Monthly Archives: March 2002

More thoughts on Mr. Television: Milton Berle had the reputation of hogging the spotlight, stealing scenes and insinuating himself into other acts.  On his legendary variety show and in his stage shows that predated it, he would bring on great performers but rarely allow them to have the stage to themselves.  The jugglers would only get to juggle a little before Uncle Miltie came bounding out in juggler garb to burlesque and make a shambles of their routine.  "It always had to be about him," George Burns once told me.  "If the bit wasn't about him, he made it about him."

This was not always done out of ego — or, if it was, it was also with the intent of making a better show.  When criticized for the practice, Berle would get defensive.  He'd argue that, by injecting himself into another performer's act, he kept that performer on stage longer than they would otherwise have remained, and gave them the status of co-starring with the star of the show.  Given his rate of success, it's hard to argue that he was always — or even, usually — in the wrong.

Still, he was an enormous glutton for attention.  You know the joke about, "The most dangerous place in the world is anywhere between So-and-So and a camera?"  The first time I ever heard it was at a lunch at the Friars Club with a wonderful, now departed comedian-impressionist named George Kirby.  Berle was the former "Abbot" of the Friars — a kind of ceremonial grand poobah — and he'd still table-hop during mealtime and glad-hand everyone.

He was at our table when someone across the room whipped out a home video camera to record some sort of greeting to an absent friend.  The greeting was not supposed to involve Mr. Berle but, like lightning, he sprinted over, got in the shot and did his famous "walrus" shtick, inserting a cigar under his upper lip like a tusk.  Kirby shook his head, turned back to me and said, "The most dangerous place in the world is anywhere between Milton and a camera."  Indeed.

A little later, Entertainment Tonight set up to tape a few interviews with the comedians present.  Berle was first up and he proceeded to do something that I mentioned in my article here on Red Skelton; something almost every comedian of his generation seemed to do, given the chance.  As the camera rolled, Berle talked about there being too much smut in comedy.  "I tell all the young comics, 'Don't work blue,' he lectured.  "If you have talent, you don't need four letter words and filth."

Then the camera was turned off and Berle resumed what he'd been doing before the interview: Telling dirty jokes.  The cleanest one I recall was the one about the newlyweds who sunbathed nude on their honeymoon.  That night, the groom's privates were horribly sunburned so he went into the kitchen, took out a container of milk and plunged his member into it.  His new bride wandered into the room, saw this and said, "Oh!  I always wondered how men fill those things."  Uncle Miltie told the joke, then looked down at his lap and added, "I'd need a dairy."  (I almost played naïve — like I didn't get the reference — but I was afraid he'd show me what it meant.)

Every cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World who's ever mentioned his name in interviews has spoken of his uncanny ability to always be the last one out of every shot, thereby maximizing his screen time.  A TV director I once worked with told me a story that pertained to this ability…

Berle kept adding words, adding lines to his part.  He had this one long speech and every rehearsal, it got longer and longer, no matter how we told him to cut it down.  Finally, we got into taping and it turned into an extended monologue.  He simply would not not add all those extra words.  So I figured, "Well, I'll find some cuts in editing…you know, cut away from him right after the beginning, drop the whole middle, and then cut back to him for the last few, crucial lines."  Well, I couldn't do that.  I got into editing and that's when I realized what he did.

During the speech, he took out a cigar, slowly unwrapped it and put it into his mouth.  I couldn't cut the middle of the monologue out because then, the cigar would have appeared out of nowhere…and I couldn't cut the whole speech out because the last line or two were essential to the plot.  So I had to leave the whole thing in, and I'm 100% convinced he knew exactly what he was doing.  He knew I wanted to cut, he knew where I'd want to cut and he knew how to fix it so I couldn't cut.

Okay, those are all negative or semi-negative stories.  There are a lot of good things that ought to be said about Milton Berle, starting with the incredible number of performers who owed their careers to his help and encouragement.  He even found talent on the street.  One day, back when he was headlining at Loew's New York State Theater, he wandered between shows into a nearby arcade.  There, a printer had a little set-up cranking out business cards and letterheads and he told Berle that he dabbled in joke-telling on the weekends.  They became friends and Berle began steering the job offers he couldn't take to the printer, whose name was Henny Youngman.

Another time, also in his stage show days, Berle struck up a friendship with a kid who worked the counter at a luncheonette near the theater.  The kid's name was Jack Gellman and he did impressions and pantomimes so well that Berle hired him and put him in his act…but not before changing his name to Jack Gilford.  There are dozens of these tales.

And he really did invent an awful lot of TV comedy, back at a time when both budgets and technology were pitiful.  Part of his reputation as "The Thief of Bad Gags" came about because his show, The Texaco Star Theater, initially couldn't afford much in the way of writers.  To fill that weekly hour, Berle dredged up every old routine he could remember and, in some cases, they were sketches and monologues that were more-or-less public domain among comedians, but in which some comics — perhaps jealous of his success — claimed proprietary interest.

Later on, when the program's success kicked loose some funds, Berle began buying the rights to use some of the classic comedy sketches that had been written for Broadway revues.  The material was properly bought and paid-for but some of the comedians who'd performed in those revues — Bert Lahr being the most vocal, Berle claimed — saw it as Milton stealing "their" signature routines.  When I heard Berle talk of this — decades after Lahr and his other detractors were dead and buried — he still turned crimson over it.  He said, "I was the first guy on television to pay writers and to pay them well."

I'm not certain that Berle was the first TV performer to pay writers but he was surely among the first…and he was the first to do so many things, including causing America to stay home and watch the tube.  The surviving kinescopes of those broadcasts have not aged well — all the outrageous costumes, constant mugging and everyone breaking up.  But this was state-of-the-art live television of the time: Berle was way ahead of what everyone else was doing.  It wasn't sophisticated but it was easy to watch.  (He always told the writers to make the jokes "lappy," which meant to lay them in the viewers' laps.)

After a few years of the Texaco program and a few successors, he established another "first."  He was the first performer to ever wear out his welcome on television.  By the time he was knocked off the air — by Phil Silvers playing S/Sgt. Ernest T. Bilko — Berle had demonstrated that it was quite possible for America to tire of someone.  He had plenty to do for the rest of his life — movies, clubs, guest shots, the occasional series, even some dramatic roles — but he never again reached the apogee he'd reached as Mr. Television.  No one did.

I'm writing all this quickly and off the top of my head.  If I sound conflicted, I am.  Like many of my generation, I never laughed that much at Milton Berle and there was a time when I wondered why this pushy guy was so revered.  In time, I think I came to understand that it had to do with innovation and longevity, two qualities that are rarely found — at least, together — in the comedy stars who began in television.  Milton Berle was of another era, already an established performer before he or anyone appeared on TV, forced to invent and reinvent in front of an entire nation.  Fortunately, he was a master showman and more than equal to the task.

The few times I got to meet him, he was very nice to me and quite willing to dive into his uncanny memory and summon up anecdote after anecdote, most of them probably true, at least to some extent.  All in all, I enjoyed being around the man.  Of course, I never got between him and a camera.

I suspect a lot of folks under the age of 60 respected Milton Berle — assuming they really knew who he was — not because he was funny but because he was first.  He couldn't appear anywhere without someone (often, him) reminding us that he was Mr. Television, aka Uncle Miltie, aka The Man Who Invented TV Comedy.  He spent his life in show business, commencing as a child actor being thrust into the spotlight by a pushy stage mother.  He claimed to have been the kid who sold Charlie Chaplin a newspaper in Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), though some film historians question that.  Throughout his career, Berle had many great accomplishments but he always seemed to be claiming they were even greater — that is, when he wasn't telling people how large his penis was.  I have no idea if that last brag was true but the others weren't that far wrong.

He was in show business almost from the time he could walk.  He was a major headliner in vaudeville and a star on Broadway.  He was the impetus for so many American households to scrape up the bucks to buy their first television machine.  He was even, at times, as notorious a stealer of other comics' material as he joked he was.

He was at his best when he was playing straight for other comedians.  On his sixties' TV show, the best segments came when he was heckled by a rude audience member named Sidney Spritzer — in reality, veteran burlesque comic Irv Benson.  Spritzer would insult Berle relentlessly and stop him from performing.  Eventually, they'd always get to this joke which I loved…

SPRITZER

You're too close to the microphone.

BERLE

How far should I be?

SPRITZER

You got a car?

An old joke?  Certainly.  But one of the reasons Berle's material seemed so shopworn to many of us was that he'd been doing it for eons, and whole generations of comedians had helped themselves to it.  (That particular Milton Berle Show didn't last long, by the way.  In fact, when it was cancelled, Berle — probably with the aid of some writer — remarked, "I've figured out how to end the Vietnam War.  Just put in on ABC and it'll be gone in thirteen weeks.")

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Berle on a couple of occasions, one of which is recounted in my article here on Henny Youngman.  Another, which I just this second posted, is this article about a time I was poaching on the set of Love Boat.  And, of course, he was one of the stars of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which is mentioned, ad nauseum, on this site.  One of these days, when a little more time has passed, I'll try and write up a few other stories I heard or observed that perhaps shape or cloud my admiration for the man.  For now, I'll just say that he had a rich, wonderful life and probably no regrets, apart from the fact that he didn't outlive Bob Hope…or die a few days earlier, so they could have mentioned it on this year's Oscars.

There oughta be a term for this: When something happens and everyone pounces on it and tries to use it to advance their own causes — like when 9/11 went down and you had vegans saying, "Well, this proves you shouldn't eat meat" and bird fanciers saying, "See?  This wouldn't have happened if we all fancied birds."  It's kind of a grand exploitation/spin, and it seems to happen everywhere these days.

Last Sunday night's Oscars were the lowest-rated ever.  Cruise the Internet and you'll find a ton of reasons, all spun according to the reasoner's mission in life.  Folks who don't like Whoopi Goldberg are saying, "This proves they need to get rid of Whoopi Goldberg."  Folks who have a hate on for successful Hollywood types are saying, "See?  Nobody wants to watch four-and-a-half hours of Hollywood phonies."  There are even those arguing that the numbers were low because too much attention was paid to black people.

Here's my answer and it's an easy one.  Too often in this world, we ignore the easy answer because it doesn't advance our personal agendum.  But usually, the easy answer is the right answer.

People watch the Academy Awards to the extent they care about the films and performers up for those awards.  Do we passionately want to see a certain movie or actor win?  If so, we watch.  It's just like the World Series.  If you have an emotional of financial stake in one team beating the other, you watch.  If you don't care, you're less likely to tune in.

With the Oscars, this is 90-some-odd percent of what matters.  The host makes a little difference, the presenters make a little difference, the length of the show tests how much we care about it versus how much we care about going to bed.  But really, what it comes down to is: Do we care who wins?  This year, though there were some fine movies and performances up, I don't think we did.  And I think any other explanation is pure, self-serving spin.

This letter was published in the Boston Globe on March 14, 2002…

To the Editor:

George F. Will writes: "Bush's terseness is Ernest Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley." ("Old Fashioned Values Return Since Sept. 11," Op Ed, March 12)

Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley's sermons, but I do know that to put George W. Bush's prose next to Hemingway is equal to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen.

Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies?  You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.

Here's a passage from "A Farewell to Arms." It has more going for it than "terseness."

"I was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice.  I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words you could not stand to hear… Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a democracy may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the scurvy manipulation of such words as "evil" and "love" by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president.

NORMAN MAILER
Provincetown

Paul Scrabo is a video guy and filmmaker in New York who shares, among other tastes, my interest in the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Over on his website — www.scrabo.com — he has some interesting pictures and articles about it.  He also offers loads of other fun stuff that will probably interest anyone who enjoys this site.  One treasure is an on-line version of the famous video of William Shatner performing his version of the Elton John song, "Rocket Man."  There are those who call it the single most inane and pretentious musical performance ever on television…and I'm not sure I agree but I sure wouldn't waste any breath arguing against that position.  Anyway, click on the link and go visit Paul's site.  (But first, click on the link below and donate some cash to this one.)

Matt Drudge is reporting that anonymous folks at ABC want Oprah Winfrey to host next year's Oscars and that, among "influential Academy insiders," Jay Leno is the odds-on favorite.  This is probably just the musing of two or three people who will have little or nothing to do with the decision…which the network and Academy won't even begin to address for many moons.  (Leno, I've been told, was offered the gig a few years ago but turned it down, allegedly because he feels a real movie star should host, but probably because he saw what it did for Mr. Letterman's career.)

In any case, the Powers That Be haven't even decided who'll produce the Oscars next year.  They certainly aren't going to expend any serious time thinking about possible hosts until they get much closer to the date and see who's hot and who's available.  My guess is the first call will be to Billy Crystal and if he won't do it, the second call will be to Steve Martin and if he won't do it, they'll start debating a list that includes Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams and maybe a dozen others.  One of these days, if and when Nathan Lane makes another successful movie, he'll shoot right to the top of that list…or maybe sooner.

April Fool's Day is next week and while I don't like most practical jokes, I do love witty, harmless gags.  I'm remembering the first April Fool's Day after I'd gotten a modem and begun calling computer bulletin boards.  This was before Al Gore invented the Internet.  I logged into a B.B.S. I called once a week or so and there, in its "announcements" section was a serious, deadpan notice that due to complaints from callers, three regular users of the system — two unfamiliar names plus mine — were being banned for being obnoxious and offensive.  I did a double-take that would have been considered overacting in a Ben Turpin movie and began pondering what I'd posted that could have ticked people off.  Took me about ten seconds to realize that I'd been had; that the system was configured so that everyone saw their name as one of the three in the bogus announcement.

One of my favorite April Fool's Day gags was perpetrated by the Cartoon Network back in 1997.  Rather than describe it myself, I'm going to quote verbatim, a squib from the daily fax report that was issued that day by the newspaper, Electronic Media.  Here it is…

The Cartoon Network pulled its regularly scheduled programming in lieu of an April Fools' Day stunt.  Since 6 a.m., the network has been repeating a single seven-minute short (Screwball Squirrel's Happy-Go-Nutty), along with occasional on-screen notices claiming the animated character has taken over the control room in an effort to have April 1 declared a national holiday.  All fooling aside, the channel plans to resume normal programming at 6 PM — after the cartoon has run more than 140 times.

The stunt was, I thought, hysterical — the same cartoon over and over and over.  They did not even rotate the five classic cartoons that Tex Avery directed of Screwy (sometimes known as Screwball) Squirrel.  They ran the same one over and over and over and over.  Even after it was apparent what they were doing, I found myself tuning in to Cartoon Network throughout the day, making sure they were still at it, and checking out the little announcements about the Screwy Squirrel hostage crisis.

They left all the promotional announcements and bumpers intact as per the schedule, so they'd announce, "Coming up next — The Flintstones," and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty.  Or they'd say, "We now return to Thundercats" and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty.  For twelve hours straight.  I found myself laughing, just at the sheer silliness of it all.

Someone at Cartoon Network has a great sense of humor and a hefty serving of guts.  For the sake of a great gag, they ran the risk of outraging cable subscribers — and, indeed, judging from Internet postings, a few were incensed sufficiently to phone up the channel's headquarters in Atlanta.  This did them no good, of course; all they got was a recorded announcement that said that they were doing their best to get Screwy out of the control room.  Others called their local cable companies to report technical problems.  At least one cable service out in the Valley began carrying the channel on the first of April.  One wonders what those new viewers thought.

But I know what I thought: I thought it was brilliant.  And, looking at the above report from Electronic Media, I wonder if Cartoon Network played a trick on them in a press release, or if no one at Electronic Media knows how to multiply.  Even if you left out commercials and promo announcements — and they didn't — it would take a lot more than 12 hours to run a 7-minute cartoon 140 times.  Either way, somewhere Tex was laughing his wings and/or ass off.

Just to remind (or warn) you: I will be among the guests at this year's Wonderon, a fine comic book convention which is being held in Oakland, California from April 19-21.  As has become my lot in life, I will hosting a mess of panels, including a 20th anniversary Groo discussion, a Golden/Silver Age panel and a "quick draw" competition which will pit a bunch of cartoonists against one another to see who can whip it out fast.

I'll post a list of the panels here in a week or two, and the whole schedule will be up shortly at the convention website, which is www.wondercon.com.  You'll also want to go there for further info on the event.  After 30+ years of attending comic conventions, I have seen it all, done it all and generally grown "conventioned out," turning down most invites.  I always try to get to WonderCon, however.  It's a friendly gathering of just the right size: Large enough that you'll never run out of things to do and people to meet, but not so overwhelming that just getting from one end of the Dealers Room to the other becomes some kind of Bataan Death March past rows of comic books for sale.  Try and be there.

Flix — another one of those channels you probably don't get unless you have a satellite dish — has been running Movie Movie, a very funny movie that a lot of folks never got.  Written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, and starring George C. Scott, Art Carney, Trish Van Devere and other fine thespians, Movie Movie is two films in one.  First up is Dynamite Hands, a parody of a thirties' boxing flick.  Then comes Baxter's Beauties of 1933, which burlesques the musicals of the period wherein the star can't perform on opening night and a girl from the chorus takes over.  Both mini-films have much the same cast, and there's a trailer in between…and the whole thing is a lot of silly fun.

Both halves of Movie Movie were filmed in color and, when it was previewed, they experimented with making one half black-and-white.  (They also had a newsreel segment then, which was eliminated, and Dynamite Hands had a different ending.)  In the initial release, the prize-fighting movie was black-and-white and the show biz musical was color…but the prints now being run on cable have both halves in color, which I think is a mistake.  Dynamite Hands was funnier in monochrome, and the shift to color was effective.

The film was not a big hit and never received much exposure on home video.  Gelbart wrote Movie Movie II, the script of which reads even funnier, but it never got in front of a camera…so we have to settle for catching the first one on cable.  If you get the chance, I suggest you do so.

Just got an e-mail from Batton Lash pointing out the real punch line to the Reuters "correction."  They corrected the line where it said he plays at Elaine's to saying he plays at Michael's Pub…but, in fact, that's wrong, too.  Michael's Pub was sold some time ago and for years now, Woody and his band have been playing at the Hotel Carlyle.

These are the people who tell us most of what we know about what's happening in our world.

One more thought on the Oscars and then I'll shut up: I think there's a silly tendency to try to discuss "The Vote" as if all the voters were working towards one goal and with one motive; like they all got together in a big room to mark their ballots and said, "Okay, it's time to make a racial statement.  Everyone vote for Denzel and Halle, but we'll give Best Director to Ron Howard because we liked him when he was Opie!"  Amidst this morning's web chat about the event — including, what a surprise, many who thought it was the Worst Oscar Show Ever — I see a lot of this.

A large group of people voted without consultation, and we have only a tiny piece of information as to how they voted.  We know which films and people got the most votes but for all we know, each winner could have gotten 21% of the vote in a razor-close five-way competition.  Nonetheless, we not only act like the whole Academy chose Halle Berry, we pretend they all had the same thing on their brains…then we further extrapolate to discuss the mindset of the voters in all categories; what they were collectively trying to say with this year's awards.

Fact is, there probably isn't one — or even one dominant — trend.  We do this with political elections, as well ("Twelve states voted Republican because they're fed up with high property taxes") but at least there, we have various opinion polls and the exact vote totals from which to speculate.  We still go too far, trying to assign one thought process to a large group of divergent minds — we color a whole state red or blue based on 51% of the vote — but there's some basis, however vague, for interpreting the win.  Oscar votes, apart from being even less important, have the luxury of no data whatsoever that can ever validate or belie any analysis.  We can say, "Well, this year, Academy voters were trying to say they don't like the price of Raisinets at the refreshment stand," and nothing can ever prove us wrong.  I think it's silly to pretend that a whole group of people — whose identities none of us really know — all spoke with one set of sensibilities and purpose.  For all we know, this year's "statement" was about the price of Raisinets.

Okay.  Now, I'll shut up.  By the way, they still have no idea if it's going to rain Thursday.

For some reason, this kind of thing interests me.  The Reuters News Service put out a story around 9 PM (Pacific) last evening that included the following paragraph…

Allen, who is also a jazz musician and usually spends Oscar night playing the saxophone at Elaine's restaurant in New York, received a standing ovation from Hollywood's finest inside the Kodak Theatre and said, "Thank you very much … that makes up for the strip search" — a reference to the strict security surrounding the Oscar presentations.

About three hours later, they transmitted a corrected version that amended the name of the place wherein Mr. Allen plays jazz music:

Allen, who is also a jazz musician and usually spends Oscar night playing the saxophone at Michael's Pub in New York, received a standing ovation from Hollywood's finest…

Okay, first question: Who noticed the error and felt it was significant enough to warrant moving a correction?  I mean, given all the erroneous news stories that don't get corrected, why this?  Did Michael's Pub call up and complain?

Second and third questions: Doesn't Woody Allen play the clarinet?  And doesn't he do this on Monday nights, which are no longer Oscar nights?

Woody Allen at the Oscars?  How exciting is that?  There aren't too many folks whose surprise appearance would mean boo but Woody, plus a lot of the "right" people winning, might mean we'll hear fewer folks tomorrow morn saying, "Boy, that was the worst Academy Awards show ever."  They'll fault it for being long, and for the presenter banter (which I thought was better than the norm, and almost pain-free) but, all in all, I thought it was a pretty good show.  Here are some other thoughts off the top of my cranium…

• As always, the show ran longer than advertised.  The "official" length, as per the announced schedule, was 3 and a half hours — which is when my TiVo shut off, somewhere in the middle of the montage of dead folks.  Credits finally rolled around an hour later and, of course, the producers knew well in advance they'd be around that length.  No one made an extra-long speech, no one took eleven minutes to walk onto the stage.  Absolutely nothing occurred that could not have been estimated in advance.  So how about if we just admit in advance that the show's going to run 4 and a half hours?  That way, those who went out and set their VCRs would get to see the presentation for Best Picture.
• Woody's appearance was a stunner…though did you get the idea that a few of those who stood and clapped were a little unsure if they wanted to do that for someone with his, uh, personal history?
• One of the few "missteps" I thought occurred in the broadcast was in the performance by Cirque du Soleil.  Whether it's worth taking X minutes of Oscarcast time for a great act that has nothing whatsoever to do with movies is arguable.  But if it was going to be included, I think it was a mistake to try and pretend it had something to do with the field of Visual Effects and to throw all those clips of special effects sequences in the background.  Cirque du Soleil is a visual feast without any help and, with the film montage running, there was just too much on the screen: You couldn't see the clips, you couldn't see the acrobats.
• The footage accompanying Bill Hanna's "in memoriam" salute should have been from a Tom & Jerry film.  He didn't win Oscars for his TV cartoons.
• First rule of directing the Academy Awards Telecast: Any time anyone says anything having to do with race or brotherhood, cut immediately to a shot of Samuel L. Jackson in the audience.  And then, if there's time and he's in his seat, Will Smith.
• Boy, the Kodak Theater looks nice on camera.
• Boy, Randy Newman's win was sure popular with the audience.  (But you see, this is the kind of thing I was talking about, earlier.  The main thing that makes an award show fun to watch is when the "right" people win and they get up there and give charming, funny speeches.  But when that doesn't happen, critics dump on the folks who produced and wrote the telecast, as if they've screwed up…)
• Same thing with Halle Berry's acceptance speech.  To some, it will always be a memorable high point, and perhaps it is.  But when this kind of thing doesn't occur — when the Best Actress doesn't cry and have an emotional outburst, people fault the guys who produced the telecast.
• Whoopi G. did not one but two Liza wedding jokes, and she did a slightly different Ashcroft line than we predicted.  I didn't watch the middle so I may have missed an Enron or Gary Condit joke.
• Having Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close as announcer/hosts would have been a better idea if they'd had fewer off-topic trivia lines to read.  And it would have been even better if real, professional announcers had done the honors.  (If ever a show didn't need big names to draw an audience, it's the Academy Awards…)

And that's all that comes to mind at the moment.  Tune in next year for the next "Worst Oscar Show Ever."

Speaking of predictions: Earlier today, the Southern California forecast from the National Weather Service said showers were possible for Wednesday-Thursday.  Now, it says Wednesday will be partly cloudy and we have "A chance of showers" Thursday through Friday.  How solid is this projection?  About as solid as smog.  The following is currently posted on the website where the weather forecasters discuss why they're predicting what they're predicting.  (By the way, "CWA" stands for "County Weather Area" and all the other unfamiliar terms refer to different computer model projections based on satellite readings.)

BEYOND TUESDAY THE FORECAST REALLY GETS TRICKY. AS HAS BEEN THE CASE THE LAST FEW DAYS, THE MEDIUM RANGE MODELS HAVE BEEN ALL OVER THE PLACE, THOUGH THE TREND HAS BEEN TO TAKE THE LOW FURTHER AND FURTHER WEST (A VERY COMMON PATTERN WITH THE MODELS IN A SCENARIO LIKE THIS).

THE 12Z CANADIAN AND UKMET BOTH KEEP THE UPR LOW WAY TOO FAR OFFSHORE TO BRING ANY PRECIP TO OUR AREA, AT LEAST THROUGH WEDNESDAY. THEN MOST OF THE MODELS SEEM TO DROP THE LOW QUITE A WAYS SOUTH BEFORE SWINGING IT INLAND FRIDAY SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SAN DIEGO AND ENSENADA. WITH THIS SCENARIO, THE CENTRAL COAST WOULD NOT SEE ANY PRECIP FROM THIS SYSTEM, AND QUITE LIKELY THE REST OF OUR CWA WOULDN'T SEE ANY EITHER. HOWEVER, GIVEN THE CONTINUING UNCERTAINTY AND MODEL INCONSISTENCIES, WILL ONLY MODIFY THE EXTENDED BY PUSHING BACK PRECIP CHANCES BY A DAY, WHICH WOULD BE THE THURSDAY/FRIDAY TIME FRAME.

THE AVN DOES INDICATE QUITE A DEEP LAYER OF MOISTURE MOVING IN AT THAT TIME, BUT CONFIDENCE IN THIS SOLUTION IS EXTREMELY LOW, PROBABLY 1 ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10.

I'm not faulting the folks at the National Weather Service who, I believe, do a much, much better job than we admit.  They're too often judged by that one day in a thousand when an inland front backs up against high pressure and it showers on a day that was supposed to be Mostly Sunny.

But there are times when predicting the weather is easy; when they can say, days in advance, that a storm is impossible or almost certain.  And then there are times like this coming week when several scenarios are possible.  Personally, I find it somewhat refreshing — and surely more useful — to hear someone in a position of authority admit that they really don't know.  Would that the atmosphere in Washington were such that our elected officials could say that when that's the case.  Because, very often, they don't know…but they can't own up to that.

And, oh yeah, Whoopi will do a joke about John Ashcroft wanting to put brassieres on all the Oscar statues.