Monthly Archives: October 2005

First of all, I have nothing to do with these interviews I told you about. If they won't play on your computer, don't come running to me.

I've watched a few of them. The ones that have a good, well-informed interviewer are terrific but in some cases, the interviewer simply doesn't know enough about his subject. This leads to the interviewee being asked a lot of things he's answered many times before or things which are already on the public record. If you put a Carl Reiner mask on me, I think I could have answered about 80% of the questions Mr. Reiner is asked in his little oral history.

A tip for all interviewers: Don't ask your subject what he thinks of each of his friends and co-workers unless you have reason to believe the subject either has a great anecdote about a certain person or that they didn't like them. I can't take interviews that go like this…

INTERVIEWER: So, what was it like to work with Bette Davis?

INTERVIEWEE: Oh, she was so wonderful. What a professional. She was always on time and she always had a great big smile for everyone.

That kind of thing is boring and informs no one. Actors are supposed to be professional and to be on time. So don't even ask that kind of thing unless you suspect it might go like this…

INTERVIEWER: So, what was it like to work with Bette Davis?

INTERVIEWEE: A monster. One time, the stage manager went to get her and he found her shooting crystal meth in her dressing room. She kneed him in the groin and stuck a shiv in his thorax. The cops came and took her away and they had to bring in some drag queen to impersonate her for the rest of the picture.

You see? That's the kind of thing people want to hear…or at least something of more substance than, "Oh, he was great to work with." People in show business say that about everyone, including the people it wasn't great to work with.

Okay, enough for tonight. I'm going to bed. I'm not expecting any indictments tomorrow morning when I wake up. I'm becoming convinced it's like Waiting for Godot except less coherent. The Special Prosecutor is going to empanel another grand jury and then another and another, and for the rest of our lives, we'll be hearing that indicts are imminent. It will go well past the year 2100, by which time we'll have Bushes who aren't even born yet in the White House and the White Sox might (might!) win the World Series again. Good night.

Political cartoonist Mike Luckovich does an amazing piece of work. Make sure you click on the PDF link to see it enlarged.

I am about to cost some of you a helluva lot of time. I mean like many, many hours of your life.

For some years now, the Archive of American Television has been videotaping oral histories of important people in the field of TV. They've logged thousands of hours of these interviews and now they're making them available on the Internet, over on the Google Video site. Hundreds are already posted with more to come. Wanna watch several hours of Joe Barbera being interrogated by Leonard Maltin? It's there. What's more, the interviews seem to be raw, unedited footage with false starts, delays, technical errors and everything included for those of you who like that kind of thing.

This page tells about the project but the best way to find these interviews and watch 'em seems to be to go to the Google Video page and do this search. Most of the interviews seem to be in several parts and in some cases, they seem to have not posted all the parts yet. For example, right now they have Part 5 and Part 6 of their Dick Van Dyke interview up but not the earlier pieces. More uploads, as I mentioned, are promised.

Here, just to get you started, are a couple of more direct links…

• Carl Reiner (eight parts)
• Sid Caesar (six parts)
• Buffalo Bob Smith (six parts)
• Dick Clark (three parts)
• Joe Barbera (seven parts, one of which doesn't seem to be up yet)
• James Garner (six parts)
• Florence Henderson (ten parts!!!)

Before you emotionally commit to any of this, remember that some of these interviews run more than four hours and there's a load of dull, repetitive material in them…but there's also a ton of show biz history so go exploring. I've just barely started my browsing so I'm not certain what's in some of them.

Here's an example of the kind of thing our public discourse could do without…

A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday. In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year. Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.

Great! All the Democrats have to do is figure out how to get a presidential election held this year. They also have to make sure they run an unnamed candidate because the minute they select someone, that person is no longer "the Democratic candidate." Instead, that person becomes Hillary or Al Gore or Howard Dean or someone else with a history and a paper trail and traits that the opposition can attack.

Really, I'm no fan of George W. Bush. I think he's been a terrible president. But a poll such as this one is full of "if"s as to be way below worthless. Perhaps the pollsters could try telling us something that relates in some way to reality. They could at least indict someone.

The Allan Sherman collection, My Son, the Box, is much cheaper over at Barnes & Noble. At the moment, it's $111.98 if you're not a member of their book club, $100.78 if you are…and that's with free shipping. (It costs $25 a year to belong to their book club so this might be a good time to join.) Here's a link to the page.

This site (i.e., the one you're reading at the moment) is not a member of the Barnes & Noble affiliate club, meaning we don't get a commission (like we do with Amazon orders) if you go there via our site and buy stuff. We could have set this up for Barnes & Noble too but the last time we looked, their affiliate links involved putting a little tracking cookie on your system that we decided qualified as spyware. We object to that…ergo, no affiliate links to Barnes & Noble. If you are grateful that we don't allow that kind of thing on this site — and that we may save you up to thirty bucks on this purchase — feel free to show your appreciation with a PayPal tip.

Lost in the celebration today of the 35th anniversary of Doonesbury is the fact that 35 years ago, another strip started. Momma was the second newspaper strip of Mell Lazarus, who had previously done Miss Peach…and continued to do it, along with Momma, until 2002.

(Quick Aside: I'd love it if someone would reprint large quantities of Miss Peach. The strip never ran in any Los Angeles newspaper…or at least, no L.A. paper that came into my home. In 1961, I glommed onto a paperback collection of it when the Scholastic Book Club did one of its classroom book-hustlings, and it was hilarious…one of the dozen-or-so newspaper strips that ever made me laugh out loud. But for a long time, that was about all I saw of Miss Peach. I think I have all the subsequent collections and I've still only seen about 1% of all the ones Mell did. I'm sure there must be plenty of others as funny as the ones in those books.)

Mell forgives me that I never liked Momma quite as much as Miss Peach since I seem to be pretty much alone in this viewpoint. Maybe it's because my own mother was and is so unlike Sonja Hobbes, for which I will be ever grateful. But I have always enjoyed Momma. A few years ago, I wrote a short animated sequence of the strip — June Foray did Momma's voice — that was done for a TV project that never aired. Before I did it, I sat down with a pile of Momma strips, figuring I'd read a few weeks' worth just to get a feel for the characters. I got hooked and spent hours reading the whole stack, which was about five years worth. Good stuff. I'm not surprised it's been around as long as it has.

While you're waiting for your Allan Sherman CD set, you probably have nothing else to listen to. So I'll mention that over at Comic Geek Speak, they have a new podcast episode up…an interview with Yours Truly all about comics and the folks I've met who write and draw them. The whole show runs a little over 90 minutes but it's not all me.

It is now possible to pre-order copies of the Allan Sherman set, My Son, the Box. What's more, you can go to this page on the Rhino Handmade site and see a complete track listing and hear audio samples.

If you're going to order: The Rhino Handmade site will sell it to you for $119.98 plus tax and maybe postage. (They have a free shipping option but I suspect it means they put it on the back of a tortoise pointed vaguely in the direction of your mailbox.) The whole thing will run about $139 by the time you're done. The Amazon listing, which I've been keeping my eye on, has changed prices three times in the last week and has also (now) decided the item is available for "free super saver shipping." It's (now) $139 without getting into tax. If you'd still rather order from Amazon, here's that link. Otherwise, go to the above-linked Rhino Handmade site and get yours there.

The list of what's included seems very complete, including a few things I can't believe the lawyers were able to clear. The folks who now control the Lerner and Loewe catalog have always been pretty fierce about not allowing parody lyrics to their songs, especially from My Fair Lady. Back when Mr. Sherman was trying to get started, he recorded his highly-Jewish version of that score and was adamantly denied permission to release it so it's been available since only in eighth-generation bootlegs. Yet here it is, about to get a real, professional, above-ground release.

I haven't yet had the time to study the list and see if any notable Sherman gems have been omitted. We seem to have the full contents of all his WB albums. (His one RCA album is out as a separate CD. You can order it here.) We have lots of pieces and extras, plus the two records he did for private advertising concerns — one for Dixie Cups, one for Encron Carpets. I'll try to figure out what's not in this set and post a report shortly. Even as it is, this is a joyous gift to fans of Allan Sherman. It's almost as good as indictments.

I remember when Doonesbury first hit newsprint, 35 years ago today. A friend of mine — an aspiring cartoonist — reacted in utter horror. "G.B. Trudeau," whoever he or she was, had to be the offspring of some powerful syndication exec who had decided to put his kid's inept doodles into print. And that exec must have had powerful blackmail evidence against the editor of the Los Angeles Times because that paper could not possibly have bought the thing on its merits. In later years, I would hear other cartoonists rail against the injustice of a coveted slot going to someone who, any fool could plainly see, was not a "real" cartoonist.

It turned out, of course, that Doonesbury became a smashing success — in my view, the most important strip of its era. It took a while for Trudeau's drawing to come close to catching up with his writing, but it was always worth reading. I even liked it when its politics stood in stark contrast to my own. (Those who think Trudeau only skewers the right haven't read him very closely.) As I wrote in this article, it always struck me as not only a funny strip but also a very courageous one.

Here's a link to a speech by Mr. Trudeau and one to a press release by his syndicate. Here's a little interview, as well. I hope it's around for 35 more.

CNN is now saying "no indictments expected today." Stop toying with my emotions, CNN.

Actually, all the news sources I just scanned are saying, in effect, "Indictments are not expected today unless Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald decides to release them. He's expected to announce them tomorrow unless he chooses not to, because the Grand Jury expires on Friday unless he decides to extend it — and oh, by the way, he could also take his case to a new Grand Jury." It all reminds me of a weatherman we once had on Los Angeles TV who'd practically say, "No rain is expected unless, of course, clouds roll in and water starts falling from the sky."

Newsman Jack Germond once said, approximately, "The trouble with news coverage is that we're not paid to say 'I don't know,' so we have to say we know even when we don't."

Even worse than the lack of any indictments — and remember, I'll settle for the indictment of anyone of any political stripe — is that we've hit 2,001 military deaths in Iraq. It's chilling because that number says so much and yet says so little. There's no measure in it of how many soldiers have been maimed or scarred for life, no measure of how many deaths have occurred in Iraq of both insurgents and totally innocent people. There are estimates out there but they vary wildly.

Of course, it's silly to place much emphasis on round numbers in something like this. Death #2000 was only worse than Death #1999 because it was one more. #2002 will be worse than #2001 in the same way. And to the people who knew and loved the fallen soldier, it won't be Death #2002. It'll be the death of Fred or Mike or Bob or whoever it is. That's another way in which the raw number is insufficient. It makes you forget those are people, not objects to be tallied and counted.

If we believe this poll, 53% of all Americans now believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake as opposed to only 34% who believe it was the right move. I wonder if the folks in the 34% would have voted for this war if we'd all been able to vote and if we'd known how long it would last and how many deaths it would mean.

Keith Olbermann gets all the top newsmakers on his show. (Actual, unmodified screen grab)

Elmo, that lovable Muppet from Sesame Street, has been arrested for begging on Hollywood Boulevard.

Here's a nice little display of all the covers of MAD Magazine in an unusual way. Thanks to Mike Everleth for calling it to my attention.

Everyone's promising me indictments tomorrow but some are cautioning they may be secret indictments. Okay, fine. I'll settle for secret indictments just so long as we know all about them. I almost can't wait to wake up and find out not only who's been indicted but which side will be calling Patrick Fitzgerald an irresponsible partisan.

Sure looks like it. A lot of you have written me to say, "Be not disheartened. Wednesday looks like it'll bring indictments. Or maybe Thursday." Yeah, yeah. That's how it always is. Tomorrow. And then tomorrow, it'll be tomorrow.

Some of you have also written that the indictments, when they come, will be explosive and worth the wait. I think you're missing the point here. I don't care who's indicted or how close they are to Dick Cheney. I just want someone indicted, preferably many someones. The more, the merrier.

I'm giving them until the end of the week. If I don't see some indictments by Friday, I start indicting. In fact, I'll start by indicting all the people who were supposed to issue indictments and let me down. Then I'll go after people I've mentioned on this website. Nathan Lane? I'll indict him. Charles Lane? Indicted. In fact, I may just indict everyone in the country named Lane. Allan Sherman? So what if he's dead? I can still indict him. I'll also be indicting everyone who has never clicked on one of my "give money to the website" banners like this one…

That's right…I can be bribed. And if you think that's wrong, what are you going to do about it? Indict me? Ha!