Monthly Archives: December 2004

I haven't read one since I was about eight but I recall enjoying the Little Dot comic books. The character was reportedly created by writer-artist Vic Herman and debuted, looking somewhat different than she later did, as a back-up feature in Harvey's Sad Sack comic book. Later, she was redesigned by Warren Kremer, who was the archetype artist for Harvey Comics, and she got her own book…and two of her back-up features, Little Lotta and Richie Rich, also graduated to stardom. It was a fun comic…but I never thought about it in quite the same way that my pal Mike Gold is thinking about it over on his weblog.

If you think back, The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended with a cute reversal of logic: Everyone was fired from WJM News except the guy who was truly, undeniably incompetent…Ted Baxter.

You get the feeling the same pattern's at work with the Bush Cabinet? Get rid of everybody except Rumsfeld…

And here's an article by John W. Dean about the red state/blue state way of looking at America. Personally, I think the whole county is just purple mountain's majesty.

Google News gathers up and displays news headlines from all over the Internet. Sometimes, this doesn't work.

Andrew Sullivan offers an interesting look at the notion that the so-called "red states" have higher values than the blue ones.

Every year at a site called ICQ Friendship, they post an animated online "greeting card" starring Santa Claus and his reindeer. I don't know who animates them but they're very clever and charming. Two years ago, they presented this one. Last year, they added this one. And I just noticed they've put this year's card up on the site. Happy Clicking.

Here's Frank Rich's latest, which is about the attempts of network news to appeal to the "Nascar" sensibility.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it enables you to "meet" a lot of folks you previously knew only as names. I long ago discovered a series of terrific books by a gent named David Feldman. They all have different titles but they're part of a series he calls "Imponderables," meaning a question about something that's right in front of us all but which we cannot understand. Dave collects such questions and, amazingly, answers them. It's a cliché to say of a book that once you start reading it, you can't put it down…but it applies with his volumes.

Thanks to the wonderful worldwide web, I now exchange the occasional e-mail with Dave and one of these days, when we find ourselves on the same coast, we're going to have lunch or whatever meal seems applicable. This will give him the chance to research an important Imponderable, which is why it is that when two writers eat together, neither one will pick up the check. In the meantime, here's a link to his website where you can buy his books and read his weblog.

Dahlia Lithwick discusses the penalty phase of the Scott Peterson case. The case still doesn't interest me but the way in which we decide about the Death Penalty does, and this piece raises some important points.

The other day, animation maven Jerry Beck told me that the old, vacated F.A.O. Schwarz space in The Grove is currently housing — though only until the end of the year — the first Turner Classic Movies store. The Grove is the new upscale shopping mall appended to the wonderful Farmers Market tourist attraction here in Los Angeles, not far from where I reside. In fact, it's so close that I walked over there today to lunch and check out the TCM shop.

Interesting place. It's one of those stores where you get the idea that no one thought they'd make a profit…or even not lose a bundle, but they had some reason for opening it, anyway. There isn't even that much for sale — some film books, a lot of stuff with the TCM logo, etc. Most of it is a mini-museum with about a dozen costumes and props from Casablanca, A Star is Born and other films that run often on the cable channel. I guess what they're selling is the idea of a retail Turner Classic Movies store and if this one draws enough attention and walkthroughs, they'll get serious about opening more and developing products for them. (I'm also guessing they got a bargain price on the huge retail space, only part of which they're using, because no one else wanted it for the rest of this year.)

One of the exhibits there now is a denim shirt and work pants supposedly worn by Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. I'm always a little suspicious of such claims…and not just because it seems quite possible for someone to take an old piece of clothing and claim that so-and-so wore it in such-and-such a film. There's also the fact that most key wardrobe for a movie is produced in multiple lots. If the star needs to wear a tux, especially in a role that requires physical action, the wardrobe folks will have four or five duplicate tuxedoes, plus two or three for the stand-ins and stunt people. Not long ago on eBay, someone was auctioning off what they claimed were the pants my friend Carl Gottlieb wore in the movie, M*A*S*H. I alerted Carl and he wound up buying them from the guy who won the auction…and it turned out, they were pants he'd never worn. They were from the right costumer and they had a real "Carl Gottlieb" label sewn into them. But Carl concluded they were "back-up" trousers — an extra pair that the wardrobe folks had at the ready, just in case he needed them. They never adorned his torso and they never appeared in the movie…and of course, the seller had no way of knowing that.

How can you authenticate such things? For years — it may still be there, for all I know — a memorabilia store in Las Vegas was selling what they claimed was one of Frank Sinatra's toupees. How could you prove this? Even when Frank was alive, you couldn't exactly go to him and say, "Hey, Blue Eyes! This your old rug?" I'm sure most stars couldn't even recognize their old wardrobe items…or hair.

So — a couple was looking at the alleged Cool Hand Luke work clothes and I heard the woman say, of the figure on which the outfit was displayed, "Ohhh…how I envy that mannequin." The guy she was with asked why and she said, "I would give anything to get into Paul Newman's pants."

A very gay black guy who also overheard her leaned over and said, "Get in line, get in line!"

Anyway, that's the Turner Classic Movies store. It's there until New Year's Eve and if you're over at The Grove, you might want to take a peek inside. But don't make a special trip because there isn't that much to see, apart from one pair of exciting pants.

You're a beloved favorite of children the world over. Once upon a time, you had your own show on NBC and kids loved you. And while you've appeared many places since — including on a show that I wrote — and your show still turns up in syndication and on DVD, the jobs occur with less and less frequency. And now, at long last, it's come to this: They're selling you on eBay.

The Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 50,540 libraries in 84 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. At least, that's what it says on their website, from which I cut-and-pasted the preceding sentence.

Recently, they did a survey to identify the 1000 books that are most often owned by their member libraries. Various editions of the National Census ranked first, The Bible ranked second, Mother Goose was third, Divine Comedy was fourth, Homer's Odyssey was fifth, etc. All of the books that ranked high on the list are either reports (like the Census) or books written by long-deceased authors. They're also all books that have been published in multiple printings for decades or longer by multiple publishers. There have, for example, been hundreds of different editions of Tom Sawyer from different publishers so it's not surprising that it came in at #17, which is still very high on the list.

And then you get to #18.

#18 is the highest-ranked book on the list that was created by someone who's still alive and who produced a book that comes from only one publisher in one edition. In fact, you have to go all the way down the list to #80, past many of the major works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Poe, to find another book of which that could be said…and then it's quite a drop down to the next book written by someone who's still alive. (You will also notice that all the books in the top ranks that are by living authors would be found on the same shelf in any bookstore.)

So what is #18 that places so high on this list, well ahead of books so esteemed that they made you read them in school? I think I'll let you look for yourself. Scroll down slowly until you come to it.

(And while you're over there, you might also check out their list of books that have been banned over the years. Notice how closely it parallels the list of books that libraries felt were important enough to stock.)

Something I just found out: Three of the Buster Keaton MGM films that Turner Classic Movies is running in their Keatonfest next week (the best three, happily) are about to be released in a DVD set which also includes the documentary I mentioned and a bunch of other extras. So those of you who don't get TCM and/or love Buster Keaton can purchase them…and of course, I'll make it easy for you by supplying one of these neato links via which you buy it from Amazon and I get a tiny percentage of what you spend. The set is supposed to be out December 7, the same day Turner is running their Keaton tribute, so I guess there's some connection or cross-promotion there. (Thanks to the ever-vigilant Gary Sassaman for the tip.)

Also, I just noticed that TCM is running The General on Sunday evening, December 12. The General is not only the best movie Keaton made, it's one of the best movies anyone has ever made. If you haven't seen it, see it. If you have seen it, see it again. If you've seen it again…okay, you can go do something else.

Tuesday, December 7, Turner Classic Movies is saluting Buster Keaton by airing seven of his films and a new documentary entitled So Funny It Hurt. Both the documentary and the films they've chosen to air direct our attention to Buster's years at MGM when he made the transition from silent pictures to sound, from having control over his movies to not having control, from being a working comedian to being an unemployable alcoholic and from being a top box office star to something very close to a charity case. They're running one film from the earlier period when he had his own studio — a very funny short called The Balloonatic.

Then they have most of the early films he made for MGM after his studio was dissolved, starting with The Cameraman, which turned out to be the last Keaton movie up to his old standard. It starts the TCM presentation and then, since they're running the following in the order produced, you can watch the sad decline of perhaps America's greatest solo comedian: Spite Marriage is followed by Free and Easy, which is followed by Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, which is followed by The Passionate Plumber and What! No Beer?

Then, for some reason, they're running The Balloonatic at the end, out of sequence, perhaps to remind you that the co-star of What! No Beer? was once a great clown. (Here's a page with the whole listing and some good facts, photos and even some brief video clips.)

It will be interesting to see to what extent the documentary — which airs twice during the above marathon — faults the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio for Keaton's quick decline into failure. The company was not wholly to blame, perhaps not even primarily to blame. Buster already had a self-destructive tendency to drink too much and sleep with all the wrong people, and a lot of folks who were very funny in silent films never quite mastered talkies.

Still, the studio seems to have dealt with his problems by exerting controls that made things worse, and the films he was in went pretty much in that direction. (Oddly enough, TCM is skipping over Doughboys, the one Keaton movie in this period that briefly reversed the downslide.) Ultimately, the story of Keaton in the thirties is a sad one, and there's very little about it that's funny. The same could be said, by the way, of What! No Beer? You might want to give that one a pass.