At one time or another, just about every person who claims the title of Magician performs the Cups and Balls routine. It's kind of a rite of passage and it's one of the purest tricks because it's (usually) all about artful skill and misdirection, not about how a gimmicked prop was built. I did this trick with paper cups when I was twelve and I doubt I did it well because…well, I just wasn't that good a magician, especially at that age. Still, everyone I did it for was the kind of person who would have pretended they were fooled if they weren't so I couldn't be sure how good or bad I was.
Today, if you asked a roomful of magicians who does it best these days, someone would probably mention Paul Gertner. I was fortunate to see Paul perform at the Magic Castle a few years ago and to spend some time with him between shows. He's a great talent and here's how he does this, his favorite trick…
Measles is making a big comeback thanks to a lot of misinformation exacerbated by the stubbornness of people who are wrong about the disease and just plain don't want to admit they're wrong. The folks at FactCheck.org are correcting some of the misinfo because much of what's being said is — you'll forgive the term, I trust — spotty.
Once again, I remind you that the many friends of the late Mike Schlesinger — and I am on that long list of friends — will be gathering together in Santa Monica the afternoon of April 6. There will be stories about his life, clips of films in which he had some involvement, speeches by a fraction of those friends (all we have time for) and then those of you who want to stay around will watch his favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
This will not be a long ceremony because we must make time for the long movie…but we hope to do Mike justice and to have the kind of event he would have wanted us to have. We have a limited number of seats and they're being filled so if you wanna come, click below and do as told. You do not have to stay for the movie…but how could you not?
Two weeks from today, many of us will be at WonderCon Anaheim at the Anaheim Convention Center here in Southern California. WonderCon is kind of like Comic-Con International Lite, run by the same folks but on a smaller scale than the July colonizations of San Diego. It's still a pretty big convention with plenty to see, plenty to do, plenty to buy. It also, unlike its Big Brother, has badges available. You can still get in.
I always have a good time at WonderCons so I'll be there hosting or appearing on seven panels. I'll post a list of them as soon as the convention does. I should also mention that though I am one of their Special Guest persons, I will not have a table there but if you have the con schedule, I am very findable and I'm also very approachable if I'm not rushing to a panel at that moment.
I believe one of the reasons Donald Trump won the last election was that he and his crew very effectively sold a lot of lies to the American people about Joe Biden and (especially) Biden's economic record. The lying continues and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post discusses a lot of recent claims about job loss and globalization.
As a kid, I somehow always enjoyed it when Jack E. Leonard was on television. I didn't understand half of what he said but I liked his rhythms…the way he said whatever the hell it was he was saying. Often, he could make absolutely nothing sound like a real joke…and he didn't even wait for the laugh, if any. Whether the audience laughed or not, he'd just roll right on into the next line as if nothing had happened. He dealt mostly in insults but they were relatively malice-free insults and for every three or four he lobbed at others, he'd direct at least one towards himself.
He was on TV a lot and for a few years there, he was always talking about a forthcoming cartoon series in which he'd play some sort of sheriff who was the fastest fattest gun in the west. He was animated at times as a mailman selling Post Alpha-Bits cereal but I never saw any trace of the promised western series.
As an adult — if you could ever call me that — I still didn't understand half of what the man said but I could enjoy the delivery. I liked him more than I liked Don Rickles, a man of whom Jack E. once said, "I don't mind him doing my act but the son-of-a-bitch stole my head!" Here's ten minutes of Leonard just jabbering semi-coherently on The Merv Griffin Show…
Republican Senator Rick Scott from Florida says that "The number of full-time jobs [was] dropping almost the entire Biden administration." Politifact says this ain't so. I believe the answer to the question of why Kamala Harris lost involves a number of contributing factors but a biggie was that Trump and his mob managed to convince a lot of Americans that the economy was much worse than it was…and they're still selling that line.
This is kinda interesting. In 2012 when NBC had the Super Bowl, they shot a little video to precede it and promote all their shows and stars. Notice if you will what gets a lot of screen time and what doesn't. They single out Smash, which was debuting the day after the Super Bowl…and which was not quite the smash the network expected. They only devoted a few seconds to The Voice, which was their highest-rated show that season, and to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which might have been their most profitable.
(A friend of mine who worked on the show with Leno said one of the most impressive things about it was how high its ratings were despite the network doing so little to promote it…and how rarely Jay complained.)
And if you don't blink, you might spot a fast glimpse of Howie Mandel, the sole representative of one of NBC's biggest shows, America's Got Talent. Mandel is allegedly in the crowd scene shot outside in New York and I wonder if he flew there just for that or if that shot was done elsewhere. (While you're at it, see if you can spot Seth Meyers who definitely was in New York.)
Putting together a piece like this, coordinating all the shows and the stars and their shooting schedules, is a helluva lot of cat-herding. As you'll see very few are really singing. There are many copies of this production online but this one includes credits for the musicians and the actual vocalists. It also strikes me as odd that they decided to build the spot around the Frank Loesser song from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. That was an odd choice because…
They're singing about the "Brotherhood of Man" at a time when the network was trying to be more inclusive of women viewers and…
It's a song about how we should forgive incompetence and mediocrity on the part of others.
…but hey, it's a catchy tune and I guess that's all that mattered. And it even has one word in it from Donald Trump…another guy who had a hit show on NBC that's given as little recognition as possible.
There are a number of tributes and remembrances online for the great political blogger Kevin Drum. A lot of you have sent me links to this piece by another of my favorite political bloggers, Josh Marshall. And a number of you have told me that for the first time, you went to Kevin's page, read some items he posted and now see why we'll miss this man.
Trump is probably regretting the needless fight he picked with Canada because there's no way he can possibly sell the notion that they're the Bad Guy Aggressors or that everything that's going wrong was Joe Biden's fault. But he's trying, including — as CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale notes — just plain misrepresenting what's going on with those tariffs.
Ever since I posted this video clip introducing the song "Pick Yourself Up," folks have been sending me links to other interpretations so…why not? Here's Mel Tormé who, in this video, is not sitting at Farmers Market reading a newspaper. The pianist is the great George Shearing and I should warn those unfamiliar with Tormé that he liked to take strange detours in the middle of songs — in this case to Johann Sebastian Bach…
It's possible to point to some bad economic statistics from the four years Joe Biden was in the Oval Office but there were a lot of great numbers, too. As Steve Benen of the Maddow Blog points out, some Republicans are fudging numbers and fibbing to soil the previous administration's record.
For quite some time on this blog, I've quoted or linked to posts by a gent named Kevin Drum. Of all the folks I've come across on the 'net writing political commentary, he seemed to be the smartest and the most fact-based, meaning that he almost always backed up his views with statistics and history…and this is rare: He was willing to amend or reverse an opinion when the facts warranted it. Too many people double-down on bad calls and defend them to the death.
For some time now, his political writings have been interlaced with reports on his health. In 2014, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and last Friday, it took his life. He spent some of his last days blogging feverishly, which in his case meant meticulously reading and studying what he was writing about. I invite you to read some of the recent postings on his blog at https://jabberwocking.com/. I have no idea how long it will remain up but I hope forever. Lots of wise writings there.
Kevin and I had a brief e-mail friendship which led to a lunch together one day. I asked him about political issues and he asked me about comic books and we also spent a lot of time discussing great places to get barbecue. Very nice man. Very smart man. I'm already missing being able to go to his page and learn things. One thing I learned from him is that an awful lot of Bad News we see in the headlines is not as bad as it seems.
Many folks probably aren't aware that Craig Ferguson was and still is a stand-up comedian but he is and he's pretty good at it. I spotted this on the website of my buddy Paul Harris and thought I'd share it here with you. Enjoy…
Factcheck.org takes a look at some of the recent statements by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about health and human services. And what they see is that he's still dispensing uninformed, unqualified medical advice and that when he does get it right, it usually involves contradicting something he's said in the past. By now if you follow this blog, you know what I think about people who never graduated medical school advising on matters of health and medicine.
