Here's a good, long profile in the New York Times of Stephen Colbert. It really is impressive how he is able to improvise so well "in character" as he does…to the point where some people out there actually don't understand it's a character.
Monthly Archives: January 2012
WordPress Woes
Okay, so here's my latest problem: The above screen shot is the way this weblog is supposed to look…with blue bars on either side. And from what I can determine, it looked this way to about 97% of you if you came by here in the last week or so. For some reason though, about 3% of you were seeing it without the white in this area. The blue background was showing through, making the text difficult to read.
I did all the necessary tests and validations and everything told me I had it all configured properly and that shouldn't happen. But it did. I got a lot of distressed e-mails from folks who thought I'd put black text over a dark blue (at top) background because I wanted it to be close to illegible. Stumped, I finally e-mailed a friend who's supposed to be an expert at this kind of thing. The reply I got him from said, in part…
There's nothing wrong with your CSS. It all validates fine. The problem is that 3% of your users are using browsers they shouldn't be using. Most of them are probably old and incapable of reading modern CSS coding. They may not realize it but they're missing a lot of things on the internet and in the next year or so as more and more sites abandon old coding and deprecated tags, those browsers may not be able to read most sites at all. A few of them are probably also using one of the dreadful recent browsers for the Mac that don't know how to handle some basic commands. I don't know why they did that but one of them can't even read the friggin' Time magazine site. Tell those people to upgrade for their own sake or go find some other site to read.
And the trouble with that advice is that as some of the 3% have written to me, they can't upgrade that easily. Usually, the stated reason is that they're on very old computers and can't afford at this time to upgrade their hardware…and the old hardware won't run new software.
Well, I've decided that before I give up on that 3%, I'm going to fiddle with the software here. The difficulty is that since none of my three computers or my iPad or my iPhone sees the "problem," I have no way of knowing if anything I do fixes it.
I have replaced the blue background with yellow for the moment. I'm going to eventually go back to it but for now, yellow is in its place. So anyone who had the problem of the blue showing through is, at worst, now reading this over yellow so it should at least be legible. I'm going to be fiddling over the next week or two when I have the time. If you had the problem and anything I do causes white to appear in this space instead of yellow, please drop me a line and let me know. Thanks.
Today's Video Link
Stu Shostak is still trying to get New Year's Eve guests out of his home after his gala six-hour broadcast that evening. But he took time out to send me this link to a video of about two minutes of old Los Angeles. It says 1954 on it but there's a shot in there of Grauman's Chinese Theater and it's showing The Robe, which opened there in September of 1953 and had surely closed by '54.
Amazingly, a lot of my city hasn't changed much. Look fast and you'll see a couple of shots of Owl Drugs, which was a local chain back then. The big one, which is visible for a few seconds at 1:07, was at the corner of La Cienega and Beverly Boulevard. In the late seventies, I lived on that block…and there's still a drugstore there. Now it's a CVS Pharmacy as every building outside the state of New York will soon be. (In New York, everything will eventually be a Duane Reade's.) Here's what that corner in L.A. looks like now…
Here, I'll give you one more. In the video which you're about to watch, there's a fast look at a Ralph's Market at around 1:02. That's Westwood Village back then and that building is now a Peet's Coffee and Tea, which is kinda like Starbucks but with nicer furniture. Here's what it looks like today…
Okay, here's the video. It's less than two minutes but I spotted an awful lot of places I knew and know. Thanks, Stu. If all of your guests haven't left by Washington's Birthday, give me a call and I'll help you throw them out…
Today's Political Musing
Ron Paul's campaign manager says their campaign believes that Rick Santorum has "a daring lack of viability" as a candidate. Isn't that the guy in third place saying the guy in second place doesn't have a chance?
Recommended Reading
You know how politicians will promise one thing when they're running for office then do the opposite once they're elected? Jonathan Bernstein says that doesn't happen as often as we think it does.
Richard Alf, R.I.P.
When Shel Dorf and Ken Krueger died in 2009, I wrote on this blog that they were the two most important people involved in the founding of what we now call the Comic-Con International. You know the Comic-Con International: That nation unto itself that many of us attend each summer in San Diego. Well, a close third in importance to the con's founding was Richard Alf, who died earlier this evening at a hospice in La Jolla, California at the age of 59.
Richard was a tall, friendly fellow and I do not recall him ever not being in a great mood and smiling. He was something of a wunderkind: As a teenager, he began dealing in old comic books and he was so successful that when the first San Diego Con was being assembled, Richard was able to front much of the money that was needed to launch the project.
He was on the first committee and very much involved. The organizers paid several visits to the home of Jack Kirby where they received encouragement and advice. Richard is the tall guy in the back in this photo taken on one of those visits. Kirby is in the center and Dorf is in the back on the right
Richard served as Chairman of the convention at least once and worked on all the early ones before stepping away. I'd see him at the most of them, though. He was enormously modest when praised for his role in starting it all…and yet he was enormously proud of having had any sort of role. At recent cons when they've celebrated the anniversary of that institution and also the anniversary of Comic Book Fandom, we all got to see and talk with Richard and he seemed to be having a great time. But then he always seemed like he was having a great time. Sad to see it end.
Shrink Rap
My one-time writing partner Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist. Hmm…I drove him to that. Well, if I did, he should be grateful because he's very successful in this profession…though it's one that is often not depicted in a favorable light in films and television. He discusses this situation for Psychology Today.
Suite Stuff
If you're thinking of attending the WonderCon in Anaheim, California…just a dwarf's throw from Disneyland. The festival is March 16-18 and this would be a dandy time to make that hotel reservation. They won't sell out by the time you finish reading this item the way they do for San Diego…but they probably will sell out. I suspect the convention will be quite well-attended but that the most of the folks from L.A. and surrounding areas who will pack the place will commute from home.
People keep asking me if this means WonderCon will likely remain in Anaheim. As you may know, San Francisco is WonderCon's home and they'd be there this year but for the fact that the Moscone Center is undergoing renovation and doesn't have space for us. The answer to the question about the future is that the convention organizers seem to have every intention of returning to S.F. when they can…but who knows? If Anaheim is wildly successful, maybe they'll stay. Or start an Anaheim convention to go along with San Francisco.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number one hundred and ten in a series…
Go Read It!
Shane Shellenbarger sent me this link to an article that seeks to answer the question, "Why Do All Movie Tickets Cost the Same?" My guess is it's mainly Reason #2 in the article — theaters don't want you waiting for them to lower prices later on — and perhaps a fear that it'll make the higher priced tix feel like gouging. They think the customers will think, "Hey, it costs them to same to have me sit in Theater 1 as it does to sit in Theater 6. There's no reason they have to charge me more!" Yeah, I know that's not utterly logical but merchants cater to a lot of consumer notions that aren't logical.
Recommended Reading
Among the hundred-or-so reasons why Rick Santorum will never get the G.O.P. nomination is this: He's against contraception. Never mind that when you practice contraception, you prevent a lot of horrible diseases. And never mind that you prevent unwanted babies, including those that could be born to couples that already have all they can feed or care for. He's against contraception because it leads to people having sex for the wrong reasons.
There are a lot of quotes where he's said as much. No one has dragged them out into the open because no one thought he was much of a factor in the current presidential race. But I guess we're about to hear a lot about it and about some of his other odd views of morality, and that'll be the end of Rick Santorum.
That'll be a shame in a way. It would have fun to have the next presidential election be about whether the government should be dictating how and why people have sex.
Today's Video Link
Today on Stu's Show, your enthusiastic moderator Stu Shostak welcomes my buddy Vince Waldron, author of the best danged book there could ever be about the best danged sitcom ever, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Vince was on Stu's Show before but there was so much to talk about and they only got through about half past "It May Look Like a Walnut." Today, they resume their conversation.
Stu's Show is webcast live at 4 PM Wednesday afternoon. That's Pacific Time so if you're in the east, it's 7 PM and if you're in Kazakhstan, as so many fans of Stu's Show are, it's 6 AM the following morning. The show is supposed to run two hours but sometimes runs longer. You can listen in by going to the Stu's Show website at the proper time.
That's free. Shortly after the live webcast, each episode becomes available for downloading at the same place where the price is a measly 99 cents. While you're there, you might also want to buy Stu's previous episodes about my favorite situation comedy, including the one with Rose Marie and Larry Matthews, as well as Vince's earlier appearance.
Hey, what do you say we watch an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show? Yeah, I know you bought the DVD set but sometimes I embed just because I can. This is a complete one — complete with current commercials you'll have to sit through, though you can always do what I do, which is to minimize the window and try and solve an entire Sudoku puzzle while the ad plays.
I've selected "Obnoxious, Offensive, Egomaniac, Etc.," which is the one where the writers loaded a script with insults about their boss, Alan Brady, then accidentally sent it over to him without deleting the offending adjectives. The plot was reportedly based on a real-life incident where the writers on The Joey Bishop Show did a draft wherein they inserted their true feelings about Mr. Bishop and then had to scramble to get back a copy which wasn't supposed to have been sent to him. Here's what Carl Reiner and his merry band did with that premise…
Dropping the Ball
That's what I did: I dropped the ball. I meant to link to this history of New Year's Eve customs on that day and forgot.
The Name Game
The Las Vegas Hilton is no more. Oh, the building is still there but they lost their right to use the Hilton name and now the same place is the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino — or LVH for short. Few will probably notice and if you tell a cabbie there to take you to the Las Vegas Hilton, that's where he'll drop you off.
An interesting bit of history. It was the biggest hotel in the world when it opened its doors in 1969 as The International. Barbra Streisand was its first headliner and that naturally raised the problem, "How do you follow Barbra?" Easy: You bring in Elvis. In 1971, the Hilton Corporation bought the International and just before they renamed it, it was used for many of the scenes in the James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever. In that movie, there was a Howard Hughes-like entrepreneur named Willard Whyte who operated a hotel called The Whyte House. For the exterior shots of The Whyte House, they used a view of the International and did a matte painting to add several stories (and a big sign that said THE WHYTE HOUSE) to the top of the International. But of course that was only on film. They didn't actually build onto the building.
One of the first times I was in Vegas, I had dinner with a gentleman of advanced years who had been a casino host and showroom manager at the Sands throughout the sixties. He had loads of great tales about Frank, Dino, Sammy and all the guys. The subject of the Vegas Hilton came up and he said, "You know about the secret floors there, right?" I said I didn't. He explained to me that while most people thought the Hilton had 30 floors, it was actually more like 34 or maybe even 36. Most elevators, he said, didn't go up to the secret floors but if you had a special key they only gave to the highest of rollers, you could get access. What went on up there? "You don't want to know," he replied. It was like a super-casino with drugs and hookers and gambling tables where it was not unusual for someone to wager a cool million on one spin of the wheel."
The way he described it, it sounded a little…let's say "hard to believe." I asked him how he found out about these super-secret floors. He said, "They gave away the secret in that James Bond film. The way they photographed the hotel, you could see the extra stories." It took a few seconds for me to realize he was not putting me on.
That's when I asked him, "So how is it that if I go over and look at the Vegas Hilton, I won't see these extra stories?"
He hunched over the table like he was letting me in on the biggest secret on the planet. Then he said, "Listen…you go down to the Frontier and see two guys in the showroom there named Siegfried and Roy. You'll see them make an entire elephant disappear into thin air. But they don't really make the elephant disappear. It's a trick. And I don't know how they do that but if people can make it look like an elephant has disappeared, they can sure as hell make a 36-story hotel look like it only has thirty stories."
Recommended Reading
Matt Taibbi writes of what this seemingly-interminable presidential election is all about. He doesn't think it's about much other than that the guy who gets the most money out of Wall Street wins and spends the following four years thanking them in oh-so-many ways. I think it's about that but it's also about a little more than that.