Monthly Archives: October 2007

Jack Hitt discusses the Reagan "Star Wars" missile defense system into which this country has poured zillions of dollars and loads of hope with no reasonable evidence that the thing can ever work.

You know, I understand why someone would want to believe there could be a magic genie that could protect us from that kind of attack, just as I can understand why some folks are so gung ho about the U.S. spending so much on hardware for defense. What always puzzles me is why the question of whether the hardware will work is treated like some nitpicky technicality. It's almost like some people think spending billions on planes that won't fly or defense systems that won't defend is still better than not spending as much on protecting this great nation of ours.

Okay, so how many times today are we going to hear someone joke about how the Supreme Court just voted 5-4 to give Al Gore's Nobel Prize to George Bush?

This one got right by me in the article I linked to yesterday morning — the one about how NBC will soon be relocating their studio…

"The Tonight Show put us on the map" said Burbank Mayor Marsha Ramos. "Without that line from Johnny Carson, about 'beautiful downtown Burbank,' most people wouldn't even know that we exist. When The Tonight Show leaves, there will be a portion of our heart that will be empty."

As several of you reminded me, Mr. John Carson did not coin the term "Beautiful Downtown Burbank." It gained national fame on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, especially as uttered by the show's announcer, Gary Owens. And it actually originated years before that on Gary's radio show here in Los Angeles. He used that term many a time and introduced it into the Laugh-In library of catch-phrases.

I called Gary earlier today to double check and he said he'd been flooded with calls about it and had done several TV and radio interviews in the previous few hours. A lot of folks are sad that NBC will be vacating those historic premises and, of course, some are irate that the Mayor of the city doesn't even know who gave the town its famous nickname. Maybe Congress can vote a resolution condemning her. That would be a lot more important than addressing the problem of Iraq…or as we call it, Beautiful Downtown Baghdad.

This site is about to do some of you a huge favor. If you live or have recently lived or worked in the state of California, that is.

Go to this page and enter your name. This is not a scam or a hoax or a trick to sell you penis enlargement creme. It is the Unclaimed Property Search for the State Controller's Office. Via circuitous means, money that is owed to you may have wound up in their coffers and they'd like to find you and send it your way. This they cannot do this unless you tell them where you are and fill out a mess of forms…which may be well worth the effort. Then agan, it may not…but you won't know until you go to that page and do a search.

Some tips: Unless you have a very common name, do not enter your city. Some of the money waiting for you may be c/o the address of your union, a past place of employment, an old residence or mail drop, a union, a lawyer, a business manager, etc., so your current address may not yield a match. Also, you might try entering variations on your name — Robert, Bob, Rob, etc. and try it with and without a middle initial.

And, most important: Enter the names of dead relatives and anyone else to whom you may be an heir. I have a deceased uncle in there who has $1700 waiting for him or whoever is legally entitled to claim it. I think it's me.

I pointed this website out once before and a lot of you got a lot of money, especially if you were a current or past member of either the Screen Actors Guild or AFTRA. Some of the amounts may be too trivial to bother with but just entering friends' names in the last twenty minutes, I found a couple of large sums due to folks who could really use the loot. So let's spread word of this around. If you don't want to bother explaining it to everyone you know, just send them a link to this item. (Right click below where it says LINK and then you should get a menu that will enable you to copy the link. It'll say either "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link" or something of the sort, depending on your browser. Then you can paste that link into an e-mail or two.)

So…have you heard the one about the shoplifting seagull?

Ezra Klein on a rather pathetic attempt by some parties to smear a twelve-year-old boy and his family who spoke out against George W. Bush's veto of the S-CHIP expansion.

I'll admit it was kind of a cheap political stunt for the Democrats to trot out an injured child to campaign for aid to sick kids…though no cheaper, and certainly more relevant than the endless stream of firefighters, soldiers and children that George W. Bush uses in his photo-ops. (Anyone remember what he was doing on 9/11 when the planes hit the buildings?) But the response in this case was just meanness and misrepresentation…and of course, they wound up proving the opposite of the point they were trying to score.

So I'm on the line right now to the Washington office of one of my senators, Dianne Feinstein. My call was answered by a recording of the Senator's voice telling me that all lines are busy and that I can either hold or call back later…but if I hold, my call will get disconnected after two minutes. What company makes a phone bank that works like that? Can you imagine a company that wants you to buy something from them having phones that hang up on you if they're too busy?

Wait. Someone coming on the line.

Okay, I'm back. I just told the person who answered that I am a voter in California and that I want Sen. Feinstein to vote against amnesty for the telecommunications companies involved in the FISA wire-tapping mess. He dutifully took down my zip code and said my opinion would be tallied. (Why I feel this way, I should explain, is that I'm always suspicious when someone claims they've done nothing wrong but need to be protected from accountability for what they've done.)

I wonder if any Senator or Congressperson has set up something that I would think would be very easy to set up. It would be a website where their constituents could register to vote on the issues of the day. I mean, as it is, I could have been living in Pennsylvania or Portugal and told the guy on the phone I was a California resident. What if there was a site where I could actually register and they could verify my Californianess (in my case), maybe by sending me my password via postal mail or checking my Mastercard billing address or something…and each week, they'd put up questions on which I could express my opinion? There could also be a little comment box where I could add my reasons in 100 words or less.

It wouldn't in any way be binding on my representative but I would think it would at least be a good p.r. move on the part of an elected official. Wouldn't you be at least a little impressed by a Congressperson or Senator who arranged such a thing? Especially if they promised to read all the comments that were submitted?

I don't know whether Al Gore will win the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow or if it will do anything to jar him loose from his "I am not a candidate" position. But I do know what I'd like to hear him say if he does win: "Thanks…but I'm not accepting your award until you take back the one you gave to Henry Kissinger."

Here's a photo of two of my favorite people. The guy on the right is the late Jack Kirby. I've written at least ten million articles about how terrific Jack was, plus I have a real fancy book coming out in February all about him.

The fellow on the left, looking like he wasn't wild about having his picture taken, is Joe Simon. I've probably only written about five million articles that address the greatness of Joe so here's a brief summary. Joe was one of the true pioneers of comics. He was one of the first "Renaissance People" in that he could do everything. He could write, he could draw, he could letter, he could design, he could edit. Whatever it took to create a great comic book, he could do it. Kirby used to say, "Joe knows comics," and that was the highest compliment Jack could bestow on a colleague. He was especially impressed with Joe's ability to sell a comic — to conceive or recognize a saleable idea and then to know just how to design the cover, layout the book, etc. The comics created by the Simon-Kirby team were classics, every one of them, and that was in large part because Joe knew comics.

He still does. I'm delighted to wish my friend Joe Simon a happy 92nd birthday today. Hope there are many more of those to come.

NBC is announcing firm plans to close down some or all of its Burbank studio and to move operations to a new facility that will be built over on Lankershim across from Universal Studios. Apparently, the traffic over there on Lankershim is not quite impossible enough. It's still possible to get through there once in a while and they need to stop that.

The story also says that when Conan O'Brien takes over The Tonight Show in 2009, he will broadcast from a studio on the Universal lot. I think this is the first time they've admitted what everyone has presumed since the handover was announced; that Conan would not do the show from New York.

Looming over and under all of this, of course, is the question of what becomes of Jay Leno. He's lately begun doing jokes about NBC throwing away the one thing on their network (him) that's working well. There are rumors he's dickering with Fox about a competing late night show that might even start at 11:00, giving him a jump on Conan and Dave at 11:35. I suspect the rumors come from no source whatsoever; that everyone's just assuming that there are or will be discussions with Fox.

Because his ratings are still strong, Leno is in one of the best bargaining positions in the history of show business. He's like a star pitcher who has his best season ever just as he's becoming a free agent and can entertain all offers. The question is what, apart from the job he's been doing for the last umpteen years, the guy might crave. Once upon a time, NBC was in the awkward position with Mr. Letterman that they were desperate to keep him but unable to offer him the one thing in the world he wanted, which was The Tonight Show. It may be that the network is now in the same position with Mr. Leno. And just how embarrassing would it be for the network if Jay went over to Fox and did a show that beat Conan?

Woody Allen's first album of stand-up comedy may be all-time single funniest record of its kind. Every comedian of the generation after him studied and envied that album, especially a short, hilarious routine called "The Moose."

Our clip today is from an English TV show of the mid-sixties. It's Allen performing that routine in less that ideal circumstances. His timing is a little off and the audience isn't particularly receptive…and also, he decided he had to adjust a few lines, including the all-important last one. Still, footage of Woody Allen doing standup is rare and this may be the only footage ever of him performing this routine…

Fred Kaplan on what we can still accomplish in Iraq.

People ask why I link to so many Fred Kaplan articles and I would think the answer would be self-evident. He's the only guy I've seen out there writing straightforward, address-what's-really-happening pieces about Iraq. One of the things that made me decide the war was a botch was that the arguments about why we're fighting all either fell apart (We're there because Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction, we're there because a wonderful democracy will fall easily into place without him, etc.) or they were just too vague. Lately, in the last category, I keep getting e-mails from pro-war folks whose case never seems to go much deeper than "We have to win there because we're America and America always has to win." I think I'd like a little more than that, along with a specific definition of what will denote a "win."

Boy, we get answers fast around here. Barry Mitchell writes…

The sketch artist wearing the smock in Dick Van Dyke's Bosco commercial is local New York-area TV weatherman, Tex Antoine. He's famous for two things: illustrating his forecasts while drawing his character Uncle Weatherbee, and in the 1970s, being forced off the air in disgrace. Antoine was commenting on a news story that preceded his segment, and had the poor taste to ad-lib, "Confucious say: if rape is inevitable, sit back and enjoy." Or words to that effect. His long TV career was over in a flash.

Which is not surprising, especially since the preceding story was about the violent rape of a five year old girl. It was in 1976, by the way. Can we think of anything stupider that's been said on a newscast since then? I mean, besides about 20% of everything said by our elected officials?

Preeeeesenting…three and a half minutes of commercials for Bosco, the chocolate syrup that seemed to sponsor about half of the shows I watched when I was a youth. Of interest in the spots is Bosco's identity crisis: Sometimes, they tried to sell it as something that was good-tasting and decadent, and sometimes it was a "milk amplifier" that added vitamins to the cow juice. After all, we all know how milk isn't healthy for children unless you add a lot of sugar to it.

Also of interest is that one of the commercials features Dick Van Dyke as spokesguy. I'm guessing this was from around (or slightly after) 1956 when CBS was using Mr. Van Dyke to host kid-oriented programming like Cartoon Theater and the occasional family movie special. This was before he starred on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie and well before The Dick Van Dyke Show. I wonder who the cartoonist is in this spot.

Bosco was introduced in 1928 and it's still available in stores. They have the original chocolate flavor (natural cocoa with malt extract) but there's also a strawberry version, a "berry blue" variety, a caramel Bosco, a sugar-free chocolate Bosco and Sugar-Free Bosco Pancake Syrup. My impression is that Bosco once had a pretty large share of the market but then the Hershey's and Nestlé's corporations made a move on the syrup shelves and managed to whittle Bosco down to a smaller company. One of these days, I'll have to edit and upload a series of Bosco commercials that Daws Butler did which were, like everything Daws did, marvelously entertaining.

Here's an obit for Enrico Banducci. It says in there that his birth name was Harry Banducci but all the comedians I was with last evening — including one mentioned in this obituary, said his real surname was something that sounded Jewish. Perhaps they were in error or maybe it was a joke I didn't get.