Monthly Archives: November 2005

My TiVo keeps grabbing Three Stooges episodes from Spike TV, especially those that feature Shemp Howard or Joe Besser in the coveted post of Third Stooge. Every now and then, it'll get a Curly but it's mostly Shemp and Joe. (If you are woefully unfamiliar with the lineage of Stooge Membership, I covered it here.) Among Stooge buffs, the consensus seems to be that Curly was the undisputed greatest of all Stooges and that Shemp was a barely-acceptable substitute and then, only because of his bloodline. And Joe Besser was the pits, bettered slightly when "Curly Joe" DeRita happened along. In some Stooge circles, if you express a contrary opinion, you're likely to have someone poke you in the eyes, run a saw over the top of your head and slap you silly. At one point, I felt that way.

But as I occasionally watch the Stooge epics my TiVo collects, I'm struck by how much I've come to like Shemp and Joe. The lower quality of the films that featured them may simply have been a matter of money. Year after year as the Stooges made two-reel comedies for Columbia, there was less of a market for two-reel comedies and therefore, the increasing necessity to make them cheaper. Many were out-and-out cheats where the producers took an old Stooges short and shot a few new scenes, then edited them in and passed the result off as a different film. This saved enough cash to enable them to do other films that weren't mostly footage from earlier pictures…but even those look like they were shot on 8mm in someone's garage.

I wasn't conscious of the lowering of production values when I was a tot. That's because back then, they all looked cheap. In the sixties in Los Angeles, Channel 11 ran Stooge films, often hosted by a gent named Don Lamond who happened to be Larry Fine's son-in-law. The show he ran fluctuated constantly in length and time slot. It would be a half-hour a day for a few months, then they'd cancel something else and make it an hour for a while. Then they'd move it later and cut it back to a half-hour. Then they'd move it again, make it an hour and stick some cartoons in it. TV Guide never knew what time it was on and neither did those of us who wanted to watch. About three times a year, Lamond would have Moe, Larry and Curly Joe live in the studio where they'd plug Stooge merchandise and admonish the kiddos at home not to try the things they did in their films.

Most of the Stooges shorts originally ran between 17 and 19 minutes and you'd think one of them, plus commercials and Mr. Lamond's hosting, would nicely fill out a half-hour of TV time. Channel 11 didn't see it that way. When the program was a half-hour, they always chopped the films down to get in two. If they had an hour to fill, they'd run four or sometimes three plus an unrelated cartoon. This rendered most of the Stooge films pretty far from coherent. In many cases, the editors didn't put a lot of thought into the cutdown. If six minutes had to come out, they'd often just chop out the first six minutes after the titles. The films didn't have much in the way of plot but whatever they had, they had in the first scene or two. In some cases, I suspect, scenes were lopped out because Channel 11's prints were simply falling apart, and there was at least one instance when they got pieces of two separate films confused. The action suddenly cut from Moe, Larry and Shemp running a tailor shop to Moe, Larry and Curly drilling for oil…or something like that. Between the scheduling and the editing, it felt like the Stooges were not only in the films but running the station, as well.

I was always curious why they didn't just run one Stooge film per half-hour and I came up with two possible reasons. One was just to keep things moving faster. The competition was running 6-minute Bugs Bunny cartoons and the Channel 11 execs may have felt the need to approximate that pace and to give the kids two stories per half-hour. The other reason was that they had all those Shemp and Joe shorts, and someone there may have wanted to prune things down so they could get a Curly into every show. They did run them in a completely random order which usually resulted in one Curly plus one non-Curly episode. Every so often, by sheer chance, the two films that shared a half-hour would include some of the same footage or one would be a remake of the other.

What this all meant was that my introduction to the Stooges was via the worst possible presentation of their work. I don't know how old I was when I finally saw shorts that were uncut and had all the scenes in the proper sequence. When that happened, I began to realize that the problem with the Shemp and Joe shorts wasn't Shemp and Joe. They just weren't good films and wouldn't have been much better with Curly. Given their paucity of opportunities for physical comedy, they might have been worse. Shemp and Joe were funnier than Moe and Larry when they had nothing to work with.

The films run relatively uncut on Spike TV, a channel which sometimes defines itself (see previous posting) as "entertainment to inspire men." I'm not sure the Stooges should be inspiring any man over about the age of nine but given some of the other things on that channel, you could find worse role models.

As we predicted some time ago, the Trio cable channel is going out of business. Well, actually it's going to become a "Broadband only" channel which, these days, is almost the same thing. This happens at the end of the year, which is when Universal (which owns Trio) is launching Sleuth, a channel that will be running detective and suspense shows 24 hours a day. So if your cable company is losing Trio, it may slot that in its place. No word yet on whether Sleuth will make it onto DirecTV.

Trio had some wonderful programs but it lacked an identity. I think it may be that people these days expect their cable channels to have a clear mission statement that can be summarized in five words or less — "all game shows" (GSN) or "all comedy shows" (Comedy Central) or "all snooty, slightly-gay programming" (Bravo). I don't know how you'd go about explaining to people what to expect if they subscribed to Trio. Maybe "Lots of esoteric programming with an emphasis on things that got cancelled." But that's more than five words.

Two posts ago, I mentioned that Kevin Drum was my favorite political blogger. And nine posts ago, I mentioned that I didn't know who had started the Internet tradition of Friday Cat Blogging. Turns out 'twas Kevin Drum who, back in March of '03, started the weblog tradition of capping each week with a photo of a pussycat.

You learn something new every day.

One of my little crusades is to have hotels simplify (and not try to make as much money off of) high-speed Internet access in your room. A fee of $9.95 for 24 hours of access seems to be becoming the norm but there are variations. A reader of this site who for some reason wishes to remain anonymous writes…

Here's the new scam. It says you get access for $9.95 a day but what they either don't tell you or tell you only in tiny print is that the day stops at check-out time even if you're not checking out that day. Let's say checkout time at the hotel is Noon. At 12 sharp, everyone's Internet access is the next day. If you first log on at 11:30 AM, then you're paying the $9.95 for that half hour and you have to pay another $9.95 after Noon even if you're only on for five minutes. You could wind up paying $20 for five minutes of Internet connectivity if it started at 11:57 AM. At the last hotel where I stayed, I found four days of Internet access billed on my credit card even though I'd only been at the hotel for three days. The problem was that I'd checked in and accessed the Internet before Noon. When I argued that I shouldn't be charged for four days of Internet service on a three day hotel stay, they erased one day of charges but still this kind of thing should not be tried, especially when their website said "$9.95 per 24 hours."

Good point. I notice that some hotels — particularly the kind that are not likely to attract business travellers on expense accounts — seem to be offering free in-room high speed web connects. Sure would be nice if this became the norm. $9.95 is okay if you're going to be doing some serious web browsing but what if you just want to check your e-mail and maybe the weather forecast for five minutes? I wonder if there are any stats on how much of that 24 hours the average hotel guest uses when he buys a full day of Internet access. I'm guessing not a lot.

Tim Rutten in the L.A. Times discusses what's wrong with the way Bob Woodward's been practicing journalism lately. And my favorite political blogger, Kevin Drum, expands on what Rutten said.

Veteran character actor Harold J. Stone died Friday at the age of 92. Here's a link to the L.A. Times obit.

I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Stone for a week on Welcome Back, Kotter about three decades ago. (The story of how he was cast is in this article I wrote.) He was a true professional and a fine gentleman.

One day that week, while the rest of the cast was rehearsing a scene that did not include him, I found myself sitting in the reception area with Mr. Stone, talking about what he'd been doing lately. For the most part, it was performing around the country in productions of either Norman, Is That You?, Come Blow Your Horn or — less often — Don't Drink the Water. They were all plays in which he portrayed a Jewish father who was upset about his son's lifestyle…which is pretty much what we had him playing that week on Welcome Back, Kotter. Stone said he was frustrated that he kept being cast as essentially the same character but very grateful that he always seemed to be working. In earlier years, he'd played a pretty wide range of ethnicities and a lot of treacherous villain roles. Lately though, it had all been Disapproving Dads. He said his favorite TV job of all time had been playing the magazine editor, patterned loosely on the New Yorker's Harold Ross, on My World and Welcome to It. There's a series someone ought to release on DVD or at least put on some cable channel.

As we were talking, the receptionist was flipping through channels on a muted TV, looking for something to have on, and I spotted X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes — a low-budget 1963 horror film in which Stone played a doctor. "Stop there and turn on the sound," I yelled — and the timing couldn't have been better. Thirty seconds later, Harold J. Stone was on the screen warning Ray Milland that if he continued to experiment with an x-ray vision formula, it could have dire consequences.

Next to me on the couch, the real Harold J. Stone alternately chuckled and cringed. It wasn't a bad movie but his scene was pretty awful. It ended with him crashing through a window and plunging to his death. Sitting there in the reception area, Mr. Stone said, "I guess I was lucky. I didn't have to be in the rest of the movie."

Here's a link to his Internet Movie Database listing which, like most Internet Movie Database listings, is hardly complete, especially with regard to television guest star appearances. Even as is, it includes roles on 159 TV episodes including just about every major dramatic or comedy series filmed in Los Angeles for thirty years. It also lists around three dozen movies, including several with Jerry Lewis. Jerry wasn't dumb. He knew how good Harold J. Stone could be.

Throughout the seventies and eighties, and well into the nineties, I was a frequent customer of Aron's Records, following them from one location to another as they got larger and larger. The first two were on Melrose Avenue, across from Fairfax High School, opened by a gent named Manny Aron who (I think) I sometimes chatted with. We never exchanged names but he acted like he owned the place.

This was the first Aron's Records, which was about the size of a box of Raisinets. By around 1973, the place had became so crowded with customers that you often had to wait outside on the sidewalk for someone to leave before you could go in and elbow your way to a bin. I learned to go at odd hours and unless I simply couldn't physically browse enough of the store, I always went home with a pile of cheap used LPs and promo copies. That was one of the big features of Aron's and one of its secrets. People in the music business were always receiving free review copies of new albums and they'd bring them in to Aron's to trade. I don't think I ever went in without seeing someone hauling in a pile of records to swap for store credit.

As I said, by '73 the space problem became impossible. The guy I think was Manny was always telling customers that he had thousands of used albums stashed in nearby garages and warehouses. He just had too many to display in the store…so he got a bigger store. He moved one block east to one that was about five times the size. The space he vacated was soon occupied by a new comic book shop called Golden Apple run by a gentleman in the record business named Bill Liebowitz. The real estate must have been lucky because Bill was soon having the same problems of space and he wound up moving one block east to a large storefront next to the new Aron's.

Golden Apple is still there but in 1990, Aron's moved into an even bigger space over on Highland Avenue. And soon it will close. In fact, it's currently having its big closeout sale.

Not that I'm typical of anything in this world but I'm probably part of the cause. I rarely buy CDs in stores these days and I hadn't set foot in Aron's since about 1995. I'm told that the rare items they come across are more likely to be sold on eBay than in the shop. There just aren't the warm bodies coming in like before as more and more of us purchase on the Internet and download music. A large outlet of Amoeba Music, which takes old CDs in trade, recently opened not far from Aron's and I suspect that has not helped their customer traffic, either. A lot of folks seem to think Amoeba has become what Aron's used to be, and that it's friendlier and offering a better selection.

A while back, I wrote about how used book stores were going the way of the Passenger Pigeon. And I had to admit that while I loved going into them, once upon a time, I hadn't been to one in years. Same thing with old record shops and even the independent sellers of new CDs. It's becoming a world where things like books and CDs are sold primarily on the Internet and the few physical stores are primarily large chains. Something about this bothers me but I have to admit that I'm as culpable as anyone of contributing to the change. I can't expect stores to stay open just because I once liked going in but would now rather make my purchases sitting here at my computer.

The late Jack Benny always claimed to be 39 years old. The U.S. Postal Service is about to raise the price of first-class postage to 39 cents. Don't you think there ought to be a 39-cent Jack Benny stamp? Of course there should be a 39-cent Jack Benny stamp. It goes without saying that there should be a 39-cent Jack Benny stamp and it doesn't have to look like the little fake one I whipped up in about two minutes of Photoshopping.

So stop reading this weblog and go add your name to this online petition.

(Don't let the fact that you're asked for your e-mail address stop you from doing that or anything. A lot of folks are afraid to give out theirs for fear they'll be bombarded with Nigerian scams, loan offers and Cialis bargains. Easy way to avoid it: Get a Junk Mail Address. Go to Hotmail or Yahoo or some other free online e-mail service and sign up for some e-mail address you will use whenever a site asks you to sign up or enter that info. You can check out that mailbox every month or three or when you sign up somewhere that asks you to validate your address by responding to one e-mail. It can never affect your regular e-mail account in any way.)

UPDATE, a half hour later: Yes, I know there was a Jack Benny stamp in 1991, part of a set drawn by Al Hirschfeld of famous comedians. So what? There have been eight million stamps with George Washington on them and he wasn't even all that funny. There can be another of Benny.

Longtime Hollywood columnist Army Archerd is no longer writing several times a week for Variety but he is doing a weblog on the trade paper's website. Here's a recent entry about Ralph Edwards that expands on the story I told here about how Angie Dickinson refused to be the subject of an episode of This Is Your Life.

And of course, you routinely check out the fine weblog about comics that my friend Tom McLean does for Variety.

Last night, I linked to a blog entry about an encounter between Jerry Lewis and some protesters. Rogers Cadenhead digs a little deeper into the matter.

I don't know where the tradition started but a lot of weblogs can't let a Friday pass without hurling a cat picture at you. I took this one about a week ago in my backyard. We have two stray cats who are nearly identical except that one is not shy about demanding to be fed and the other is very timid. So the gutsy cat howls until I fill the dish with Friskies, eats some and then turns the bowl over to the timid cat. It is highly unlikely I will ever get a photo of both of them together so you'll have to settle for some pics of the bold one. I'll post another next Friday if I remember. Then maybe you'll see this cat's lovely face.

I am told by my secret spies that the just-taped Tonight Show — the one that airs this evening — is quite wonderful with Jerry Seinfeld delivering a very strong stand-up spot on weddings. Also on the bill is the great Shelley Berman. You might want to set the TiVo. And if you don't have a TiVo, you might want to run out, buy one and set it.

One other thought just popped into the airy open space of my mind, and I thought I'd throw it out here in case anyone else wants to ponder it. The Bush Administration is currently wrestling with two related scandals. One is the whole matter of who leaked the CIA status of Valerie Plame Wilson. The other is the question of whether the White House hyped, manipulated, lied or otherwise misrepresented intelligence on behalf of their Iraq war plans. Both scandals may ultimately have innocent resolutions but at the moment, they're crippling the administration's ability to make the case for "staying the course" in Iraq.

Bush isn't doing press conferences because, among other questions he'd rather avoid, he doesn't want to be asked if in light of recent revelations, he's going to make good on earlier pledges to dismiss anyone — Karl Rove, say — who was involved in the outing of Ms. Plame. Cheney doesn't want to be asked if he told Scooter Libby or Bob Woodward or anyone else. Neither prez nor veep wants to have reporters throw some earlier quotes at them to defend, like Cheney's line about Saddam reconstituing his nuclear weapons program. Two years ago, newsfolks didn't press such matters. Today, some would.

If there's a case to be made for continuing the current course in Iraq, it's not being made in the most effective manner, which would be Bush or Cheney fielding questions in a real give-and-take venue. They can't do that because of all these questions they don't wish to face. And when they make speeches about Iraq, as both have lately, the headlines and sound bites are all about their defense of pre-war intelligence handling and their attacks on their critics. Nothing about why pressing on in Iraq is a good idea.

If anyone can point me to a good article that does make the case, I'd like to read and link to it. I don't buy the argument that we have to press on because we'll look like Surrender Monkeys if we pull out. (If you buy that premise, there's no such thing as a war plan we shouldn't see through to its conclusion, no matter what it costs us.) I don't buy that Democracy is imminent in Iraq and that it's worth any amount of American lives and dollars to see that happen. I especially don't buy that it will dishonor those who have fallen to change the plan that's getting their fellow soldiers killed. But I suspect there is a better case for Bush's approach than we've been getting lately and I'd like to hear what it is.

End of political ramblings for now. The next five postings, whatever they turn out to be, will all be about show business and comic books and raccoons in my yard. You know…the stuff that really matters.

This morning, Congressguy John Murtha (D-PA) gave an emotional speech in which he called for the immediate pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq. Murtha is a Democrat but he's also a highly-decorated veteran with a history of supporting U.S. military action, so his position is not something that can be dismissed lightly. If nothing else, he provides a certain amount of moral cover for those who've backed the war in the past and wish to quietly move away from that position. Here's a link to the text of what he said and here's a link to a partial video.

Yesterday, I posted here that I thought the Bush strategy on how to defend itself against charges of lying was not an effective one. For some reason, about a dozen correspondents read that piece as if I'd written, "We must surrender in Iraq and admit we were wrong to ever think that Saddam Hussein had to go." I don't believe any part of that. Truth to tell, I don't know what to do about Iraq and we should all be glad I don't have to decide. I just think what's going on there now is a disaster with no light at the end of any proverbial tunnel and that we have to do something other than what we're doing. That a guy like Murtha thinks we oughta withdraw (a.s.a.p.) is worthy of attention. It hasn't completely convinced me but I'll bet it'll convince another 1-2% of the American people. And that, in turn, will convince a few more members of Congress who are up for re-election next year.

The other day, I put up a birthday salute to Jonathan Winters. A number of people have written or told me that when they saw it, their first thought was, "Oh, no! Jonathan Winters died!" Sorry that you jumped to that conclusion and, yes, I know this site does run a lot of obits. I guess I need to acknowledge the living more often. Either that or title such pieces something like, "Jonathan Winters Still Alive!"

Which reminds me: I'm way overdue to check in and see if Abe Vigoda is still alive…

Yep. Abe's still hanging in there. If you view your Internet through the browser called Foxfire, it is possible to download an extension (add-on) that will monitor Mr. Vigoda's status.

A couple of folks have written to ask when I'll post some stories about TV producer-host Ralph Edwards, who passed away the other day at the age of either 91 or 92, depending on which obit you read. None come to mind at the moment beyond what I posted last year in this article. I only met Mr. Edwards once and all we talked about was the memorable time Laurel and Hardy appeared, quite against their will, on his show, This Is Your Life. It still ranks as one of the great uncomfortable half-hours in television history. If I think of anything else worth posting, it'll be up here.