Items of Interest

As this article in L.A. Weekly notes, the Motion Picture Academy ought to dump Price-Waterhouse as the accounting firm which tabulates its annual Oscar ballots.  You wouldn't trust those boys with your nephew's piggy bank.

When he he was a beginning actor, Stan Freberg did a number of odd roles.  He has a small but important part in Callaway Went Thataway, a lightweight 1951 comedy with Fred MacMurray, Howard Keel and Dorothy McGuire that runs the evening of August 13 on Turner Classic Movies.  (6 PM or 9 PM, depending on your time zone.)  The film was produced, written and/or directed by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, who were responsible for — among other classics — the Li'l Abner Broadway show and movie.  It's most interesting for Freberg's brief appearance, a fine supporting role by Jesse White and a brief cameo by Clark Gable.

Interested in the ongoing war between Disney and the folks who controlled the merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh?  If so, click quickly on this link and hustle to the website of Los Angeles Magazine.  It's a long piece but worth your attention.  (By the by: None of these articles ever seem to mention it but the woman suing Disney, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, is not just the widow of Stephen Slesinger, former Pooh merchandising agent.  Her second husband, also deceased, was cartoonist Fred Lasswell, who did the Snuffy Smith newspaper strip for just shy of sixty years.  Interesting sidelight.)

Eric Forman sends in this link to another story of airport security guards who do stupid things that don't make us one bit safer.  Don't anyone else bother sending any more of these.  This is the last one I'm posting here.  But thanks, Eric.  You've helped me make my point.

And here's a link to an interesting article by Joshua Micah Marshall about the odd correlation (or lack of one) between the popularity of the Bush administration and its achievements.  I agree with most of it…I think.  Some of the comments lately by Bush supporters remind me of a comment Michael Kinsley made on TV at about this point in Clinton's first term.  I can't find the precise text but it went something like, "I know this guy's about to let us all down and see his popularity plunge, but I want to deny that as long as I can."