Fowl Headlines

I swear I didn't retouch this in any way. It's up on the CNN website at the moment (here) and I thought at first I'd made a wrong click and wound up at The Onion. In case you don't get it, the "quack" story is about how some are saying Bush is becoming a lame duck president. That's bad enough but to put it next to a story about Bird Flu…

You know, it can be dangerous to quack around the White House. You might get shot by Dick Cheney.

Recommended Reading

I often read The Huffington Post but I hadn't realized until the other day that my friend Bob Elisberg is now among their gaggle of pundits. He has three columns up so far and I can recommend them all to you. Here's a link to his page there.

Commercial Ventures

The other day, we were talking here about product placement, where some company pays to have its product displayed in a scene in a TV show or movie. Michael A. Burstein clues me in to this website, which is for a company that digitally inserts products into such material as part of sponsored placement deals.

As I've been been saying for years, I'm waiting for the day they can digitally take George Lazenby out of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and replace him with Sean Connery. Oh — and while you're at it, I'd like Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly, Angela Lansbury in Mame, Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, Peter Sellers in every Pink Panther movie that didn't have Peter Sellers, and W.C. Fields in the title role of The Wizard of Oz. Somebody get right on these.

Want Your Very Own Bill Clinton?

Here's an auction you might not want to miss. I can already hear Star Trek fans emptying their bank accounts. (Thanks to Rowby Goren for calling it to my attention.)

Briefly Noted…

This website reports that a study released by the Motion Picture Association of America says that last year's box office receipts were down 7.9% from the year before. This website reports that the ratings on last Sunday's Academy Awards telecast were down 8% from the year before. Anyone think this is a coincidence?

Recommended Reading

Terry Jones (of Python fame) says he's lost faith in Tony Blair.

Speaking of Mr. Jones, if you haven't visited his website, you've missed out on some nice articles and commentaries, including this interview.

Fine Books

A couple of times in the seventies, I trucked out to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills to visit Larry Fine, the oft-mauled "middle" member of the Three Stooges. Larry was recovering from a stroke and he welcomed company and a chance to tell his anecdotes, of which he had about a dozen. No matter what you asked him, he told you the same twelve stories. In fact, the second time I was there, he told me one yarn three times. The question everyone apparently put to him was "Did you ever get injured making those movies?" and he'd developed a little five minute monologue/reply that you'd hear if you asked him what time it was.

He also introduced me to other old actors who were living out there, most notably a woman named Babe London who was "the fat girl" in countless films, including some with Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy. Ms. London was thrilled that I knew who she was and she'd try to hijack my visits with Larry, diverting the conversation to her dozen anecdotes, which Larry was thoroughly sick of hearing. So I'd just sit there while she tried to tell me for the third time about being falsely accused of having an affair with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle while Larry would impatiently wait for her to finish so he could tell me for the fifth time about him getting a quill pen stuck in his forehead in one film.

Neither of them was much good for history beyond the little collection of oft-told tales. When I got to speak, which wasn't often, I'd ask something like, "What was Charley Chase like?" And since neither Babe nor Larry had a good Charley Chase story, they'd both say, "He was great." And then Babe would quickly start telling me the Fatty Arbuckle story again while Larry would try to interrupt and tell me one more time about the quill pen. Or if I asked something that actually did jog either's memory, it would suddenly turn into a scene from The Sunshine Boys…

"We had this prop man at Columbia named Tommy Blake…"

"Tommy Blake didn't work for Columbia. He was over at Republic."

"Like hell he was. I used to see him every time I drove on the lot at Columbia and I'd always say, 'Hi, Tommy!'"

"Well, I don't know who you were saying hello to at Columbia because Tommy Blake was at Republic. That's where I said hi to him."

"When did you ever work for Republic?"

In 1973, Larry's autobiography was published. It was called A Stroke of Luck and it's very rare these days. I once turned down $500 for my copy of what may well be the worst-written celebrity autobiography ever. Its other two distinctions are that (a) it probably holds the world's record for the most typographical errors ever in one volume and (b) you rarely see anyone unintentionally get so many of the details of his own life wrong.

I'll tell you how bad it is. If it was about someone else, you'd read a few pages of it and say, "Who wrote this? One of the Three Stooges?"

What's really odd about it is that as per its title, the book tries to view the story of Larry's stroke — the one that put him in a hospital for the rest of his life and took away his ability to walk — as a good thing. I can certainly understand trying to put a positive spin on bad news and can admire the tenacity involved in living with it and overcoming as much of it as can be overcome. But the book is so clumsily authored that at times, it's like Larry's saying, "Thank God I had that stroke…best thing that ever happened to me…you oughta try it."

The book is Larry's autobiography and it's written in the first person, as if by him. But the cover says "by James Carone" on it and there's an author photo of Mr. Carone on the back of the dust jacket. I don't know who Mr. Carone is or was, other than that he seemed to believe that you should never write eight words in a row without inserting at least four commas in there someplace. He even invented a whole new kind of punctuation where you put two or three commas in a row. But he took down Larry's memories and somehow managed to pry more than the usual twelve stories out of him. I suppose we should be grateful that he got as much history as he did out of the Center Stooge. Certainly, a lot of later books about the Stooges have unearthed a couple of true details of Larry's life buried somewhere amidst the errors and commas of Stroke of Luck.

There was a later biography of Larry (entitled simply Larry) by his brother, Morris "Moe" Feinberg, that compensated some for the shortcomings of Larry's book. And now, two very good authors — Stephen Cox and Jim Terry — have written a new book that I'm looking forward to. It's called One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures and it looks quite well researched and exhaustive. We just may have that definitive Larry Fine biography we've all been waiting for.

Before I leave this topic, I feel like I should include one other memory. I mention it elsewhere on this site but one of the oddest things I ever saw on television was on the local CBS News the evening after Larry died. They hurried a camera crew over to Moe's house to get his reaction and Moe — big surprise — was just devastated. He was crying and having trouble forming words as he talked about Larry and said, "He was like a brother to me…I loved him so…he was my best friend…" And as he spoke, they cut to old footage of Moe breaking pottery over his best friend's head, running a saw across his best friend's scalp and ripping large handfuls of hair out of his best friend's skull. Now, that's friendship.

Video of a Cat and a Chicken

Here's a link to a video of a cat and a chicken. Go there if you'd like to see a video of a cat and a chicken. This is for those of you who like videos of a cat and a chicken.

My thanks to Carolyn Kelly for calling my attention to the video of the cat and a chicken. I've always wanted to link to a video of a cat and a chicken. Now, I can.

TiVo News

Our friends at TiVo have announced "narrower fourth quarter losses," which I guess is a good sign, though not as good as actually showing a profit some day might be. They've also announced a new pricing structure which would basically give you your TiVo box for free if you committed to a long-term service contract. You can do the math on this yourself and see how good a deal this is. Of greatest interest is the statement that they're doing away with the lifetime price of $299…which I guess you have to do if you want people to pay $369 for a two-year contract.

The way it worked was that you'd buy your TiVo machine and then if you paid $299, you'd have lifetime service on that machine for as long as it still ran. This was not only a good deal, it was an incentive to keep that TiVo machine up and operating as long as possible instead of purchasing a new one. When my office TiVo seemed to be wearing out, I took it to these people and they installed a new hard disk — two, actually — and extended the lifetime of the machine with lifetime service. If the option of lifetime service on a new TiVo is going away, that may make me really try to keep this one going. It may also make some people want to sign up for it in a hurry, though many may not; not with the new Series 3 TiVo machines promised for later this year.

Also, TiVo has announced a new arrangement with Verizon where if you're a Verizon subscriber, you'll be able to program your TiVo from your cell phone. This article will tell you more about it, though it omits the fact that this service will cost five bucks a month.

Ad Aware

The Writers Guild of America, of which I am a loyal but oft-bewildered member, is on a campaign against product placement in TV shows and movies. To that end, they've been producing a number of parody videos that illuminate the problem. You might want to visit the website they've set up to tackle this, see the videos and read up on it. I personally think the WGA has more pressing concerns but I do agree that people should be made aware of how many commercials they're getting shoved down their gullets…and often in more subtle ways than they imagine.

Snoopy Shrine

Here's a nice article on Jeannie Schulz, widow of Charles, who now manages his legacy and a very lovely museum up in Santa Rosa.

My pal Sergio and I went there a few years ago and got the grand tour, including Jeannie taking us across the street and showing us the skating rink, which I loved. I also liked the fact that in the Schulz Museum, there are Peanuts strips printed on the tiles that ring the men's room. You're not supposed to take photos inside the building but I was alone in there.

Mainly though, I enjoyed meeting Jeannie. Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and all the rest couldn't be in better hands.

Shelf Esteem

I'm not sure who's had a harder time of it lately: The northern spotted owl or the independent bookseller. Both seem to be teetering on the brink of extinction.

Non-chain bookstores have had a one-two punch. A few years ago, big chains like Crown Books and Brentano's began doing to them what Walmarts do to the neighborhood mom-and-pop businesses in many a town. More recently, online booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have siphoned off enough business to cause book shop after book shop to close down and be replaced by a Starbucks or a Kinko's.

And now, Dutton's Books on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood is closing. Dutton's offered a glorious selection of new and used books for 45 years there. They're currently having a 50% off sale on their remaining stock and when it's depleted, which should be around the end of this month, Davis Dutton is shutting the door, moving his family to another state and doing his bookselling on the Internet. The Dutton's stores in Beverly Hills and Brentwood, managed by other family members, will remain in business…but the one on Laurel Canyon was the most wonderful clutter of books and interesting patrons. I never went in there without finding a book I wanted to buy and running into someone I wanted to talk to.

It was also a gutsy store, dedicated solidly to the right of authors to write and have their books sold. When Iran issued a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, Dutton and his staff posed for a photo that ran in The Los Angeles Times. It showed them selling the book and the accompanying story said they would continue to do so, no matter what. It was also a store that loved to host author signings, no matter what the book, no matter how small the potential turnout. A writer friend of mine was once unable to get his publisher to set up any events. He picked up the phone, called Dutton's and they immediately agreed to a signing party.

I feel guilty that places like this are going away. I rarely go into bookstores since Amazon is just so easy. But I should…before any more of them disappear. We all should.

Recommended Reading

Gore Vidal is one of those people I don't always agree with. I sometimes quite disagree with him, in fact. But I always find him interesting to read or to listen to. Here's part one of an interview with him and when you finish with that, here's part two.