Monthly Archives: August 2006

My TiVo's forever doing me favors. Why, just the other day — completely on its own and without me doing any kind of programming — it recorded A Big Steaming Pile of Me, which is an HBO standup special that Richard Jeni did last January.

How I missed it in the first place, I have no idea…because Jeni has long been one of my favorite comedians, especially after the remark I quoted in this item. The guy's very funny and very clever and unlike many good comics working these days, his material is in no way derivative of eight dozen other guys mining the same areas. I'm not sure why his name isn't mentioned more often when people tick off the names of the hottest comedians out there.

That special is so good, I just ordered the DVD from Amazon…which you can do by clicking here. I've also begun checking this page on Mr. Jeni's website to see when he's going to be performing within an easy commute of my area. (I just missed a couple nights he did at a club to which I could have walked. We won't be making that mistake again.)

And if you're too cautious/cheap to spring for the DVD, HBO2 is running the special at least once more — August 21, at a time when most of us are asleep. I'll remind you as we get closer to the date just in case your TiVo doesn't do you any favors.

Allan Sherman performs "The Painless Dentist Song," a lovely parody of the tune, "The Continental." Whenever I hear the latter now, I think of the lyrics of the former. Mr. Sherman did that to any number of songs for me.

Electricity was out in my neighborhood all evening. That happens, and the D.W.P. does a good job of correcting these problems and getting the juice flowing through the lines again. But here's the part I find a bit annoying…

You phone up to make sure someone has reported the outage or to see if they have an estimated restoration time…and you wait on hold for a human being to come on the line. While you wait, you have to listen to the same recorded announcement over and over…

…and it keeps telling you that they're experiencing a high caller volume and you'd be better off checking the Department of Water and Power website, instead. Which is tough for some of us to do when the power's out.

On the web, you can find a bunch of reports on this year's Comic-Con International but you won't find any better than Peter Sanderson's. He's serializing his accounts over at Quick Stop Entertainment. Here's a link to Part One, which you should read but you can skip if you're short on time since it doesn't mention me. Here's a link to Part Two, which does so you have to read it. I'll be linking to future parts as they appear, especially if they mention me.

Image Entertainment is announcing a new DVD that will present the entirety of the three episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show on which Elvis Presley made his legendary appearances.

Well, not exactly.

I'm not sure if this will be mentioned on the DVD or not but there were a couple of non-Elvis segments on those episodes where there were legal clearance problems. They're not historically significant so they're being replaced on these DVDs with segments from other Sullivan programs. If you watch carefully, you may note Ed's wardrobe changing suddenly as he introduces them. The Will Jordan monologue on the January 6, 1957 episode is one of them. Will wasn't on that program but his spot has been edited in to replace one that couldn't be included.

These should be great DVDs for two reasons. One is that they're including all the other material for those of us who don't care all that much about Elvis. There's a spot with Carl "The Amazing" Ballantine. There's one with Señor Wences. There's Carol Burnett and Charles Laughton and a great musical number from the Broadway show, The Most Happy Fella. For those who don't care about such performances, the DVD producers are including a menu option to play only the Elvis songs. I wouldn't mind another option that said, "Play everything except Elvis."

The other selling point is that I've seen a preview of the video quality and it's incredible. The photo above left is not from the DVD. The video on the DVD has been processed by a new restoration process called Live Feed that makes it look like…well, like a live feed. It looks like Elvis is performing today, there's a black-and-white video camera on him and you're next door, watching him on a monitor. I'll try to post something about this amazing technique in the next week or two. It's salvaging old kinescopes and making them highly watchable today. After you see it, you'll want to join me in encouraging more companies to employ it. The video quality on some recent releases is disgraceful or, at least, not as fine as it could have been.

You can see the full listing of what's on these peachy DVDs over on this page at TV Shows on DVD, which is your one-stop source on the Internet for info on what old treasures of the cathode tube are coming out on DVD. It's a great place to find out that while you already bought all seven seasons of The West Wing individually, your completist tendencies will force you to also purchase the special "gift set" for yourself, even though it contains the same seven seasons, because it also has extra material available nowhere else. (I need to write more about that scam…)

The "Photo of the Day" over on the Stars and Stripes website is especially cool today. Take a look…and thank Joel O'Brien, who called it to my attention.

Seymour Hersh on the U.S. participation in the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

The other day, I told you that Turner Classic Movies was running Pretty Maids All in a Row this morning. I'm watching it now and I realize I forgot to tell you something about it. I forgot to tell you what a truly crummy film it is.

In my defense, let me assure you I'd forgotten. It was not atypical of many movies that came out around 1970 that couldn't seem to figure out the morality of sleeping around…whether it was a good thing or a bad thing or even, beyond the release of horniness, what it might mean to someone's life. It's almost like movies were afraid to have a point of view on their own sex scenes. They were there because that's what ticket buyers were buying tickets to see and that was more than enough.

There are some other odd things about the movie. I know Rock Hudson wasn't dubbed in this film but for some reason, he sounds like he was. It's also a bit distracting, in light of later revelations and his death, to see Mr. Hudson play an unabashed heterosexual hedonist. And isn't it odd to see Telly Savalas rehearsing to play Kojak? Even though the character had the silly name of Sam Surcher, it's Kojak. I think this is the first time Savalas played that kind of part and it wouldn't surprise me if he got the role of Theo Kojak in that TV-movie because someone saw him in this film.

But really, the "who's killing the co-eds?" plot is so lame with no surprise and no logical throughline. When the film came out, I was baffled as to whether Hudson's character was really as one-dimensional as it seemed or whether I was missing something. My curiosity led me to buy and read the book by Francis Pollini from which the movie was based. I thought it might give me a clue but it didn't. The paperback had a great James Bama cover but no more insight. As I recall — it's been 35 years since I read it — the book had a much stronger racial angle, keying off a young black student who was suspected of the killings. In adapting that work, Gene Roddenberry eliminated that character, thereby creating a murder mystery with no suspects and no clues…and not much of a point.

Still, it was nice to see my old high school…and even nicer to see Angie Dickinson. But I apologize if you went out of your way to watch this one because of me.

The Boomerang Channel is about to begin rerunning Garfield and Friends, a cartoon show I wrote years ago. I think it might play better if they had the show translated into Finnish. See if you don't agree.

On this page of the website of the Transportation Security Administration, one can find a certain amount of information on what one can and cannot now bring onto an airplane…but not a lot. If there's a lot of confusion — and we're hearing there is — it may be because of questions and answers like these…

Question: What about liquid eyeliner and similar items?

Answer: If you are in doubt about an item, please leave it at home or place in your checked baggage or the item may be intercepted at the security checkpoint.

Well, that's helpful…not. One of the folks who was at this morning's breakfast (the one I mentioned in the previous item) was a fellow named Johnny Dark who commutes to New York every week or so to play The World's Oldest Page on the Letterman show. Johnny's going back this weekend and he seemed pretty baffled as to what he'll encounter at the airport and what he can take on the plane. He asked a few questions and no one at the table had any idea.

How difficult would it be in this Age of the Internet to put up a simple list of what you can and cannot take on the plane? Why do they have to turn this into a game show?

Here's a link some of you are really going to enjoy…

This morning, I had breakfast with a gang of comedians and comedy writers. One of the latter was Bob Mills, a gent I'd heard of but never met, and we had a very nice time talking about show business and mutual friends and his career and even a little of mine. Bob's is more interesting as he spent many years in the service of Mr. Robert Hope. Mills was one of those writers that Hope had on call 24/7 and would sometimes phone in the middle of the night and say, "I'm playing the Rutabaga Festival in Jerkwater, Alabama tomorrow. I'll call you back in 90 minutes for some good rutabaga jokes." Some very fine and loyal writers worked that way, and Bob Mills was one of the best. Still is, though he doesn't get many calls from Hope these days.

Mills has posted some of his tales of working with Bob Hope over on this website. They're very good and, of course, straight from one who was there. Many of the anecdotes are accompanied by audio examples and don't pass them up. In fact, don't pass up any part of this splendid memoir.

A few items ago, I was plugging some upcoming showings on Turner Classic Movies. To be of more service to you fine people, I should have noted that TCM seems to have changed its attitude in the last few months. They went through a period where they weren't showing anything that we all weren't sick of seeing and most of it was stuff we all have (or could easily have) in our home video libraries.

But lately, someone there — some wise, kind lover of cinema — has decided to intermingle such selections with some genuine rarities, digging deep into the vast aggregation of acquired companies that represents the Time-Warner film vault. They've also apparently licensed a lot more films that weren't already lying around the office and that offer more esoteric appeal. (In October, they're running two of Russ Meyer's less salacious independent efforts, Mudhoney and Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill! Can Mondo Topless be far behind?)

So I'm going to suggest that you browse their listings and to make it easier for you, I'm going to provide some links. Here's what they're showing the rest of this month. Here's what they're running next month. And here's what they're running the month after. Notice that I'm linking to the listings for the Pacific Time Zone because…well, guess where I live, pal.

You may note some strangeness in these schedules…a number of offerings that are "0 minutes" in length and some blanks to be filled in, especially in the October list. These will get filled in as we get closer to the dates in question. You may also notice that someone there still thinks we yearn to see Sabrina, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and a few others every month but I can't help that. Just enjoy what else they're giving us…and I'll try to point out some highlights with enough advance notice that you can set your TiVos.

As readers of this site are well aware, I'm a big fan of Allan Sherman. Despite the fact that he threatened to sue me when I was in junior high school (a story I oughta tell here one day), I think he was a brilliant performer of very clever musical material. Here's a clip of him performing a truncated version of one of my favorite of his parodies…

If you've been following this site, you've seen an ongoing discussion of drunk driving, which is one of those crimes I think should be punishable by…well, by more than the customary punishments these days. An acquaintance of mine, Bob Cosgrove, weighed in here on the matter and then an anonymous (to you, not to me) person was quoted here. Now, it's Bob's turn again…

It's really all about the trade off between encouraging people not to drink and drive and fairly punishing those who do. (Actually, it's really about keeping people alive.) It would be interesting to see some research on that issue — what's the ideal "tipping point" beyond which jacking up the penalties yields little perceptible gains. With luck, your posts on these issues will get people thinking. Your concern probably has a bigger impact on people, coming from someone they tune in to for your interesting comments on entertainment and related issues, than from someone with a perceived ax to grind.

Anyway, I thought to just shut up and not bother you again, but at least for your own information, I felt I had to make one comment on the very interesting post from the fellow who had the dui conviction. As you would expect from my original comment, I agree with a lot of what he had to say, especially about sentencing. But two comments, then I promise to shut up on the subject.

Given a normal rate for metabolizing alcohol (and some of us are faster, some slower), to have been one above the "legal limit" (and I assume from the rest of his post, he's talking .08), he would have had to have consumed those three beers within one hour, and he would have to have weighed about 110 pounds. For a guy 200 lbs., consuming 3 beers in the same amount of time, the result would be under .05, low enough to get the charges dismissed in most states. Maybe he's a lightweight, maybe he has a slow metabolism, or maybe he lost count of how many beers he actually drank. There are various charts people can play with on the internet to figure out averages by weight and time — they just have to google something like "blood alcohol chart" and take their pick.

Second, if there is a phrase I could consign to hell, it would be "legal limit." The press uses it all the time, though I've never seen the term in a statute. The implication is that it's like fishing — catch ten fish and you're fine, catch eleven and you're fined. What the "legal limit," so-called, usually is, is the point where the blood alcohol level alone is high enough for the jury to draw an inference of guilt, absent any other evidence of impairment. But you can be impaired (as I tried to suggest in my comment you were kind enough to quote with my story about blowing a .06) at levels far below the "legal limit." (And frankly, a practiced alcoholic may drive better substantially over the "legal limit" than a lapsed teetotaler with a few drinks under his belt). That may be why the "legal limit" for airline pilots is zero.

Well, I assume the "legal limit" for pilots is zero because they can get an awful lot of people killed or hurt. I think there should be more recognition that a drunk behind the wheel of a Plymouth can do that, too. A message I received but didn't post here included the observation that drunk drivers who don't get into accidents frequently get off with little or no punishment out of a sense that they didn't endanger anyone but themselves. But of course, that's a fallacy; they endangered lots of people. They just didn't hit any of them.

Not that you're suggesting this but the idea of people deciding if they're sober enough to drive via math strikes me as appalling. It's easy to imagine someone thinking, "Well, I weigh 241 pounds and I only had 3.5 Coronas in forty-three minutes so it must be safe to drive." It may be that what I'm really seeking is not so much more severe penalties for drunk driving but less inclination to give the marginal case the benefit of the doubt.

I also think that in all areas, I'd like to see more societal rejection of the notion that you're not responsible for your actions while tipsy. Among the many reasons I don't drink is that I've seen a number of people — including, alas, a few close friends — do and say enormously rude and even harmful things…and then, later, offer "I was high" as if it's some sort of acceptable excuse. One of the drunk drivers responsible for a friend's death seemed genuinely convinced that being drunk was a form of Temporary Insanity so you were not legally or even morally culpable for what you did in that condition. (He further argued that someone else had forced libations upon him so he was not even responsible for being intoxicated.) I'm generally a very forgiving person but I cannot find any forgiveness in myself for the evil that men do when plastered. If you're a jerk when you're drunk, you're a jerk, period.

Since some may think this sounds prudish or puritan, I should add that I really have no problem with people drinking or doing drugs. I don't think people who are stoned should be stoned. I just don't want them around me. If the world ever became a dictatorship with me in charge — and call me pessimistic but I'm starting to get the sense this might not happen soon — I would liberalize the laws for private use of drug and drink, and tighten them for doing it in public. I'd also do something about Regis Philbin being on TV so much but that's another matter.

We may have beaten this topic into the ground so I'll just thank everyone — Bob Cosgrove, especially — for participating. And now, I think I'll link to a video clip of Allan Sherman…

Very early Sunday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Pretty Maids All in a Row, a 1971 movie produced and written by Gene Roddenberry. It's not a very good film but it interested me greatly when it came out because much of it was filmed at University High School in West Los Angeles, shortly after I graduated from the place.

Well, actually, what really interested me was seeing my alma mater depicted as a place crawling with beautiful young ladies who'd have sex with anyone and everyone. Given the reality of Uni High, I always thought of the movie as Roddenberry's greatest contribution to the world of science-fiction…as if casting Rock Hudson as a rabid heterosexual wasn't incredible enough.

And then all day long Sunday, TCM is running film after film starring Walter Matthau…or as we described it in here, "Walter Matthau, ad nauseam."

On Wednesday, they're running Soylent Green. In case you weren't aware, Soylent Green is (SPOILER ALERT) people.

On Thursday, they have a heaping helping of Carole Lombard. Then on Friday, you can get sick of seeing Bela Lugosi. It's quite a week on Turner Classic Movies.