Monthly Archives: December 2006

See that man? That's Peter Leeds, a wonderful character actor who passed away a little more than ten years ago. He was in a lot of things you saw. Matter of fact, someone told me — I can't swear this is true but it sure wouldn't surprise me if it is — that there were several years when he worked more days than any other member of the Screen Actors Guild. His listing in the Internet Movie Database has more than 170 movies and TV roles and I'd bet that's less than a tenth of them, plus it doesn't list commercials, radio shows, records and cartoon voiceovers.

Peter worked constantly…and yet, if you didn't know him by name, there's no way I could describe to you who he was. I could mention Roger C. Carmel (another character actor who worked constantly) and if you didn't know him by name, I could say, "He played the character Mudd on two episodes of Star Trek" and a lot of you would go, "Oh yeah, that guy." But for all the hundreds, even thousands of roles Peter Leeds played, he never had one that defined him that way. He played agents, cops, con men, gangsters…almost any kind of part you can imagine. But he never played anything that was so colorful and memorable that it defined him thereafter.

Mostly, he was a straight man…maybe the best of his era. Lucille Ball was always telling her producers to hire him for her shows. Bob Hope hired Peter constantly, not only to play interviewers or official-type people on his specials but he took Peter along on military tours to play opposite him in sketches. (At Peter's memorial service, a lady who'd gone on one of those tours choked up as she told a story of Peter taking charge and getting her and other performers get out of a particularly nasty situation when their troupe got too near enemy fire.) Stan Freberg used Peter on his radio show and many of his records. He was the bongo-drumming beatnik on Stan's recording of The Banana Boat Song, for instance.

And Carson loved him. People forget how many comedy sketches Johnny Carson did on The Tonight Show but he did a lot of 'em and Peter was often the serious guy in them. I often watch a syndicated show called Carson's Comedy Classics, which runs such sketches so the program has a lot of Peter Leeds. At the beginning of each show, they billboard the guest stars who appear in the segments and the other night, they ran one that gave star billing to Peter. Here's a screen grab from one that was on the other day. In one skit, Johnny played a Mafia type who was interviewing for a position in some other line of work. Peter played the man interviewing him for a job.

Sometimes, odd things make me smile and that made me smile. Peter was a working actor for well over fifty years and that's one of the few times, maybe the only time anyone gave him the same kind of billing they'd give Bob Hope or Lucy or other stars he supported. I rolled back the TiVo and froze it on Peter's name for a few seconds, just looking at it and thinking, "Look at that…Peter Leeds being treated like a star." He was a star, of course…he did great work and everyone who hired him knew that because they hired him again and again and again. But they never gave him star billing and when I saw one time they did, I thought, "That's great. I'm going to put that on the weblog." Why? Because I liked seeing it and it's my weblog. And also because I wanted there to be some page on the Internet that would tell the world how good Peter Leeds was. If you Googled his name and got this page, now you know.

Fred Kaplan doesn't think much of the report of the Iraq Study Group.

I don't know if it's a workable plan for Iraq but after watching some of the news channels today, I get the feeling that's not the point. The idea is to minimize embarrassment for all the folks who got us into the mess in Iraq. If that means keeping U.S. troops there longer and getting more killed, or making the death toll for the Iraqi people get even worse…well, that's too bad. But we have reputations to protect.

Today's click will bring you eleven minutes (that's right — eleven) of old commercials, starting with a Kool-Aid spot with the voices of Dick Beals and Paul Frees. After a Pillsbury ad, you'll see John Astin and Marty Ingels promoting their then-new comedy series, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, an ABC promo for My Three Sons, a Barbie and Ken spot that I think is narrated by Olan Soulé, another Kool Aid Kids ad, a commercial for Mattel Spy Detector (with a v.o. by Mr. Frees again), a spot for Mattel's Vroom Bikes (announced by William Conrad) and some other stuff that I don't have time to list. Just clear eleven minutes and watch. You'll especially enjoy the commercial for Feeley Meeley.

The most encouraging thing I've seen about Robert Gates, who will presumably be our new Secretary of Defense, is this article by Fred Kaplan, who more or less likes the guy. Kaplan's been pretty good about assessing this kind of thing in the past.

Everyone says the TV show Heroes (which I have yet to watch) is a great show. It may be…but think how much better it could be if the entire cast was comprised of Deal or No Deal models.

Your bargain-hunting friend Mark wishes to inform you that the first three volumes of Looney Tunes on DVD have been drastically marked down…like to around 50% of list price. That's not quite as big a bargain as it sounds because you're never dumb enough to pay list but it is a bargain. You can now order Volume 1, Volume 2 or Volume 3 for $32.00 each and if you get them shipped by Amazon's "free super saver shipping," which arrives pretty swiftly for me, that gives you something like 180 of the best cartoons ever made (plus a ton of extras) for under a hundred bucks.

People tell me that buy.com and deepdiscountdvd.com are the two best places to get DVDs for cheap on the Internet…but buy.com still has them for $51 to $57 each and deepdiscountdvd wants $44.74 apiece or $130.61 for all three. So it pays to not assume that and to shop about. (The website shop.com has them at $81.15 per volume. Do people really not know how to browse a few stores so they don't wind up paying $81 for the same thing someone else is selling for $32?)

Anthony Lane with an interesting view of Walt Disney. "Interesting" is the kind of thing I sometimes say when I'm not sure if I agree or not.

We have here another (another!) sixteen minutes of old cereal commercials. It opens with a dandy Rice Krispies spot, followed by Buffalo Bee (voiced by Mae "Olive Oyl" Questel) selling Wheat Honeys and Rice Honeys. A pre-Batman Adam West eats Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes, with narration by Paul Frees. The Cheerios Kid tries to launch himself into space and his spot is followed by the Trix Rabbit and the Lucky Charms leprechaun. There are some promos for Clackers and Frosty-Os, an Andy Griffith Show in-show commercial with Don Knotts, and one for Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice that I think features the voice of Kenny Delmar. Mr. Delmar played the infamous Senator Claghorn on the Fred Allen radio show and later was the voice of The Hunter and Commander McBragg for animation. You'll see an early Tony the Tiger commercial with Thurl Ravenscroft's magnificent baritone, a Maypo spot and…oh, there's too much in this to list it all. Just watch.

The next presidential election is 704 days away. Isn't it a little early to be talking about frontrunners and saying things like, "It's Obama's to lose" and "Nobody can stop Hillary"? Unless Dick Cheney does something crazy like running or quitting, we won't even have an incumbent on the ticket in 2008…and some people think the nominees are all but certain?

Incumbents aside, when was the last time someone had a near-lock on the nomination 700 days before it was time to vote? More important, when was the first time that someone's frontrunner status that far in advance was even relevant once the primaries started? (Bill Clinton, let's remember, lost his early primary contests.) Candidates like this kind of talk because it's never too early to start raising funds. Reporters like it because it gives them something to write about and they can make predictions that no one will remember when things turn out otherwise. But the rest of us don't have to fall for it.

If you stuck a gun in my ribs and made me predict who'll be the Democratic ticket in 2008, I'd say it will be Al Gore. His slogan will be, "Re-elect Al Gore" and his running mate will be either Barack Obama or Howard Dean. On what do I base this? Same thing as everyone who's making predictions these days: Almost nothing.

Those of us with TiVo Series 2 know that one of its many delights is the "TiVo to Go" feature via which you can record something on one TiVo and, assuming you're properly networked, transfer it to another TiVo or to your computer. This is more than a convenience of being able to watch a recording where you want to watch it. If two shows I want to view are on at the same time, I can record one on my office TiVo (where I watch most programs) and the other on the TiVo in my TV room downstairs. Then I can transfer the show from the downstairs TiVo upstairs. Neat. Tidy. Handy.

One snag in all this has been that if you transfer a TiVo recording to your computer, it's there in an encoded proprietary format — a filename that instead of ending in ".avi" or ".mpeg" or some other common format, ends in ".tivo" — which means you can't easily edit it or burn it to a DVD (without special software they sell) or upload it to the 'net. TiVo instituted this because they were afraid of lawsuits from networks and movie producers even though there are plenty of ways to configure a computer to record shows off the air without this kind of encoding.

There have been a couple of different methods to get around this restriction, the easiest of which was a piece of free software called DirectShow Dump. It works decently with most recordings but occasionally encounters something it cannot parse or process. Now, someone has made things simpler. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) feature of .tivo files has been cracked and the software to do it is widely available for no cost. That version, by the way, is rather clumsy to use but it does "decode" the structure of the .tivo files for all to see, so we'll probably see a handier utility program any day now.

I think this matters beyond the fact that some of us will now have an easier time doing whatever we want to do with shows we record on our Series 2 TiVo machines. Many years ago, when the Betamax was the format of choice for almost everyone practicing home video (largely because VHS and DVD hadn't been invented), there was a lawsuit. A group of major studios headed by Disney and Universal sued Sony — this was before Sony was a major studio — demanding that the Betamax be redesigned to prevent people from taping copyrighted shows off the air. It seems silly now but in the early days of home video, no one quite knew where it would or could all lead…no one but the judge who presided in that case. He said, and this is a paraphrase but it's close, "It's silly to insist they invent a way to jam the process because two days later, someone else will invent a way to unjam the jam." That's pretty much the way it's gone.

Those who traffic in intellectual property — books, TV shows, movies, music, etc. — have sometimes harbored fantasies that technology could restrict the copying and circulation of their wares, enabling them to set up a lucrative per-use (or per-user) licensing fee. If it ever works that way, it doesn't work for long. Not as long as there's a widespread desire to unjam the jam.

I'm not saying this is good or bad because for me, it's both. I'd love it if shows I've written could not be copied or illegally downloaded or otherwise obtained without each consumer coughing up a fee. That would translate to more cash for Mark. On the other hand, I like the idea that if I buy a DVD, I can copy it so I can have one copy in my downstairs library, another in my upstairs DVD carousel and maybe another stashed away as a backup. When I buy a CD, I often dub off the cuts I like to CD compilations I can play in my car. It's all legal and I think it's ethical…but there's no way I can have both my wishes at the same time. If I have the power to copy a DVD or CD for myself, I have the power to copy it for someone else. Like I said, it's not good or bad. It's just the way it is. Copy protection is like those speed bumps they're putting on my street. They slow people down but they don't stop anyone…and I doubt they ever will for long.

This is one minute from the first episode of The Chris Rock Show on HBO, which was aired some time ago. There's a joke at the end that is oddly prophetic. Take a look.

For the last year or three, I've been in the process of transferring my videotapes to DVD. In my lifetime, I've moved from 3/4" U-Matic tapes to Beta and then to VHS. Then for a time, I bought movies on Laserdisc and taped off the TV to VHS. Now, the 500+ Laserdiscs sit on shelves, as untouched as the 1000+ record albums in the other room. I buy movies on DVD and when there's something on TV that I want, it goes onto the TiVo…and if it's something I want to keep, I burn it to a DVD.

I know not what new formats await me in the future…but a lot of my tapes are rotting and many contain material that will never be available commercially. So I decided I'd better copy them over to DVD and every now and then, I run a few. I started with the 3/4" tapes, most of which contained shows I'd written. This went faster than I thought it would due to some fortuitous timing. I'd transferred every show I'd worked on except Garfield and Friends, which I saved for the end. The day I was going to start transferring the 121 half hours of that program, I got the call that the producers had closed a deal to put the series out on DVD. I should have been happiest that I was going to get some money out of that. Instead, the only thing I could think was, "Great…now I don't have to do those shows."

Once the 3/4" tapes were done, I went on to Beta. I'm almost finished with them and am about to get started on the VHS cassettes. There are so many of them that by the time I'm done, it'll be time to start converting all my DVDs to some other new format.

Most of the tapes are labelled but some aren't and that's where the fun begins. I shove an unlabelled tape into a machine, punch "play" and then I sit there, trying to figure out why I recorded whatever I see on it. Once in a while, I decide there was no reason; that the tape is unlabelled because I (or some friend) recorded the wrong channel or the right one at the wrong time, and there's absolutely nothing on the cassette that I could possibly care about. But often, it's something I want…and sometimes, it's something I really want. I just found some old Tony Awards broadcasts from the early nineties, some tapes of panels from comic book conventions and old episodes of Late Night from the Letterman era and from Conan's first year. I have Leno's first few Tonight Shows (which he reportedly doesn't have and doesn't want) and a lot of odd news specials from the eighties.

Some I'll transfer, some I won't. But the big decision is what to do with the tapes themselves. Throw them out? Put them in storage? I made a decision that if the tape held something that was out on DVD, I'd toss the tape. If it held something that wasn't out on DVD and it was something I really wanted, I'd transfer the program and put the tape in storage. If it wasn't out on DVD and was something I might want to watch one more time, I'd keep it around until I could do that, then dump the tape.

That made sense in theory but it's rough in practice. I'm throwing away hundreds of tapes. I'm getting rid of tapes I never watched and that doesn't feel good. One time shortly after I got my satellite dish, a station I received ran a holiday weekend marathon — every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, in sequence. I taped all 158 of them — twelve to a cassette, even though it meant fourteen tape changes and timing my life and sleeping all weekend so I could be at the machine at the precise station break to make the swap. Monday morning, I was so proud: I had every episode of my favorite situation comedy!

Little did I know I'd never get around to watching those tapes because the shows would always be running on some channel I received. Or at least they were, up until the time I could purchase them all on DVD. I can't think of a single reason to keep the VHS tapes around but I put so much effort into recording them that it's hard to just dump them in the garbage.

The tapes could, of course, be used as blanks…and I have about fifty VHS cassettes that have always been blank. I also have no need for blank VHS cassettes. I don't think I've recorded anything on VHS for more than three years. For that matter, I wonder if I even need the four VHS machines I have stashed in the garage, right next to the three Betamaxes and my extra Laserdisc player. (I also have a camcorder that takes full-size VHS cassettes.)

Eventually, of course, everything will get tossed out or moved forever to the world of Public Storage. That includes DVDs I'm buying today because home video is not a permanent thing. As I've written elsewhere, it's all a slimy plot to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger. You'd think I'd be used to it by now but I'm not. In fact, I still have the 4 minute 8mm silent Castle Films edition of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein that I owned when I was ten. I don't have a projector to play it on and I can always run my DVD of the whole movie with sound. The 8mm version is of minimal value and I can't think of a single reason to keep it around.

Still, I keep it and all my other old 8mm treasures there in my front hall closet. Because you never know when you might need something like that.