Number two hundred and twenty-two in a series…
Monthly Archives: May 2012
My One Tweet From Yesterday
- Mitt says if you want to go to college, borrow from your family. If they can't afford it, borrow from his family. 12:53:12
Go Read It!
My friend Shelly Goldstein, oft-mentioned on this blog, writes a monthly column for a Gay Rights website arguing for more tolerance and also some of those "equality" things like marriage. When I mentioned her gig to someone once, he furrowed his brow and said, "She's not gay, is she?" No, she's not and it's sad that there are some people out there who can't seem to grasp the concept of taking a stand on behalf of others, as opposed to your own immediate self-interest.
Here's her latest, which is about a great teacher she had…a man she later learned was gay. I think I had one of those, too. I mean, I never found out for sure but years later when I'd met more gay folks and had several instances of learning that someone it didn't occur to me was gay was gay, I realized that particular teacher probably was, too. And of course it doesn't really matter except to make the point that it doesn't really matter.
I should probably link to all of Shelly's column but if I wrote about everything she does, there'd be no room on this blog for me or pictures of Laurel and Hardy or postings about tomato soup. But if you read her new essay, you may want to look up some or all of the earlier ones.
Tomorrow on Stu's Show!
Hanna and Barbera aside, the two most important producers of Saturday Morning TV animation have been Joe Ruby and Ken Spears…and theirs is a fascinating story. They met when working as film editors and made that unlikely shift from cutting film to writing the shows that were recorded on it. Eventually, they were also producing…first at Hanna-Barbera, then at other studios and finally at their own. Along the way, they were the creators or at least the showrunners of so many of the most successful shows of the sixties, seventies and into the eighties — and they're still producing stuff. Plus, shows they launched are still around. They created Scooby Doo, for instance — not only the most popular property ever conceived for non-primetime animation but the template for so many other programs.
Wednesday, they're the guests on Stu Shostak's popular Internet radio show. Stu usually does his show live on Wednesdays but this one was recorded last Friday because his co-host for the week (me) has to be somewhere else. So I can tell you that the program went very well, though we only got through about a third of the Ruby-Spears story. We talked about them working as editors, about them starting out writing short segments for Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear, about them becoming full-fledged writers on shows like Space Ghost and The Herculoids and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. We got about as far as when they left H-B to go start their own studio…and then the rest will have to wait for another webcast.
You can listen to the show for free tomorrow (Wednesday) when Stu "airs" it at 4 PM Pacific Time, which is of course 7 PM Eastern Time…and if you live anywhere else, you can figure out the time based on that information. It runs about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Just go to the Stu's Show website at the proper hour.
And should you miss it, fear not. You can then go to the Stu's Show website at any time and download it as an MP3 for a measly 99 cents. In fact, while you're there, download a few more shows and get Stu's bargain rate of four shows for the price of three. They're all a lot of fun but this one is one of his best.
Another Supermarket Interlude
So one night a few weeks ago, I go into a Ralphs Market about 2:30 AM. There are two young men in their twenties, both with spiked hair in unnatural colors. They're loading a shopping cart with food but they're also dining as they shop. They've opened a couple of bags of chips and cookies, plus they've opened and are swigging from bottles of Snapple from the refrigerator case.
There's one checkout line open at this hour and way more shoppers than it can handle. I'm two behind them.
The checker rings them up and it comes to about $40. The one with the lavender hair swipes a credit card…and it is declined or rejected or whatever the term is. "No problem," he announces. He has another credit card…but it too is n.g. "You'll have to pay with cash," the checker tells him. Which he'd do if he had any. Lavender Head says he doesn't have a cent on him. Neither does his friend with the puce crewcut. So what do we do now?
The checker takes away the unopened groceries and does a quick total on the ones that have been opened and about half-consumed. It's about twelve dollars. "Do you have the twelve dollars?" he asks the duo.
"No, it's like I told you," Lavender says. "All I have is these credit cards." Puce nods in agreement. Lavender tries to convince him that he has no choice but to charge the purchases to one of the cards. "They're both good, I swear."
The checker explains that the system there will not allow him to charge a card that doesn't verify. "Can you call someone to come bring you twelve dollars?" No, says Lavender, he can't do that either.
The checker calls over the Night Manager and there's a discussion. In the meantime, the line of folks who want to pay and take their groceries home is stretching clear back to the meat case. The whole episode took about fifteen minutes until they told the kids to just go. Mr. Lavender shouted an apology to the line for holding things up (it sounded about as sincere as Rush Limbaugh's to Sandra Fluke) and then he and his crony left.
The store employees and many in the line grumbled about those worthless bums who had no cash and invalid credit cards. "Those cards were obviously stolen," someone said. Another shopper said, "And I'll bet they knew the cards were no good and that they'd get away without paying at all."
Meanwhile, the shopper after them paid with cash and so did the next person. Then came me. I swiped my American Express card…and it was declined. Beginning to suspect what was going on here, I swiped my Visa card. Also declined. The checker recognized me as a loyal customer and told the Night Manager, who opened up another checkout station and switched my total over there. I swiped the Amex card on this card reader and it verified fine. These things happen.
Today's Video Link
I was a big fan of a musical group called Big Daddy that had a great gimmick: They'd take contemporary rock songs and rearrange them in fifties style. (They also played very fine replicas of fifties tunes in the fifties style. They could sound like anyone. One member of the band was a white guy who could imitate Little Richard so well, he was once hired to dub some vocals for the singer.) They came up with a little legend about being captured in Laos and held prisoner for years. Here — watch this short promo video…
Okay, you got the premise? Over the next few days here, I'm going to feature a few Big Daddy treasures, some of which I've embedded here before long ago. Here they are doing something quite different to a Barry Manilow tune. I like it better this way, don't you?
Recommended Reading
Take the time to read this piece by Michael Rubens, a former producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It may take a while if you make side trips to watch some of the Daily Show clips to which he links.
Basically, Rubens had this job that required him to press flesh with people whose politics he'd despised…but an amazing part of the time, he found himself not loathing the person but liking and/or feeling sorry for them. You can decide for yourself if this is a sentiment more likely to occur among Liberals…or folks of any stripe in Mr. Rubens' position…or even if he's telling the truth.
I've had very few opportunities to meet someone in the political arena I'd disliked from afar. One was William Calley. He seemed at first like a nice, ordinary guy…until you remembered that he was a convicted war criminal who'd murdered Vietnamese civilians.
Another was the (recently) late Charles Colson, who in a pre-Watergate era had been one of Richard Nixon's more arrogant hatchetmen. By the time I met him, Colson had "found God" and while I didn't like or dislike the man I met, I did think that what he'd found in God was, quite consciously, a way to rehabilitate his name and make money exploiting the religious market.
I would probably enjoy meeting and liking someone famous whose politics I had disliked from afar. But I didn't like Mr. Colson and as for Mr. Calley…well, I can overlook a lot in another human being but slaughtering women and children? Or even men for that matter? That's kinda rough to set aside.
My Tweets from Yesterday
- I doubt Romney would have killed bin Laden. He might however have acquired Al-Qeada, stripped it of its assets and declared bankruptcy. 20:44:25
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number two hundred and twenty-one in a series…
