Today's Audio Link

This is a half-hour interview of John Cleese on the podcast, Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. It was apparently done in the last week or two…

Hog Haven

Chris Christie has a dilemma. I mean, besides the ones you may know about. Folks in New Jersey are waiting to see if he'll sign a bill that's on his desk. It's bipartisan with substantial support from both parties and polls say that over 90% of Democrats and Republicans support it. So signing it — whatever it is — oughta be a no-brainer, right?

Here's the problem: It's a bill to ban certain inhumane practices in the raising and butchering of pigs.

This wouldn't have that much impact on New Jersey because there isn't much of a pork industry there…but it would anger powerful forces in Iowa, where there is a huge pork industry. They'd take it as a slap in the face, a bad precedent and a victory for the folks trying to enact similiar legislation in their state.

Last year, Christie vetoed similar legislation. Why? People are saying it's because Iowa is a very important state to someone who wants to win the first Republican presidential caucus in Iowa in 2016. If you have your eyes on the White House, you don't want to piss those people off.

Then again, he may just want to avoid the jokes that he's protecting his own kind.

Recommended Reading

David Carr writes a nice piece about John Oliver and Last Week Tonight, which seems to be an unlikely hit. It deserves to be.

On the Road

Last evening, I went to a party out past Pasadena, some distance from my home. I was driving on the 2 North freeway and about to transition to the 134 East when Henrietta said something. Henrietta is what I call the lady built into the Global Positioning System in my car. Her voice is turned off for directions but she does occasionally speak up to tell me, "Five miles ahead on the route, slow traffic" or "Two miles ahead on the route, stop-and-go traffic."

What she said this time was something I'd never heard from her before. She said, "Seven miles ahead on the route, dangerous event."

"Dangerous event?" I thought to myself, "What am I supposed to do with that piece of information? Put on a Hazmat suit?

What was this dangerous event? A fire? A flood? Someone driving a red 1971 Pinto? Maybe a food truck full of cole slaw…

I turned on the radio and I thought, "Well, it's seven miles from me. Maybe before I get too close, either a traffic report or Henrietta will tell me what it is."

I had gone no more than a mile from the first warning when she gave me the second: "Four miles ahead on the route, dangerous event." So not only was the event dangerous, it was coming my way. I decided before it was upon me, I'd better change courses. I got off the freeway at the next exit and took surface streets to the party.

The radio told me nothing so I never did find out what the "dangerous event" was if indeed there was one. Usually, Henrietta tells me if there's an accident. I'm wondering if it was police pursuit — presumably on the other side of the freeway since it was apparently coming in my direction. But those make the news pretty rapidly and I heard nothing. I'm thinking it was a Saturday night so maybe Henrietta had been drinking.

Today's Video Link

This is the group called The Magic of Voices. For obvious reasons…

The Latest on Cosby

Last night on his show, Bill Maher alluded to the allegations that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist. I take that as a sign that this issue is not going to go away quietly.

In a recent radio interview, Cosby declined to say one word about the matter, not even, "My lawyers have advised me to say nothing at this time," which would probably be a bit (just a bit) less damning than silence. Cosby also canceled a scheduled appearance with David Letterman this week, reportedly without explanation.

So what's the plan here? Does Cosby think he can still have a career doing what he's been doing — stand-up gigs, lectures, talk show guesting — and just pretend these questions aren't being asked? I don't think so. Doesn't he reportedly have a new TV series that is or was soon to go into production?

He's supposed to do a concert tonight at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, Illinois and tomorrow night at the Warner Theater in Erie, Pennsylvania. He probably won't cancel those but I do wonder if there'll be empty seats or if people will be outside with signs demanding he address the charges. At some point, it has to impact his business, doesn't it?

The man is a great talker. If he's innocent or if there are circumstances that might put all this in a different light, he certainly has the ability to go on some talk show and communicate and explain. He also has enough dough to hire (as he probably already has) the best attorneys in the country for this kind of thing…but right now, he's probably worried more about his rep than about lawsuits or criminal charges.

Lawyers can probably keep him out of prison and he could certainly pay vast sums to his accusers and not miss the money…but neither of those things will stop him from losing the mantle of Beloved Entertainer. Much of that is disappearing even as we speak and he doesn't.

Le Grande Tour

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I may be wrong but I think there is at least one TV show that I often watch that John Cleese is not appearing on these days to plug his new book. He's blanketing the nation and making a bunch of appearances in Los Angeles each week — I'll be in the audience for one of them — and then he's following me to Florida for the Miami Book Fair.

Traveling with him is an old pal of mine, Kim "Howard" Johnson, who is the undisputed world expert on Monty Python, author of several books about them and even about other great humorists. That's Kim on the right above. He sometimes works as an assistant or collaborator or aide or pimp for one or more of the Pythons and as he journeys with Mr. Cleese, he sometimes writes about it on his blog but more often on Twitter. Should you have even a seventh of the interest I have in John Cleese, you might want to follow Kim around, too.

Hey, Kim! How often does Cleese check into the hotel and the desk clerk or manager makes a remark about how they hope he won't have a "Fawlty" stay with them or some such reference?

Mushroom Soup Friday

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Much to do today so I won't be blogging at my usual fevered pace. I have to figure out what it is I do on Groo so I can do it for the issue we're working on at the moment. The other day, I overheard someone say "I always either do the right thing at the wrong time or the wrong thing at the right time" and I thought, "There's a little Groo in all of us."

Oh, a correction: I said back here that Johnny Carson did his last show on Friday, May 22, 1992 because that was the night the May "sweeps" rating period ended that year. Actually, as a couple of folks have informed me, sweeps periods always end on a Wednesday so Carson's last two shows with their monster ratings were not included in the sweeps for that May. Sorry I erred but as a wise man just said, there's a little Groo in all of us.

Last night, John Oliver was a surprise guest host on The Daily Show even though Jon Stewart was on the premises. Stephen Colbert is facing a long period of being off the tube between the time he does his last Colbert Report and the time he debuts in Mr. Letterman's timeslot. I'm wondering if he might not turn up now and then hosting The Daily Show as a means of keeping his face before the public…and whether he'd do it as his right-wing character.

Yesterday, I got one of those calls from a contractor (or someone fronting for one) who started off by saying, "I spoke to you last March and you said to give you a call back about now because you'd be ready for us to give you an estimate on some work you wanted to have done." When I get one of those, I immediately tell them they're lying and I don't do business with people who try to start a relationship by lying to me. The guy came back with an interesting response. He said, "All contractors lie to you. You don't think the estimates they give you are lies?" Well, mine doesn't lie but the caller may have been more accurate than not. See you later.

My Latest Tweet

  • Mitch McConnell keeps complaining Obama won't "come to the political center." Well, maybe the man doesn't like being all alone.

Today's Video Link

I have a feeling Meredith Willson would have liked this…

About the Few Vices I Don't Have…

I wanted to single out one paragraph from this article I linked to about James Randi…

Randi has never smoked, taken narcotics or got drunk. "Because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers," he once said. "And I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That may mean giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways, but I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world."

I've never done any of those things and I sometimes have a devil of a time explaining to people why not. Every so often, someone takes it as a condemnation of them for doing one or all of them, or as my attempt to feel superior to them. The smoking part is easy. I dislike being around cigarette smoke so much (and sometimes feel nauseated from it) that the last thing I want to do is ingest it directly. Once, I asked a smoker near me to smoke in the other direction. Just to be an asshole and assert his right to smoke anywhere he damn pleased, he turned and blew smoke in my face. I felt so sick I threw up on his pants.

I didn't do that intentionally but I wish I had.

So that's why I don't smoke. What about the non-drinking? Well, I could say it's because I've seen friends and one very loved one killed by drunk drivers and also seen friends destroy their own lives by drinking. But that's not the basic reason.

Really, it's just kind of an instinctual thing. I just have no yearning to drink alcohol or take drugs. To the extent I have a rational, explainable reason, it's kind of like what Mr. Randi says…plus I'm usually quite happy with my mood and see no reason to try altering it.

If you get something out of it, great. Don't let me stop you. Also, if you get to the point where someone should stop you, don't count on me to stop you. And if you must smoke, don't do it around me. Especially if you're wearing your good pants.

Go Read It!

Matt Zoller Seitz likes Last Week with John Oliver more than The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. So do I but not by as wide a margin.

Bat Stuff

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The photo of Adam West in his Batman suit I posted earlier reminded me of something that bothered me about that show. Actually, there were a lot of things but one was that I thought someone was telling the wardrobe department, "Keep moving Adam's chest insignia down towards his stomach so he looks dumpier."

The pic above at left is unretouched. For the one at right, I moved the insignia up. Doesn't he look more heroic? Why didn't he look that way on the series?

In the meantime, my pal Tom Galloway sent me this link to a report on why it took so long for the Batman TV show to make its way to home video. Some of you may be amazed to see that DC Comics sold the rights to do the series for so little but that was how the comic book business operated back then. Martin Goodman, founder-owner of the company we now know as Marvel Comics, licensed Captain America for a 1944 movie serial for either zero dollars or one dollar, and sold the rights for the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes cartoons for not a whole lot more. The premise was that the TV/movie version would make the character more valuable, boost the sales of the comic book, secure all sorts of licensing deals, etc. In Goodman's case, I doubt either deal paid off the way he'd hoped.

In '66 when DC Comics sold the rights to Batman, they had that in mind but Jack Liebowitz, who was calling the shots then, was also gearing up to sell the company. The success of the Batman TV show enhanced the value of the whole enterprise, brought forth more potential buyers and inflated the purchase price. Batman was a hit TV show when they made the deal in 1967 whereby Kinney National Company acquired. So selling the rights for the TV show even for a pittance was probably a wise, wise move.

In the article, you will note many mentions of my friend, Wally Wingert. Wally is still one of the busiest voiceover actors in the business even though he no longer announces The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I work with him whenever we do Garfield cartoons since he's the voice of Jon Arbuckle and I hear him on an awful lot of other shows and commercials. Still, I think he'd trade it all if he could tool around in the Batmobile with Adam West…

Today's Video Link

The Birthday Paradox, explained…

VIDEO MISSING