Every few days, someone writes to ask if I still have a parade of cats, possums and raccoons coming to my back door every night. So here's a photo taken less than fifteen minutes ago. I'm told that a possum living in the city rarely has a life span of over eighteen months so this handsome fellow could be the great-great-great-great-grandson of the first critters I spotted out there nibbling on the cat food.
And now, I must get back to work. I have a lot of mouths to feed.
Jerry Lewis has a bad evening. It's all reported by Will Pfeifer over on his weblog.
Here's an example of why Keith Olbermann has become my favorite TV newsguy. You've probably all read about the revelation today that some senior official in the Bush administration "outed" Valerie Plame Wilson to super-reporter Bob Woodward before the time that Lewis "Scooter" Libby is alleged to have told another reporter about her. Almost all the news sources out there are quoting Libby's lawyer as saying…
[Woodward's] disclosure shows that Mr. Fitzgerald's statement at his press conference of October 28, 2005 that Mr. Libby was the first government official to tell a reporter about Mr. Wilson's wife was totally inaccurate.
Which would make Fitzgerald wrong if he'd actually said that. On the Countdown show today on MSNBC, Olbermann played the actual tape of Fitzgerald's statement at that press conference. And what Fitzgerald said was…
Mr. Libby was the first government official known to have told a reporter about Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife.
Not exactly the same thing. And this is the kind of thing reporters ought to catch. Every time anyone in the news misquotes someone or twists provable facts, the press ought to point that out instead of just letting it pass. Too many newspeople have just gotten into the habit of letting everyone have their say and not holding it to any standard of accuracy. That's not covering the news. It's just turning over your cameras and microphones to the newsmakers.
Dick Cheney, whose approval rating is two points below cold sores (but still a full point ahead of groin pulls) has joined the "If we were wrong, so was everyone else" crusade.
My thinking on this whole issue seems to be evolving to the following rule. I think we should get rid of everyone in government who thought Saddam Hussein possessed serious Weapons of Mass Destruction and either had a nuclear weapon or was close to getting one. Maybe these government officials were duplicitious. Maybe they were just gullible. I don't want either kind in any position of power.
There would be one exception to this. That would be if that government official can say "I was deceived" and — and this next part is crucial — is taking whatever steps they can to ferret out the deceivers and take the appropriate action against them.
Back in the Wacky World of Watergate, there was something Nixon did — or rather, that he didn't do — that caused a lot of people to think he was guilty of something. What he didn't do was to get mad at those who had broken the law. He complained a lot about the press and about the Democrats, both of whom wanted to get to the bottom of who'd dunnit. But he never pounded on the desk and yelled, "Damn it! This is the Law and Order Administration and we're going to find out who authorized these break-ins and no matter who they are, they're doing hard time for it!" In the same vein, a lot of people decided O.J. Simpson was guilty of that double murder because he only spoke (and rather unemotionally) about "finding the real killers" — and then only as a means of clearing his own name. He didn't shout, "I'm going to find the bastard who killed the mother of my children and make him pay for his sick crime!"
The current White House line seems to be admitting — or coming darn close to admitting — that the administration acted on bad intelligence. Okay, I think we all know that by now. I might be willing to believe that the Bush crew had no hand in the doctoring or slanting of that intelligence if I saw somebody high up in that crowd saying, "The President of the United States cannot conduct a war based on faulty information. We're going to find the people responsible for this, fire them and maybe prosecute them." Until they do, a lot of people (including myself) are going to believe that they don't do that because they know such an investigation would uncover massive fraud and/or incompetence where they don't want it uncovered.
I'm guessing that by Thanksgiving Day, Cheney will be a point below groin pulls…and giving leprosy a run for its money.
The Writers Guild, of which I am a 30 year member, is taking on the issue of Product Placement in movies and TV shows. This is not a new practice. It dates back at least to the 1949 Marx Brothers movie, Love Happy. Assuming you made it to the end of that gobbler, you may remember a chase scene near the end involving illuminated advertising signs. Legend has it that they were there because the producers were short of completion bucks. As the story is told, they sold plugs in the movie they wouldn't have been able to otherwise finish. There must be earlier examples.
The Guild has whipped up what they're calling a "white paper" on the practice to provide an overview. This page has a list of links to articles about it and here's a link to a PDF file of the white paper. And I don't know how effective it'll be in calling attention to the problem but they've also put up a webpage called Product Invasion where you can give commands to a subservient Donald Trump. Give it a try. It's pretty funny.
I just made a wrong turn at the Washington Post website and discovered Sudoku puzzles. If you're looking for a way to get nothing done for the next few hours, go try one. But don't come whining to me about how addictive they are.
Fred Kaplan is as mystified as I am about George W. Bush's new excuse about the pre-war intelligence.
That Penn and Teller special last night reminded me of some ongoing debates within the magic community having to do with ethics and misrepresentation. When a magician tells you that no camera tricks were employed in the taping of his show, that's supposed to mean that no camera tricks were used. But that same magician also told you that he put the three of diamonds in his pocket and he didn't. A lot of magic involves lying and getting you to think the trunk is empty when, in fact, the trunk contains three geese and two showgirls. Some in the magic biz have argued and continue to argue over which misrepresentations constitute lying and which are just acceptable parts of a trick.
Any magician on TV will tell you that no camera effects are used and that what you're seeing at home is exactly what you'd see if you were there live. But of course, there's plenty of wiggle room in that claim. All these shows are edited, especially when they do the big tricks. It really took thirty minutes to "vanish" the jumbo jet or the Empire State Building or whatever they made disappear. It may even have required two or three takes. All this is chopped down to five minutes and you are, in one sense, seeing just what you'd see if you were there. You just aren't seeing all of it because that would make the trick seem less spectacular and maybe even boring.
Is that a camera trick? Maybe.
And while you may be seeing what you'd see if you were there, you're also seeing what you'd see if your attention was as rigidly controlled as the camera's lens is on what they want you to see. If you were there and you looked slightly to the left or right, you'd see exactly how the trick was done. What makes it work is that you can't.
Another camera trick? You might say that.
Magicians, live and on TV, will often tell you that no confederates or audience "plants" are employed and sometimes, that's true. But sometimes, it's not. It's a running joke among magicians to wonder aloud how certain magicians can make any money when so much of their audience is on their payroll. Is it lying to bring up someone out of the audience and pretend they're not in on the trick when in fact, they are? Or is it like saying the trunk has no secret doors when it actually does? These are issues that magicians debate. Or should debate.
Throughout most of their special, Penn and Teller got around most questions of honesty by simply showing you how they did everything. Years ago, when a rogue magico was exposing tricks in a series of Fox TV specials, a lot of magicians cursed his name and/or reassured one another that it didn't matter; that the magic of magic was in the performance, not in the secret. With some presentations, it's both but in most cases, it doesn't ruin a trick because you know about the trap door. Heck, with some tricks, you can't fully appreciate how good the magician is or how much skill it takes to do what he's doing unless you know what he's really doing. It sure never ruined my enjoyment of a ventriloquist to be well aware that the dummy's voice was coming from the guy next to him with the quivering lips and forced smile. Penn and Teller are clever enough to do a two-hour magic show, expose all the tricks and still be entertaining.
And then at the end of their special, they pulled a super-reverse gag on the audience and on all of magic. If you didn't see it, let me summarize: The big finale, touted in ads and all through the special, was that they would make a full-size submarine disappear. Which they did. It was on the bottom of a lagoon, surrounded by scuba divers with underwater video cameras…and I guess the implication was that you at home were seeing what you'd see if you were one of those divers.
Penn kept saying over and over, "We're going to tell you how we did it" and just before they showed it, he admonished us that if we wanted to preserve the wonderment, we should close our eyes and look away. I'm guessing less than 1% of the viewership opted not to peek. If you looked, what you saw was this not-too-convincing CGI trick shot of three helicopters flying the submarine away on cables.
Much of America said, "Ah, of course, that's how it was done" but of course, that's not how it was done. (There are a couple ways they could have done it. I'm guessing they used the same method Copperfield used to vanish that airplane in one of his first specials.) Few people probably noticed the special effects footage didn't look all that real. Few people probably noticed that Penn initially described the sub as weighing eight tons and that he later added a syllable and it turned into eighty tons, which may have been a deliberate hint for the terribly-observant. Even the lesser weight would be quite a strain (and balancing act) for three helicopters, to say nothing of the fact that if the idea was just to raise the submarine vertically, it could have done that under its own power. Nothing in the special said that those divers couldn't or didn't look up. Come to think of it, nothing in the special even claimed that none of the divers were confederates who were in on the gag.
It was a great trick but it wasn't the one most viewers thought they were seeing. By showing us how all the earlier tricks were done, Penn and Teller had done what every good confidence man does: Gain our trust. Then once they had that, they tricked the home audience so well, most of it didn't even know it had been tricked.
You see? Even when you think you know how the trick is done, you too can be fooled.
Always fun to wake up in the morning and find out what you got wrong. An avalanche of mail this A.M. (more letters even than want to sell me Viagra) inform me that the special on the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live did come out on DVD. I apparently missed it because I checked on a DVD site by searching for the full name of the show and it was listed only as SNL: The First Five Years. It appears to contain about an hour of material that wasn't on the original telecast so I think I'll order one and take a peek. If you'd like to order one too, here's an Amazon link.
Some might call it sacrilegious but I've long thought that the classic "first five years" of Saturday Night Live weren't the only time that show was good. The years when the show was dominated by Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey were pretty good, too. So I found it interesting that near the close of last evening's special — Saturday Night Live in the 80's: Lost and Found — Lorne Michaels, who presided over both versions, came close to saying the same thing. It was almost like he was trying to say it without saying it, if you follow me.
Actually, the two-hour overview NBC aired Sunday evening was unsatisfying because it tried to cover so much. That meant only brief fragments of sketches and frustratingly short interviews with cast and crew members. So much went unsaid about the intervening years and little was included that hasn't been covered in past histories of the show.
It would have been nice to hear more than the standard line about how the show plunged to embarrassing lows when Jean Doumanian took over from Michaels as producer in 1980. I don't know Ms. Doumanian and can't defend the show she put on the air…but it always seemed to me like NBC stuck an unqualified person in an impossible job and then she somehow got all the blame for the resulting failure. No one could have delivered what they were expecting of her, which was a show that would debut, with a very short lead time, with something approximating the magic that everyone imagined the first regime had displayed. Plus, at the same time, she had to discover "The Next Chevy," "The Next Gilda" and other stars with spin-off potential. Others might have done a better job but I doubt anyone could have succeeded. Still, it's a compelling tale to note how others built back after that catastrophe.
Among other things missing from the two-hour special was any mention of the many variety acts and stand-ups that appeared on the show. Come to think of it, some pretty impressive hosts went unmentioned and I don't recall any reference to the show's political humor which got rather potent in some of those years. I seem to recall that when a similar special on the first five years aired some time ago, it was reported that there would be a DVD release of an expanded version letting many of the sketches and "talking heads" run longer. As far as I know, no such DVD ever materialized but it should have. And they really should do a longer version of the cursory overview that ran last night. There's a lot more of that story.
I think it's very nice that Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's legendary "nine old men" was honored this last week with the National Medal of Arts. But really…did someone say, "Hey, almost all of the greats of theatrical animation are dead. Maybe we'd better give this award to one of them while there's still time"? They started this award informally in 1983 and more formally in '85. They could have given it to Chuck Jones and Walter Lantz and Grim Natwick and four or five of the other Nine Old men. Ollie had to be sitting there thinking, "Why couldn't they have done this fourteen months ago when Frank [Thomas] was still around to receive it with me?"
Just finished watching the entire Penn and Teller special, including the first nine minutes. Maybe the most amazing feat was that they got a network to spring for a prime-time magic special. David Copperfield hasn't done one in a long time. Lance Burton stopped doing them. Those "World's Greatest Magic" spectaculars have vanished without magically reappearing in the rear of the house.
Specials in general aren't seen much anymore. Viewing patterns have changed and the current network thinking is that if you love a certain show, it's risky to preempt it for a week and put something in its place. There was a time when viewers were patient enough to wait for their faves but now they're more inclined to sample something else and perhaps fall in love with it. (This is not unrelated to why Leno and Letterman rarely air reruns older than a month or two. When Johnny Carson took a night off, he often ran a year-old program. Jay and Dave don't dare because, the thinking goes, the out-of-date references will make viewers think, "Old show. Let's see what else is on." And they may find something they like better.)
Penn and Teller: Off the Deep End was fun but a little long. I suspect that's just a matter of tight budgeting. Ten years ago, this would have been an hour special with a similar budget or higher. Today, networks are looking harder for the "bargain" license fee and they like their shows to either come in cheaper or fill more time for the same money. That probably explains why Penn and Teller are still in the TV special business when the other guys aren't. They aren't better magicians but they're cleverer and almost every trick has a concept and a story behind it…so they not only do the trick but they show you the set-up and later, they show you how they do it…and in this special, they even showed some of the rehearsals and screw-ups. Mr. Copperfield would rather show you his private parts than show you his rehearsals and screw-ups. He's the master when you have major bucks to spend but when money is tight, as it seems to be these days in prime-time television, Penn and Teller have the edge.
Okay, I'm going to go watch the Saturday Night Live special that followed. I may or may not be back.
I'm watching the satellite and it looks to me like Nascar coverage ran over and NBC just lopped off the first nine minutes of the Penn & Teller Special for the east coast. This kind of thing is among the many reasons the networks are losing market share. I can (presumably) watch the whole thing on the west coast feed but if I were on the opposite coast, I'd be pissed — especially since it wasn't that the race ran over. It was the post-race interviews.
I haven't written anything political here for a little while because every time I try, things quickly descend into the Painfully Obvious. Does anyone not know that Bush is in trouble? That the torture scandal is a no-win game for him? (For more on that, read John McCain, Larry C. Johnson and Frank Rich.)
I actually don't understand the logic behind Bush's new excuse about how Congress had the exact same intelligence and most of it voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Even if that's true — and I don't see Republican leaders racing to assure us it is — it's a pretty lame admission from a guy who claims that even if he'd had better info, he still would have done all the same things. I don't think even supporters of the war are comfy with the notion that the President of the United States and Congress operate off flawed intelligence, even if that somehow leads them to the proper course of action. They need to be reminded that bad information is always dangerous and that this administration doesn't seem all that upset about it.
But I also don't get why Democrats keep harping on this "lie" thing and saying he "misled us into war." Some people will buy that it was deliberate but others will write it off to good intentions and bad sources, and we shouldn't tolerate that, either. Seems to me, Democrats would be better off (and perhaps more accurate) saying, "Our Iraq policies have been a mixture of faulty intelligence, misleading intelligence, cherry-picked intelligence and intelligence slanted to justify what this administration already intended to do. It doesn't matter how much of this was done intentionally. None of these are acceptable, especially when sending Americans off to war." Then again, I also don't get why some of them — John Kerry, especially — aren't more careful about quotes that include the word, "intelligence." When politicians are out there saying, "We didn't have the intelligence" or "our intelligence was insufficient," you wonder if something Freudian isn't in the air.
By the way: I have now had TimeSelect, the new subscription service for the New York Times, for two months and I've yet to read an article there that I couldn't find for free elsewhere on the Internet. The Frank Rich column linked above is a good example. I don't think they're getting another fifty bucks out of me next year, especially since this year's fee is all going for Judith Miller's severance package.
John Cleese gets something named for him.