Monthly Archives: January 2007

Here's one minute from the end of an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. Just watch it for a nice surprise.

A while ago on this site, I put up a section called "Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More" and I've occasionally added to it since then. (If you haven't read it for a while, there are probably a few entries — not necessarily at the end — that you haven't seen.) I thought the premise of this section was pretty clear. It's personal recollections of restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area that I went to, one or more times, and which are no longer in business. And I guess I thought it was also implied that these were restaurants about which I thought I had something interesting to say. I know I did mention that the section would be expanded in the future…and I continue to add to it.

I also continue to marvel at the people who don't get this basic concept. In the last two months, two major websites that focus on Los Angeles have linked to that feature, prompting thousands more hits than usual and lots of very nice e-mails from folks who fondly remember this or that place to dine. I also, however, received a number of messages that really baffled me because, like I just said, I thought the premise was pretty simple.

I received one rather insulting message from a fellow who was upset because I didn't include his favorite old restaurant, which was a place called Brewster's in Michigan. Why didn't I include Brewster's?, he demanded to know. Well, maybe because it was in Michigan and this is a section about restaurants in Los Angeles. Also, of course, I never went to or even heard of Brewster's.

I've received any number of messages — well over two dozen — from folks who write to me about great defunct L.A. restaurants that I seem to have omitted from my list. Most are friendly and polite but a few write as if I have committed a horrendous factual error and shame on me. Why didn't I include their favorite old restaurant?, they demand to know. Well, in a few cases, it's because I haven't gotten around to it yet…but in most, it's because I never went to their favorite old restaurant, have nothing to say about it and perhaps never even heard of it.

This morning, I received a message from a man who I hope was kidding with how outraged he was. I mean, I don't know the guy but you hope there aren't total strangers who could get this incensed over something so wrongheaded. He's upset because he operates a very popular, successful restaurant in Los Angeles and I didn't include it on my list. Why didn't I include his restaurant?, he demands to know. Well, maybe it's because it's still there. It's not out of business! I've also never been there and have barely heard of it so I have no reason to declare it "Great"…but the main point is that it's still open and operating. It doesn't belong in a collection of essays called "Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More." Maybe he'd have a point if I'd called the department "Every Single Restaurant That Ever Existed in Los Angeles That Anyone Liked."

I guess I shouldn't be stunned by these messages. Whenever I post anything even vaguely political, I get at least one e-mail to which the appropriate response, were I of a mind to respond, would be, "Please read what I wrote with your eyes open." The Internet is wonderful because it makes it so simple for us to all communicate with each other but of course, there's a downside to this. It's that it makes it too simple for us to communicate without enough thought and consideration.

Someone ought to invent a piece of e-mail software that would work as follows: You compose a message and hit "send" but it doesn't send it. It holds the message in a little storage area for twelve hours and then it shows it to you again and asks, "Do you really want to send this?" The software could even scan the message for certain key angry words and if you include enough of them, it would ask you two or three times, the last of which would say, "Are you sure we can't talk you out of sending this?" Or if you tend to drink at night while surfing the web, you could set the program to stop you from sending anything after 9 PM. It wouldn't actually dispatch the message until the next morning after you'd passed a little online sobriety test.

I'll be updating the L.A. Restaurants section in a few weeks with three or four more old extinct Southern California eating establishments. If your favorite isn't there, relax. Maybe I never went there. Or maybe it's still in business or it was in Michigan.

If you enjoyed yesterday's clip with Mel Blanc and Johnny Carson, you'll probably like this one of Mel Blanc with his longtime employer, Jack Benny. You'll even get to hear the English Horse impression again.

This runs ten minutes and it's from Benny's last TV show of 1956. The first half is Mel playing an impersonator of animal sounds. Note that he and Mr. Benny have a bit of trouble getting through it without breaking up.

If you want to stay tuned for the second half, you'll see some (not all) of a bit Benny did with "The Landrews Sisters." There's an interesting bit of history to this piece. It was originally written for Benny by a writer named Harry Conn, who authored all the early Jack Benny radio programs. Jack did some version of it throughout most of the live performances he did from about the mid-thirties until the last times he played Las Vegas in the seventies. The name of the act kept changing to keep up with the times. Near the end, they were called The Smothers Sisters.

The three ladies in the video are, left to right, June Earle, Iris Adrian and Muriel Landers. I don't know anything about Ms. Earle but Iris Adrian had a long career playing wisecracking waitresses and chorus girls. (She was the waitress that Walter Matthau flirts with in the delicatessen in The Odd Couple.) Muriel Landers had a long career playing fat girls and was even a regular briefly on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. She was so often cast when they needed a fat girl that casting agents used to refer to those as "Muriel Landers roles," which was a nicer way of saying, "Get me a fat girl."

Tim Dickinson on why he thinks Al Gore should run for president in 2008 and why he thinks Gore can win. I still think it's too early to predict almost anything about the election but when I think of all the reasons some people gave in 2000 for thinking Gore would be a bad president, they sure seem trivial to me today.

That's Charles Lane in his (brief) scene in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett. It was only one of a couple hundred movies in which he appeared, usually playing a banker or a lawyer or some other officious presence. Every time I've seen Mad World with an audience, there's a laugh of recognition when Mr. Lane appears on the screen and you can hear people muttering, "That guy." They may not know his name but they know the face and voice from films as diverse as You Can't Take It With You (he played an I.R.S. agent), Arsenic and Old Lace (he played a snoopy reporter), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (he played another snoopy reporter), It's a Wonderful Life (he played a rent collector), The Big Store (he foreclosed on Groucho's car) and so many more.

Mr. Lane turned 102 today. I doubt he's spending it Googling himself so he probably won't see this. But maybe somebody he knows him will let him know that he has a lot of fans out here on the 'net and that we're thinking of him.

This video is badly edited but there's enough good stuff in it to make it linkworthy. It's an appearance Mel Blanc made with Johnny Carson, demonstrating pretty much the same voices he did on every talk show appearance he ever made. Even the bit at the end where they pretend Johnny's throwing a curve at him is an old bit but, hey, it's Mel Blanc. There's a reason he was the top voice guy in the business.

Michael Kinsley comes out in favor of partisan squabbles.

The 1933 movie 42nd Street may have been the first great movie musical…and it still holds up rather well. Let's take a look at the trailer for it which hypes all the wrong selling points and avoids showing you any interesting scenes from the film. In spite of that, it's still a fun trailer. If the embedded link below doesn't do it for you, click here instead.

And by the way, consider this: This is a pretty old movie. Your great grandmother could have seen it when your great grandfather took her out on this first date. It truly belongs to another era.

The movie is all about the staging of a Broadway musical called Pretty Lady. And you know who played the guy who authored Pretty Lady? He only has a small, unbilled part but he's there in the movie…

Charles Lane, who reaches the glorious age of 102 tomorrow. We'll post something more about the Birthday Boy then.

Take a moment and read this weblog post by Glenn Greenwald. It's about the latest crusade by people who were all wrong about Iraq to suggest that the problem isn't that they were all wrong about Iraq. The problem is American citizens pointing out that they were all wrong about Iraq. You know, everything would be just fine if we'd just refrain from pointing out that they don't know what they're doing.

This is a quickie but it's something you may remember from your childhood…an animated commercial spot with Reddy Killowatt, the mascot of your local electric company. I believe his voice is done by Walter Tetley, who's probably best remembered for his role as Sherman on the Mr. Peabody cartoons produced by Jay Ward. Here he is…

So what's the deal with Bush's alleged "health care" proposal? Doesn't it sound like he gathered together his aides and asked them to come up with some new proposal that was guaranteed to not go anywhere and to piss off everyone in the process? If you hate the idea of increased government involvement in our medical lives, you're probably annoyed that he's legitimizing that goal and suggesting it would be a good idea for something to be done in that area. If you love the idea, you're probably annoyed that he's come up with such a terrible one.

Isn't Bush down to the point where his remaining constituency is mainly people who love him for his tax cuts? For the last decade or three, any time a Democrat has suggested anything that might cause someone to pay a dime more to any government than they did before, those people have screamed "TAX INCREASE!!!" What Bush is proposing here would certainly qualify as one by even a more realistic definition. So, given what a tax hike did to his father's popularity with that same crowd, why is this Bush opening himself to that charge? Especially for a proposal that won't even have much Republican support, let alone the Democratic backing it would need to become a reality?

That's what I wanna know.

I didn't watch the State of the Union address earlier, though it's waiting on my TiVo at home. (I am currently blogging from an undisclosed location.) According to Fred Kaplan though, Bush is still double-talking us through this war. Which is a shame. It would be nice to believe in Bush's plan…and even nicer to believe he actually has one.

Ed Golick explains something that hadn't occurred to me about that "soundie" I linked to…

The "Who's Yehudi film" was printed backwards on purpose. Panorams, the machines that showed the 16mm musical numbers, rear projected the films. If the films were printed normally the titles and the image would have been backwards. I own a number of original 16mm Panoram films and they all have reverse titles.

A little trivia. Years ago, a Yehudi radio contest was held on Bob Hope's radio program. Listeners were invited to send in who they thought the
mysterious Yehudi was. The winning entry — "Yehudi is the little man who turns out the light in the refrigerator when the door is closed."

Maybe someone who reads this site can help me with this. I'm looking for a place, preferably online, to buy two-sided blank DVD-r discs. I don't mean dual-layer. I mean the kind where you can burn Part One of a movie to one side of the disc, then flip it over and burn Part Two on the other side. Most companies have stopped making or carrying these because they're quite unreliable. I know this but I have a need for them in spite of it. I'd like 16X but will settle for whatever I can get.

Also: I'm looking into maybe/possibly/I'm not sure getting a wireless Internet card for my laptop. Several cellular companies offer them and I'm wondering if anyone reading this has a strong recommendation or warning about any particular provider or plan. Natch, I'm most interested in hearing from anyone in Southern California, which is where I can usually be found. So far, the deals I've seen all require that you to sign up for a couple of decades. Having once gotten stuck in a long-term analog cell phone plan when the rest of mankind went digital, I'm a bit leery of committing to anything that may not be what I want after the next Consumer Electronics Show. Anyone have a suggestion?

Several folks have pointed this out to me in e-mail: In the "Who's Yehudi?" soundie — our previous link — everything is mirror-imaged. Whoever did the transfer flipped the image.

Sharp eyes there. For years, whenever the movie Oliver appeared on home video — and sometimes even when it ran on TV — one entire reel (about 11 minutes) was flipped that way. The telecine operator who did the film-2-tape transfer erred and then that transfer was used over and over…with surprisingly few complaints. Finally, a few years ago, they did a new transfer and put things right.

I've been swamped with matters — biz and personal — all day so I'm behind in posting news and thoughts. I'll try to catch up later tonight. I also need to post our annual notice of the birthday of the great character actor, Charles Lane. He turns 102 on Friday, I believe.

Bear with us, please. It's not quite Cream of Mushroom Soup time here but it's getting close.