Number one hundred and nine in a series…
Monthly Archives: January 2012
Another Stupid Remark From Pat Robertson
So: According to CNN…
Christian conservative leader Pat Robertson says he has a secret straight from God: He knows who the next president of the United States will be.
"I think He showed me about the next president, but I'm not supposed to talk about that so I'll leave you in the dark — probably just as well — but I think I know who it's gonna be," Robertson said Tuesday on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club."
Robertson then went on to recite the message he claimed to have been told by God. According to Robertson, God doesn't support President Barack Obama's agenda and says that only "overwhelming prayer" can bring a new leader who will stop the country from "disintegrating."
This is interesting. Let's assume he (that's the upcapitalized "he") is right; that God told Robertson who the next president will be. If it was someone other than Obama, then Robertson wouldn't be urging people to pray desperately for a new leader because God has told him we're going to get one.
Then again, if He said it was going to be Obama…well, God's always right, right?
Also, Robertson says "I'm not supposed to talk about that" as he talks about that on national television. Who told him not to talk about that? The only one authorized to place conditions on what God tells you is God, right? So isn't Pat violating some order from the Lord here?
Not long ago, Robertson cautioned Republican candidates to avoid stepping into radical territory with their campaigns. Question: What is more radical than saying, as Robertson did elsewhere in his remarks, that God told him that the nation's downfall would be triggered by an economic collapse if Obama was elected to another term?
You know, I'm starting to get the idea that Pat Robertson is a few Jews short of a minyan.
Today's Political Agreement
My right-wing friend Roger likes about 80% of what Ron Paul says…which is high for a presidential candidate. I'm not sure I've ever liked 80% of the agenda of anyone I've voted for. Anyway, Roger just sent me an e-mail in which he said something that I kinda said here…
Most Republicans are not going to get behind him. We believe we're the strong party and Democrats are weak on defense. We can't do that if there's all that tape of our guy saying how we shouldn't go to war practically ever and their guy presided over shooting Bin Laden in the face.
It's so rare that Roger and I agree on anything, I thought it was worthy of note.
Today's Video Link
This is more of an audio link but why quibble? It's a 1953 explanation of how to survive an atom bomb blast and it comes to you from just the man you'd figure would know all about such things, Groucho Marx…
Very Early Tuesday Morning
The guy who was running around L.A. setting all those fires…life in prison is too good for him. If you really want to punish this man, make him convert a Movable Type weblog to WordPress.
By the way: It's 2:33 AM in Los Angeles and I hear no sirens.
Recommended Reading
Kevin Drum on why Ron Paul, while he may seem right on a few issues, is probably a lot more dangerous than folks think. I think it's important to realize that you can't support only the Ron Paul who seems reticent to get this country into wars and who wants to do away with federal drug laws. You have to support the entire package, which includes the Ron Paul who wants to do away with Medicare, Social Security and darn near anything else that keeps the poor and elderly alive.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number one hundred and eight in a series…
Monday Morning
As you've probably heard, Los Angeles has been plagued recently by someone (or someones) starting fires every night, usually igniting cars in car ports. Police have apprehended what we used to call a "suspect" and what we now call a "person of interest." The latter term, of course, makes the guy sound like he should be on the cover of People magazine, right next to the Kardashian of the Week.
Some reports say the "person of interest" is an immigrant. If that's so and if it turns out he set some or all of these fires, I suppose this will become a story not about an arsonist but about all immigrants.
Folks have been writing to ask if any of this is happening near me. Last night, there was a fire about ten blocks from here but that's as close as it's gotten. I do not, by the way, have a car port. Very early this morn from about 1 AM to my bedtime of 4:30 AM, I could hear sirens quite often in the distance and at one point, a helicopter was hovering over a location perhaps a mile from me. It reminded me of the Rodney King riots of '92. The destruction didn't make it into my area but I could hear sirens, see plumes of smoke in the distance and in the news, see that the riot was affecting places I was known to travel.
There were a number of moments from that week that I vividly recall but I thought of this one last night. Most of the meaningful TV news coverage of the looting and the burning was done by men in copters. They were showing us what was happening right then, as opposed to the reporters on the ground who were usually showing us aftermaths.
One night — I think it was a Friday — there came a moment when the chopper guy on one local channel was able to report that as far as he could tell, there were zero fires burning at that moment. That was the first time he'd been able to say that in days and to emphasize the concept, he did a 360° pan of the city from his aerial vantage point. Not a plume of smoke to be seen.
He mentioned a hillside and swooped down to give us a look. It was a grassy slope and on it were about thirty firemen, mostly in full gear, lying down and napping…and for some, it may have been the first time in days.
On my TV, I heard the news anchor, back at the studio, tell the copter pilot to bank closer so we could get a better look at those brave, hard-working public servants. And I heard the copter pilot say, "No, this is as close as I dare get. Any closer and they'll hear the helicopter, and if anyone ever deserved a chance to sleep, it's those guys." The in-studio anchor hastily agreed and retracted his suggestion.
Like I said, last night I thought about that. I never wanted to be a fireman. I wouldn't even have wanted to be Dean Martin if it required sliding down one of those poles. But I'm very glad there are people in this world who want to fight fires and help the public. Very glad indeed.
Today's Video Link
Larry Fine of The Three Stooges suffered a stroke in 1970 and spent the rest of his life (about five years) in the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, here in California. He loved having visitors and I went twice, though in neither visit was he as alert and informative as he is in a video made by someone in '73. When I was there, he seemed to have a repertoire of about twelve stories, most of them about being injured on the set…and no matter what I asked him, I got one of the twelve stories.
The '73 conversation was posted to YouTube and I embedded it last night in this posting…but now the person who put it up on YouTube has disabled embedding so if you want to see it, you'll have to go over to YouTube. Here's a link to Part One of three. They all total a little less than a half-hour.
Recommended Reading
Matt Taibbi on yet another way that your government funnels a lot more of your money to private enterprise than is absolutely necessary.
Recommended Reading
Norman Lear on why he founded People for the American Way.
Lookin’ Back
2011 was a not a bad year around here. Matter of fact, if I could overlook friends getting sick, friends getting financially desperate and friends achieving both, I could say it was a pretty good year. Trouble is, I can't overlook that stuff. About all I can do is hope we've seen the worst of it.
A pretty bad bit of news for many of us came with the sad, sad loss of Earl Kress, my friend of 27+ years and one of the nicest, brightest people I've ever met. That's Earl in the picture (like you couldn't have figured that out) with the magnificent June Foray at a Comic-Con panel a few years back. Earl was an animation writer, voice actor, historian and devout fan, and the two of us helped June assemble her autobiography.
As I've said before here – prompting some thankful mail and some angry – I'm not a big believer in grief. I don't think you have to be in pain for weeks or months or years because you lost a loved one. My feeling is on the order of: "You're going to get past this sooner or later. Why not sooner?" When I go, I don't want anyone who knows me to be depressed for more than fifteen minutes unless there's some reason to think that being miserable will bring me back.
That said, I'm also big on remembering the departed. To that end, the evening of his passing, I seized control of a web address Earl wasn't using anyway – www.earlkress.com – and put up a quick tribute site. I have since had the time to redesign it into something more appropriate…and easier on the upkeep. If you haven't visited, drop by and read up on my pal Earl. You might get some idea why so many of us miss him.
Browser Blues
Well, if you've tried accessing this page within the last three hours, you've found it installed and uninstalled and installed and uninstalled and installed and uninstalled and that's how I've been spending my evening. I fixed about half of the software problem but it still doesn't look exactly right in some versions of Internet Explorer 9.
But here's what had me removing large clumps of hair from my own head, Moe Howard-style: I have a bunch of other domains on the same server that hosts this weblog. I installed the weblog in one of those and it looked fine in I.E. 9. Then I did the exact same thing installing it in the newsfromme folder and it looked screwy. So I uninstalled that and I installed it again in the folder that houses another domain on the server. Looked fine. Then I did the exact same thing installing it in the newsfromme folder and…screwy again. I tried putting it into a sub-folder of newsfromme and it was wrong. I tried putting it in a sub-folder of another folder on the server and it was right. It'll work fine as long as it's in the wrong domain. I managed to minimize the screwiness to the point where I can live with it (or make you live with it) but it's still not right. Anyway, I'm through fussing with it for a while.
Everything is as fixed as it's going to get for now. If something looks wrong and you're on an older browser, I suggest you upgrade…not for my silly little blog but because there will be more and more sites where you'll be missing out. Seeking advice on my problem earlier, I phoned a friend who does the kind of thing I was doing, only he does it for huge fees for big companies and knows what he's doing. He couldn't solve my dilemma but he did say (approximate) this…
The sites I'm doing will not look right on older browsers and most of the companies I do them for don't care that much. I mean, they'd like everyone to be able to access their site and navigate about and take in all the fancy graphics. But if someone writes in to say he can't see the Flash embeds or the QuickTime movies, the company doesn't sweat it. They assume that person isn't much of a customer. If he won't take the time to upgrade to the latest browser, which is usually free, he's probably not going to upgrade his old TV, his old car, his old computer. They may even have marketing surveys that tell them that. Anyway, they don't care that much.
I dunno how true that is but it sounds true. For what it's worth, I use Mozilla Firefox and I keep it up to date but not immediately. Every time they put out an update, half the plug-ins stop working for a week or two so I delay my upgrades for a few weeks. Things can get better in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping my site's Internet Explorer problem does.
Old L.A. Restaurants: Tracton's
Here’s everything I remember about Tracton’s, a restaurant my family frequented for many years: It was on La Cienega down near Rodeo, across from what was then a Fedco membership department store (we were members) and is now a Target. The place was friendly inside and they served big hunks of meat. I usually had the chopped steak, which was basically just a very thick hamburger patty. I also remember an odd argument with a waitress once when my aunt asked for a doggie bag so she could take the rest of her dinner home and the waitress accused her of not having a dog. Which was true. My aunt didn’t have a dog but what business was that of the waitress?
I also remember that when Tracton’s closed, the building became one of those places that’s a different restaurant every time you drive by as one after another goes out of business. Finally, one closed down and stayed closed for a couple years until the building was torn down. And that’s all I remember about it.
Research has yielded the info that it was opened and owned by a gent named Harold “Red” Tracton who played host to all sorts of L.A. notables, mobster-types included. There was also a Tracton’s downtown and he operated the Buggy Whip restaurant near LAX (and still in business), the Salem House which was in the Farmers Market and the restaurant at the Fox Hills Country Club. Before that, he had Norm and Red’s Green Lake Cafe out in Pasadena. The most famous of all these — the Tracton’s on La Cienega that my family visited — opened there in 1956, then moved to Encino in ’78. In 1988, that place was sold and is now a Chevys Fresh Mex Restaurant. Red moved to Del Mar and opened a restaurant that’s still open (and quite successful) as Red Tracton’s, operated by his daughter Tracy. Red passed away in 1999 but his tradition of serving big hunks of meat continues.
UPDATE, YEARS LATER: The Buggy Whip is now gone but since I never ate there, there will be no page about it here.
Today's Video Link
And now here's something we hope you'll really like: The Hillcrest Wind Ensemble of San Diego offers a lovely symphony of themes from cartoons produced by Jay Ward…