Monthly Archives: February 2004

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Just set the TiVo to record tonight's Oscarcast. On first generation TiVos, this was a problem because if the schedule said a show was three hours, that's how long TiVo would record. Now, you can pad, and I padded this recording by an hour. I don't expect it to run that long but in years past, I padded 20 or 30 minutes and it sometimes wasn't enough.

As I recall, the last few Oscar shows have come in relatively close to the announced three hours. It seems like we've moved past the day when the producers would say it would last that long, knowing full well it would be more like four. A theory used to exist in the teevee business that it was preferable to lie about the length of shows that ran late at night. One local Los Angeles station used to run a late movie that started at 11:00 PM and they always claimed "90 minutes" in the TV listing even though the movie, after commercial insertions, was always going to be an hour longer than that. (And the station knew it. If you looked closely, the start time of the next program was always around 1:30 AM.) The idea here was that you'd be less inclined to tune in the broadcast if you knew in advance you wouldn't be getting to bed 'til 1:30.

The Oscars have this problem that they have to be live. This means programming for the West Coast and East Coast. When they were Monday night, the network and producers didn't want to start the show any earlier than 6 PM in the West because people would be coming home from work. This meant 9 PM in the East. Which meant that for folks on the right coast, it would mean staying up well past Midnight…some years close to 1 AM. So they'd lie and say it would be three hours when they knew it would be four. They figured that though Eastern viewers might get annoyed at not being able to go beddy-bye by 12, they weren't about to tune out then and miss the big awards. A few years back, the ceremony was moved to Sunday. Since fewer people work on Sunday, it seemed possible to start the show at 5:30 Pacific Time, giving them an 8:30 start in the East.

One thing to remember is that the Oscar broadcast really doesn't run long in the sense that its producers thought it was going to be a lot shorter. Most of it is rehearsed and timed…everything except the acceptance speeches, which are usually limited in time. Even if everyone rambled an extra minute, that wouldn't add an hour to the show. If they say it's going to run three and it's 45 minutes longer than that, it's because they decided to let it run long.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Joan and Melissa are now counting down the ten worst fashion statements at Oscars past. Sally Kirkland looks like she's wearing Scarlett O'Hara's drapes. Courtney Love is a slut. Dennis Rodman looks like the doorman at a gay Bed and Breakfast. (Hey, Joan: How do you know what the doormen look like at a gay Bed and Breakfast?) Pam Anderson and Elizabeth Hurley are "trailer trash all the way," apparently because their breasts are exposed. And Number Uno is Bjork's famous 2001 swan dress but at least Joan recognizes that it was intended as a joke. Joan knows about jokes because, rumor has it, she used to do comedy.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Just tuned in the E! Network and heard someone say something about predictions for tonight. Turns out, various fashion designers are predicting what the stars will be wearing tonight. For the men, that's easy. I always thought it was odd that regarding formal attire, the biggest sin a man could commit was to have his tux stand out, whereas for women the biggest sin was to dress like anyone else.

Alison Krauss is going to singing the nominated songs from Cold Mountain wearing a pair of shoes valued at two million dollars. The gent who designed them is calling this an "anti-Hollywood statement." Yeah, I can see that.

Joan and Melissa Rivers are counting down the "Top Ten" fashion statements from the years they've spent working the Red Carpet outside the Oscars. Their number one pick is Halle Berry in 2001 mostly because (Joan says) of how she tastefully displayed her breasts that year. Yeah, but were her shoes worth two million dollars?

It always amazes me how to some people, the Oscars are all about what the ladies are wearing. One year, I watched the ceremony at a Hollywood-type party where the consensus was that it was all a colossal disappointment. I agreed but not for the same reason as half the people there: The outfits weren't great, and the director had failed to give us a good look at them. This is why the transparent podium was invented.

Don Markstein, curator of Toonopedia, notes that February 29 is also the birthday of Little Orphan Annie.

Superman…Captain Marvel…and Little Orphan Annie. What do these three folks have in common besides a tendency to never change their outfits?

Come to think of it, February 29 was almost my birthday. I was born in a leap year and due on that date. Two days later, when I hadn't shown up on schedule, the doctors went in and dragged me out.

This may explain why to this day, I never like being late for anything. Deep down, I'm afraid they're going to do that again.

The Los Angeles supermarket strike seems to be ending with a vote and a whimper this weekend. The whole thing looks like a lose/lose situation for the three supermarket chains involved (Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons) because they lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and for the union because they lost months of wages and only wound up turning a terrible offer into a slightly less-terrible offer. Much of the public lost too, because the markets will try to make back that lost money somehow, and also because if you went into a Ralphs during the strike, you probably got lousy service and maybe even spoiled food.

So if all those parties lost, who won? Non-striking markets like Trader Joe's and Gelson's seem to have profited. Last night, we stopped in a Gelson's and there was a sign out front that said something like, "We appreciate that the strike at other markets prompted you to shop here. We hope that our superior service and food will keep you coming back." Based on my experience, that's not even hot air. Gelson's has long been a much better market than Ralphs, Vons or Albertsons. It will be interesting to see how much of their business they lose back to those other chains.

What I find sad is that the union seems to have caved to the old two-tier negotiating strategy. This is unfortunately common in labor relations. Management offers a devastating package of rollbacks and reduced benefits. The union panics and braces for a fight to the death. Then Management comes back and offers, in effect, "We'll let you keep most (not all) of what you have…but there will be no increases and you'll have to agree to a two-tier wage structure, meaning that new hires in the future will get stuck with the lower salaries and less health insurance." And the union, to save its current skin, accepts. I understand why after months of lockout and picketing, the union would take such terms but I think it's a shame. Given this country's "jobless recovery," this is not a good time for that class of labor, and I suspect it will get worse.

Jim Hanley, who runs the fine comic book emporiums known collectively as Jim Hanley's Universe reminds me that before February 29 was designated as Superman's birthday, it was said to be the birthday of Billy "Captain Marvel" Batson. Separated at birth?

My pal Andy Ihnatko seems to think I stole the notion of Live Oscar Blogging from him. Can he be so utterly unaware that Live Oscar Blogging goes back to the days of Edison? That it was all the rage back in the days of D.W. Griffith, back before the Internet had sound or color? Admittedly, before the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, Live Oscar Blogging mostly consisted of people posting, "I hope someone starts giving out an award called an Oscar some day," but the idea was there, at least.

Yeah, I guess I did steal the idea from Andy. So in return, I'll plug his page of Oscar predictions. They are all brilliantly picked and wisely deduced, except where they disagree with me since I'm right and he's wrong. Matter of fact, if the Academy presents the awards tonight except as I indicated, they're wrong, too.

I don't know if it's still the case but once upon a time, the folks at DC Comics in charge of Superman said that his birthday was February 29. I'm not sure how they arrived at that date. I mean, I assume the editors there picked it because it was unique but I'm not sure how they figured Superman knew that. His home planet blew up, taking all birth records with it…and of course, there was no February on Krypton, nor did it probably rotate at a speed that required the insertion of an extra day after four years.

So maybe that was the date on Earth the day he was born on Krypton…except how would anyone know this? Superman could conceivably have figured out just when Krypton went kablooey but how could he have known how many days or weeks before that date he was born? So I'm guessing that he adopted as his birthdate, the day his rocketship landed on Earth. And I'm not sure DC Comics still holds to that date but just in case they do, many happy returns, Man of Steel. Use that super-breath to blow out the candles.

This year, instead of pretending I have a clue about Best Editing or Sound, I'm limiting my forecasting to 19 races. Here is not who I want to see win but who I believe will win…

• Best Picture: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Best Director: Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Best Actor: Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
• Best Actress: Charlize Theron, Monster
• Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins, Mystic River
• Best Supporting Actress: Shohreh Aghdashloo, House of Sand and Fog
• Original Screenplay: Lost in Translation
• Adapted Screenplay: Mystic River
• Animated Feature: Finding Nemo
• Animated Short: Destino
• Foreign Feature: The Barbarian Invasions
• Documentary Feature: The Fog of War
• Art Direction: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Score: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Original Song: "Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," A Mighty Wind
• Costume Design: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Visual Effects: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Documentary Short: The Chernobyl Heart
• Live-Action Short: Two Soldiers

To be honest, it's a coin flip between Bill Murray and Sean Penn for Best Actor and a wild guess for Best Song. Five or six of the above are projections that all the seers of filmland say are a lock…and I'll predict that at least one of those "can't go any other way" predictions will be wrong. One always is. I'll also predict…

• A joke about gay marriage within the first five minutes.
• Billy Crystal either having a breast exposed a la Janet Jackson or doing it to someone else.
• A joke about Michael Moore being bound and gagged backstage by Teamsters.
• One reference by someone along the lines of, "I hated what Michael Moore said last year. Imagine thinking our president would lie to us about something as important as a war."
• One acceptance speech in which the winner will say, "This is not the place for a political speech" and then make a political speech.
• One really freaky, revealing outfit on a presenter or winner which will have everyone outraged the next day.
• And enough stuff about the recent deceased to make you think you're at a funeral. Or reading this website.

Other than that, I'll meet you back here at half-past Joan Rivers for Live Oscar Blogging! And remember: Formal attire only.

If you think you might not get enough Billy Crystal on the Oscars, you might want to set your TiVo or VCR tonight. NBC is scheduled to air the March 17, 1984 episode of Saturday Night Live in its overnight programming block, starting around 3:00 AM in most time zones. Crystal hosts and dominates the broadcast which includes musical guest Al Jarreau. As I recall, late in the show, Billy does a little monologue explaining why he didn't appear, as planned, on the first-ever episode of SNL.

Mr. Crystal is also developing a one-man show that will eventually play Broadway. It's trying out in La Jolla at the end of April and I may try to get down there to see it.

Over the years, MAD Magazine did so many parodies of Peanuts that Charles Schulz once wrote in to suggest that he could retire and let them take over his strip. Many of those parodies will soon be part of an exhibit at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. On March 20, the exhibit will kick off with an appearance and speech by Sergio Aragonés, who has been drawing for MAD since John Quincy Adams was president. Or maybe it just feels that way.

I don't know how many cable systems receive the Boomerang Network but it's happily available via satellite. Once or twice a day, I switch over to at random and usually catch a cartoon from the early years of Hanna-Barbera. I don't think it's just nostalgia for my youth that makes me enjoy those shows. They were cleverly written and the animation was often quite ingenious. I was also a devout student of Warner Brothers cartoons at age eight but I don't think I really noticed that the H-B cartoons contained a minute fraction of the drawings seen in a good Looney Tunes. It's amazing, watching an old Huckleberry Hound today, to see how much of the action takes place off-screen or is otherwise upcut. If Huck falls down, you never see him get up. That would have required actual animation. So they cut around that movement, implying it or having him "zip" to a standing position. As I watch a Quick Draw McGraw I remember from 1962, I am amazed at how much wasn't really there and was filled-in by my young imagination.

It's an amazing bit of sleight o' hand but Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had a powerful secret weapon that enabled them to pull it off: Superior voice work, most of it done by the great Daws Butler and a solid supporting cast. Daws was so expressive, so able to wring humor out of any words, that he supplied all the personality and style that was absent from the drawing. It's really a joy just to listen to him and to hear his frequent co-star, Don Messick, playing off him.

The schedules over on Boomerang are a little frenetic. I have rarely been able to track what comes on when, and even when you think you know, announced start times are highly approximate. There are very few commercials so what was once a 30-minute show no longer fills out a half-hour. As a result, they insert oddments and stray cartoons almost randomly between the announced programming. These sometimes cause the next scheduled show to start a little late. Lately in those "bonus" slots, I've caught a few nuggets from the 1967-68 Filmation series of Superman, Aquaman and other DC Comic characters. Again, I am now amazed at how cheap the animation appears but the scripts aren't as strong, the direction isn't as facile with its misdirection, and the voicework doesn't compensate for any of those shortcomings. On one level, it's fun to see them again but on another, it's disillusioning. I didn't recall those cartoons as being wonderful but I also didn't recall them being quite that chintzy.

Every day or so, someone sends me a link to a website on which they display cartooning or other creative work they've done. They are not, they say, getting any or enough work. Could I please look at their samples and tell them if they're wasting their time pursuing a career as a writer or artist? And of course, could I suggest anywhere they might sell some of their work?

To the latter, the answer is almost always no. I just don't know of very many places these days that are looking for writers or artists. Everyone I know who hires or buys at all has more submissions than they can handle. And of course, the fact that I might like the work doesn't mean anyone else will. So I usually wind up writing a reply that reads…well, like this one I just wrote to someone who sent me a link to a website that displays their cartooning that no one is buying…

There are two aspects to what you're asking me. One is whether the work is any good. I liked what I saw on your site very much but I'm afraid that doesn't mean a lot in terms of you selling it.

I know a lot of very talented artists who aren't getting much work, including many who once did. It's a sad fact of life that in a field like this, there are only so many openings. If a given company needs 10 good artists and 25 good artists apply, 15 good artists get turned away. Those 15 aren't necessarily doing anything wrong except to try and sell their wares in an oversaturated market.

I believe it's important in this world for everyone, even an artist, to have some measure of financial stability. Perhaps to attain it, you might have to modify your short-term goal. It may seem like giving up or being untrue to your muse to look to non-artistic sources of income, and you may even be able to tread water for a while longer. But the work of a creative individual flows in many ways from his or her life, and if that life involves constantly worrying about the Visa bill, that will eventually destroy something. To artists or writers living on the edge, I sometimes suggest finding something steady to pay the rent, getting a little cash in the bank and then perhaps returning to writing or drawing as time permits. Monetary desperation is just plain bad for the soul, especially when one gets beyond the "young beginner" stage of one's life.

I never tell anyone to give it up but I also never assure them that it's merely a matter of time before the world discovers the wonderment of what they create. The world isn't that perceptive and sometimes it isn't even a matter of talent but of the right talent in the right place at the right time. Persistence up to a point is an admirable quality but at some point, it can become a matter of investing too much of your future in a risky proposition.