Monthly Archives: April 2013

As I've said, I don't believe any meaningful Gun Control laws will pass in the foreseeable future. In fact, I'd hate to think how many Newtowns we'd have to have before a majority of politicans would be more afraid of not passing Gun Control than they are now of even showing it the slightest consideration. Nevertheless, I admire the artistry and good intentions of this video created by a bevy of the country's leading newspaper cartoonists…

A contract signed by the Marx Brothers for something they did at MGM Studios. I don't see the part that's in every contract, the part that says, "If any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified." You know what they call that part…

History, sounding a bit like my pal Bob Elisberg, judges George W. Bush. I love, by the way, how some conservatives are trying now to sell the idea that Obamacare is "Obama's Iraq." And these are all people who still won't admit invading Irag was a foolish, destructive thing.

Politifact is usually pretty good at catching politicians when they lie or distort the truth about unimportant matters like war and death and health care. But how are they at the serious, vital stuff like whether Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey is shamelessly lying about his favorite cartoon character?

My friend Jeff is urging me to take the money I just got from selling my mother's house and buy this, this being Milton Berle's old joke file. Note that my friend Jeff is not intending to use his own money to purchase this sucker. That's because he knows, as I know, that most of what's in there has got to be dreadful. Berle published two volumes of jokes from this repository plus there was an awkwardly-designed CD-Rom…and all the jokes on the three of them collectively were not as funny as the photo above. Which, as you can see, isn't all that funny.

You know what is funny? Back in the seventies, there was a syndicated version of I've Got a Secret hosted by Steve Allen. On one episode, Berle was the Celebrity Guest and they brought out these huge boxes on stage. His secret was what was in them and the panel, which included Alan Alda, had to guess what was in them. At the end when they hadn't figured it out, Steve asked Milton to tell them and Berle said, "Those boxes contain every joke I ever told on television."

In less than a second, Alda exclaimed, "You mean you've got both jokes in there?"

Here's an episode of Topper, a 1953-1955 situation comedy based on the 1937 Cary Grant movie of the same name. Cosmo Topper, played in the TV series by Leo G. Carroll, lived in a home inhabited by three ghosts (one of them, a dog) that only he could see. I remember watching this show over and over in syndicated reruns in the late fifties and early sixties but this is the first time I ever saw a print of it with the original opening and closing. It's also full of commercials for Camel cigarettes, which I guess explains why everyone in the show was always smoking. Even the dead people.

This is one of the eleven episodes written by George Oppenheimer (a screenwriter and playwright who among other credits wrote on the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races) and his then-partner, Stephen Sondheim. This is not the episode in which Topper's wife entered a jingle-writing contest and penned a terrible entry that didn't rhyme very well. That may well have been the first Sondheim lyric to be performed on television…and the worst.

Singer Richie Havens has died. It's probably my loss that I was not too familiar with his work but he sure had a lot of fans.

Actor Albert Brooks, back when he was comedian Albert Brooks, told a wonderful story on one of his records about the loyalty of Richie Havens fans. You can listen to it via the player below and I suggest you do. Ignore the little aside where someone yodels. You have to hear the entire album — Comedy Minus One — to understand what that's about…

Contrary to reports around this wacky Internet of ours, there is pre-paid parking available for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. None of it is at the convention center but at right this moment, there are spots that can be purchased in several lots. Here's the link.

This may not be true later today. It may not be true in twenty minutes. But it's true as I post this message.

You may remember I used to do this joke every year around this time about how if you need a parking spot for the con in July, leave now. Since they introduced pre-paid parking, the joke doesn't work.

A discussion of the difference between "ketchup" and "catsup."

Last night, I watched Robert Redford's new documentary, All the President's Men Revisited and I'd figured on writing a long piece about it this morning. I awoke though to find that Beverly Gage had written a long and much more incisive review than I could have mustered, covering all the same points and then some. The film's a pretty good overview of the surface version of the story for anyone who doesn't know it.

Beyond that, it's still the unquestioning portrait of heroism by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein presented in the 1976 movie. It still gives them almost sole credit for exposing Nixon's crimes. It still doesn't get too deep into the weeds of how and why it all happened. There are some nice, short sound bites from surviving players and cameos by folks like Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. And as Gage notes, there's this odd, recent interview with a crying Ben Stein, who still seems unable to grasp the concept that maybe Richard Nixon did something wrong.

One point the doc does make is that Nixon wasn't "done in" by his enemies. The near-certain impeachment that prompted his resignation was not, as he and his defenders liked to claim, because Democrats had engineered a coup d'etat. It was because Republicans, including Barry Freakin' Goldwater, had told him they would vote against him. Redford here sees that as bipartisan courage. I'm more inclined to think they just realized the damage that would be done to their party if they didn't get rid of the guy.

Half the Republican voters in this country had decided Nixon was a crook. The other half either didn't think he'd done anything wrong — the Ben Stein POV — or thought he had but so what? I had a friend then who insisted that even if Nixon had murdered a couple of nuns, he shouldn't admit guilt and hand his political enemies a "win." If you were a Republican congressperson or senator then, you had a big problem with those pending impeachment votes. Do you vote with Nixon and lose half the G.O.P. vote or do you vote against him and lose the other half? Either way in most districts or states, you lose your seat to a Democrat.

Democrats didn't really want to oust Nixon. Left in office, he was "the gift that keeps on giving," bringing down his party and all that it stood for. It was his "friends" who showed him the door, getting him out before they had to vote.

Anyway, that's one of the things I think was wrong with the documentary…and by the way, I don't see that it's reairing soon but when it does, it is worth catching. I think Redford overglorified Bernstein and Woodward and congratulated himself a lot for the '76 movie but it still provokes much thought. This little online-only clip expands a bit on a question only briefly touched-upon in the film. My own view is very much in line with James Carville's…

I still think we will never see meaningful Gun Control in this country…but as Ezra Klein points out, the Manchin-Toomey gun bill that just failed was not really meaningful Gun Control. It was, at most, a test to see if anything that mentioned firearms could get through a Congress that cares less about the will of the people than it does about the will of the N.R.A. I think it would have been interesting to see them try to pass a bill that said that if someone has a history of violence and murder, they can be limited to purchasing 1,000 rounds of ammunition at a time. It would have been fun to hear the speeches about how that's the first step to confiscating everyone's weapons.

And before Certain People write me: I am not in favor of banning all guns, confiscating all guns, taking them away from people who use them responsibly, etc. I just think there are laws that could be passed that wouldn't infringe on the Second Amendment but would make it more difficult for bad guys to acquire weapons and make it less difficult for the good guys to solve crimes involving weapons. I further believe that even the vast majority of gun owners in this country agree with that…but they aren't driving this debate.

Everyone on the 'net today seems to be debating the motives of Tamerlan Tsarnaev at arranging the Boston Marathon bombings. It's real simple, people. His motives were whatever you want them to be to advance whatever argument you want to make. For God's sake, let's not wait until we actually have a smidgen of real information about what he thought he was accomplishing. I'm pretty sure the whole ghastly deed proves that writing comic book scripts should pay better, bloggers make better lovers and the CVS Pharmacy I go to needs to resurface its parking lot.

David Chan is an attorney in Los Angeles. What does he do when he's not attorneying? He goes to Chinese restaurants…so far, 6,297 of them, sometimes several in one day. You see, an hour after you eat at one…