for sale — some film books, a lot of stuff with the TCM logo, etc. Most of it is a mini-museum with about a dozen costumes and props from Casablanca, A Star is Born and other films that run often on the cable channel. I guess what they're selling is the idea of a retail Turner Classic Movies store and if this one draws enough attention and walkthroughs, they'll get serious about opening more and developing products for them. (I'm also guessing they got a bargain price on the huge retail space, only part of which they're using, because no one else wanted it for the rest of this year.)

One of the exhibits there now is a denim shirt and work pants supposedly worn by Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. I'm always a little suspicious of such claims…and not just because it seems quite possible for someone to take an old piece of clothing and claim that so-and-so wore it in such-and-such a film. There's also the fact that most key wardrobe for a movie is produced in multiple lots. If the star needs to wear a tux, especially in a role that requires physical action, the wardrobe folks will have four or five duplicate tuxedoes, plus two or three for the stand-ins and stunt people. Not long ago on eBay, someone was auctioning off what they claimed were the pants my friend Carl Gottlieb wore in the movie, M*A*S*H. I alerted Carl and he wound up buying them from the guy who won the auction…and it turned out, they were pants he'd never worn. They were from the right costumer and they had a real "Carl Gottlieb" label sewn into them. But Carl concluded they were "back-up" trousers — an extra pair that the wardrobe folks had at the ready, just in case he needed them. They never adorned his torso and they never appeared in the movie…and of course, the seller had no way of knowing that.

How can you authenticate such things? For years — it may still be there, for all I know — a memorabilia store in Las Vegas was selling what they claimed was one of Frank Sinatra's toupees. How could you prove this? Even when Frank was alive, you couldn't exactly go to him and say, "Hey, Blue Eyes! This your old rug?" I'm sure most stars couldn't even recognize their old wardrobe items…or hair.

So — a couple was looking at the alleged Cool Hand Luke work clothes and I heard the woman say, of the figure on which the outfit was displayed, "Ohhh…how I envy that mannequin." The guy she was with asked why and she said, "I would give anything to get into Paul Newman's pants."

A very gay black guy who also overheard her leaned over and said, "Get in line, get in line!"

Anyway, that's the Turner Classic Movies store. It's there until New Year's Eve and if you're over at The Grove, you might want to take a peek inside. But don't make a special trip because there isn't that much to see, apart from one pair of exciting pants.

You're a beloved favorite of children the world over. Once upon a time, you had your own show on NBC and kids loved you. And while you've appeared many places since — including on a show that I wrote — and your show still turns up in syndication and on DVD, the jobs occur with less and less frequency. And now, at long last, it's come to this: They're selling you on eBay.

The Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 50,540 libraries in 84 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. At least, that's what it says on their website, from which I cut-and-pasted the preceding sentence.

Recently, they did a survey to identify the 1000 books that are most often owned by their member libraries. Various editions of the National Census ranked first, The Bible ranked second, Mother Goose was third, Divine Comedy was fourth, Homer's Odyssey was fifth, etc. All of the books that ranked high on the list are either reports (like the Census) or books written by long-deceased authors. They're also all books that have been published in multiple printings for decades or longer by multiple publishers. There have, for example, been hundreds of different editions of Tom Sawyer from different publishers so it's not surprising that it came in at #17, which is still very high on the list.

And then you get to #18.

#18 is the highest-ranked book on the list that was created by someone who's still alive and who produced a book that comes from only one publisher in one edition. In fact, you have to go all the way down the list to #80, past many of the major works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Poe, to find another book of which that could be said…and then it's quite a drop down to the next book written by someone who's still alive. (You will also notice that all the books in the top ranks that are by living authors would be found on the same shelf in any bookstore.)

So what is #18 that places so high on this list, well ahead of books so esteemed that they made you read them in school? I think I'll let you look for yourself. Scroll down slowly until you come to it.

(And while you're over there, you might also check out their list of books that have been banned over the years. Notice how closely it parallels the list of books that libraries felt were important enough to stock.)

Something I just found out: Three of the Buster Keaton MGM films that Turner Classic Movies is running in their Keatonfest next week (the best three, happily) are about to be released in a DVD set which also includes the documentary I mentioned and a bunch of other extras. So those of you who don't get TCM and/or love Buster Keaton can purchase them…and of course, I'll make it easy for you by supplying one of these neato links via which you buy it from Amazon and I get a tiny percentage of what you spend. The set is supposed to be out December 7, the same day Turner is running their Keaton tribute, so I guess there's some connection or cross-promotion there. (Thanks to the ever-vigilant Gary Sassaman for the tip.)

Also, I just noticed that TCM is running The General on Sunday evening, December 12. The General is not only the best movie Keaton made, it's one of the best movies anyone has ever made. If you haven't seen it, see it. If you have seen it, see it again. If you've seen it again…okay, you can go do something else.

Tuesday, December 7, Turner Classic Movies is saluting Buster Keaton by airing seven of his films and a new documentary entitled So Funny It Hurt. Both the documentary and the films they've chosen to air direct our attention to Buster's years at MGM when he made the transition from silent pictures to sound, from having control over his movies to not having control, from being a working comedian to being an unemployable alcoholic and from being a top box office star to something very close to a charity case. They're running one film from the earlier period when he had his own studio — a very funny short called The Balloonatic.

Then they have most of the early films he made for MGM after his studio was dissolved, starting with The Cameraman, which turned out to be the last Keaton movie up to his old standard. It starts the TCM presentation and then, since they're running the following in the order produced, you can watch the sad decline of perhaps America's greatest solo comedian: Spite Marriage is followed by Free and Easy, which is followed by Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, which is followed by The Passionate Plumber and What! No Beer?

Then, for some reason, they're running The Balloonatic at the end, out of sequence, perhaps to remind you that the co-star of What! No Beer? was once a great clown. (Here's a page with the whole listing and some good facts, photos and even some brief video clips.)

It will be interesting to see to what extent the documentary — which airs twice during the above marathon — faults the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio for Keaton's quick decline into failure. The company was not wholly to blame, perhaps not even primarily to blame. Buster already had a self-destructive tendency to drink too much and sleep with all the wrong people, and a lot of folks who were very funny in silent films never quite mastered talkies.

Still, the studio seems to have dealt with his problems by exerting controls that made things worse, and the films he was in went pretty much in that direction. (Oddly enough, TCM is skipping over Doughboys, the one Keaton movie in this period that briefly reversed the downslide.) Ultimately, the story of Keaton in the thirties is a sad one, and there's very little about it that's funny. The same could be said, by the way, of What! No Beer? You might want to give that one a pass.

This is kind of funny. Yesterday while I was out, UPS attempted to deliver a package to me. I wasn't here so they left one of those little, scrawled post-it notices that they'd reattempt delivery the next day. It said the parcel was from, "Love, Frances."

I was puzzled. I couldn't think of anyone named Frances I know well enough to sign her name that way. I do know one guy named Frances but I don't know him that well and he's pretty straight. I even asked my friend Carolyn, who sometimes uses my address when she has things delivered, if she knew anyone named Frances. She didn't.

Right after I posted the previous item, the doorbell rang and UPS delivered the package in question. It's a case of barbecue sauce I ordered and the return address is "Love's Franchises."

Fred Kaplan — to whom I usually link for good political insights — offers some pretty sound advice for those contemplating the purchase of a high-end television screen.

Irwin Donenfeld has died. Irwin was the son of Harry Donenfeld, the founder of DC Comics, and he literally grew up in the comic business. He was twelve years old when the first issue of Action Comics was published and so was probably the first kid in the world to read the debut story of Superman. Later, in the tradition of nepotism that pervaded most early comic book companies, Irwin became a senior executive in the company. Harry was an alcoholic with a penchant for getting into trouble and an inability to run his own business. The financial decisions therefore fell to his former accountant, Jack Liebowitz, and the creative ones to the editorial division. Bridging the gap between them for a little more than twenty years was Irwin.

He held the title of "editorial director," which pretty much meant that he consulted with Liebowitz to decide what they'd publish, continuing in that position even after Harry passed away. The editors he "directed" liked him, though they sometimes didn't understand his deductions about how to maximize sales. Precise numbers about how many copies each book sold were generally kept from the editorial crew. Irwin would have the accountants enter that data in scrapbooks, each issue's sales figures accompanied by a photo of the book's cover. Then he'd spend long hours each week studying the trends, trying to decide what elements on each cover had caused sales of that issue to go up or down. (He was generally uninterested in the contents of the books, believing that good, intriguing covers were about all that mattered. He once said the only DC Comic he made a point of reading every issue was Sugar and Spike.) Every now and then, he'd tell the editors, "Sales went up when you put a dinosaur on the cover" or "Sales go down when you use a lot of brown on the cover." The books would promptly be readjusted to reflect Irwin's conclusions, which explained the unlikely appearance of prehistoric monsters in Batman, Blackhawk, Tomahawk, war comics and other books that seemed to posit a different, less fantastic reality.

He had good ideas and bad. In 1956, when DC was in desperate need of new comics but afraid that flops would injure a depressed marketplace, Irwin suggested a new book called Showcase, each issue to "test" a new concept. Most of the company's successes of the next ten years came out of such tryouts. On the other hand, in 1966 with DC sales dropping and Marvel's rising, Irwin came up with the idea of pasting a checkerboard pattern on the top of every DC cover to make their books stand out on the newsracks. They called them "go-go checks" and they were the ugliest thing anyone ever did to the front of a comic book…and a symbol of the company's inability to arrest its steady descent. Before things fell too far, Liebowitz and the Donenfeld family sold their company to a corporation called Kinney National Services which eventually morphed into Warner Communication and then into Time-Warner.

Liebowitz moved on to a seat on the Board of Directors of the parent company and Irwin had expected to remain in his post, co-managing DC with Carmine Infantino, an artist he had promoted into management. But everyone else decided that more of a shake-up was necessary and when the dust cleared, Irwin Donenfeld was cut out of the company his father had founded. He dabbled for a time in other kinds of magazine publishing but eventually retired on the not-inconsiderable fortune he had realized from the corporate buyout. Thereafter, he became a community leader in his home city of Westport, Connecticut. This obit in a Westport newspaper lists a few of his achievements in this area. (It will also tell you that he died Monday night at the age of 78, but awkward phrasing makes it sound like he didn't take over running DC until his father died in 1965. His responsibilities may have increased a bit then but he was involved in management there by the time he was out of his teens.)

Irwin, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing at the 2001 Comic-Con International, retained some amount of bitterness at having been squeezed out of the comic book industry. He was also quite defensive at the often-expressed belief that his father had cheated Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster out of Superman, or even that Harry was as irresponsible as others described. I enjoyed chatting with him during that panel and in several private conversations, though I came to the conclusion that he was not a source of unvarnished history. I also understood why the company felt the need to sever him in 1970, as his thinking was rooted firmly in marketing concepts that, by then, were simply not operative. He told me how amazed he was by the convention, seeing how big and important "comics" had become, and admitted a definite regret that he had been separated from the field. Still, he was glad that so many of us knew of his contributions and were interested to know as much as we could possibly extract from him. He had planned to be there again last year but illness made that impossible, and he phoned to tell me how he regretted not being able to be attend. And I seem to recall him saying in that call, "…and I still can't believe what's happened to the business we started."

I have two creative friends named Paraskevas. Betty Paraskevas writes wonderful books for kids of all ages like The Tangerine Bear and Monster Beach and various volumes featuring Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. (I'd link to my favorite Paraskevas book, Junior Kroll, but it seems to be momentarily out o' print.) All of these were illustrated by the other Paraskevas I know…Betty's son, Mickey. Mickey is a terrific designer and artist and multimedia innovator.

Not content to give us fine books, some of which get turned into hit cartoon shows, Betty and Mickey have taken all their creativity and a budget of almost thirty dollars…and brought forth The Cheap Show. Not since The George Gobel Show has a program been more aptly named. It's a cacaphony of bizarre puppets, each made for about the cost of a Krispy Kreme Caramel Kreme Crunch Doughnut. The Cheap Show is currently seen only on one cable channel and it's in a wealthy part of New York state. You can get a nice preview on your home computer by going to —

Wait. Before I give you the link, I'd better warn you. The page automatically plays the Cheap Show theme song, which is so catchy, you'll be humming it for weeks in your car, in bed, at work or at any funerals you may attend. You'll also want to watch the trailer and see some of the other Paraskevas projects which can be reached via the page.

Okay, you've been warned. Here's the link.

You may think you get a lot of Spam. You'd get more if you had an active website like this one. Several times a week, I receive e-mails like this one that just showed up in my mailbox…

I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in povonline.com because it looks like it's relevant to a site for which I am seeking links. This site is about exterminators. This site contains valuable information and a exterminators search engine, which gives visitors the capability to easily find information on different exterminators. I'll keep the web address confidential and will send it to you only if you give me permission to do so. Just let me know if it's OK, and I'll send you the web address for your review. If you approve of the site, then the intention is to exchange links.

Hmm…what is it about this site that makes it relevant to exterminators? Am I posting too many obits?

Thanks to the wise and perceptive Avedon Carol over at The Sideshow (which has a new address, by the way), I found this piece by media reporter Jeff Jarvis. When the FCC levied a $1.2 million fine over a TV show for its contents, Jarvis filed a Freedom of Information request to find out how many complaints the FCC had received over the broadcast. It turned out that though the government agency claimed to have logged 159 complaints, there were really only 90…and since most were form letters, they were really the work of about three people.

Five points…

1. The fine was a pretty big news story, at least in the world of entertainment reporting. What does it say about the folks who cover this beat that Mr. Jarvis was the only one to make this rather simple inquiry? Everyone else just quoted the 159 number, assuming it had to be correct.
2. It took Jarvis very little time to realize that the letters were the work of perhaps three people. Did the FCC folks who acted on these complaints realize this? I mean, if you're going to take a drastic step like assessing a huge fine and justifying it because you received some significant number of requests, shouldn't you be able to count those requests accurately and assess their veracity?
3. If there were only 90 letters, where did the 159 figure come from? Is it possible that someone was afraid that 90 sounded like too trivial a number to warrant action so they made up a higher number to tell the press? The theory here would be that when Jarvis filed his request and they knew they couldn't produce 159 letters, they had to own up to the real number.
4. Given how many people watch even a low-rated network TV show, 90 complaints is not a lot. Neither is 159. Some pretty harmless things have aired on television and sparked a lot more angry mail than that.
5. The fine was presumably based on the concept that the show offended viewers. But doesn't the statistic prove just the opposite? If only three people took the time to sit down and write a letter of protest, how offended could America have been?

I guess I don't have to tell you what I think of the current FCC policies and officers. In fact, it's late so I'll just link one more time to Tom Shales's article about all this. This is gonna get uglier.

I was never a huge fan of the musical, Oklahoma! I've seen it on stage twice (once, a production with Jamie Farr as Ali Hakim) and I've given the movie a fair shot. I thought it was good but not great, and always wondered just what it was audiences saw in the material that allowed the original production to run more than five years on Broadway. Well, I think I know…and all it took was seeing the video of the recent production mounted by the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain. It's currently running on PBS channels as an installment in their Great Performances series, and it's also available as a not-too-expensive DVD that includes a "making of" documentary. I just watched the show on TV and ordered the DVD. You can order the DVD from Amazon by clicking right about here.

The production starred Hugh Jackman, who gets mega-star billing. He's terrific in the show but so is everyone. I was especially impressed with how the show was filmed…and it seems to be filmed, not taped. This means, among other things, that the lighting is more evocative and it doesn't feel like you're watching a TV show. Ordinarily, preserving a musical means either rethinking it as a movie with no audience and a lot of different sets and camera angles…or just photographing what was on stage via cameras situated amidst the audience. This version of Oklahoma! has it both ways: You occasionally see the audience and they occasionally applaud a particularly spectacular number. But for most of the show, the camera is free to roam about the proceedings, move with the players and be wherever a good film director would put it. The result is that it's a stage musical when it needs to be, a movie when that is more effective…and a general success. Richard Rodgers' music has often felt cold and impersonal to me, but context is everything and here, the context is perfect. The "dream ballet" always struck me as an intrusion designed to take us out of the story. Here, it fits right in, in part because they don't substitute the lead actors with trained dancers, which is customary with stage productions. I can't wait to get the DVD and see the featurette on how this production was assembled.

Having seen a lot of my favorite stage productions eviscerated when someone refashioned them for film, I'm probably more enthused about the approach than I am about finally liking Oklahoma! Boy, can I think of a lot of shows that I wish had been committed to film in such a faithful yet creative manner. Some call the Rodgers-Hammerstein show the most American of American musicals, and it's often said that the musical comedy is one of the most significant American art forms. Looks like it took a bunch of Brits to show us how to do both right.

Here's a page with information on this production and some clips. And here, once again, is a link to order the DVD. Consult your listings to see when your local PBS affiliate will be airing the special four-hour-with-tedious-pledge-breaks version.

Here's a link to a semi-silly article by Bill O'Reilly that says Dan Rather was "slimed." I agree with the sentiment that Rather was a good newsman but O'Reilly's piece is a pretty lame defense with some obvious self-interest lurking as subtext. He writes, "There is no way on this Earth that he would have knowingly used fake documents on any story." Uh, yeah. Has anyone aside from a few nut jobs suggested Rather knew the documents were bogus? That would have been a pretty stupid thing to do…risking one's entire reputation to slightly advance a story that a good part of America didn't regard as very important. (Or to put it another way: If Rather had decided it was a good idea to put forged documents on the air, I think they would have been better forgeries and far more damning.)

No, I think the charge against Rather was that he was so eager to bash George W. Bush that he didn't exert sufficient caution over arguable evidence. That may or may not be an unfair charge. For that matter, has Rather even concluded the documents were forged? Last I heard, he said, and I quote…

I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where — if I knew then what I know now — I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

Nothing in there about concluding the documents were forged. There's a big difference between "these documents were phony" and "we cannot vouch for them," though I wouldn't expect a lot of folks to make that distinction. For those who have never liked Rather — or even those who just like to see someone famous be humiliated — it's just too tempting to spin the story as Dan getting caught using obvious forgeries. And of course, they may well be forgeries, though perhaps not as obvious as some say.

I don't think it's unfair that Rather is having to step down, reportedly a year before he'd planned. The anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News receives a huge salary for which he really only has two responsibilities. One is to keep the ratings up. The other is to keep the prestige of the organization high. Even before the questionable memos were used on the air, Rather wasn't doing all that good a job on either count. A very good case could be made that going by usual practices in his industry, he should have been replaced years ago.

O'Reilly seems to just not like the idea that someone famous — like, say, Bill O'Reilly when he's sued for sexual harassment — could be presumed guilty without a trial declaring that. And I agree there's unfairness on some levels, though the "presumption of innocence" is really only something that binds a judge or jury. I can certainly say that based on what I've read, Robert Blake is guilty or that O.J. slit two throats or even that any number of public figures who will never be tried for perjury have lied under oath. My right to say any of this is not at the mercy of some prosecutor who may or may not decide to prosecute, or whether fancy lawyering lets a wrongdoer go unconvicted. For that matter, it was highly unlikely that the lawsuit brought against O'Reilly would ever see the inside of a courtroom or any verdict that he was or was not culpable. Should people never venture an opinion in that matter?

Yeah, O'Reilly's right that accusations often get too much publicity in these days and given the competitive nature of the news business, they always will. The problem is that the facts — which have a way of screwing up many of those juicy accusations — never quite catch up with the charges, and very few folks in talk radio or the news media these days can afford to wait for them. Let's see what Bill O'Reilly does to improve the situation at his places of employment. The fact that he starts by defending Dan Rather against an accusation no one even made — and presumes the documents in question were definitely forgeries — doesn't give me a lot of hope.

A couple of folks have written to ask if, given these "bad news for TiVo" articles I keep pointing out, I think our beloved Personal Video Recorders are doomed…and if so, what that means for their owners. Despite the fact that the company has yet to post a profit, I don't think the demise of TiVo is imminent. The main threat to its existence probably comes from competition. It is quite possible that some other company will come along, introduce a superior PVR and take over the niche that TiVo has created. Even now, TiVo is suffering somewhat from the rise of PVRs that come as part of your basic service when you subscribe to digital cable TV in your area. These machines are not better than TiVo, except in the sense that they more easily interface with a person's TV source…but they're gobbling up a lot of potential TiVo customers.

Some of the problems facing TiVo — like the apparent need to allow for copy-protection schemes on pay-per-view programming — will presumably affect competitors, so they won't doom TiVo. What will is competition if they don't improve their product at a better clip. It's pretty easy to imagine all sorts of upscale features that could be in a PVR…and will be, one of these days. Just as Beta foolishly allowed VHS to take the lead in consumer-friendly features, TiVo may be pioneering a marketplace and fighting all obstacles to clear the way for the company that's going to put them out of business.

As I said, I don't see this happening soon, if ever. But every so often, someone writes to inquire what we do with our TiVos if the TiVo company goes under and no longer offers the programming guides. The answer is that someone else will. TiVo technicians have quietly leaked word to the electronics community that if they crash and burn, the company will release the source codes that will make it easy for someone else to offer a TiVo Data Subscription Service. Those of us with lifetime contracts will lose out because we'll have to pay someone else for the info that is now downloaded every day or so to our TiVos…but the machines will still function.

Of course, it may not come to that. TiVo may yet thrive. Before the year is out, they're supposed to implement the "TiVo to Go" feature, which will enable us — with some restrictions — to transfer shows from our TiVos to our computers for burning to DVD. It's a little slow in coming but it's a step towards staying ahead of potential rivals. And of course, if TiVo does cease operations, it may be because they've been elbowed aside by a much better PVR, one we'll all rush to purchase. So we won't mind the loss of TiVo very much.

I hope it doesn't come to that. I've been a TiVo owner almost since the day they introduced them. The ones I now own are, I think, my fifth, sixth and seventh machines, and I've probably been directly or indirectly responsible for at least two dozen friends buying TiVos after they saw mine…to say nothing of the purchasers I've inspired on my website. Still, brand loyalty doesn't mean much in the age of technology. I'd like to see them upgrade their product so I don't have to forsake my beloved TiVo service…but really, I want to see even better Personal Video Recorders. I know they're out there, someplace. It's just a question of what company will make them.