Monthly Archives: March 2013

Which hotel loyalty card program is best for you? Our buddy Joe Brancatelli explains that it depends on who you are, where you travel, how much you spend, etc. But in most cases, you still don't get as generous a deal as you did a few years ago.

Today on The Leonard Lopate Show, which I'd never heard of either, there was a discussion of the great writer-cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman. Mr. Lopate hosts a radio show on WNYC, the big public radio station in New York and today, he welcomed Al Jaffee, Drew Friedman and Arnold Roth to talk about Harvey. The chat ran about 23 minutes and you oughta be able to hear it in the player below…

You would have been proud of me this morning. I was directing cartoon-type voices and in the studio next to us, a whopping six yards away, Ben Stein was recording something. I resisted the temptation to go over and ask him, "Uh, in light of these new revelations in the Johnson tapes, have you lost any of your respect for that Nixon guy you used to write speeches for?"

I used to like Ben Stein and would cite him as an example of that rarest of breeds — a funny Conservative. He occasionally still is and once in a while, since he isn't out to run for anything and doesn't make money telling the right-wing what it wants to hear, he says something disarmingly honest. But that's once in a while and he has much to answer for, including attempts to spin facts to try and rehabilitate Richard Nixon's image, his opposition to the Theory of Evolution and whatever role he played in Jimmy Kimmel having a career.

A lot of people think newsman Dan Rather's a bit of a kook. That's been true a long time and I remember that back when he published his first autobiography, a number of people thought that because of something he said in it. He was talking about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago which, as you surely recall, had no incumbent running because then-President Lyndon Johnson had withdrawn as a candidate. So it came down to Hubert Humphrey versus anti-war candidates like Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, and the entire party looked to be coming apart at the inseams.

In his 1977 book, The Camera Never Blinks, Rather insisted that L.B.J. had a plan he was unable to make work. It was to make a surprise appearance at the convention where some sort of carefully-engineered spontaneous outcry would insist that he accept the nomination for a second term after all. For the good of America and to bind the party together, he would accept and then sail to a landslide victory. Moreover, claimed Rather, Johnson would dump Humphrey from the ticket and replace him in a gesture of cross-party loyalty with the Republican (!) governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. It all seemed so outrageous that no one believed Rather and I recall more than a few journalists and historians suggesting he was loco in the cabeza.

Well, Mr. Rather has been at least partially vindicated in the new release of some hitherto-classified tapes of L.B.J. phone calls. There appears to be no mention of the Rockfeller factor but there is conversation about the plan for President Johnson to make an unexpected appearance at the convention and to snatch back the nomination he had foregone. They say it didn't happen because Chicago Mayor Richard Daley couldn't assure L.B.J. he'd actually get that nomination and the Secret Service couldn't ensure Johnson's safety if he did plunge into that riot-filled, angry event. So there's an interesting twist in U.S. history that didn't happen.

This revelation is so far being ignored by the U.S. press because, you know, we care nothing about the past in this country except when we can use it against our enemies in the present. But the B.B.C. is doing stories about it and on this page, you can read the tale and hear excerpts from Johnson's recorded phone conversations. And the story I just told you isn't even the most shocking revelation.

It's the claim — supported by much evidence though I'd still like to see more — that Richard Nixon feared his '68 candidacy would be derailed if Johnson managed to end the Vietnam War so he secretly sabotaged the peace talks. Johnson thought Nixon had committed treason…and if he did what they say he did, that seems like a fair accusation. That was one of the amazing things about Nixon: Just when you thought your opinion of the man couldn't get any lower, he'd always surprise you.  It's somehow comforting to see he's still at it.

I was up at the Magic Castle last night where I saw a performance by these folks…

They're David and Dania, who tour the world with their amazing, much-imitated quick change act. I doubt very many in their audiences don't know roughly how it's done…it is, however, hard to figure out the particulars. I was in the second row and it's a little more impressive when it's live and you're eight feet away from them. Then again, sitting that close, you can't help but notice how Dania loses weight as the routine progresses.

The full act they did was a bit longer than in any online video and it incorporated some real magic tricks that did not involve either instantly switching wardrobe. What I love though is that these two people have perfected an act they can do anywhere — language not being an issue — and I don't think most people would mind seeing it many, many times. I sure wouldn't.

And of course on the way out, I overheard almost every man in the place say to the woman he was with, "Why can't you change your outfit that fast?"

We're more than halfway through March, the month when the Souplantation restaurants offer my favorite soup, their Classic Creamy Tomato. Each year, I plug it here for your enjoyment and to hope it will bolster sales enough that the Souplantation people will make it a more frequent offering in their repertoire. (Full Disclosure: The mentions here have in the past prompted the Souplantation folks to send me lotsa coupons for free meals there. However, just to assure you my integrity cannot be bought, you should know that this year, they haven't. So far.)

But do I have a coupon for you! Click here and you can print one out good for 20% off any meal you have there through the end of April. Do keep in mind that (a) my favorite soup will only be there through the end of March and (b) you can print this coupon out again and again as many times as you go. Matter of fact, if you sign up on their website for their Club Veg and if you go to the Souplantation page on Facebook, you can almost always score some sort of discount coupon for the place. You never have to pay full price.

Here's a page where you can see if there's a Souplantation within easy souping distance of you. In some venues, Souplantation is known as Sweet Tomatoes but I can't do anything about that. And if you like their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup even a smidgen as much as I do, here's a page where you can write or call to tell them to make it more often. I'm told calling their toll-free Customer Service number is a lot more effective than e-mailing.

I'm going to stop talking about Senator Portman's "evolving" on Gay Marriage but we should pause to ask the question if his critics are being too rough on him. William Saletan, a writer I usually respect, makes a weak (to me) case that Portman isn't as hypocritical as some of us think. Yes, Portman's two positions are on the surface not all that different from Barack Obama's…but some of us also thought Obama's were disingenuous, too. The key difference is that Obama was never a militant opponent of Gay Rights as was Portman, a man who usually got 0 (zero) ratings from civil rights groups on the issue. And Saletan doesn't address the aspect of this I mentioned, which is that for Portman to have an openly gay son and to still oppose Gay Rights would be an awkward position that might make him look like a champion of principle to some but would make him look like an uncaring father to others. Even Dick Cheney, who clearly shrugs off a lot of pretty insulting characterizations, didn't want to be in that position.

Cheney wasn't pilloried by the right-wing for his stance because they could say, "He doesn't really support Gay Marriage. It's just something he has to say because of his daughter." And indeed, I don't think there's any evidence of Cheney actually doing anything to advance the cause of Gay Marriage in this country or to impede those who seek to quash it. Will Senator Portman actually now do anything besides his statement to help make Gay Marriage a reality in more states? His editorial practically promises he won't. So that's a big difference from President Obama, who's out there crusading for the cause, albeit a bit late.

Still, a couple of folks have written me as did Ted Herrmann to say — this is what Ted wrote — "Doing the right thing for self-serving reasons, or for any reasons whatsoever, is still doing the right thing. Remember, Orson Welles directed Citizen Kane mainly to get a date with Rita Hayworth." True. And I'm of the mind that most politicians, including those I vote for, do most of what they do for self-serving reasons. I just think it's becoming too much the norm with the right-wing to carry this to personal extremes; to look at everything in terms not of how something will benefit all or the majority but just their own immediate needs. I'm surprised we even have fire departments in most cities given how few politicians' homes are on fire at any given moment.

That's it for now on this topic. The next few posts here should be about more important stuff like comic books and Creamy Tomato Soup.

And here, for those of you who've read David Frum's piece linked in the preceding item, is a response by Glenn Greenwald, who thinks Frum is being disingenuous and revisionist. Thanks to James J. Troutman for sending me this link.

David Frum, an important writer of speeches that got us into the Iraq War, reckons with a history that shows a lot of those speeches were bad at predicting and worse at accuracy. But Dick Cheney, at least, has no regrets…

The great master of parody Allan Sherman had a number of songs that never made it onto his records. Some were never recorded for legal reasons and there were others he withheld because when he performed live, a lot of the audience knew the material too well from his albums and would begin singing along with him. I'm not sure which was the case with this song, heard here from a concert appearance…

Andy Borowitz has a funny piece here about Senator Portman's decision to change his stance on Gay Marriage. I'll quote just the first part here…

The decision of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to support same-sex marriage after learning that his son was gay has inspired hundreds of other Republican lawmakers to stop speaking to their children immediately, G.O.P. leaders confirmed today.

"I have gathered my caucus and told them, if your kids are going to tell you something that's going to cost you the next election, it's better to nip that situation in the bud," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). "Just stop talking to them altogether, for heaven's sakes."

As I've said, I suspect Portman's change-o'-heart is self-serving and predicated on the assumption, "Hey, if it didn't hurt Cheney with the extreme right, it won't hurt me." But they're attacking him anyway, sometimes with inanities like, "If his son revealed he was in favor of drunk driving, would he now support drunk driving?" Even leaving out the fact that drunk driving is more of a choice (and a lot more possible to stop) than being gay, the folks making that counter-argument are willfuly missing the point.

Taken at face value, Portman's position is simple. Once he learned his kid was gay, he came to have a deeper understanding of gay people and to appreciate the awkward, inhuman position that those who oppose Gay Rights, such as himself, were putting them in. That understanding led him to rethink and change his position. A deeper understanding of drunk drivers might also be nice for someone who makes laws about them but it might not lead to the same conclusion since they're not the same thing.

One of the reasons some folks oppose Gay Rights is that they really don't know many or even any gay people. The ones who think you can "pray the gay away" or that we can legislate them into (a) heterosexuality and happy, child-bearing relationships or (b) simply disappearing are folks who really don't know gay people.

I didn't know Malachi Throne, the prolific character actor who passed away Wednesday at the age of 84 but I have a certain fondness for that kind of performer: The guy who works constantly — year in, year out — never quite attaining wide recognition with the public but so well-respected within the industry that he never quite attains unemployment, either. The Internet Movie Database could save a lotta bandwidth if they just listed the shows he wasn't in. I'm sorry to see obits that peg him as a "Batman actor" or a "Star Trek actor" because those credits were only a few days of work for an actor who played hundreds of roles.

Still, some of us will remember him for his two-episode appearance as False Face on the Batman TV show — the series with Adam West. The show then aired twice a week, Wednesday and Thursday, with the Wednesday show ending in a cliff-hanger. False Face was a villain who wore masks and as a gimmick, the TV Guide didn't tell who was playing him and neither did the end-credits on Part One. Some of the press hyped it as a genuine interest for the audience to solve…and I don't remember if it was said or if we just assumed that the man under the mask was someone really famous and we'd all be shocked to find out who it was…and proud if we guessed.

Thursday at school, that's all some of us talked about: Who was playing False Face? I recall all sorts of theories ranging from Frank Sinatra to Clint Eastwood. One friend of mine was sure it would turn out to be Peter Sellers and while I can't recall what they were, he based his deduction on some clues he detected within the script. None of us guessed Malachi Throne but there was a good reason for that. None of us had ever heard of Malachi Throne. He could have done the episodes without the mask and we wouldn't have known who he was. We expected that at the end, the Dynamic Duo would rip the mask off the villain's puss and we'd see the countenance of John Wayne or John F. Kennedy or somone really famous and unexpected. But they never even showed us what Malachi Throne looked like.

When the end-credits of the Thursday show identified him, we were all stunned and you could hear a collective "Who?" and maybe a few other words, one starting with "f" shouted around the Southland and probably all across the United States and Canada. We felt like someone who reads a murder mystery, mulls over all the clues…and then finds out that the killer is some character who'd never been mentioned in the story. None of this cheat was Mr. Throne's fault, of course and I still wonder if the producers did that intentionally as a joke on the audience. More likely is that they did have a biggie lined up for the part and that person cancelled at the last minute. (What I would have done is have it turn out to be Adam West playing a dual role.)

Rumor has it Mr. Throne was annoyed that he received so little billing and no unmasking scene. He had every right to be steamed but it sure didn't seem to keep him from getting lots and lots of other work. Guys like that are really the backbone of the acting profession. Not stars. Folks like Malachi Throne.

It's Stooges Sunday here at newsfromme.com, continuing for one time only, the long-standing tradition that I've never done before of posting a link to a Three Stooges short every Sunday. And what a film we have for you today, knuckleheads. It's A Plumbing We Will Go, which was released to theaters in April of 1940. This means it was done back when Columbia used to spend some time and money on these things instead of, as the years rolled on, doing them faster and cheaper and faster and cheaper.

If you've never been a fan of Moe, Larry and Curly, you might want to watch because they didn't get much better than this. So if you don't like it, there's not a whole lot of point in you seeking out other Stooge films. This one was so good, in fact, that they remade it a couple of times reusing footage from this version.

Well, what are you waiting for? My apologies if ads intrude…

Matthew Yglesias does a better job of saying some of what I was trying to say about Rob Portman's "evolved" acceptance of Gay Marriage.

So let's check in on what's up with the late night shows, shall we? NBC continues to deny reports (actually, one anonymously-sourced report repeated in many venues) that it will soon announce it's replacing Jay Leno with Jimmy Fallon. The newer story is that the Chairman of NBC Entertainment complained to Leno about monologue jokes on the dismal ratings performance of the network lately.

Several of you called my attention to this story that says Jimmy Kimmel's ratings are below what Nightline was previously doing in that time slot. I'm not sure that report accurately reflects what's going on. Are they comparing Kimmel's ratings for a full hour to Nightline's for a half hour? Every hour-long late night show loses viewers as it goes along and they lose a big chunk around the halfway mark. A large amount of Leno's success in overtaking Letterman was not a matter of getting more people to tune in but in getting them to stick around longer.

At times, reporters have not noted the distinction as they've covered the ratings. Nightline usually finished third in the 11:35-12:05 period but its ratings looked better when laid alongside Jay's and Dave's for their full hours. I haven't crunched numbers but it appears to me that's why Kimmel seems like he's not doing as well. Even if he is doing worse than Nightline though, ABC has to be happy with his demographics and with the fact that he was even this competitive from the get-go.

A lot of what all this is about is that there's a feeling at all three networks that Late Night TV as we know it will soon be over; that before long, something new will have to be done in that day part. Leno continues to win by narrow margins but all three 11:35 shows are pulling digits that would have denoted failure just a few years ago. The main argument for Kimmel displacing Nightline was never that he would put Jay and Dave outta work right away. It was that he might represent the future of that time slot; that eventually, all three networks would only be chasing the 18-49 demographic there and that Kimmel would have established himself well by the time NBC and CBS replaced their old guys. That premise has yet to be disproven.

I don't think NBC is ready to dump Jay since Jay is winning at a time when very little else at the network is. I don't think CBS is ready to dump Dave because Dave is Dave. But I don't think anyone at any of the three networks would bet serious bucks that they'll have the same show at 11:35 three years from now that they have there now. Or that the replacements will be the men who seem now to be in the on-deck circles.