Monthly Archives: October 2006

If you want to know how we got to where we are with North Korea, this 2004 article by Fred Kaplan is a good starting place. There will probably be a new article by Kaplan up on Slate before the day is out and I'll link to it when it's there.

The other day, we tipped you off to a planned "flash mob" in New York involving director Terry Gilliam. Here's a report on what transpired.

My longtime pal Marc Wielage recommended this video, which will be of special interest to anyone with a good collection of rock albums. Warning: It's a little loud and a little bloody…but very clever.

Here's a pretty good article about Stephen Colbert, Lord of Truthiness.

Fareed Zakaria says that Iraq is in Civil War, that nothing the Bush administration can do will help, and that it's time to get out. Yeah, I know a lot of people have been saying that for years. But this is Fareed Zakaria, who has been getting attention for some time for his views that the U.S. effort in Iraq would eventually be productive and worth the sacrifice. Him changing his mind will probably change a few more minds.

The Los Angeles Times runs an opinion piece by its departed opinion piece editor Michael Kinsley on what's wrong with The Los Angeles Times.

John Dickerson makes a couple of interesting points about the usage of the term "cut and run" by Republicans and by George W. Bush. Basically, he thinks it's dangerous to define all suggestions of withdrawal from Iraq as cowardice and appeasement.

Okay, we've established that Laurel and Hardy are still funny in German. Here's proof that the Marx Brothers are not funny in Spanish, especially when they're way out of sync. And how'd you like to have been the guy who had to translate this scene?

Rod Dreher writes about the tragic shooting in an Amish schoolhouse and how the Amish are dealing with it.

Either today or tomorrow, "going out of business" sales commence at all outlets of Tower Records and Tower Video. And unlike some stores that seem to endure comfortably for years with "going out of business" plastered on their windows, it looks like Tower really is going out of business, at least in terms of retail outlets.

Obviously, this has a lot to do with the Internet availability of CDs and DVDs and such. Heck, the Tower empire took a big monetary hit just from me switching my business from them to Amazon. They certainly aren't the only giant company in those areas to discover they couldn't compete with the ease of online ordering. A gent I met recently who seemed to know a lot about this kind of thing told me that companies that didn't have "brick and mortar outlets" (i.e., physical stores) held a huge advantage in the marketplace because they didn't have to factor those "dinosaurs" into their corporate planning. He said every single company that had retail shops had been too slow to reconfigure for The Online Era. I'm wondering what more, if anything, there is to the demise of Tower Records than that.

I'm also wondering what will become of the Tower stores up on the Sunset Strip. The building that houses the video outlet at the corner of Sunset and Larrabee has a rich history that has always fascinated me. For a time, it was a history of failed restaurants — at least a dozen, including a Jerry Lewis Restaurant that was opened in seeming response to the success of Dino's down the block. A local disc jockey named Dick Whittinghill had a restaurant there after Jerry and though Whittinghill plugged the heck out of it on the radio, it also closed in a year or two, eventually to be replaced by a strip joint called The Classic Cat. Finally, Tower Video moved in for a few decades and seemed to have broken the jinx.

The main Tower Records building, which is across the street on Sunset, has probably been the site of more "event-type" signings and album premieres than any store in the world. It's a place where I used to always (well, twice) see Elton John going around with a shopping cart, buying records by the hundreds. Rock groups would demand in their contracts that their record company arrange to have their album blown up to six by six and displayed on the side of Tower Records and that they had to have a signing party there. The place has such a rich history that I'd love to see it either stay open in some form or converted into a rock music museum or something of the sort. It sure would be sad to see a Bed, Bath and Beyond at that location…though I wonder if some of the clientele would even notice the difference.

Bill Maher had a pretty good show Friday night (it reruns many a time on HBO in the coming week) with guests Robin Williams, terrorism expert Richard Clarke, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chris Matthews, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI). It's odd to hear Kerry talking tough now when it doesn't do him any good.

But the odd thing is that the show was done from Washington, D.C. and I'm wondering why. You might go to the time and expense of doing your show from another city because you'll be getting guests you can't snag back home…but Kerry and Chafee were on remotes (Kerry's was even pre-taped) so that could have been done from Hollywood. Robin Williams is on a tour promoting his new film so it would probably have been better for him to be in Los Angeles where he could have done four other appearances the same day. Chris Matthews is out here all the time (he was on with Leno the other night) and it's not like Richard Clarke or a Florida Congressperson wouldn't have flown out to do the show.

Or you might go to another city to get a hotter audience but that's no explanation, either. Maher's audiences at Television City out here are about as hot as you could ever want. So I don't know what the producers thought they were going to get in Washington that they couldn't get at home.

In any case, the show ran over its one-hour slot so if you set your TiVo or VCR and didn't pad the recording time, you didn't get the last few minutes, which included some funny bits under the closing credits. (They looked like they were shot for some other show, which may explain why Real Time with Bill Maher went to Washington…so its star could tape bits for a special of some sort.) And why did it run over? Well, I love Robin Williams when he's the only funny one on the stage. But when someone else is trying to get a laugh, especially with prepared material, he can be very annoying. I've heard professional comics argue over whether Williams interrupts to intentionally sabotage another comedian's performance or if it's just reflex. I suspect the latter but either way, there are times you just wish he'd let someone else get a punch line in edgewise.

Fred Kaplan on what's going on with North Korea. If Bush handles it as well as he's handled Iraq, we're in bigggg trouble.

A brief interview with Garry Trudeau, maker of Doonesbury.

One of the many lovely things about Laurel and Hardy is that their humor transcends nations. They're funny everywhere. Here they are in a scene from Hollywood Party (a 1934 release) that's been dubbed into…German, I think. The lady is Lupe Velez.

I think Christopher Hitchens is wrong about a lot of things. But I think he's right about Henry Kissinger.