You may see this elsewhere but I can't resist. I have to quote it. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert appeared today on Meet the Press and discussed the decision (in which he played a major role) to recruit Alan Keyes to run for the Senate in Illinois. Here's what he said…

I talked to Mike Ditka, and I decided maybe he made a good decision. I talked to a guy name Gary Fencik, who was a great star, Harvard-Yale, star for the Chicago Bears. He couldn't. And the problem in Illinois, you've got to have $10 million to run; $6 million or $7 million of that has to be done for name I.D. I got down last week to interviewing a 70-year-old guy, who was a great farm broadcaster in Illinois. He decided since his health problems — he couldn't do it. You know, we were down — we needed to find somebody to run, somebody who wanted to run. And, you know, Alan Keyes wants to run, and I hope he's a good candidate.

Rough translation: "We were so desperate, we had to pick Alan Keyes, and I have no faith at all in him." If I were Barack Obama, the guy Keyes is running against, I'd just use the clip of Hastert as my commercial.

Broadway: The Golden Age is a theatrical documentary on a couple of decades of shows that played the Great White Way with an emphasis on the folks who starred in them. Filmmaker Rick McKay spent many years hauling his camera around the world interviewing enough theater legends to fill 250 hours and he also acquired a lot of rare performance footage. All of that has been edited into a film of just under two hours which is currently playing around the country. You get to hear Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury, Carol Burnett, Gwen Verdon, John Raitt, Carol Channing and countless others discuss their lives and craft. In fact, there are so many worthy interviewees in this film that a lot of important theatrical figures are confined to the briefest of clips.

Over at the film's website, you can view the incredible cast list and see a couple of trailers. You can also read about the many awards the movie has received and study some of the rave reviews. Rex Reed (who is among those interviewed in it) never wrote a more positive notice than this one in a recent current New York Observer and just about everyone else who has appraised it has called it a must-see. Since I love Broadway and the people who work there and the anecdotes they tell, you can just about bet the farm that I'd love this movie, right?

Well, you'd lose the farm, but it's okay. I'd have made that bet, too. I can't recall ever coming out of a movie more amazed that I didn't have a great time. I admire the effort and I respect the hell out of the filmmaker's intentions…but I was unmoved and, at times, bored by a movie that I think reaches to cover too much in its limited time, especially when so much time is allotted to trivia. And I say that as a guy who ordinarily loves trivia…but we hear more about where the actors went to hang out after the show than about how those shows were created or even what any of them meant to their era.

I agree that the period of the American theater that the film chronicles was a "golden age" of great memories. I'd have liked to see more examples of that instead of a lot of actors telling us it was great, but I don't have to be convinced on that count. What puzzles me is that McKay starts with the premise that this great era has passed and then, if we are to believe Rex Reed's write-up, "…asks all the right questions [about why it ended] and gets fantastic answers from a cast of 100 people who were actually there." That's not the movie I saw this afternoon. We get some nice tales about beginning actors living in poverty, about understudies getting to go on and being discovered, and about going to Sardi's to hear the reviews. But perhaps because the movie is primarily about actors talking about acting, the question of why Broadway has changed goes largely unasked and unanswered. Why there are now shows with people in cat suits and scores made up of recorded music is a topic that is probably best addressed by directors, writers and (primarily) producers, and there are very few of them represented in Broadway: The Golden Age and none is asked that question.

Late in the film, Elaine Stritch assures us the theater is in great shape. Is this the filmmaker's view, too? I really don't know. I also don't know what the proper audience is for this movie. If you know little about theater, I think you'd be baffled. The clips are selected more for their rarity than for any real demonstration of the magic of the stage, and a lot of the references will be lost on theatrical novices. There's some great footage of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon working together, for example, but no real explanation of who Fosse was, where he came from, what impact he had on the theater, etc. On the other hand, if you know a lot about theater, I think you'd want a lot more depth than is offered here. Then again, given how many of my friends love this film, maybe I'm wrong, and the sheer celebration of these folks is enough.

As I said, I really wanted to love this movie. I still want to love this movie, which is why I'm hoping the DVD release, whenever it happens, will include 20 or 30 hours of additional footage from those interviews. I'm also anticipating McKay's announced sequel, which will deal with present-day Broadway. Maybe it will address the question of what's changed and, taken together, the two films will form a far-reaching overview of a topic in dire need of more consideration. If so, I'll be thrilled because, as you can tell, I don't feel good about not liking what I saw today.

Back when Richard Nixon was fighting to keep his tapes private, there was a wide, understandable assumption that he wasn't just afraid of Watergate-related revelations. Even a lot of Nixon's friends assumed there were "other matters" on those tapes; that somewhere on them, we'd hear him allude to some murder or other crime he'd ordered. I remember one "talking head" on TV — and I don't think it even belonged to one of Nixon's more outspoken critics — saying, "Once those tapes are in the hands of investigators, we'll have a dozen more scandals on our hands."

That did not happen. As I understand it, not every single one of the infamous White House tapes has been examined, even at this late date, but those that have been examined have yielded a lot less dirt than anyone probably expected. There's a lot of coarse language and one can reportedly hear Nixon trashing a lot of folks he praised in public…but at no point does he say anything like, "Let's just hope the press never finds out about the guy in New Orleans we had pay off Oswald." (In the late seventies, when I briefly delved into the world of Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Buffs, that was a very active fantasy; that a Nixon tape would prove he'd been involved and would serve as the Rosetta Stone to unlock a vast plot.)

Those who are disappointed can perhaps derive some comfort from this new revelation that just before the '72 election, Nixon decided that South Vietnam was likely to fall. In a newly-transcribed tape, one can apparently hear him discussing with Henry Kissinger how the timing of that would affect him politically.

This is not a huge surprise. Tapes that have already made it to public scrutiny already have Nixon discussing how to time the bringing-home of troops to help him in the election. (You can hear part of one over on this page.) Still, it is significant if as reported, Nixon in mid-'72 is saying, "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway." If you'd suggested at the time that was possible, Nixon and his pals would have called you a spineless, America-hating Commie and defeatist. If you'd suggested Nixon was letting election concerns impact his conduct of the war, they would have said that was a horrible thing to suggest about an occupant of the Oval Office. Some folks still say that except that now they pretend they never said it about Bill Clinton.

In the meantime, today is the 30th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, which my father thought was the best thing he ever saw on television. In fact, he wondered why the networks couldn't make a weekly series out of it…you know, bring Nixon out every Tuesday night at 8:30 and have him quit again. Maybe put him in a dunk tank or dress him as Mae West or something like that. I never felt Nixon was quite as bad as my father did but I did think there was a good object lesson in the downfall of the 37th President of the United States. Not everything his enemies said about him was warranted but almost nothing his partisans said in his defense turned out to be true. And an awful lot of things we all thought no American President would ever do, he did.

So to mark the day, how about if we all enjoy my father's favorite TV show?

Hey, remember those "Billy Bass" gizmos? You know…there's a stuffed fish mounted on a wall plaque and when you get near it, it comes to life and starts singing to you. How do those work?

Quietly and over the objections of the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Football League, the F.C.C. has approved "TiVoToGo," a new service that all us TiVo users will soon be putting to good use. Here's the TiVo press release but I can summarize it for you: "TiVoToGo" is a way to interface your TiVo and your computer so that you can record a show on the TiVo and then transfer it to your computer's hard disk. The "To Go" part of the name comes from the assumption that the main usage of this service will be when you move a show to your laptop and then take your laptop on vacation or to your place of work…and you watch the show there. If your computer has a DVD burner, you might also transfer the show to a DVD.

There's some sort of security key feature that's supposed to limit your ability to transfer the shows over the Internet but it sounds very easy to defeat. For that matter, it's pretty simple to just record a TV show to your harddisk without a TiVo and send it to as many people as you wish. Someone is going to have to face reality here. We will soon see websites where if you miss last night's Letterman or yesterday's General Hospital, you'll be able to log in and download it. I'm guessing the networks are already quietly preparing to open their own web services for this purpose. Just another way broadcast television will be changing.

Vince Waldron corrects me on something: Amazon only has to charge sales tax in some states, and ours (California) is not one of them. Unless you live in Kansas, North Dakota, or Washington, The Complete Far Side should cost $91.80 if you order it from them with their free "Super Saver Shipping," which in my experience always comes sooner than they predict. If you order the book from Costco, the $79.99 book becomes $97.26 with shipping and California sales tax. So here once again is the link to buy it from Amazon.

To thank Vince for his catch, I will again plug his "Totally Looped" improv show, which has a performance this coming Thursday evening in Hollywood. A team of talented vocal magicians will again do live, unprepared dubbing of film clips they've not seen before. I have no reason to think they will not be at least as funny as they were the last time I went when, as I describe here, they were pretty darned funny.

Let me preface this by emphasizing that I do not believe that any one poll is an inarguable, accurate reflection of the electorate…and that even if one is, a lot can change between now and Election Day.

That said, polls can also have an impact on the election and I think this one [WARNING: PDF file] will. It has generally poor news for Bush, showing Kerry equal or ahead in most categories. There are a number of those out but they can be dismissed as "biased," which always seems to me like a silly charge to level against a poll from a major news organization. They might be inept and inaccurate, but I don't think they're ever intentionally skewed.

But this is a Fox News Poll. Kind of hard to dismiss that as biased against Bush-Cheney. A lot of folks will pounce on this to justify the claim that the Republican ticket is in free fall.

I don't know that it is. But there's an old saying in politics that even when you're ahead, you should always run as if you're five points back. And if everyone starts saying the Bush campaign is five points back, they'll have to run as if they're ten down…which means throwing everything they can think of at the opposition.

We all knew this election was going to get dirty. I think we're all going to be stunned at how dirty it will get. And how soon.

The Onion has a good interview up with Robert Smigel, a great comedy writer and the human presence behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

One of those "must-buy" books for fans of clever cartooning is The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson…a two-volume, 1,272 page extravaganza that contains over 4,300 single-panel comics. About a fourth of them did not appear in those paperback Far Side collections that we all enjoyed way back when.

The set came out a little less than a year ago with a $135 sticker price which was quickly discounted to around a hundred dollars. It's now down to $91.80 at Amazon (click here to buy it there) but that may not be the best price you can get. It's now eighty dollars at Costco. At least, that's the mail order price to which you'll also need to add a $9.85 shipping and handling fee, bringing it close to the Amazon price. (Both stores will also hit you up for sales tax.) But if you're visiting a Costco and they have it there for eighty bucks, you may want to grab one. If you can lift it.

Actually, it's the perfect Costco purchase. Eighteen pounds of Gary Larson cartoons will go just fine with your 40 lb. vat of Smucker's Apricot Preserves and your hot-tub-sized drum of Kirkland-brand Hydrogen Peroxide. I'm always afraid when I go into that store and see them giving flu shots. I figure that's got to be, like, a 30-gallon flu shot.

As a gift to him, I won't mention the date…but a certain amount of years ago on this day, a kid named Stanley Freberg was born in Pasadena, California. The son of a Baptist minister, he went into a different line of work (entertainment) but somehow managed to retain his father's moral balance. Stan got into radio, got into cartoon voice work, got into early television. Bob Clampett's Time for Beany, starring Freberg and his frequent partner Daws Butler, may have been the first truly "hip" TV show. Then he started making some of the best comedy records ever made and became the nation's foremost maker of funny advertising and did a lot of other things in TV, movies, radio and more records. As I wrote here, I discovered Freberg when I was a small lad and the impact was enormous. He not only taught me about writing comedy but about looking at the world with a healthy skepticism. That's half the lesson. The other half is that when you encounter something that outrages you, you try to channel that outrage into something constructive…in his case, a lifetime of smart, snappy satire.

I don't think there's anyone who has ever encountered the work of Stan Freberg who doesn't join me in wishing him…(DA-DA-DA-DAH!*) a happy birthday.

*French horns.

Here's an interesting chat with one of the better editors of comic books, Mike Gold.

One of my favorite political sites on the Internet — because they give it to both sides and play fair — is Spinsanity, run by Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan. In their spirit of utter honesty, I should confess that Ben has become a pal of mine but I was praising his site in my weblog before we ever met. I am only continuing that praise as I recommend a new book by those three folks, All the President's Spin, which is subtitled "George W. Bush, the Media and the Truth." It's a meticulously-researched, non-hysterical examination of statements that have been made by or about the current administration. As you might expect from the title, there are hundreds of examples where the authors quote Bush, Cheney, Powell or someone of that sort, then offer what seems like pretty solid proof that the statement is at least misleading and perhaps utterly wrong.

But this is not exactly a hit book on Bush — though anyone who wants to believe that he and his staff are honorable will probably think as much. There are plenty of places where Ben, Bryan and Brendan correct misstatements and misquotes of what Bush said, or point out the factual inaccuracies of his opponents. The cumulative effect creates a book that, to me, makes a pretty strong argument that no one who is currently front and center in the political world is above mangling the truth, and that the press does a spectacularly poor job of catching them when they do. (Equally appalling are the many cited instances where reporters either misquoted or excerpted a real quote in a way that distorted its meaning.) Since I like the website and agree with the premise of this book, I am happy to give it a glowing recommendation. Hell, I'll even go so far as to post this link via which you can order it from Amazon and — again, making full disclosure — give this site a small commission on the sale. This is a book with more integrity than anyone quoted within its pages.

I must add that it fueled an amazement that I have had for a long time about politics and the media. There's a saying in show business that some flops hurt you and some don't. In the same way, in the game of running for or serving in public office, there are some misstatements that harm and others that never embarrass their speakers. When Bill Clinton said that he'd tried marijuana but "didn't inhale," or when Al Gore said something that could be misinterpreted as "I invented the Internet," those quotes stuck. They went into the public vocabulary and were cited by their opponents not only as lies but as proof that there was something fundamentally, pathologically wrong with the men.

I thought those statements were, at worst, sloppy phrasing, something every public figure is guilty of from time to time. (You all saw Bush the other day saying, "Our enemies…never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." He didn't mean exactly what he said and Gore wasn't making the claim that his foes were able to convince many that he'd made.) I think political figures do lie or deceive, more often that we like to think…but somehow, Clinton and Gore got nailed for more-or-less accurate statements, and a lot of outright fibs went unreported. The Spinsanity book chronicles a lot of them, all more significant and clearly untrue than Gore's supposed "lie" that he was the model for the character in Love Story. Why do some untrue statements hurt and others don't? Beats the heck outta me. Anyway, order All the President's Spin and see if you can figure it out.

As you may well be sick of seeing me assert here, I think the smartest, cleverest show currently on television is The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In the past, I have directed many of you to the Comedy Central website to view clips from the show…which I do despite the fact that said site is difficult to navigate and filled with banner ads that try to leave invasive cookies on your computer. It's also not easy to link to specific clips. When the site was shut for a while the other day, I hoped they were installing a new, more user-friendly layout but it was not to be. The main change they made seems to have been to switch most of their online videos from Real Player format to Windows Media Files…and it's still awkward to get to a clip and hard for me to send you directly there.

Nonetheless, I recommend making the effort for several clips from The Daily Show and its show-within-a-show election coverage, which they call "Indecision 2004." Many of the segments featured on this page are "web only" features, including a couple of pretty funny Lewis Black tirades you'll see nowhere else. A lot of so-called "real" news people seem to be increasingly uncomfy with the sentiment that a satire/spoof news show does a better job of covering things than they do. But in some ways, it's true.

Speaking of Lewis Black…one of the funniest things I've seen on TV in the last few weeks was his diatribe against government officials who want to criminalize the use of "certain words" on the airwaves. I can't figure out an easy way to link directly to it so go to this page and view the clip entitled "F.C.C. Crackdown." It's worth the trip.

My pal Bob Greenberger is a first-rate editor in the world of comics and a wise presence in many others. For some reason, he has thrown common sense to the breezes and joined the ranks of us webloggers.

Not that I don't think things can't change a lot but I've been eyeing the various "electoral breakdown" maps around the Internet. The two I check most often are this one (which skews a bit Liberal) and this one (which trends Conservative). [WARNING: If you check both, note that the former uses blue for Democrats and red for Republicans, whereas the latter is the opposite.] At this very moment, the Liberal site has Kerry at 280 and Bush at 258, whereas the Conservative count has Kerry at 296 and Bush at 206. Interestingly, that's with the Liberal site putting Florida's 27 electoral votes in the Bush column and the Conservative site putting them in Kerry's. That shows you how arguable some of the polls can be…and how no one can properly count Florida.