Monthly Archives: August 2009

Hey, when you have a moment, go over to the website of my buddy Leonard Maltin and read the story of how a "lost" Frank Capra movie was saved and restored. For those of us who've been saddened over the years by the deterioration and loss of old movies, it's exciting what's now being done via digital technology. And not only are movies being restored but they're also being preserved forever.

And while you're on Leonard's page, keep reading. Lots of good stuff there, including his piece on the Oliver Hardy Festival as well as that TV Stamps unveiling that we both attended.

The folks who run the Mid-Ohio-Con have assembled a nice birthday remembrance of Jack Kirby.

I'll be a guest at their fine convention October 3-4 in Columbus, Ohio. My pal Gregg Berger, one of the best cartoon voice actors out there, is also on the guest list so I imagine we'll be doing some sort of panel about acting for animation. The whole guest list is pretty impressive even if I am on it. This is always one of the best conventions…large enough to have something for everyone, small enough to not overwhelm you. Those of you who complain about monster-sized conventions would do well to attend Mid-Ohio-Con.

Our pal Jim Brochu gets a nice piece in the Washington Post all about that show of his that I keep telling you to go see if it's anywhere near you.

Hey, did you order a copy of June Foray's autobiography yet at www.juneforay.com? If you didn't, don't delay. June signed a huge pile of them Wednesday and they went in the mail that afternoon and are now en route.

If you have ordered, please read the following…

The folks offering the book have discovered a PayPal glitch. One of our friends thought he'd ordered the book but he really hadn't. He received an e-mailed receipt from PayPal that said the order was placed on Dec. 31, 1969. It had no transaction number on it. His account was not debited. And the folks fulfilling the orders on www.juneforay.com did not receive anything — no money, no notice of the order.

If you ordered a book, check your receipt or better still, check if PayPal actually deducted the fee from your account or charged your credit card. If no money was deducted from your account, your order was never transmitted.

If you can't tell that way or you just want to make sure, drop an e-mail to juneforaybook@gmail.com and say, "I think I ordered a book." If there's no record of you having ordered a book, someone will let you know that so you can order again.

Sorry about this but it seems to be PayPal's fault. An awful lot of orders have been received and filled…but at least one seems to have evaporated.

Since it's part of the season at the Ahmanson Theater downtown and I'm a subscriber, Carolyn and I went last evening to see Spamalot. It was my third time, her second….and we took along our friends Earl and Denise, who'd never seen it before. We all enjoyed it very much. Not that this means a lot but I enjoyed it a bit less than the production I saw with the National Touring Company in Columbus, Ohio and a lot more than the one I saw in Las Vegas. Carolyn liked this one better than Columbus.

The difference for me was partly in the audience and partly in the cast. The audience in Columbus seemed more like it was full of die-hard Python fans who knew little or nothing about the show in advance and therefore had many delightfully-unexpected moments. The audience at the Ahmanson seemed a tad less Python-savvy and I got the feeling that a lot of them had either experienced the show before or had seen and heard enough about it that they knew what was coming. That's always a problem with a show that depends a lot on surprise and has been around for a while.

Some members of all three casts were good but I thought overall, the folks in the National Touring Company were a bit stronger. John O'Hurley is playing Arthur here and he's quite good…and even slips in a reference to J. Peterman. The fellow playing Patsy, Jeff Dumas, is also extremely talented.

The show's here through September 6 and if you're local and haven't seen it, try to go. I don't know how much longer it will be possible to see a full-scale production with all the sets and costumes. Any month now, we'll start getting the local and community college stagings that will of necessity be produced on a thousandth the budget. I suspect some of them will be very funny and very creative because the material will lend itself to ingenious interpretations. But you oughta see it once in all its fully-mounted glory.

There's a lot of talk about changing the law in Massachusetts to allow a temporary Senator to be appointed quickly to sit in Ted Kennedy's seat. Not all that long ago, the law was changed to prevent then-governor Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican to take the other Massachusetts seat if John Kerry was elevated to the White House. Now some of the same folks want to change it again so there'll be a Democrat there to vote the way Kennedy would have voted the next few months, especially on Health Care Reform.

(And by the way: Don'tcha just love how some on both sides are already twisting themselves into Rold Gold Pretzels trying to use Kennedy's passing in the Health Care argument? Democrats are saying, "This was what Teddy called 'The cause of my life.' Let's pass it in his honor!" Okay, a little shameless but I don't think Kennedy would have had a problem with it. The hard part is guys like Hatch and McCain who with one breath will speak of their dear, dear friend and then in the next sentence, spin how it's in his honor that they're going to oppose what he championed. The current talking point seems to be to claim that if he'd been more active lately, Ted would have shaped Health Care Reform into something that would have had bipartisan support…)

Anyway, I don't know what to think of changing the law in Massachusetts. The arguments for and against all seem to me to have merit…so I wonder if maybe the larger answer is that we need to get rid of this recurring dilemma. Every time there's a Senate vacancy, there's a big to-do about how it should be filled and must an appointed successor be of the same party and should it be a caretaker or someone who's qualified for the long run and what if the governor appoints himself?

Why don't we just have Vice-Senators or something of the sort? How about if when someone runs for Senator, he or she designates — as part of the ticket so voters are voting with this knowledge — someone who'd be next in line for the seat if there's a need? It doesn't have to be someone who also gets a job in the government, though the elected Senator would be free to hire him or her on staff. We just have someone on Student Standby…someone the voters choose at the same time to jump in if there's a void. If the Vice-Senator dies or chooses to no longer be in the "on deck" circle, there'd be a process to pick the new person…and that could be done in a more leisurely, less contentious environment. At the same time, we'd say that if you're a Senator, you can't quit or run for higher office unless your successor is in place.

I know, I know. They'll never do it because it makes too much sense…and maybe because they won't want to rule out the possibility of exploiting a vacancy for political gain. But it would make so much sense. The easiest way to deal with most problems is to figure out how to not have them in the first place.