You'll need to be able to listen to MP3 files to play along. Here's a brief excerpt from a song that Annette Funicello recorded back when people were letting Annette Funicello make records. Does this song sound familiar to you? Where else might you have heard it? Answer later today…
Michael Jackson must be in trouble. He has Geraldo Rivera on his side.
Rivera was a guest the other night with Leno, plugging his weekend exclusive interview with The King of Pop and telling us that Michael is innocent and will be proven so in a court of law. He actually had a nice, civil debate with Jay…almost the kind of thing you wish would occur on shows like Crossfire or Hannity and Colmes, and I guess it's what prompted me to TiVo and watch At Large With Geraldo Rivera yesterday afternoon. Can you say, "Big waste of time"? The singer was under a gag order that limited what he could say, so it was mostly him repeating how much his family loves him and Rivera courting the interviewee's favor by saying over and over how unfair the accusations are.
The closest thing to news in the whole tawdry hour was that Michael said, as I believe he also did in a video on his website, that he will never again place himself in a position where he can get into the kind of mess he's in. Geraldo later informed us — in an attempt to claim a scoop where none seemed to exist — that this was an announcement from Jackson that he will never again invite children to his Neverland Ranch. Well, maybe it was…but it would have been nice if Rivera had explained whether this was just something he assumed Michael was trying to say, or if Jackson or some spokesperson told him that was what it meant.
I'm annoyed that I let myself get roped into watching this. I more or less vowed not to follow this trial (see here), in part because I don't see it leading to an actual resolution. Either he'll be found guilty and there will be the strong suggestion that he was railroaded because of his celebrity, or he'll be found not guilty and there will be the strong suggestion that he did it but bought his way out with a high-priced legal team. Or I suppose there's a third possibility, which is some sort of plea bargain and settlement, though that looks unlikely. No matter what, the outcome will raise more questions than it settles.
The one thing I got out of the Geraldo interview was a sense that Jackson still doesn't believe that he brought most of this on himself. That's even if he didn't actually molest the kid in question…and I'm willing to believe that's at least possible. But when you pay off one molestation claim to the tune of (reportedly) 20 million bucks and then go on TV and talk about the joys of letting small children share your bed…well, you shouldn't be in shock that folks think you're a pedophile.
For decades now, Jackson has had absolute control of his immediate world, which is peopled with those who tell him exactly what he wants to hear. This was especially true when he was cranking out those million-selling albums that made everyone around him very wealthy. Now, he's not quite the cash-yielding ATM he once was, and events are forcing him to more and more confront the judgments of those who aren't on his payroll. I guess it's a little hard to adjust.
Geraldo's insistence on Jackson's innocence seems to be based in large part on his conclusion that the parents of the allegedly-molested boy are looking for a big payoff. They went, he told us several times, to a civil lawyer — the same one who wrangled the $20 million check — before they even went to the police. As proof, I don't find that too definitive. Among other possible interpretations, the boy could have been violated and the parents could have uncorked champagne and yelled, "Whoopee! Our ship has come in!"
If I were going to follow this case — and I'm not, after I finish writing this — I'd like to hear some actual rebuttal of charges. In any case, I'm glad someone's taking Michael's side, though I'm not sure Geraldo isn't helping him the way you help a drowning man by throwing him an anchor. For one thing, it doesn't do him a lot of good to have his only interview broadcast with the words "AT LARGE" supered over his image.
Still, Rivera delivered a good speech about not judging people without hearing all the evidence. I thought that was nice. And it would have been even nicer if he'd felt that way back when his broadcasts were airing every bit of dirt anyone could find on Gary Condit.
Michael Kinsley has been thinking about what George W. Bush is thinking about.
My buddy Mike Peters made me laugh out loud with this installment of his fabbo newspaper strip, Mother Goose & Grimm. Browse his whole site by going here, and don't miss his latest editorial cartoons.
No one has yet sent me a list of what's on Volume III of the Garfield and Friends DVD series. But they've sent it to this site.
Somewhere in there, you'll see an episode called "Mistakes Will Happen." If you're ever writing a show like this and you want to really go over budget and create all sorts of production problems, trying doing a cartoon where you deliberately insert drawing and animation errors. We actually had to have things done over because they'd done them right.
Frank Rich on decency standards in the U.S. and the folks who insist that theirs be yours.
There's a new theory making the rounds that Deep Throat, the legendary source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, was none other than George Herbert Walker Bush, the former president. The argument for this sounds flimsy, though I suppose it's possible. Pat Buchanan and Henry Kissinger, who are also sometimes mentioned, are in the same category to me. They're possible…but I sense the speculators are grasping too hard for it to be a "name" revelation — someone we've all heard about — rather than some little-known FBI agent or White House clerk. It seems more likely to me that when the day comes that Deep Throat's identity is revealed — supposedly, the day after he dies — those who've followed this matter are going to be awfully disappointed. It'll feel like one of those too-cute murder mysteries that thinks it's clever to reveal the killer's identity at the end and have it be someone who didn't appear before in the scenario, yuk yuk. We all hate that and I think we're going to hate it when Woodward's famous parking lot buddy is exposed.
The thing I find intriguing about the whole matter is how many smart, important men — top journalists, folks who've had important jobs in our government — have put their investigative powers to work on the riddle and come up with different names. Which means that most of them are dead wrong. John W. Dean, who is by no means a dumb guy, has named (I think) four different people. That means he's been wrong three, maybe all four times. Men who were close to Richard Nixon have collectively named maybe twenty, including each other, in a lot of logical, carefully-reasoned decisions that were as wrong as wrong can be. I wonder if Woodward, when he puts together some story that involves major deductions on his part, ever pauses to wonder: "Gee, I'm utterly confident in my conclusions…but so are all those smart men who think they know who Deep Throat is but are wrong. Maybe I'd better not be too sure…"
Got four minutes to hear a funny phone call? George Noory does a radio show about bizarre subjects, and I don't listen to it but my friend Carolyn sometimes does. Over on his webpage, he has the audio to a message that someone left on an answering machine and…well, like I said. If you've got four minutes, go over there and click on the link that says "Funny Phone Call."
Time for a theater review. The Reprise! series here in L.A. is doing Pippin, the 1972 Broadway show which starred Bob Fosse's staging. The story has something to do with the son of King Charlemagne, Pippin by name, who tries to find some meaning in life via various means. He tries study and war and drugs and since this is a Bob Fosse musical, he tries sex a number of different ways. Mostly, he tries singing "Corner of the Sky" every eight minutes. His life, as it evolves, is told by a nimble narrator character called Leading Player who was originally played by Ben Vereen, and who in this production is played by Sam Harris. As near as I can tell, what you have is Harris playing Vereen playing the Leading Player who plays God and Bob Fosse, not necessarily in that order. (Pippin is played by a gent named Michael Arden, who I never saw before but he's awfully good. Most of the cast is awfully good, especially Conrad John Schuck as King Charlemagne and Mimi Hines in a brief star turn as Pippin's Grandma.)
So did I like it? Yeah, some of it. But there was an awful lot I didn't like, most of it in the second act when Pippin's rather simple-minded quest to do something "extraordinary" with his life seems to ramble and move in contrived directions. By the last twenty minutes, I was squirming in my seat and wishing someone would just tell Pippin to grow up, then bring Mimi Hines out to do her wonderful number from Act One again.
As far as I can tell, my problems with it were with the basic play, not with this expert production of it, which was directed by Gordon Hunt. Gordon, who I used to work with at Hanna-Barbera, did something more extraordinary than poor Pippin ever achieves, just by getting this show up and running and looking as polished as it does, all in the limited rehearsal time of a Reprise! staging. I guess I admired everything about the show but the show, itself.
This weekend in the overnight slot, NBC is scheduled to rerun the 4/22/78 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Steve Martin. This is the one often cited as "the best episode ever" of the series. I don't know if it's that or not, but it does include an opening with the Blues Brothers (introduced by Paul Shaffer playing Don Kirschner), Martin singing "King Tut," a sketch with the Czech brothers, the "Dancing in the Dark" dance with Gilda Radner and Mr. Martin, and a few other gems of note.
This early A.M. time slot provides a rare opportunity to see old episodes of SNL in their original, 90-minute lengths. The show's rerun package, currently airing over on the E! Network, trims out the weakest material to bring each program down to an hour. Sometimes, this involved the omission of some real treasures.
And sometimes not. Lately, they've been reaching back to the classic "first five years" and reairing episodes that were nominated for the Emmy Award. Last week, it was one hosted by Candice Bergen; the week before, Eric Idle. Though they were well worth TiVoing and watching at a decent hour, I have to admit that they weren't as wonderful as I'd recalled — not as funny, not as professional. Maybe the one this weekend will be otherwise. It airs some time between Saturday night and Sunday morning…beginning at 3:01 AM on my set, but consult your TV listing to make certain.
My old pal Joe Brancatelli informs us which airlines and airports have the best and worst track records, which ones are most likely to lose your luggage, and other things you might like to know.
Another comment on the 60 Minutes Wednesday story about Stan Lee. This one's in the Nashville City Paper.
The obits for actor John Vernon, who died last Tuesday, all note how deliciously hateful he was as Dean "Double Secret Probation" Wormer in National Lampoon's Animal House. They also note how he had many, many other roles in movies and TV, both in this country and in his native Canada. But only here will we remind you that he was among the voice actors in the 1966 Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons (the ones that didn't move very much). He played, I believe, Iron Man and Sub-Mariner, as well as The Hulk's nemesis, General Thunderbolt Ross, and other villains. He performed in more recent cartoon shows, as well, including re-creating the role of Ross in the most recent Hulk cartoon series. Not a big part of his long, fruitful career but it oughta be mentioned.
For a few weeks now on his show, Jay Leno has been having celebrities autograph a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle to be auctioned off on eBay, with all proceeds going to aid Tsunami victims. I dunno if I think this is a nice gesture or a publicity stunt but bidding just closed, and $800,100 is going to help some folks who could really use it. That's not a bad thing. I thought the last minutes of bidding were rather interesting…
That's quite a jump — more than half a million clams — in just a few minutes. One assumes these guys were using "sniping" software to enter rapid bids but still, it had to be quite a frantic contest. Imagine bidding $800,000 at the absolute last second but losing to a guy who simultaneously bid $800,100. I've been known to get nervous when I was bidding five more bucks to try and win an old Freberg record.
I have no idea who "steinerdwm" is but I did a search and noticed that his or her past eBay purchases have mostly been for paintings, the most expensive of which went for $305. So this is probably a bit of an extravagance. It must have been the Dr. Phil signature that made it all seem worth it.
If you're in or around Los Angeles, you might be interested in this: Sunday afternoon at 5 PM, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is running a 70mm print of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'm guessing this is the same print that the American Cinematheque group screened at the Egyptian Theater in December of '02. (The American Cinematheque group manages and I think owns the Aero.)
No guests or speeches have been announced…but the night before, the Aero is running Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machine, with director Ken Annikin in attendance. I'd go if I wasn't so burdened with deadlines.
The Aero, in case you don't know, is one of the oldest movie theaters in the Southland that is still operational. For a decade or three there, we kept hearing of plans to close it down and open three new Starbucks on the premises, but then film buffs would howl, common sense would prevail and the place would remain open. Happily, the American Cinematheque acquisition has put an end to that cycle, at least for now. It's a great old theater and beyond its history as a place to see movies, it also has a decent one as a place where movies are shot. Those deadlines prevent me from compiling a long list of them right now, though a scene in Get Shorty comes to mind. So here's a Note 2 Self: Keep an eye on this theater's calendar.
