Monthly Archives: September 2003

Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo weblog offers Part One of an exclusive interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson on our situation in Iraq. If nothing else, read the first sentence of Wilson's first answer. It summarizes the position we're in with an eloquence and directness one does not often hear from those in a position to know.

Above and at left, you see a picture of Leslie Parrish in the role of Daisy Mae in the 1959 movie of Li'l Abner. At right, we see a shot of Little Red Riding Hood as she appeared in several cartoons directed by Tex Avery. Tex reused animation and models, but I believe this shot is from Little Rural Riding Hood, which was made in 1949. Apart from the fact that a lot of males got hot 'n' bothered over them, what do these two characters have in common? I'll post the answer later today. Don't bother writing me if you know the answer. There are no prizes. I can't afford any. I have raccoons to feed.

Some time ago, I launched a section called TV Tickets where I display tickets to TV and radio tapings and, wherever possible, provide little commentaries, anecdotes and historical notes inspired by said tickets. It's a lot of fun and it's inspired a lot of volunteerism. Folks have sent me literally hundreds of scans of old tickets. In a few cases, they even mailed me the actual tickets. Some of them are so fascinating that in response to no less than twenty suggestions, I'm going to assemble and shop around a book of them. (Hey, one of my books got a great review in The New York Times last Sunday. That oughta be worth something…)

Some day soon, I'll add another 40 or 50 tickets to the online gallery but in the meantime, I thought I'd share this ticket which came to me from a devout news from me reader named Jay Shull who attended the evening taping of Conan O'Brien's 10th anniversary special…

As is customary, they did the show twice, then edited together the best moments for airing. Jay reports the following…

The show as broadcast was essentially as performed, even down to the running time. There were a few definite differences, such as: some of the bumpers broadcast were not the ones we were shown that evening post show; and a very few lines were cut, mostly one-offs that got buried in the applause from the previous quip. It was amusing to see the big-screen-TV-as-teleprompter dubbed over with images of the show in the flying camera cut-aways when broadcast.

Robert Smigel was behind the podium hiding in wait for his Triumph bit when the Vomiting Kermit came by and soaked him with liquid. It was obvious that whoever was inside the Kermit cart wanted to get Smigel good as the cart stalled behind the podium and a markedly larger volume of "vomit" spewed forth. When the Triumph bit was through, and Smigel arose to take his bows, he was soaked from head to toe in "vomit."

A sad fate for one of the funniest men in television. I enjoyed the special, though I could have done with longer clips and less audience hysteria.

I really like Late Night With Conan O'Brien and have always been impressed with how solid it was from Day One. It's common to say that Conan was inept for the first year or so while he received his on-the-job training. In truth, I don't recall the show ever being as bad as some now say. He's gotten better but what I find interesting is that he seems to have known pretty much what kind of show he wanted to do from the start and since then, he and his crew have worked at doing that show. Even when rumors were swirling that O'Brien was out and that Greg Kinnear would be taking up occupancy in the time slot, there was no wholesale makeover of Late Night. They didn't start firing bandleaders, adding sidekicks and departments, trying markedly new stunts, replacing the whole staff, etc. They just kept doing the same show. I believe Conan did the "dumb ads" desk bit on his first or one of his first shows…and the routine is still in his repertoire.

By contrast, Letterman, Leno and even Carson retained very few of the ideas they tried in their first weeks. Dave, when he first started, had joke guests (and some too-serious ones) and little vignettes going in and out of commercials. He and his staff soon realized they didn't play and dumped them. Jay had comedy bits like "Celebrity in a Sack" and "The $25 Trapezoid" which were intended as regular routines. They didn't work and he got rid of them, along with his opening, theme song, set and bandleader. The exalted Johnny initially had a little stock company of comedy players for sketches, and a weekly department where he'd go out with a film crew and do some stunt like auto racing or skydiving. It took a few weeks before he jettisoned them and a number of his early departments and sketch characters. Every show goes through those kinds of shakedowns…but Conan's has probably changed less than any of them.

I miss Andy Richter and a few recurring bits have probably recurred too often. (Dave, Jay and Conan now all have running gags about their announcers being perverts and/or getting maimed. Enough, already.) Still, I think it's a terrific show — better than either of the 11:30 shows, as far as I'm concerned — and I'm delighted he got his little prime time victory lap. Hope there are more of them.

[UPDATE, Many Years Later: The TV Tickets section of this site has graduated into its own, separate website.  It's called Old TV Tickets.]

What do Brits do when they find their car has been clamped for illegal parking? Why, they pray for the swift action of Angle Grinder Man! (I gather a clamp over there is like when they put a "boot" on the tire of a car over here, meaning it cannot be moved.)

If only we had someone like that in this country, except he should go after crooked towing services! (Thanks to David Rutman for the tip.)

Senator John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. (The shocker was not that he's running but that he announced it there.) Here's a link to an online video clip which unfortunately cuts off in the middle of Stephen Colbert's very funny commentary that followed the announcement. (RealPlayer required, I think.)

The meaning of life is that we are all not compatible. Or at least, some DVDs are not compatible. If you purchase the new DVD of Monty Python's Meaning of Life and find that Disk 1 will not play properly in your DVD player, here's what you do. And thank Kevin Boury for finding that for us all.

Back to that deadline…

Say, whatever happened to "Grandpa" Al Lewis? Click here for the latest.

For those of you who are new to weblogs: When the operator of the page you're visiting is swamped with deadlines and just too busy to post witty observations, pithy remarks and links to items of great interest elsewhere on the 'net, it is traditional to put up a picture of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup as a means of saying, "I'm occupied and I may not be posting for a while but I haven't abandoned you and I will return shortly." Of course, by "traditional," I mean that I do this and almost no one else. But it's a tradition around here, and that's all that counts.

Yes, I am busy. And yes, I am way, way behind in answering e-mail so if you're waiting for a reply and you aren't the child of some high Nigerian official who wants to use my bank account to transfer $47 million bucks into this country, my apologies. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, thanks to all of you who have made donations to feed the raccoons that invade my backyard and devour a large size bag of Friskies almost every evening. They are also lately engaging a game which seems to involve knocking over the water dish and playing some kind of Raccoon Hockey with it, rolling it all over the yard. This seems to cause them to work up even more of an appetite so keep those donations coming. Muchas gracias.

Like you and everyone else, I have no idea what the delay in the recall election will mean, or even if it will get undone. Cruising political websites just now, I see opinions are all over the place: It'll help Davis, it'll hurt Davis, it'll help Cruz, it'll hurt Cruz, etc. If the Supreme Court overturns the postponement, we'll all be back arguing about Florida again. This thing is such a circus, P.T. Barnum should get royalties.

This afternoon, I helped my mother mark her absentee ballot, just in case they matter. I must say it is a little confusing. In the interest of supposed fairness, the order of names is not alphabetical but was determined by a scrambling of letters. "R" comes before "W" and so on. To further complicate matters, the top position is different in each of the state's 80 assembly districts.

This makes it messy because what you have to do — or at least, what my mother has to do — is to punch out a hole (or "chad," as we now call them) on a punchcard ballot. Which hole do you punch? Well, you consult the sample ballot, find out which number corresponds to the vote you wish to cast, then you punch out that number hole on the ballot. For example, to vote against the recall, as she wished to do, you punch out chad #5…I think. At least, that's what I punched out for her. I hope it's right. Then she wanted to vote for Cruz Bustamante on the second part but, wading through the ballot, she literally could not find his name. That's why she asked me to help…and even though I have 20-20 vision and I'm pretty observant, I must admit I had a little trouble finding him.

Back in the last presidential election, I had little sympathy for those who claimed that a confusing ballot had caused them to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. I guess I thought that if you weren't wise enough to figure out the ballot, you almost didn't deserve to vote. But my mother is very smart and alert, and today it seemed quite possible that without me there to help, she would have marked her ballot wrong. At the very least, she couldn't and wouldn't be sure she'd voted the way she wanted.

My mother used to run a polling place at our home, back when the ballots were paper that you marked with an "X." After the polls closed, the ballot box was opened and the precinct workers would sit in our living room, often until late at night, and count the votes by hand. I can remember the year they went to punch cards and everyone said, "Oh, this will be so much more accurate. There will be no questions that the vote is correct."

Sure hasn't worked out that way, has it?

Several years ago, I got a call for jury duty and dutifully reported to the courthouse, even though I knew the chances of my getting on a jury were about the same as my chances of getting on Sharon Stone. Neither happened but I got a column out of it, and I have just posted that column. Here's the link.

I'm not sure I understand this news item but it's something about scientists using Sylvester the Cat to illustrate the different ways in which different nationalities describe things. Or something like that.

The passing of the great Al Hirschfeld seems to have raised the value of his work. I guess it's because of the attention his passing brought to his artistry. It couldn't be because the death of a man who was 99 and a half years old caught the art world unaware…could it?

As eight e-mails in the last hour have informed me, the famous actress who filled in for her daughter on a soap opera was Joan Crawford, holding down the role that Christina Crawford had on Secret Storm. Here's a page with all the details, including the fact that Ms. Crawford was drinking heavily during the taping. Apparently, the incident was dramatized in the movie, Mommie Dearest, but I guess I never made it that far.

My buddy Rick Scheckman provides the following info. And trust me…he's always right about this kind of stuff:

The below recounting of the switchover of Harry Morton's that was on the web page today is slightly incorrect. The episode in question "The Iron Deer" was the first episode of the second filmed season of Burns And Allen. The way it happened was thus:

Blanche Morton is mad at Harry and is standing in her kitchen holding an iron skillet to hit Harry over the head. She calls him into the kitchen. George off-stage calls out hold it. Blanche freezes in place and George walks on-screen and explains that Fred Clark has left the show to go to NY and from now on Harry Morton will be played by Larry Keating who he brings on and introduces in front of the frozen in place Blanche. He asks Larry if he has ever met his TV wife and calls Bea into the foreground to meet Larry Keating. They exchange pleasantries. Then George says it is time to go on with the scene. He and Keating walk off and the scene resumes and the new Harry Morton walks in and gets hit with the skillet.

Fred Clark had left on bad terms with George and was not in the transition episode.

When Bill Goodwin was replaced by Harry Von Zell in the live days, he was introduced by Goodwin as the new announcer. And when Hal March was replaced by John Brown, George did a similar scene to the Keating change in welcoming John Brown explaining that March had left for NY with his partner Bob Sweeney to do a television show. Brown was shortly replaced with Fred Clark because his name turned up in Red Channels.

That sounds right. And into all this talk about how to replace departed cast members, I should mention that soap operas have this problem occasionally…and had it rather often back when they were done live. They would sometimes just have another actor come in and start playing Diana's husband or whatever the role was, and there were a few times when they'd have a voiceover announce the change. I seem to remember that there was some soap where a key role was played by the daughter of some famous actress. The daughter was off the show for a time and her mother came in and filled her part for a few weeks. At the beginning of the broadcast, a voiceover made the announcement that So-and-So, who played such-and-such a character was off for a while, and that her mother was playing her character until she returned. I don't recall the actresses or the soap but I'm pretty sure it happened that way.

By the way: Yes, this is the same Rick Scheckman who works for Late Show with David Letterman, where his duties include film coordination, appearing occasionally in sketches, and impregnating the host's girl friend. He's a good friend and a decent human being, as evidenced by the fact that he was the first person to donate money to our Feed the Raccoons fund. (Yeah, I know I'm really pushing it. But you should see how much seven raccoons can eat…)