Monthly Archives: December 2008

Fred Kaplan tells us that we're getting out of Iraq just in time to get into Afghanistan.

A great musician has left us. If you aren't familiar with the song stylings of Page Cavanaugh, you should be. For decades, he's been a fixture of jazz clubs and lounges in Southern California, though he occasionally performed in other cities and in movies. This obit will give you the details of his career better than I could. So I'll just add that I always enjoyed hearing Page make his elegant, friendly style of music. He was, in every sense of the term, a class act.

Jim Bahler, who operates Jim's Comics in Wisconsin, writes about the article I linked to on the slow demise of VHS…

That was a very enjoyable article; quite well written. However, I must take exception to a few of the statements that were made.

Video tapes may be gone from Los Angeles, but here in the midwest, Home Depot and at least one other major chain, one which caters to the rural, farming population, carry VHS tapes. Each store has at least two 4 foot sections of video tapes. But no, I don't buy them. However, I check out the video tapes at Goodwill whenever I'm there. Having an interest in steam trains, I was extremely pleased to buy over 25 VHS tapes last summer for less than one dollar each. There are a lot of "specialty" VHS recordings that will probably never make it to DVD — titles like Nolan Ryan: Feel the Heat, With Love and Respect: A Reunion of the Lombardi Green Bay Packers, and Time Out With Britney Spears. Certainly, there are collectors of these three subjects, among many other subjects which will most likely never see the light of day on DVD. I doubt that VHS players will die as quickly as the article implies. As with vinyl records, there's too much material that's on VHS and not on DVD.

I guess I'm too old to master the "nimble navigation of DVD." With VHS tapes, I could take a tape out of my tape player, watch something else, put the tape back in right where I left off. I can't do that with DVDs — it can be very difficult to figure out which "chapter" I was in the middle of, when I pulled out one DVD to watch another one. Even if I can discern what chapter I was watching, I still have to go forward or backwards to return to the same spot I left off. I find this very time-consuming and a royal pain, and yet the article states, "Fast-forwarding and rewinding to any particular spot was the worst new tech irritant." The article applied this to VHS; I'd say this about DVDs.

With VHS, you could write down the number of feet or the time/mark you stopped at if you wanted to go back to a particular spot, and you could write it on the video cassette label for later reference. Yes, I know VHS tapes are worthless — I went to an auction this summer where I purchased between 2 and 3 thousand VHS tapes that a fellow had recorded from TV shows — a mixture of movies, A&E, History and Discovery Channel material, primarily. Each tape was recorded EP style with commercials eliminated, so there's a lot of programs on each tape. Each tape shows the time/mark as to where one show ends and another begins. I paid a total of $2.00 for all those tapes, so yes, they're worthless. But enjoyable material, nonetheless.

I grant, also, that the quality of any VHS tape is quite inferior to DVD's, and that Blu-ray is better than standard DVD. But the article goes on to conclude that the "days of DVD's (are) numbered (due to) Blu-ray." Well, not necessarily. Articles in the trade magazines have discussed how Sony fought so hard to win the battle for their Blu-ray discs that they have not evolved their players. Toshiba, however, has evolved their DVD players to the point where they are selling overseas a DVD player that allegedly upgrades the picture quality of a standard DVD to full high definition. It's my understanding that these are being sold in limited numbers in the United States, and that they are quite expensive at this time, in the area of one to two thousand dollars. (Much like early video players.) If this is successful, we won't need to pay an extra ten bucks per disc for Blu-ray discs, and we can just enjoy what we've already bought on standard DVD. Gosh, what a thought!

Anyway, many thanks for creating the most enjoyable blog. Keep up the great work, and have a great holiday season!

There are advantages to VHS over DVD…just as Beta was probably a superior format in most ways to VHS, save for the fact that it got out-marketed and went away. There's also a certain advantage to sticking with a format after others have abandoned it. I have a friend who began collecting the old RCA Selectavision laserdiscs after they stopped making the players and the discs for them. For very little money, he got a couple of players (because he knew once one broke, he probably couldn't get it repaired) and a very nice film library. Of course, he can't buy or watch recent movies that way but he doesn't particularly like recent movies.

I long ago came to the conclusion that we are all merely pawns in the Format Game; that, as I've said, all of home video is a massive conspiracy to see how many times they can make me buy Goldfinger. I dunno if I'll go Blu-ray. That's a decision that will probably be made around the time there are things I want that are available only on Blu-ray. (Actually, I already have one. I did an on-camera interview that's only on the Blu-ray release of the 1966 Batman movie and they sent me a copy of it…but I have no Blu-ray player. Yet. Fortunately, I don't care enough about seeing myself to purchase one just for that.)

It's maddening, I know…but if VHS works for you, great. I'm not throwing my player out, and I probably have 300 tapes for which there are no DVD versions. But there are powerful forces out there that want us to abandon the old formats and purchase Goldfinger anew…and I don't know how long I can fight them.

There are evenings in the theater and there are evenings in the theater. Last night, I had an evening in the theater. My friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee had an extra ticket for the opening of a new production of Mr. Dickens's A Christmas Carol at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood — the same venue where the Academy Awards are held. It was to star Christopher Lloyd as Scrooge, supported by John Goodman, Jane Leeves and Jane Seymour with "A Special Appearance by" Gene Wilder. Unmentioned in most of the advertising was that Mr. Wilder would not be there; that his performance would be handled by a pre-recorded hologram.

Several years ago, some actors I knew wrote a play about a play where everything that could go wrong on stage went wrong on stage. It was called Footlight Frenzy and it was quite hilarious. Alas, in one of those coincidences that haunt the entertainment business, it came out almost simultaneously with another play about a play where everything that could go wrong on stage went wrong on stage. It was called Noises Off, and it was a bigger hit to the point where few people saw Footlight Frenzy…a shame since it was the funnier of the two screw-up plays.

It's now in second place with Noises Off in third. Opening night of A Christmas Carol at the Kodak, so many things went wrong that the audience couldn't keep from laughing and ultimately, neither could the actors.

Our first inkling that things would be far from perfect came when we sat down in the theater and opened our program books. Out tumbled one of those little slips that told you there'd be a cast substitution. This one was unusually chatty and I quote it in full…

The role of Christmas Past is now played by Jane Noseworthy.

Jane Seymour had to withdraw from the play after contracting a severe bronchial inflection. She felt that she wouldn't be able to perform to the best of her abilities and be able to give the audiences 100% while suffering this illness. The producers and Jane agreed that it would be in the best interest of all parties for her not to continue with the production.

We all sighed and remarked on how the producers had done a good job of more or less keeping this a secret until we were inside and seated. (Ms. Seymour's name was still on all the posters all over the Kodak Theater.) We also noted the irony of an actress named Jane withdrawing because of a respiratory problem and being replaced by an actress named Jane Noseworthy.

Under the first announcement, on the same slip of paper, we also learned…

The role of Marley is now played by Barry Cutler.

Gene Wilder was to have appeared as a special effect using a hologram; the producers decided that it would not be effective in the production.

This was probably the first time much of the audience learned that Gene Wilder was never going to be on the stage at the Kodak at all…and now, even his hologram wasn't going to be there. In light of what happened later, it's pretty obvious of the reason: They simply couldn't make the hologram work.

Another ominous sign: A Christmas Carol is set in the Victorian era. Someone might have kept that in mind when they picked out the music being played before the play commenced. It was "Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt. (During intermission, we got "The Most Wonderful Time" by Andy Williams.)

Then the show started and so did the problems. Most of them were the fault of the tech crew. A pre-recorded narration, using passages from Dickens, was supposed to cover each scene change but they were rarely able to get the sets placed during the allotted time. Time after time, the curtain came down on a scene, the voiceover would play…and then it would finish and we'd sit there staring at a curtain for a minute or two while the crew raced to get a set set up. Finally, the curtain would rise…and sometimes it would then come down again because the stagehands were still out there arranging things. Or sometimes, they'd dart off the stage.

One time, they started playing the narration while Christopher Lloyd and the Ghost of Christmas Past were still on stage with another minute of dialogue to go before the scene change. Twice, they brought in the wrong backdrop…and only brought it in halfway. Some scene pieces were in the wrong place and you could see actors scrambling to get on and off stage because entrances and exits weren't where they were supposed to be.

In the first act, there's a scene where Scrooge returns to his home and he's supposed to see an image of his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, on the knocker on the front door. I guess this was going to be done via some sort of projection but we never saw it. When the stage crew set the scene, they left the front door wide open.

There was a long wait and you could hear whispering in the wings, which I guess was because they were trying to figure out what to do about this. The decision was to press ahead, so Mr. Lloyd entered and muttered some incomprehensible ad-lib dialogue about Marley, then entered the house. Apparently thinking his microphone was now off (it wasn't), he began to complain to someone backstage, "The door was open!"

And on it went. Things began to get a little better in the second act. John Goodman made his entrance as the Ghost of Christmas Present and got a tremendous ovation. Through sheer energy, he began to elevate the proceedings…but then we had a series of missed cues and some forgotten lines and we were back into a live Bloopers show. Christopher Lloyd did a magnificent job of pretending all was normal and carrying on but by the last few scenes, even he couldn't deny the obvious.

After the ghosts renovate Scrooge's soul, there's a moment when he needs to get out of his nightshirt and into his street clothes hurriedly. Lloyd dashed behind a screen to change and suddenly, there came the loud and unmistakable sound of modern-day Velcro® and a burst of laughter from the audience. You could hear Christopher Lloyd giggling and also struggling with the costume change…and finally, he announced, "If I didn't know better, I'd think the spirits were screwing with my clothes!"

For the rest of the play, everyone was snickering and Mr. Lloyd — sounding less and less like Ebenezer Scrooge and more and more like the Right Reverend Jim Ignatowski — was doing body language and gestures that said to the audience, "Yeah, I know…let's just get through it." There was much laughter in places that should not have evoked laughter. At the end, he and the cast got a tremendous standing ovation for sheer persistence and courage under fire. Lesser performers would have walked off the stage in mid-performance, headed across the promenade to the food court and applied for jobs at Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick.

This was the first of fourteen performances through January 4 and I assume things will get better. They'd pretty much have to. Christopher Lloyd is a fine actor and if he'd had half a chance to be as even half as good as he could be, he'd probably have been quite good…right up there with great Scrooges of the past like Alastair Sim and Quincy Magoo.

There could even be a memorable performance in this production. As it was, the first night was memorable but not in the way that was intended. As we exited, the audience was still chuckling and itemizing the errors. I overheard one gent ask his companion, "Was there anyone who didn't screw up?" The answer was, "Yes…Jane Seymour."

Here we have the opening and closing credits for Trickfilmzeit mit Adelheid, a German kid's show that went on the air there in (I believe) 1974 and featured a kangaroo host named Adelaide. But these titles are of interest because the German studio did animation of many American cartoon characters whose adventures were being translated and included. Most of them are Jay Ward characters (like Rocky and Bullwinkle) or Total Television shows (Klondike Kat, for instance) but Mr. Magoo's also in there. Have a look-see…

The slow, agonizing death of VHS tapes. I can remember back when I went through this with Beta and all the VHS owners were smug about how they'd chosen the format that would endure forever. I won't add to their mourning by saying, "Well, now you know how it feels."

Here is your latest Pussycat Report, live from my back yard…

We presently have four cats who are more or less constant dinner guests. They work in shifts: At any given time, two of them are here for breakfast, lunch, brunch, mid-day snacks, late-night dining and any other meal they can squeeze into their day and out of me…

We have Lydia. Lydia is the small, multi-hued creature that, you may remember, I trapped and took in for a feral abortion.

We have the Stranger Cat. The Stranger Cat is a lovely animal who is friendly and undemanding. He just sits on the porch, waiting patiently for someone to come out and feed him. Lydia and the Stranger Cat often arrive at the same time, apparently from different starting points.

We have the Stranger Stranger Cat. The Stranger Stranger Cat is obviously a relative of the Stranger Cat…perhaps a daughter or younger sister. The Stranger Stranger Cat is the shyest of the four. One night, she was in an odd frame of mind and she came up to me and rubbed up against my shins and demanded to be petted. But except for that one inexplicable moodswing, she stays far from any human.

And then there's Max the Bulimic Cat. That's Max in the photo above. Max is a large feline who is always either eating or about to eat or throwing up what he just ate so he can eat some more. That's how he spends his days: Binging and purging, binging and purging. You'd think he'd be built like a supermodel but no. The purging can't quite keep up with the binging, which is why Max weighs about as much as a Buick LaCrosse. And for what it's costing me to feed him, I could buy a couple.

Max will eat anything but he especially likes to eat what Lydia is eating. So what will happen is that I'll put one dish of vittles out for Max and one out for Lydia — the same food in each dish — and each feline will begin nibbling. Then Max will notice Lydia munching away and he'll decide he wants to eat her food…so he'll go over and chase her away and begin partaking of her Friskies. Lydia will circle around and start eating out of the bowl Max abandoned and all will be well…

…for about 90 seconds. That's how long it will take Max to notice Lydia has supper. You can almost hear him think, "Hey, I want to eat her food," forgetting that less than two minutes ago, it was his food. He'll go over and spook Lydia and cause her to flee from that bowl, and he'll resume chowing down from it. Lydia will sneak back to her original bowl and…well, I think you can see the pattern beginning to emerge.

Max is not that way with the Stranger Stranger Cat. He takes pretty good care of her. He'll come up on the back steps and howl for grub while she lurks in the shadows or behind a bush. I'll put food out and then, once I'm back inside and the patio door is closed, the Stranger Stranger Cat will cautiously approach and Max will share the food with her…and only her. (One of the reasons he gets so much food out of me is that I always think he's asking for the two of them…and it sometimes turns out that he's alone.)

Max is also deferential to the Stranger Cat, perhaps because the Stranger Cat is older or maybe it's because he's a he. Max won't share his food with the Stranger Cat but does permit the Stranger Cat to dine, uninterrupted. And if there's a moment when there's only one bowl of food out (because I'm preparing the second), Max will let the Stranger Cat have it. So he can be gracious when he wants to be.

I give them wet food and I give them dry food. Max prefers the wet food and will demand it, even though there's a whole dish of the dry stuff out there. Eventually, if I don't respond with canned something, he'll grudgingly go over and have a little of what's there. I'm thinking I'm going to steer him to more of the dry food as he seems to eat less of that, and he could stand to lose a few pounds. If he keeps eating the way he's been eating, we're going to have to have his fur let out.

And that's your Pussycat Report for today.

It's the first two openings to Garfield and Friends in Polish. Hey, why not?

Does anyone reading this know a source for the original airdates for the Jeopardy! reruns on GSN? In particular, I'm looking to record the 1/18/07 episode whenever it comes by again. Drop me a note if you can help.

Here's another one of these. Back when I had an answering machine — in the primitive era before voice mail was invented — I had answering machine messages recorded by a number of great cartoon voice actors. I've been posting them here…like the one Daws Butler did for me as Yogi Bear and the one he did as Huckleberry Hound. Or the one June Foray did as Rocky the Flying Squirrel. Or the one Lorenzo Music did as Garfield. This one is Arnold Stang in his legendary role as Top Cat…

Where are all of our tax dollars going in these bail-out deals? They're going to make sure the top executives at failed companies get all their bonuses and huge salaries, of course.

I link to this every Christmas and everyone seems to love it. It's an animation of "White Christmas" as sung by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. (Clyde's the one singing tenor. The bass voice is Bill Pinkney.) Animation is by Joshua Held, who also invented The Slide Show Game.

A reporter named Colin McEnroe gets a phone call from the National Rifle Association that tries to fire him up with lies to goad him into donating or enlisting or otherwise opening his wallet. More attention oughta be paid in this country to how much of our "political activism" is just good, old-fashioned hucksterism, trying to push folks' hot buttons to extract cash from them. A former business associate of mine is presently making his living advertising, in effect, "If you hate Hillary Clinton, give me money."

When you get a moment read Paul Krugman on "The Madoff Economy." Put simply (and correctly, I think), Krugman points up one of the problems in American business today: CEOs and execs being rewarded handsomely for the appearance of profit and the illusion that they're making their companies healthier.

Yep…it's a photo of the original voice cast of The Flintstones. Left to right, we have Alan Reed, Jean Vander Pyl, Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc…a fine troupe of actors. I'm delighted to hear that Ben Ohmart, the guy behind BearManor Media Books, has completed the autobiography of Alan Reed…a fine actor who hasn't received nearly the attention he deserves. Mr. Reed was one of those actors who — in radio, screen and television — worked constantly and was loved by his peers. But as the subtitle of this new book describes him, he was "Never a Star." He should have been so I'm glad there's finally a book that tells his story. You can order one over on this page…and while you're there, check out some of the other goodies that BearManor offers.

Also: Ben informs me that he's working on a book about Mel Blanc and would love to hear from folks who worked with Mel, knew Mel, have info on Mel, whatever. You can reach him through contact info on this page.