Yearly Archives: 2015

A man named Jonathan Pollard will be paroled from prison in November after serving thirty years. Fred Kaplan says Pollard is one of the worst traitors of the twentieth century for selling U.S. secrets to Israel. And here I thought a traitor was anyone who voted for Obama…

Happy Birthday, Professor Irwin Corey! Congratulations on living to be as old as your stage wardrobe!

Folks on Yelp are posting scathing "reviews" of Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who I think it's safe to assume now really, really regrets his decision to go Zimbabwe and hunt down a lion. He wanted to mount its head on his wall and now much of America is crying for Dr. Palmer's head to be mounted on a wall somewhere.

Yelp occasionally deletes a batch of these "reviews" but they apparently can't delete as fast as Dr. Palmer's detractors can report. Here's a typical one that's up at the moment…

I needed a tooth extracted, so Dr. Palmer shot me in the neck with a crossbow, chased and tracked me for 40 hours, and (once I collapsed from pain and exhaustion) removed my entire head and skinned me.

Best part, they accept my insurance!!

I dunno if Dr. Palmer can or will be prosecuted in this matter but it looks like at the least, his dental practice will suffer and maybe end, and that he'll have to go through life with a lot of people thinking he is a horrible, horrible human being. If the least is all that happens, I for one will not think he went unpunished.

This is news footage of Jack Benny's funeral, which took place on December 28 or 29, 1974 (accounts vary), two or three days after the great comedian passed away. The location was Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, a place I have visited too many times, including for the burials of three of my closest relatives…

It's hard for me not to get incensed over this story of the Minnesota dentist who killed that lion in Zimbabwe.

In a letter to his patients, Dr. Walter Palmer writes, "I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion." No, no, Doc. You didn't take the lion. You killed the lion. Your choice of verb is indicative of the problem here. To you, it's like a chess game — "I just took your Queen!" — but the result is exactly the same as if you'd said, "I think it would be fun to kill a lion!"

And if you step back and look at that sentence as a whole, it roughly translates to: "I deeply regret that my goal of killing a lion and paying a lot of money to kill a lion resulted in the killing of this particular lion." Does he get that most of the folks calling for his head now would feel that way about any lion?

Part of me would like to see this guy punished in a way that might cause others to think it might not be great fun to kill a lion or a deer or any other animal out there. I would stop short, as PETA hasn't, of calling for his execution…but I think this guy needs to be spanked hard enough for others to feel it.

However, part of me is uncomfortable for two reasons about the response to this — mine, included — one being that I am a Carnivore. I eat animals. I have heard the arguments for why it doesn't make you a hypocrite to do that but to abhor hunting and I don't completely buy it, especially when you consider the inhumane treatment of so many of the animals who are "processed" (i.e., killed) for food. Yes, there is a difference between killing animals for food and killing them for fun. It just doesn't seem like that vast a difference to me.

I'm willing to admit I don't "get" hunting. There are certain things in this world that others love that are like that. Back when Dick Cheney shot a hunting companion, I asked a former hunter I knew what was so much fun about the activities of that day. My friend was quite upset that what Cheney and his pals had been doing was being passed off as "hunting."

He said (approximately:) "Real hunting involves skill and risk and discomfort and challenge. What Cheney was doing was going to this camp where they raise quail to be shot, clip their wings so they can't fly, sometimes drug them so they're easier targets…then the hunters are driven up in air-conditioned SUVs and they get out, point their $3000 rifles which someone else loaded for them at birds that are two feet away and blast them. That's not hunting. That's killing helpless birds and pretending you just went on a dangerous safari and displayed great bravery and marksmanship."

Okay, maybe so. But I still couldn't understand what was enjoyable about what he would have considered "real" hunting. He and others have tried to explain it to me and the appeal, like I say, escapes me.

I can't imagine standing over the body of a dead deer and feeling pride in having shot it. Then again, as I'm writing this, I've been eating turkey sausage and I don't want to think of how those turkeys were fattened for the kill and then killed.

So I'm upset that that lion was "taken" (i.e., killed) but I'm also aware I don't have the cleanest of hands when it comes to the subject of animals being "taken" (i.e., killed). That's part of the reason I don't feel wholly comfortable with my position.

The other part is the vast number of human beings who are killed every day in this world without this kind of outcry. Yeah, Cecil the Lion is dead but so are so many others for no better reason. Doesn't it bother you that there are persons out there who are more upset at the murder of a lion than they are at the murder of a fellow person — especially a fellow person with dependent children? Bothers me.

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was a popular entertainer. That's him in the photo above at right, entertaining his grandson, Brian Gari. Proving something about heredity. Brian has grown up to become a popular entertainer who sings and writes songs and books and plays and who is today paying his second visit to Stu's Show. He'll be talking again about Grandpa Eddie, who had a pretty stellar career and who was much beloved by America. And Stu Shostak's going to get Brian talk some about his own life, which of course involves encounters with some pretty famous people. Oughta be a good one.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  If you know what's good for you, you'll do this.

Which airlines and airports are the fastest? When I fly from LAX to San Francisco, I usually go via Southwest. According to this little online database, the average Virgin flight would get me there in an hour and 31 minutes, whereas the average Southwest flight would take 1:59. If that kind of difference matters to you, check out where you fly.

• Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer just shot and killed Smokey the Bear, Tony the Tiger and Big Bird; swears he didn't know they were famous.

Jef Peckham writes to ask…

Your latest encore post reminded me of a question that I've thought about for a while. How do you come up with ideas or plot points on which to hang a story/script/article, and then expand it into a full story/script/article?

I'm not talking about "fat cat jokes about Garfield. Hilarity ensues," although after 37 years it may be difficult to find new ones. I'm talking about some new project using characters you may not be totally familiar with, or ones you create yourself.

I've had a few small ideas crop up from time to time that are not in my comfortable wheelhouse, and I'm lost when it comes to expanding them beyond a paragraph. It could mean these ideas may not be worth expanding any further, but since I've never made it beyond that point, I don't know.

Well, if I were you, I'd try an experiment. I'd pick my best idea and I'd commit to writing it to its completion. Don't worry about what might happen if it's not good. Nothing will happen except that you'll have wasted a few hours and probably learned something in the process. Too many new writers write like the minute they finish something, it's going to be read and judged by everyone they know.

They need to get over that. One of the emotional controls a writer requires is to be able to write something, spend days or even weeks on it and then to review it and say, "This isn't good enough" and toss it out and immediately start on a rewrite or something else. It's easier to do that when you're prolific but even if you agonize for hours on every word, you need to be able to do that. (I just wrote a long blog post about Donald Trump, then gave it another read and decided it didn't really say anything that was worth saying. So into the "Probably Not" folder it goes…)

Just write something — and here, I'll give you a push. If you don't have an idea, pick one of these…

1. Think of someone in your life you really disliked…someone who wronged you horribly. Then write a fictional story of that person getting punished, humiliated, arrested…whatever they deserve. And don't forget the scene where he or she comes to you and begs you for forgivance.
2. Think of someone in your life you lusted after…someone with whom you wished you'd had a romantic involvement. Then write a fictional story of that person coming to you, confessing that the feeling was mutual and the two of you do act upon your mutual yearnings. Make it as dirty as you like.

Pick one, write it and show it to no one. You can delete it once it's done…or for extra credit, leave it for a few weeks, then come back and read it and see if it reads better or worse to you then. The point is that you don't have to write for publication. You can write for yourself. Most of us spend a certain amount of time writing for ourselves whether we know it or not at the time.

I suspect that if you can't write one of the above stories, you can't write much of anything…at least of a fictional nature. But you can write something, Jef. You wrote me that message. You've written many to me and they all seemed reasonably intelligent even when I thought you were dead wrong about some political belief.

You had something to say so you said it in a message. If you have something longer and more important to say, you could use the same muscles and say it in an article or essay. That's what I do. I write messages and then I write essays and I write stories. The software differs and if I'm addressing a large audience instead of one person, I'll probably make an extra effort to be witty or funny or understandable…but it's the same me at the same keyboard.

A lot of folks who want to write but can't need to demystify the act. They think of it as giving a speech in front of the whole world when, in fact, a new writer's efforts aren't much different from writing a letter to a friend. You do that all the time.

As I mentioned on this blog some time back, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy filmed their early talkies several times. The craft of dubbing movies for overseas markets wasn't perfected right after sound movies began so to not lose that revenue stream, they did versions of their films in other languages.

They'd shoot the English versions and then go back soon after and refilm all the scenes that involved dialogue. Sometimes, actors who spoke those other languages would replace the supporting actors in the English versions. Stan and Ollie of course would do their own parts which would mean speaking French or German or Spanish, even though neither spoke those tongues. A coach would teach them how to pronounce the words and they'd read their lines off an off-screen blackboard.

Eventually, the studios learned how to dub films and they could stop doing this but the foreign language versions are fascinating. Sometimes, they include scenes and sequences that were not in the English versions.

This little compilation shows you excerpts from various versions. Remember: That's not dubbing. That's Laurel and Hardy speaking languages they did not understand…

I asked back in this post if anyone — figuring it would be my friend Kim "Howard" Johnson if he's still reading this blog — knew the origin of the Pope and Michelangelo sketch that the Monty Python boys often perform at live shows. Here then is the message from Kim "Howard" Johnson…

Yes, of course I still read you — just not always on weekends.

Michelangelo and the Pope/The Penultimate Supper (they were never very good at titling their sketches) was one of those non-Python sketches that eventually became a part of the Python stage shows in order to include some less-familiar material for the fans. John Cleese and Graham Chapman wrote it, and it was first performed by John and Jonathan Lynn in the 1976 Amnesty International show, A Poke in the Eye (With a Sharp Stick). When the Pythons did it, Eric Idle always played Michelangelo, most notably in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl and last summer's Monty Python Live (One Down, Five to Go). The version you posted (with Ade Edmondson) is from 1989's Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball.

Thanks. It's one of my favorite Python sketches. (And if you're interested in Monty Python — or just in good comedy — keep an eye on Kim's blog. He knows his stuff.

New York magazine has this incredible cover story now online — 35 women who say they were molested by Bill Cosby all appear together on the cover and in a group shot (both probably assembled from multiple photos) and then they tell their tales. It's very sad, especially in that it took so long and the story had to snowball to near-DEFCON levels before they were believed or not advised to just forget about it.

The gang-testimony is very powerful. What I think would have made it more powerful would have been if they'd included photos of the women at the time of the alleged molestation. Some of these incidents were quite a while ago so you have photos of older women, making it easy to forget that a lot of the victims weren't long out of high school. But read it anyway if you can take it. No matter how low your opinion is of Dr. William Henry "Bill" Cosby Jr., this will lower it at least one more notch.

Bugs Bunny is 75 years old today and you may be wondering how they figure that. Well, the cartoon A Wild Hare was released 75 years ago today. That was arguably the first Bugs cartoon — arguable because the Warner Brothers cartoon studio had made several earlier cartoons with an irreverent rabbit who baited and thwarted hunters who came after him. The rabbit in A Wild Hare clearly evolved out of those rabbits and there are still a few animation historians around who insist that one of them — usually Elmer's Candid Camera or Hare-um Scare-um is more deserving of that distinction.

It's not an argument that leads anywhere…so the date A Wild Hare was released is as good as any. The experts also can't concur on how the rabbit got the name Bugs — which was not mentioned until the cartoon after A Wild Hare. The naming seems to have had something to do with the fact that Porky's Hare Hunt — the W.B. cartoon that started the evolutionary process — was co-directed by Ben Hardaway and his nickname was "Bugs."

But enough history. On Friday, I recorded a phone interview for CBS radio about the wabbit that is running today. I was asked why people like Bugs Bunny and I have no idea what I said. I should have said something like this: Because he's always funny, usually fearless and he always comes out on top unless it's an opera.

Bugs was kind of an early role model for me. Popeye was funny too but Popeye had a grand total of one way to solve a problem: After getting battered and beaten, he'd haul out and gobble down a can of spinach he could have consumed three minutes earlier and he'd then punch the hell out of his opponents. That was entertaining but even at age six, I knew that I was never going to solve a single problem in my life with my fists. (The first time I ate spinach, it made me so sick I decided that getting pounded into a pulp by Bluto couldn't be as bad as that. This was before I learned about my food allergies.)

Ah, but what Bugs did…that looked possible to me. Also, I could eat carrots.

Bugs didn't take his foes seriously. He ridiculed them and except for a few cartoons that struck me even then as horribly, horribly wrong, he triumphed by outsmarting Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam or even some more threatening antagonists. That, I thought I might be able to do and I've spent most of my life trying. Once in a while, I like to think I actually succeed.

I don't recall being as happy at getting any assignment in my life as when my editor at Western Publishing, Chase Craig, asked me to take a whack at writing some Bugs Bunny comics. I'd been doing mostly Disney titles for him and none of those characters seemed particularly aggressive or clever to me. Bugs was clever. It was a lot more fun to hear his voice in my head as I wrote and I just felt better. To the extent we identify with the players in our stories, I identified with Bugs and felt more effectual and braver and smarter.

They say Mickey Mouse became a sensation during the Great Depression because audiences reveled in his spunk and determination. That's what I got out of Bugs Bunny: Spunk and determination…oh, and also funny. Let's not forget funny. It's silly to ask how a character with all that could be around for 75 years. How could he not?

One of the cleverest folks I've met in the last few years is Josh Robert Thompson, who was so brilliant as Geoff Peterson and a whole cast o' characters on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Unlike most of what passes for a talk show these days, that series was largely improvised and Josh was amazing in how fast 'n' funny he was. I've seen some of the best improv performers in the world so it takes a lot to impress me…and he sure did.

What's Josh doing now? He's been producing the pilot for The Josh Robert Thompson Show, funding it up to a point with his own money. I've only seen as much of it as you'll see in this video but it looks terrific and as you may have figured out by now, I think the guy's real good…so I want to help the thing along; ergo, my own donation and this plug.

They're financing the last stages of it with an Indiegogo campaign, asking for donations. They already met their primary goal and are now going for a "stretch" goal to make the product even snazzier. Here's the video. Here's the link. I don't promote many of these things but I thought this one was worth my support and, I hope, yours…