Monthly Archives: August 2006

Rich Lowry on why Iraq is looking more and more like Bush's Vietnam. This is another one of those articles where I don't agree with every word but I think the view is worth a read.

Here's another way that bloggers can have an impact on the world. For some time now, tech blogs have been complaining about the tendency of the batteries in Dell Laptops to explode and burst into flame. Here's an example. Here's another example. Here's another example. Here are photos of a Dell Laptop exploding at a conference in Japan.

Dell has now announced what may be the largest recall in the history of consumer electronics. It's possible they would have done this anyway but the bloggers probably hurried things up a bit. And that means that a few less laptops will go kablooey, which is a good thing.

By the way: You can't bring a bottle of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water onto an airplane in this country. But you can bring a Dell Laptop with a battery that can explode and burst into flame. Fill in your own snide remark.

Adam Cohen discusses the legal heritage of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court decision that first put George W. Bush into the White House. Here's the paragraph that most interested me…

The heart of Bush v. Gore's analysis was its holding that the recount was unacceptable because the standards for vote counting varied from county to county. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the court declared, the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. If this equal protection principle is taken seriously, if it was not just a pretext to put a preferred candidate in the White House, it should mean that states cannot provide some voters better voting machines, shorter lines, or more lenient standards for when their provisional ballots get counted — precisely the system that exists across the country right now.

So, uh, how come that hasn't changed?

I know a lot of Republicans (including Antonin Scalia) tell Democrats to "get over it" but the article has a point: If it was valid law, it doesn't go away. It should be defensible in the context of ongoing legal decisions. By the way, the last person who told me to "get over it" is still posting in chat rooms that the Clintons should be arrested for the murder of Vince Foster.

I have a feeling that we're going to wake up one morning and find that some future configuration of the Supreme Court has said Bush should never have been installed in the job in 2000. The way things are going, we may see a majority of Republicans say that before long.

For those of you who find Sudoku puzzles too complicated, the Washington Post had one yesterday that Goober Pyle could solve in under three minutes. Here it is. It's almost as tough as the one I posted a few weeks ago.

How'd you like to watch six minutes all about the original, 1975 production of the Broadway show, Chicago? The two men interviewed together are the men responsible for its score, John Kander and the late Fred Ebb. They talk about its director, Bob Fosse. Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking talk about Bob Fosse. I think the guy at the end is New York Times political commentator (then, its Broadway critic), Frank Rich.

There's also some footage here of the original cast and one of the dancers you'll see is the lovely, leggy Charlene Ryan who was a Fosse favorite. (She was also in the both original Sweet Charity on Broadway and in the movie.) Charlene is now married to my friend, Sergio Aragonés. Every time I refer to Sergio as "the fastest cartoonist in the world," Charlene sighs and says, "Tell me about it."

And on that cheap sex joke, let's go the videotape…

AFTRA (the TV performers' union) has recently and happily announced a settlement of nearly a million dollars, negotiated on behalf of performers who appeared on The Dean Martin Show and whose performances have been put out on DVD. This is a very nice and just thing for the performers and I suspect it will serve as a nice precedent for future legal actions. A lot of DVDs have been issued by companies that haven't bothered to properly compensate performers, writers, directors or others who are contractually entitled to some cash, and the guilds have been slow to raise the proper stink.

And here's something that interests me in a strange, "small world" kind of way: AFTRA announced the settlement on this page over on their website. Among those who'll be sharing in the bucks — and are interviewed about it there — are two former dancers from The Dean Martin Show, Lynne Latham and Larri Thomas. Lynne was one of the Ding-a-Ling Sisters on Dino's show and later, she was a frequent dancer on shows I used to write for Sid and Marty Krofft. Very talented, charming lady.

I never met Larri Thomas but I know she was a Goldwyn Girl…one of the dancers in the 1955 movie of Guys and Dolls, in fact. Later, she was a favorite of the great choreographer Hermes Pan, who used her in the acclaimed Fred Astaire TV specials. And a friend tells me — and I swear this is a coincidence; I was going to write about this before I was aware of the possible connection — she's the woman who played Miss Clinger in the Allan Sherman clip I linked to this morning.

Fred Kaplan on the recently-voted U.N. cease-fire resolution. What will it mean if it succeeds? What will it mean if it fails?

Over at The Christian Science Monitor, they're serializing the story of the kidnapped (and released) journalist, Jill Carroll. It looks a lot like someone's attempt to sell her story as a movie but that doesn't mean it isn't an important and interesting tale. And given how much apparent fabrication was introduced into the press by people trying to spin it to serve their political goals, it's about time we heard her account of what happened. It's over here with more to come in the following weeks.

In this item posted earlier, I suggested a number of reasons why George W. Bush might be withholding his endorsement of Alan Schlesinger, the Republican candidate for Joe Lieberman's senate seat in Connecticut. Several correspondents have suggested another. Apparently, Mr. Schlesinger has called for substantial U.S. troop reduction in Iraq on a timetable.

So what you have in that state is a Democratic candidate who wants the troops withdrawn soon, a Republican candidate who wants the troops withdrawn soon, and an Independent candidate (Lieberman) who says a number of conflicting thing but seems to eventually side with the administration. If you were George W. Bush, how would you play this one?

At a ceremony last Saturday evening, my hero Stan Freberg received the prestigious Los Angeles Area Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. These are the Emmy-giving-out people. Nancy Cartwright, best known as the voice of Bart Simpson, made the presentation and Stan accepted, accompanied by his puppet, Orville. In the screen grab above, Orville is the one without the glasses.

The Academy has put the entire event online in webcast format at this link…but wait. STOP! For God's sake, in the name of all that's holy, don't click on that link yet! The show's almost three hours long and even though Keith Olbermann does a nice hosting job, there's no way you want to sit through the whole thing. You just don't.

Here's what you want to do. Go to that link (here it is again) and start playing the webcast…then fast-forward or move the slider over to 01:09:10, [SEE BELOW] which is about where Olbermann introduces Nancy Cartwright who, in turn, introduces Stan. The whole presentation, including Stan's wife Hunter, a film about his career, Stan (with and without puppet) and his acceptance speech runs about eighteen minutes. And make sure you stay tuned after Stan exits to hear a quick story about him from Mr. Olbermann.

Lastly, a brief aside to the Academy, of which I am a member: I think it's wonderful that you honored Freberg. No one deserves it more. But if you're going to honor someone, it would be nice if a wee bit more research was done. Yes, Stan was the voice of Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany…but you played him on and off, not with any of the dozens of hit songs he wrote but with the theme song from the Beany and Cecil cartoon show, which he had nothing to do with. And he made that wonderful entrance right after the tribute/history film on which you MISSPELLED HIS NAME! Come on, Academy. Your Mission Statement says you exist to "…promote creativity, diversity, innovation and excellence through recognition, education and leadership in the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences." Somewhere in there, it's kind of implied that you should your spell your honoree's name correctly. I would return my Emmy in protest if I'd ever won one.

[UPDATE: Since this was posted, the Academy folks have done a re-edit on their online webcast, shortening the proceedings. The introduction of Ms. Cartwright now commences 56 minutes into the video. So leap ahead to 00:56:00 and watch from there. And thanks to Don Brockway for calling this to my attention.]

I often feel sorry for presidential press secretaries. They're sent out there with marching orders to say X and not say Y, and then they're hammered by reporters because to say X and not Y is not logical. You can almost hear the press secretary thinking, "Hey, I know this is bull but it's what they told me to say."

Tony Snow, current holder of that thankless job, was obviously instructed not to say that George W. supports the Republican candidate for the senate in Connecticut. This may be because that candidate — someone named Alan Schlesinger — is currently polling at 6% and Bush doesn't want to get caught backing someone who may not get out of the single digits on Election Day. Or maybe there's some sort of loyalty or payback involved with regard to Joe Lieberman on a personal level, and Bush doesn't want to oppose him, at least for the near future. It could even be simple political gamesmanship: Schlesinger can't win so Bush figures he's better off with Lieberman than Lamont and wants Connecticut Republicans to vote accordingly.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Snow has to go out and not say that Bush supports Schlesinger…and act like it's the most normal thing in the world for a Republican president to not endorse the Republican candidate for some high office. Here's the exchange. It's probably close to word-for-word what would have been said if reporter Tony Snow was grilling the press secretary for a Democratic president who was trying to not endorse a Democratic senatorial candidate.

We are unsurprised but saddened still that GSN has finally decided to chuck the nightly reruns of old episodes of What's My Line? They go away later this month, only to be replaced by — insult to injury time — reruns of The Amazing Race. And we'd like to suggest loudly and with great outrage in our voice that low ratings on What's My Line? may have been caused by GSN leading into it with reruns of Beat the Clock, the stupidest and crappiest game show ever produced.

The lone remnant of the network's long experiment with hoary black-and-white reruns will be a bone they'll be tossing us once a week, late on Sunday nights…or, more correctly, early on Monday mornings. There, commencing August 27/28, they will run sixty minutes of old Goodson-Todman classics or semi-classics. They'll start with two shows, one being Get the Message, a 1964 series hosted by Frank Buxton and later by Robert Q. Lewis. The other, which they've run before, is What's Going On?, a short-lived 1954 disaster of a game show, produced by the star of several recent video links on this site, Allan Sherman.

ATTENTION, FRANK BUXTON: I expect you to send me juicy anecdotes I can post here about Get the Message. Never mind spending the lavish residuals you will doubtlessly receive for these airings. Please share with us whatever you remember. I promise not to run out on you the next time we have lunch together.

Heather MacDonald considers the moral dilemma of the Conservative who is atheist or agnostic. I don't have a strong opinion on any of this — at least not yet — but I thought the article provided some interesting topics to ponder. So here's a link to it.

No newspaper has reported it yet — and even the film blogosphere found out months after it happened — but a prominent "b-movie" star of the seventies, Candice Rialson, passed away four months ago. The cause was liver disease according to her husband, as quoted in one of several movie blogs that have scrambled to obtain details. Their common goal at the moment seems to be to make enough fuss to prompt obits in the mainstream media…and I've decided to join the cause.

Between around 1974 and 1979, Candice appeared — starring, usually — in a number of low-budget movies of the Roger Corman variety…some of them, like Hollywood Boulevard and Candy Stripe Nurses, even for Roger Corman. She briefly showed promise of making the uneasy transition to upscale film and television work but somehow, it never happened and she was retired from acting (at age 27) by 1979. I shouldn't say "somehow" because at least one reason was obvious: Too many sleazy credits for the casting folks at the major studios. She certainly had the looks and she probably had the talent…but she also had Chatterbox on her résumé. (Chatterbox was kind of like The Vagina Monologues, only literally.)

I don't think it would matter today. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. But it mattered back then.

At least it did to CBS the time I had her called in to audition for a show there. I had seen her in the aforementioned Hollywood Boulevard, which — unlike most of her other credits — was a delightful, funny feature with much to offer beyond the visual of Ms. Rialson with her shirt off. Shot on a budget that on a film shoot today wouldn't cover the donut bill from Craft Services, it was cleverly written (by Danny Opatoshu) and hastily but brilliantly directed (by Joe Dante and Allan Arkush). And it also had some splendid performances by Dick Miller, Paul Bartel and Candice. So a week or two after I first saw it, when my producer said, "Can't you think of some really beautiful women who can do comedy?," I thought of Candice and we brought her in.

She read so well that the casting director immediately called her back for several other projects he was working on. But she didn't get them and she didn't get my show…and like I said, the other credits were a contributing factor. A few months later, I met her at a party and she asked me why we'd hired someone other than her. I tried to be diplomatic but she knew just what the problem was…and even added, "Wait'll they see what I've got coming out in a few months." Ten or twelve years later, a prominent director tracked her down and, based wholly on his love of Hollywood Boulevard, offered her a fully-clad part in a major motion picture. What he got back was along the lines of, "Thanks, but I'm out of the business now."

If you'd like to know more about Candice, this website is all over the story and so is this one and this one and even this one. And who knows? Maybe the L.A. Times and Variety and Hollywood Reporter will all notice, too.

Ol' pal Paul Harris, who's heard Monday through Friday on KMOX radio in St. Louis, has dug a great interview out of his archive. It's a chat he had with talk show legend Mike Douglas in late 2000. Go listen to it — especially the part where Mr. Douglas talks about having Malcolm X on his show…and being afraid to admit that he agreed with much of what Malcolm X had to say.