Monthly Archives: August 2007

Leonard Maltin just sent me this piece by Garrison Keillor about what it was like for him to celebrate his most recent birthday.

One lovely Hollywood movie star morphs into another. And another and another and another and another and another…

Thanks to "chev elt," who sent me the link.

Todd Allen takes a look at the folks who are hired to dress up in costume at comic conventions to help promote a booth and/or product. This is becoming something of an industry unto itself.

While I'm near this topic: I keep getting e-mails from folks complaining about the crowded aisles at conventions. This is obviously a problem, especially when the resident Fire Marshall is ready to shut things down. But I think some of the complainers don't get that for the folks who operate those exhibits (and pay mightily for booth space), crowding the aisles is the goal. Just as at some of the panels that preview new films or DVD releases, they're delighted when people can't get in. If you're promoting a new movie or product that's coming out next year, one of the reasons you spend the bucks to go to Comic-Con — one of the reasons you drag your cast and director down there and give out free stuff — is so that you can announce, "Interest in this is so strong that at Comic-Con, people lined up six hours early for a panel and we turned thousands away."

If you're one of those thousands, it sucks. But from the standpoint of the promoter, it's a job well done.

I'm not saying this should always be tolerated or encouraged, or that the convention couldn't/shouldn't do more to minimize crowds and long lines for things like this. But let's recognize that sometimes, the con and the exhibitors are working at cross-purposes. If I get a little time later — this is a Big Deadline Weekend for some of us — I'll post an anecdote about Buffalo Bob Smith that illumines the point.

This website asks a lot of important questions about bottled water but there are two main ones: Does it really taste better than tap water? And what impact does the manufacture of those bottles and their transport, filling and disposal have on the environment?

To the first question, I have an easy, almost inarguable answer. Bottled water tastes much better than the water that comes out of my faucets. The H2O here is awful…so awful that I've twice had experts from the D.W.P. in because I couldn't believe that what was emanating from my taps was acceptable. They tested it and said it was not dangerous in any way…but both admitted that it sure tasted like something you shouldn't be swallowing. The last guy, a year or so ago, explained that some work had been done on pipes about a mile away and that had kicked up a lot of old sediment and sent harmless but foul-tasting elements into the local water supply. "It should settle down in a few months," he said but this has not happened.

So that's the answer to the first question. It annoys me a bit when people tell me tap water is indistinguishable from bottled water. Not around here, it isn't. The fact that they may be equally good in your home is irrelevant to my life. That's like me telling someone in Germany where it's currently flooding, "Don't be silly. It's 78 degrees and clear outside."

Oddly enough, that website doesn't seem to even believe itself on this point. In one section, they say…

In an interesting study conducted by Showtime television, the hosts found that 75% of tested New York City residents actually preferred tap water over bottled water in a blind taste test. While taste is certainly highly subjective, this study shows that bottled water essentially holds nothing over tap water. In many cases, bottled water is no purer than tap water, and it may not even taste better.

I think they're referring to a survey on the Penn & Teller Bullshit show…which is, again, irrelevant to my life. Every time I've been to Manhattan, the tap water has tasted pretty good, but I can't keep flying east when I need to take my vitamins. In any case, most of the same site is devoted to pushing the idea of installing water filters because, as they say…

Tap water is nowhere near free from dangerous contaminants.

So far, I haven't had much luck with water filters. Brita hasn't made the filter that can turn my water into a reasonable facsimile of Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water. I suspect you could put my water through a Brita filter and then pour that through an Aquapure filter and run the output of that through a Pur filter and then have it all treated by my friendly neighborhood Culligan man…and it still wouldn't be decent water. But I am doing some further investigation on this point. Maybe I'll find a filtration system that works.

As for the second question, that's a different matter. Are all those plastic bottles an ecological problem? I want to read up more on that because I go through an awful lot of them and if they're filling the landfills to capacity, that's a dandy reason to do something different. I'd also like to know about the effects of water filtration. (I have the feeling that the folks who put up that website to which I'm linking have something to do with that industry. In any case, they don't address that.)

I gave up carbonated beverages in February of '06 and most fruit juices after my surgery the following May. My consumption of bottled water has probably quintupled (at least!) since then. So maybe I'm overdue to get smarter about this stuff.

This is a clip from the Colgate Comedy Hour that aired live on November 13, 1955. It was one of the last times Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis hosted that show and it was a little over seven months before they made their last appearance as a team. So despite all the on-air buddy-buddy rhetoric, they were probably already close to splitting and weren't palling around a lot off-stage.

The song is "Two Lost Souls" and I'm not sure whether it's ironic or appropriate…or maybe both. But it was from the play Damn Yankees, which had debuted on Broadway six months earlier. Some lyrics, obviously, were changed for Dean and Jerry. A little less than forty years after this telecast, Jerry would make his Broadway debut in a revival of Damn Yankees…and he would sing "Two Lost Souls." Interesting? Kind of.

Daniel Gross explains why Rudy Giuliani's (and for that matter, George W. Bush's) health care proposal sucks. Actually, I will be very surprised if any health care plan proposed by a Republican in '08 won't suck. They'll all have to have one because the public will demand it of them. So the trick will be to come up with one like Giuliani's that either changes nothing or funnels more tax money into profits for private insurance firms and major pharmaceutical companies. Obviously, Iraq will be the big issue in the next election. But this one's shaping up as a close contender so a lot of what we're going to hear is candidates denouncing each others' proposals as unworkable and/or illusory.

Ultimately, what it may come down to is Republicans accusing Democrats of having no plan to fix Iraq, Democrats accusing Republicans of having no plan to fix health care…and both sides being right.

In the previous posting, I just fixed a minor factual error that was pointed out to me by Dan Kravetz. I mentioned buying the Sunday Herald-Express. Actually, if it was Sunday — and it was — the paper was called the Herald-Examiner.

Let me explain. Once upon a time, when newspapers were a real business, Los Angeles had more of them. We had the Times-Mirror company publishing a morning paper (The Los Angeles Times) and an afternoon paper (The Los Angeles Mirror), and then we had the Hearst Corporation publishing a morning paper (The Los Angeles Examiner) and an afternoon paper (The Los Angeles Herald-Express). These all came out Monday through Saturday.

On Sunday, each company published one Sunday paper that combined the regular features of its morning and afternoon papers. The Times-Mirror company put out the Sunday Los Angeles Times and it included some columnists and comic strips that were seen in the Mirror on weekdays. The Hearst folks called their Sunday paper The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and it had features from both. In 1962, the two companies worked out some deal whereby each terminated one of its papers. The Times-Mirror people dropped the Mirror and some of its features went into the Los Angeles Times, which remained a morning paper. The Hearst folks dropped their morning paper and merged its contents into an afternoon paper called the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The Herald-Examiner continued until 1989.

For a time after the '62 changeover, the Herald-Examiner carried the comics pages of both newspapers in full and it was a glorious thing. Eventually though, they began tossing out strips and whittled it down to one page. The Times dropped a lot of strips immediately and just merged two funny pages into one. I don't recall the exact casualties list but I recall an awful lot of angry mail, including a letter I sent asking why we had to lose anything. A lot of people were happy that they had fewer newspapers to buy but they hadn't reckoned on losing their favorite comic strips.

Over on his weblog, writer-sportscaster Ken Levine is telling tales of his encounters with the late/great Jack Benny. A loyal reader (and good tipper) of this weblog has asked me to tell the story of my one encounter with Jack Benny. And he caused me to realize I've never told that story here. So here is the story of the one time I met Jack Benny for all of about twenty seconds.

It's 1961 or 1962, which means I'm nine or ten years old. It's a Sunday. My parents and I go over to a little park that is located not far from our home at the intersection where Santa Monica Boulevard crosses Wilshire Boulevard. There's a little fountain there which is, after dark, illuminated by lovely colored lights…but this is the afternoon and we're just sitting on benches there, getting out of the house for a while.

My father decides he'd like a copy of the Sunday Herald-Examiner, which can be procured from a newsstand on the southwest corner of that intersection. The park is on the northeast corner. I am handed the proper coinage and dispatched to fetch the paper, which I do happily because I'm bored silly at the park. I cross the streets, stopping dutifully at each corner to press the little button that causes the "walk" sign to appear.

I am on my way back with the newspaper and I am waiting for the light to change. It's a long light. Standing next to me is a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, high black knee socks and leather shoes. It is Jack Benny. I recognize him and it actually dawns on me that I am dressed more or less like an adult and he is dressed like a ten year old kid. Mr. Benny sees the odd look on my face and says, with a hint of a smile, "You don't know who I am, do you?"

I say, "You're waiting for Rochester to pick you up."

Mr. Benny gives me a look that everyone who has ever seen him on TV would recognize. It's a look that says, "I can't believe these things happen to me." But I can tell he's actually delighted that a kid my age knows who he is.

And then the light changes, the "walk" signal comes on, I head back to the park and that is the end of my only Jack Benny story. I wish I had another, longer one.

On Monday, George W. Bush said the following…

It's up to Iran to prove to the world that they're a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force. After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon.

He was instantly criticized from a number of sources which argued that Iran has proclaimed no such thing. This morning in his press conference, he phrased it this way…

They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program.

Okay, that second one seems closer to the truth. But isn't this the kind of thing the President of the United States ought to be a little more careful about getting right the first time? Or was the first statement a deliberate attempt to see if he could ratchet up the public paranoia a notch without being corrected?

Reader James Troutman found a simple way to download that Sondheim interview I mentioned. Over on this page, it can be snatched as an MP3 podcast. Go for it.

I keep getting messages asking me what I make of the whole Barry Bonds controversy. My primary opinion is that I don't care very much…but to the extent I care at all, I more or less agree with this article that Charles Krauthammer wrote back when Bonds was still some distance from Hank Aaron's record but likely to break it. I usually think Mr. Krauthammer knows not of what he writes…but he has to be correct about something once in a while. I think this may be it for the decade.

And today, we're going to look at the theatrical trailer for the movie of Damn Yankees. When the show debuted on Broadway, it was a modest hit. It didn't do the kind of business that everyone expected, given its reviews. Almost in desperation, the ad campaign was changed. The first posters had depicted the female star, Gwen Verdon, wearing a baseball uniform. They got rid of that and ran with a photo of Gwen in her sexy corset from the "Whatever Lola Wants" number. Business improved markedly and from then on, there was no trace of baseball to be seen in any of the advertising. It was a show about baseball and everyone knew it was about baseball…but it seemed to drive away ticket buyers if that was referenced in the ads.

The same philosophy seems to have been behind this trailer for the movie. There's very little in there about baseball but a lot about the sexiness of Ms. Verdon. There's also very little about Tab Hunter, especially when you consider that the property was acquired for him to star in, Almost everyone else was from the Broadway cast but he was put in the lead because he was a Movie Star…and then they gave Gwen Verdon the main attention in the trailer.

In his autobiography, Hunter said that he had a lot of trouble making the film because the director was George Abbott, who'd also directed the stage version. Mr. Abbott, according to Hunter, wanted him to do everything precisely the way the actor he replaced, Stephen Douglass, had done it on Broadway and scolded him when he couldn't. Another problem was that there was a musician's strike when the movie was being shot. All the musical numbers wound up being done with the actors lip-syncing to tracks from the New York cast album…which meant that Hunter had to mime to the voice of Stephen Douglass. Then the actors recorded the vocals after the film was shot, singing a cappella (no orchestra) because the musicians were still on strike. All the music was then recorded in England…an odd way to do it, and apparently agony for Hunter. But it worked.

Anyway, here's the trailer. It doesn't tell you what the movie's about but at least you know that it has the Broadway cast (well, almost) and that Gwen Verdon is real sexy in it. And you just might guess it has a little something to do with baseball.

Norman Lebrecht has an interview show on BBC3 radio where he chats with interesting people in the arts. His most recent show is a good 45 minute conversation with Stephen Sondheim.

Now, here's the hard part. The show aired last Monday and is supposed to be available on the BBC3 website for seven days thereafter…and it is, except that the website is malfunctioning and if you go to the link right now and click, the playback will start about five minutes into the programme. I figured out how to download the whole thing and listen to it from the beginning but it's kind of complicated…so your best bet is that maybe they'll fix the site before the seven days are up. Anyway, if you want to give it a try or hear it from that point on, go to this page and look for The Lebrecht Interview. If nothing else, you'll want to hear Sondheim debunk the much-rumored story that when he met Andrew Lloyd Webber at a party, Webber said to him, "There's not a note of your music that I wish I'd written." Sondheim says no such thing was said.

While you Sondheim fanciers are over in BBC vicinity, you might want to check out a two-part series from a few months ago called Sondheim's Women — an examination of the female characters in his works. This one's a little easier. You should be able to listen to Part One over on this page and Part Two over on this page.

UPDATE added the next morning: The Lebrecht Interview can be downloaded for the next few days from this page. Much simpler than what I went through.

Here's an obit for Mel Shavelson, who has passed away at the age of 90. It doesn't do justice to his filmography, which includes many a movie with Danny Kaye and Bob Hope, as well as the Make Room for Daddy TV show with Danny Thomas. I served with Mel on a committee at the Writers Guild once and found him to be a charming, witty man who worked hard for his union. As noted, he was president of the WGA three times and even when he wasn't, he was an important figure in the organization.

I'm a bit hestitant to post it because I only have it from one source with no further details…but it's a good source informing me that comedian-teacher Stanley Myron Handelman has passed away. You may remember Stanley as a shy stand-up of the late sixties and seventies. He always wore a cap and spoke in a gentle manner about the problems of his life. He later segued to a rather successful career as an acting coach and teacher, and was responsible for a great many other careers. If you see a published obit, let me know.

The Daily Show added a new correspondent tonight: Buck Henry. It was a nice surprise because Buck Henry always has been and is still a very funny, clever man. It was also a nice surprise because there are a lot of TV shows out there that…well, I wouldn't say they'd refuse to hire a 76 year old man, no matter how talented he was. But because of his age, he'd have two strikes against him before he got up to the plate.

At least, I hope tonight's appearance was the first of many by Mr. Henry. He did pretty well so we may be seeing a lot of him.