Monthly Archives: November 2011

Here are two pieces you might enjoy by our pal James H. Burns. This one is about the odd Thanksgiving tradition of watching the movie, King Kong. And this one is about a fellow named Chris Steinbrunner who was responsible for that tradition and for a lot of other things that film and s-f fans should be grateful for. I never knew Chris but we kinda/almost crossed paths a few times and I only heard good things about him.

If you're buying the new Stephen Sondheim book, Look, I Made a Hat (that's an Amazon link), you don't need an excerpt. But if you aren't, you might like to read this excerpt about critics and awards.

I am always recommending Stu's Show to you folks here. It's a weekly Internet radio program hosted by my chum Stu Shostak and on it each week, he spends two hours (sometimes, more) chatting with folks of varying importance in the world of television. Sometimes, he's working the high end with Ed Asner and Rose Marie and June Foray and other names you've heard of. Sometimes, he has me on. No matter who it is, it manages to be very interesting and a lot of fun, and I enjoy listening to his podcasts while I sit here and work.

As I tell you ad nauseam, you can hear Stu's Show two ways. You can listen live on Wednesdays for free…and this coming Wednesday, his guest will be Peter Ford, son of actor Glenn Ford. Or you can download any show (he's done 254 of them) for a measly 99 cents and listen to it over and over at your leisure. I think this is a great deal but it's gotten even better. From now through the end of 2011, you can pay for three shows and get a fourth for free! Go to the archives at at the Stu's Show website, put four shows in your shopping cart and the software will charge you for three. Or put in eight and get charged for six. Or put in…well, you can probably do the math on this one.

If I may, I'd like to recommend a couple. Stu's interview with Shelley Berman in 2008 (Program #90) was outstanding and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in comedy (especially stand-up or improv) or just the life of a performer. His chat with Stan and Hunter Freberg in 2010 (Program #169) was great despite the presence of an annoying co-host. His conversation with Lana Wood in 2010 (Program #158) was not only interesting but is now timely as Lana discussed her suspicions about the death of her sister, Natalie Wood. Go browse there and you'll find chats with Pat Harrington and Joe Alaskey and Kaye Ballard and Monty Hall and hundreds of others…even the star of today's video link here, Pamelyn Ferdin. This is a great time to buy shows, especially in multiples of four. Go for it.

Just got an e-mail from Kermit. He says no. I think he's been with Disney too long.

I really like the Muppets but I have the feeling I'm being frog-marched in to see this film.

Dear Kermit —

If I promise to go see your movie soon, could I read about something else on the Internet?

Your friend,
Mark

A company that handles Internet Security tracks the worst (i.e., easiest to guess) passwords of the year. As I think I may have mentioned, when I operated a primitive by-modem computer bulletin board back in the Antediluvian Era, a pretty large percentage of our users selected "dragon" as their password.

And some folks just picked obvious ones. A number of my users were comic book writers who used the name of their most famous character or assignment. Penn Jillette logged onto my system once and his password was the same as the name of his Showtime series. Bet he doesn't use that one anymore but a lot of other people do.

If you want an impossible-to-guess (and remember) password, go to this page and just copy some string of letters, numbers and symbols.

I didn't post for the last 25+ hours because I went shopping on Black Friday. Many have tried it. Few have returned. And the ones that did return were returning stuff they bought that didn't fit or work.

Actually, it wasn't so bad at the Costco in Tustin today — don't ask what I was doing in Tustin — though they were out of almost everything I wanted. On the way in, a nice lady handed me a coupon book of this-weekend-only specials and I went off to one side to page through it. Amidst the many bargains were low, low prices on three items I wanted. (I was not, by the way, shopping for gifts for anyone. I was buying stuff for me.)

There was a new Seagate external 2 TB hard drive for something like 19 cents. I forget the real price but I didn't pay it anyway since they were all out of them. There was sign that said that because of the shortage caused by flooding in Thailand, there was a limit of two to a customer. And then underneath that sign, there were no hard drives.

I stopped a friendly Costco employee, pointed to the little coupon in the book I'd been handed not five minutes earlier and asked, "Are there any more of these around?" I received a slight snicker and the information that they'd sold out at 10 AM that morning. It was now around 12:45 and I asked him, "What time did you open?"

He said, "Ten."

I asked, "How many did you get in?"

He said, "Ten."

Then he laughed and said, "No, we had a few hundred of them here but people just swarmed in the door and I blinked and they were all gone." It was that way with the two other items I found in the coupon book: Fresh out. I could only find about eighty dollars worth of non-advertised items to buy, which is kind of pathetic considering it's Costco where I've been known to spend that much on canned tuna.

The checkout line actually went rather swiftly. The checker asked me, "Did you find everything all right?"

I pulled out my coupon book and pointed to three separate coupons. "Yes. I found where you were out of this and out of this and out of this."

He apologized and said, "It was kind of a crush here this morning. We opened the doors and all these people just poured in and grabbed up all the specials. The thing is, a couple of those items have been available here at the same price for weeks and some of them are the same price online. I guess it just seems like a better bargain if you buy them on Black Friday."

I've received my advance-ordered copy of Look, I Made a Hat, which is the second of two books collecting the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. I don't think I like his (or maybe anyone's) lyrics divorced from the melodies but I do like finding out what some of the harder-to-understand-when-sung lines are. Of greater interest are Mr. Sondheim's annotations and little essays, reflecting on his work and that of some other folks.

I still find the layout and typography of these books hard to read but it's not like that's going to keep me away. You can order a copy of Look, I Made a Hat from Amazon by clicking on this link. And if you want a copy of the first one, Finishing the Hat, that would be this link. I have, by the way, reactivated my status as an Amazon affiliate. For the last few months if you clicked on one of my Amazon links, I didn't get a cut of what you spent there. Now, I do again…and it applies to anything you buy on that site if you get there by one of my links. Good time to get a new car.

Speaking of Sondheim: Here's a recent interview to promote the book…and he'll be on again with Stephen Colbert on November 30. I have an odd hunch Sondheim is writing a song for the occasion.

On the topic of cash register programming: Three different employees of Ralphs Markets in Southern California have written me to say that the registers at their stores will not accept alcohol purchases after the 2 AM curfew on such sales. So apparently the lady at the market wasn't fibbing about that.