Monthly Archives: March 2006

As noted, I'm very interested in the pro-Iraq War arguments, especially those that don't spring from a "Bush doesn't make mistakes" demagogy. My request for links has brought me this article by Christopher Hitchens, this piece by Fouad Ajami, this article by Victor Davis Hanson and this weblog by Bill Roggio. What I mainly notice is that most of these explain why the goal is or was proper and even if the execution has been horribly botched, we have to "stay the course" because if we did it right, it would be well worth doing. I suspect that will become the position of more and more hawks who can't deal with the way things are going over there and over here.

Yesterday afternoon, I came as close as I ever have to killing another human being…and the guy wasn't even an inept TV producer. At least, I don't think he was. He looked to be about twenty and he was riding a shiny new motorcycle on Third Street, darting down an imaginary lane that he thought existed between the real ones in which I and many other folks were driving. He was ducking and weaving and when he abruptly pulled in front of me, I had to brake and steer madly to the right to avoid getting his innards all over my hood. I came within about four pixels of crashing into him or someone else.

Two blocks down, I stopped for a traffic light and the kid was next to me, gunning the engine on what I think was a brand new Kawasaki. I yelled to him, "That's not a smart way to ride" — and I guess he didn't hear me because his response was, "Today's my birthday." Or maybe he did hear me and expected me to say, "Oh, it's your birthday. Then by all means, drive like an idiot!" Before I could say anything else to him, the light turned green and a nanosecond later, he was doing sixty down the boulevard, zig-zagging between Hummers and Hondas.

I don't know what it is lately but everyone's driving like they're desperate to get on The World's Wildest Police Videos. Maybe it's the proliferation of Starbucks outlets. I gave up caffeine about a month ago and since then, it seems like the whole world is a silent movie projected on a sound projector. Everyone and everything is about eight frames per second too fast. If it were up to me, those electric signs on the freeway wouldn't be displaying fraudulent estimates of how long it'll take you to get somewhere. They'd just flash in big letters, WHAT'S THE HURRY, BUB?

It's a lesson we all need to learn — especially that kid on the Kawasaki. I don't know if that cycle was the best birthday present he's ever received…but I have a feeling it'll be his last.

All this talk about What's My Line? reminds me that I should alert my friends in the Los Angeles area: Tomorrow (Wednesday) night at the Acme Comedy Theater in Hollywood, you can see the wonderful What's My Line? Live show — four witty panelists, a fine host, a lovely hostess, a great musician, three contestants and one Mystery Guest. None of them are the people in the above photo but that's only because the people in the photo are all dead. If they were still with us, they'd be proud to participate in this faithful and funny re-creation of the original series.

You can go tomorrow night or you can go next Wednesday night…but after that, the show's taking a hiatus. So you might want to go before that happens. It's a lot of fun and the details are all here.

Not long ago here — in this post, to be exact — we were talking about the famous Abbott and Costello comedy routine, "Who's on First?" So today, I'm linking to a six minute version of it that they did on (I think) The Colgate Comedy Hour. Looks like that's where it's from.

Anyway, one of the things I find interesting about watching those two guys at work is that Bud Abbott's contribution goes so unnoticed. Everyone thought Lou Costello was the guy who did all the heavy lifting in that team and that Abbott was getting an enormous free ride. But you can see it in this clip if you watch carefully: It's Abbott who's running things. Costello is getting the laughs and pulling focus and it's all about him…but Bud's the one who keeps driving the routine forward. A couple of times, Costello bobbles the words and Abbott is right there to get things back on script.

In burlesque and vaudeville, it was traditional for the straight man in a comedy act to get paid more than the comic. Part of that was because the straight man was usually expected to dress well and to do other emcee duties…but part of it was because it was recognized that he had the harder job. When Abbott and Costello teamed, that's how it was — Bud got 60%, Lou got 40% — and it stayed that way 'til they got big and Costello insisted on a change. Thereafter, the percentages were reversed. This was probably fair in the sense that audiences loved Costello and were generally indifferent to Abbott…but appearances can be deceiving. The more I watch Abbott and Costello, more conscious I am that Abbott contributed just as much to their performances.

Before we get to our film presentation, I need to mention something. The other day here, I told you a way to capture the video clips that are embedded on this site and others, and suggested you might want to do this because clips sometimes get removed from the web. Well, that's happened with the Tom Lehrer video I linked to a week ago last Friday. If you notice that any of the other embedded videos here go dead, let me know so I can remove the link.

Okay, that's all I wanted to say. Take it away, Bud and Lou…

Looking ahead at GSN's reruns of ancient What's My Line? episodes: I just told you what's on Tuesday morning. Wednesday morning, the Mystery Guest is the legendary movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. Thursday morning, it's Gordon and Sheila MacRae and one of the contestants is a hot dog vendor named Mike Kilkenny. Mr. Kilkenny later stopped selling franks at ball parks and started playing…for the Detroit Tigers and a couple of other teams.

Friday morn, they should be airing an episode with Melina Mercouri as the Mystery Guest and Victor Borge on the panel. The episode was notable because at one point, an intruder walked out on the stage — this was live television, remember — and started delivering a commercial for a dating service. He was quickly removed and turned over to the police who reportedly had trouble figuring out what crime he could be prosecuted for. In his book about the show, producer Gil Fates noted that it was not against the law to deliver a commercial on television.

Saturday morning, the Mystery Guest is Joan Crawford. Sunday morning, it's Robert Ryan and Nanette Fabray. Next Monday morning, it's Tony Martin. And then next Tuesday morning — and I'm going this far into the future so I can mention this — it's Robert Goulet, but the show also features as Mystery Guests, the cast of Beyond the Fringe. Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore were then playing New York. So there's a nice bit of history.

The What's My Line? episode that airs on GSN tonight — actually, tomorrow morning — features among its contestants a woman named Joanna Lee. Ms. Lee was a writer of sitcoms beginning in the sixties and she was among the writers of The Flintstones. She wasn't the first woman to ever write for animation but she may have been the second. (The first may have been Barbara Chain, who wrote for Crusader Rabbit and Mr. Magoo.)

Paul Krugman writes about what he called "Bogus Bush Bashing," meaning erroneous criticisms of the guy in the White House. Those of you still on Bush's side won't like this column any more than the ones that just criticize the guy.

Before I forget: The other day, I asked for suggestions of sites that presented the history of the Iraq War with a "things are going well" viewpoint. I've only received three nominations, all of which were to subscription-only sites that I can't read, let alone link to. One person did offer the thought that I'd already linked to one with the Donald Rumsfeld article I recommended last Saturday. If nothing better comes along, that may have to do.

Fred Kaplan discusses some of the things that went wrong in Iraq.

Greg Preston is a photographer and comics enthusiast I met several years ago. He was then travelling the country and taking photos of cartoonists, comic book illustrators and animators for a proposed book project which, I am happy to say, is finally happening. This summer, Dark Horse will release The Artist Within, a hardcover collection of Greg's photos, which are very, very good at capturing the personality of the subjects. In most cases, the subjects were photographed in their natural habitats — their studios — and the backgrounds themselves are full of fascinating details.

Amazon is taking advance orders for the book, which they say will be out at the end of August. I hear it'll be out in time for the Comic-Con International in July. Whenever it comes out, you'll want a copy of it.

This has been around the Internet for a while and I may even have linked to it long ago…but hey, there's gotta be someone visiting this site who hasn't seen it. I'm not a big fan of trained animal acts but sometimes, the animal seems to be enjoying it so much that that alone makes it fun to watch. The lady is named Carolyn Scott, the Golden Retriever is named Rookie and the clip runs a bit over two minutes…

I discussed this in the Las Vegas Guide section of this site which I've recently removed. Increasingly, shows in that there city are being done on a "four-wall" basis where the producer (or performer) rents the showroom from the casino. The Los Angeles Times has an article about this practice. I think you'll have to register to read it but so what?

Think Progress, a Liberal website, offers a rundown of significant events (and embarrassing quotes from the Bush administration) from the three years of the Iraq War.

I'd like to link to a more Conservative overview of the same period. Can someone suggest one?

It's long (12 minutes) and it has a lot of naughty words in it, and I've already embedded one video link here today. So I won't embed but will recommend this link to "Truth in Advertising," a very funny and incisive Canadian film about what goes on in your basic advertising agency. Much of it also goes on in television studios and movie companies, and some of it reminds me more of people I've dealt with at TV networks than in ad offices. And yes, that's Colin Mochrie of Whose Line Is It Anyway? among the cast members.

By the way — and by the way, have you noticed how often I say "by the way" on this website? — this might interest some of you. The video links I've been embedding in this weblog (meaning they play right on this page) so far are all from either Google Video or YouTube. They play here and on those sites via a player that employs Macromedia Flash to load and play a video file.

If you would like to capture any of these video files to your own harddisk, this can be done. Go to KeepVid and enter the direct URL (webpage address) in the appropriate place and it will decode the internecine links and format the file for your downloading pleasure — and it also works for many other websites that offer video clips. In some cases, what is saved to your computer will be an "FLV" file. That's a flash video format and in order to play it, you'll need to install a flash video player like this one. (MAC users: There are several out there that will work on your computers but I don't know which one is the best.)

Capturing online video clips is sometimes a good idea because you'll have them even after the link goes away. But you may also want to do it because clips will generally play smoother and without downloading pauses that way.

If you want to know what's going on with the issue of warrantless searches, you need to read this article in U.S. News and World Report. Basically, we have an executive branch that thinks "9/11 changed everything" with regard to any limits whatsoever on what the president can do if he says it's "national security." This, I believe, is known as The Nixon Doctrine.

The great thing about having a weblog like this is that if you ask a question, you get an answer. Of course, you get a lot of wrong answers but somewhere in there may be the correct one.

Last night before bed, I asked here if anyone could identify the background music being played when John Leader is introduced in the video to which I'd linked. This morning, my e-mailbox contains fourteen different answers from 31 people, including eight messages from folks who think it was the James Bond theme. (No, the video starts with that music. I was asking about the piece being played as John Leader is introduced.) Two people also thought the correct answer was "New York, New York" and three said it was the main theme from Chariots of Fire.

Eliminating the obvious wrongos, I went to the Amazon site, looked up the CDs of the other suggested answers, played a little of each and now I know. It's from the 1993 movie, Rudy, scored by Jerry Goldsmith. Thanks to Jim McClain, who was the only one of the thirty-one to send me that information.

Congratulations, Jim…and for the rest of you, we have lovely parting gifts and our thanks for playing Name That Background Music.