Monthly Archives: March 2016

Hey, how is an automated teller machine made? I wanna know…

At times, it's seemed like the argument over Obama's foreign policy has come down to this: Obama, at least in more recent years, has decided that there are limits as to what America can do to change things in the most volatile nations, either by spending bucks or expending human resources and weaponry…and his critics see it as weakness that he believes there even are limitations.

Obama's views on foreign policy are explained at some length in this article/interview in The Atlantic. Support for them can be found on many political sites (like in this article) which feature traditional conservative views as opposed to the Trump/Tea Party kind.

It does worry me that whether we wind up with President Trump or the second President Clinton, we're not going to get someone with that reticence to go to war. Based on the Trump, Cruz, Kasich and Rubio kaffeeklatsch last night, we may be about to get an encore performance of the Iraq War with the same advance assurances that it'll be quick, we won't have to send a lot of troops and that they'll be greeted as liberators.

Last night, I linked to a piece describing what it would take for Bernie Sanders to overtake Hillary Clinton. Here's Nate Silver explaining what would have to happen for Ted Cruz to beat Donald Trump. I don't necessarily want either of these things to happen and it doesn't look like either will.

No, we do not like Barbara Eden because of how she performed the song "Spinning Wheel" once on some seventies' variety show. We like her because for more years than seems humanly possible, she was popping up in TV shows and movies, always looking adorable and demonstrating a flair for comedy rarely seen in human beings who look that good.

You know how they often show TV pilots to test groups to gauge their reaction? Well, in early 1965 when I was 13 years of age, I was in a group that was shown the pilot for I Dream of Jeannie. I gave it an enthusiastic "thumbs up," not so much because I wanted to watch it every week but because I wanted to watch her. And I did tune in often if not always, not because I thought it was clever or funny or even because I thought Larry Hagman was a fine actor. He was…but I just liked Barbara.

By the way: In the same session, we were also shown the pilot for Camp Runamuck, which also made the NBC schedule, though not for as long. I thought that was a much funnier show. What did I Dream of Jeannie have that Camp Runamuck didn't? Barbara Eden.

That performance of "Spinning Wheel" might be the least wonderful thing she ever did on television. But even though I've long since outgrown the crush, I can forgive her anything. Judging from my e-mail, so can a lot of guys approximately my age.

And a lot of them are discussing where the hell that clip is from. I guessed Sonny & Cher. Curt Alliaume notes that the IMDB (which admittedly is not complete) doesn't list her appearing on Sonny & Cher but does have her on the following variety shows during the probable years: This Is Tom Jones, The Engelbert Humperdinck Show, two Bob Hope specials, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and Changing Scene. Changing Scene was a series of four variety specials which aired on ABC between 1970 and 1971, and she was on all four.

Mike Clark, who knows a lot about TV production, writes…

That clip screams "NBC" because of the way the cameras zoom (manually, rather than TV City's servos), the picture profile (NBC TK-44 vs CBS' Norelco PC-70) and the tame direction compared to what Art Fisher did on Sonny & Cher. I'm betting it's from a Bob Hope Special.

Donald Benson writes…

I actually remember that; somehow associate it with Ed Sullivan. Ed would sometimes have oddball numbers that weren't from a Broadway show or somebody's new album. The main thing I remember is my father walking through and muttering something about watching a "girlie show" (instead of more educational fare elsewhere).

From Brian D. Phillips…

Because it's a bit of fun for me, I believe that the Barbara Eden clip may come from one of the series of specials called Changing Scene. There were four of them and the year matches up about right since a lot of people were covering "Spinning Wheel," even the Muppets on Sesame Street!

Joe Brancatelli wrote me to say…

Little known fact: They'd originally booked Blood, Sweat and Tears to sing the original, but David-Clayton Thomas didn't fit into the costume…

…and I'm sure he's right about that. Steve Bailey also seems pretty certain when he writes…

The Barbara Eden video you posted comes from The Sonny Comedy Revue, ABC's very short-lived 1974 attempt to replicate CBS' hit Sonny & Cher show with everything — including the original supporting cast and most of the writers — except for Cher, who had left Sonny by that point. I still remember Barbara trying to do a Cher-like put-down of Sonny at the start of the show.

I don't know for sure but if you forced me to put up money, I'd side with Steve Bailey…and Wikipedia, which of course is never wrong about anything, says he was a guest on that series. So I've dispatched an e-mail to my old pal Chris Bearde, who was one of the producers of The Sonny Comedy Revue to ask him. I'll let you know what I hear. And hey, isn't this a lot more fun (and important) than linking to articles about what a douchebag Donald Trump is?

As I mentioned, I think when it comes to predicting who'll win the White House, it's not about assessing momentum or gauging debate performance or noticing who's getting big turnouts for their speeches. It's about counting electoral votes. If you want to convince me someone's going to be the next president, tell me the states they'll win. And those states had better have 270 electoral votes.

In the same way, winning the nomination is a matter of racking up delegates. What would Bernie Sanders have to do to arrive at the convention in Philadelphia with more than Hillary Clinton? Andrew Prokov breaks it down for us and it doesn't look encouraging for Bernie.

Might we see a contested Republican convention — one in which no candidate arrives with the nomination sewn-up and a fight ensues? We might…but it's unlikely. If did happen, here's what would happen.

Here's Barbara Eden — a childhood crush for many men my age — performing a number on some seventies variety show. Just which one is not identified but it feels like Sonny & Cher to me, especially based on the canned applause at the end. Some of you will think this is ghastly in some way but some of you don't appreciate Barbara Eden the way some of us do…

A phrase I keep seeing in political discourse is that So-and-So "hates America." It's a great thing to accuse someone of because it sounds awful, it's vague enough to apply to anyone and there's no way they can disprove it. Is it a cheap shot? Of course. That's the whole point of it. And unless you have a video of them saying "I hate America" (which you probably don't), it's grossly unfair.

Donald Trump keeps saying "Islam hates America." There's no mention of America in the Qur'an, and plenty of folks who practice Islam have worked long and hard to get to this country and sure act happy to be here. But it's probably a good thing to say if you want to whip up a real, not an imagined hate in retaliation to that premise.

Googling, you'll find a lot of bloggers saying that Hillary Clinton hates America or Ted Cruz hates America or Bernie Sanders hates America or Marco Rubio hates America. Apparently, you have to really hate America to want to run it.

Columnist Ben Stein keeps saying Barack Obama hates America. The other day, Stein said, "I don't think that there's much question he doesn't wish America well. He has a real strong hatred of America." What is the evidence of this? Near as I can tell, it's that Obama does things that Ben Stein doesn't like, though other Americans do…things like lowering unemployment or causing more people to have health insurance. If that doesn't demonstrate hatred of America, what does?

Right-wingers like to say the Left hates America. Since to them, "the Left" is probably anyone who votes Democratic, that's sometimes a majority of Americans who hate America. Maybe, like Mr. Stein, they mean that anyone who doesn't agree with their political agenda must hate America. I suspect they just aren't fond of the idea that there is an opposition party, which I always thought was the basic premise of America.

I've decided to try and promote the concept that anyone who accuses someone else of hating America must hate America. I don't have a real strong explanation as to how that tracks but no one seems to need one to hurl the "hates America" charge. Also, people who don't read the books I write or watch the TV shows I write must hate America. That seems pretty obvious.

You may not agree with my view on this. If so, don't complain to me about it. Instead, do a little soul-searching. Ask yourself why it is you hate America.

If you want to attend Comic-Con International in San Diego this year (July 21-24), you'll need a badge…and if you don't have one already, you may be outta luck. They went on sale on February 20, 2016 and sold out in about the time it takes to warm a Hot Pocket.

I said earlier here that they sometimes have another, limited sale of 'em. Well, they don't do that anymore. It used to be that enough badges were returned for refunds before the event that they could hold another sale. Now, too few are returned. Right now, I would guess that your best chance would be to connect with some exhibitor who received some for the folks who'll be manning their booth and might have an extra. Do not — repeat: do not — contact me to plead that it's the last wish of your dying child or anything of the sort.

One other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people who are unable to secure badges go there anyway. They seem to have a perfectly wonderful time going to the street fair that occurs outside the convention hall and in nearby venues.

Last year, a fan who was at the con in search of autographs complained to me that he'd been unable to get certain ones for which he'd yearned. The particular celebs he sought were all well-guarded and/or managed to avoid a lot of mingling while in the convention hall. But what really ticked him off was that a friend of his who hadn't been able to score a badge had been able to get signatures from some of those stars outside the hall. He'd run into them coming or going or while dining in local restaurants.

If you do have a badge, you might also now be fretting about a hotel room. Rooms at hotels in the outlying areas are now on sale. Rooms at hotels near the convention center will soon go on sale. Everything offered through these channels will sell out. Do not dawdle.

If you can't be there for one reason or another, I'm sorry. It's always a great time for most of us. I know a few folks who go each year, mainly it seems so they can complain about how crowded it is and how it's not like the Good Ol' Days when con attendance was under 7,500. I've taken to suggesting to these people that they stay home so they don't have as much to complain about and so that their badges can go to persons who'll actually enjoy being there.

Most years, the only thing I can find to complain about is the food — if that indeed is what it is — that is sold in the convention center. But that's not longing for the past since it was never good…there or in any other convention center I've ever visited.

Several cartoonists who have appeared often in the pages of Playboy talk about the magazine's revamp, which not only minimizes nudity but cartoons, as well.

I finally received my copy of the first issue in the new format. I happen to have a lifetime subscription to Playboy, a gift from Mr. Hefner back around 1980 when I worked with him. Every so often since then, an issue doesn't arrive and I call up the Playboy subscription line and ask them to send me the missing magazine. They invariably try to get out of doing that by saying, "We can't send you that issue but we'll extend your subscription to make up for it."

I then explain to them that you can't really extend a lifetime subscription. I mean, I guess they could send me some issues after I die but it's kind of understood that when you have a subscription to a magazine, they send it to you when you're still around to read it. Eventually, they accept my logic and send out a copy of the issue I didn't get.

Anyway, I care less about that now that I've seen the new issue…and not because the nude women are gone. (Actually, they aren't. There are some photos of females who have no clothes on. There just aren't as many of them and you don't see much of their bodies. The women also don't look all that magical and I'm not faulting their appearances but the photography and the presentation.)

They did do a nice job though with the new art direction for the text and layout but the editorial content was really unimpressive to me. The only thing of interest I found was the interview with Rachel Maddow and I'd already read that (and linked to it) online.

I get the feeling the big revamp here is not the elimination of nekkid females. The overriding sense of change I got was that Playboy, which once spared no expense to put out the best-possible magazine has now decided to spare every possible expense.

Jonathan Chait reveals the charge that Ted Cruz can't make against Donald Trump but which the Democratic nominee can make — and will, assuming he or she runs against The Donald. (I won't keep you in suspense: It's that Trump's tax plan would drastically lower taxes on himself and others in his income bracket.)

Here's another of those "how it's made" videos. This one says it's about Oreos but the cookies being manufactured in the film are actually Newman-Os, the organic (I think) imitation put out by the food company founded by Paul Newman. You still may find it interesting…

I said in the previous post that in the Michigan primary last night, Bernie Sanders only got 13 more delegates than Hillary Clinton. That was the preliminary, back-of-the-envelope estimate. The final total appears to be 67 for Sanders and 63 for Clinton. So the difference is four, not thirteen. Sanders did defy expectations by a wide margin but headlines that suggest he "crushed" Clinton are a little misleading.

Hey, how about that Bernie Sanders surprise victory? It's always nice when the polls are wrong. It makes you feel that we determine how our election goes instead of the pollsters. Still, being a state primary, it was not real in-depth polling that failed us. This fall, if all the pollsters say one candidate is eighteen points ahead of another, it should not be reassuring for the "another" to be told, "Don't despair! Remember how wrong they were about Bernie Sanders in Michigan?"

I don't know if it was an upset for the election or for the pollsters. Seems to me it was just good news for the media that hadn't found a lot of suspense to write about in the Democratic race. Some of the headlines suggested that match-up is suddenly a lot more competitive than it had been and I'm not sure it is. Hillary got more delegates last night than Bernie…and only 13 or so less in Michigan. Maybe, this is an indicator that other polling in the mid-west has underestimated Sanders but he has a big deficit to make up on the delegate scorecard. (I still have no favorite in that race. I kinda just want whichever one will win by the largest margin and I'm not sure who that is yet.)

Trump had a pretty good night, too. He's probably weeping though to hear that he's just lost Keith Olbermann as a tenant.

And why the hell doesn't someone put Olbermann on a show to do election commentary? The way it's going, he could be the most dignified person out there discussing this.

Oh. I just got a bulletin on my iPhone telling me Ted Cruz just landed the all-important Carly Fiorina endorsement. That'll be good for a vote or two.

And lastly for now: Kevin Drum tries to figure out what all those angry voters are angry about. It doesn't seem to be about the economy, Stupid.

I'm one of those folks who believe there's no such thing as psychic powers and that anyone who claims to have them is either deluded or, more likely, an enormous fraud. This also applies to those who claim to be able to communicate with the dead.

One of the biggest frauds was a fellow named Uri Geller who attained some prominence in the seventies claiming to be gifted in psychokinesis, dowsing, and telepathy. His demonstrations were all accomplished with fairly ordinary magic tricks but he still fooled an awful lot of people.

He would have fooled more but for a gent named James Randi, who appeared on TV and wrote a book exposing Geller's chicanery. I've linked to this before but here's a good profile of Randi that ran in The New York Times. I call your attention to this paragraph…

…when Geller was invited to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the producers approached Randi, who had been a frequent guest, to help them ensure that Geller could employ no tricks during his appearance. Randi gave Carson's prop men advice on how to prepare for the taping, and the result was a legendary immolation, in which Geller offered up flustered excuses to his host as his abilities failed him again and again.

"I sat there for 22 minutes, humiliated," Geller told me, when I spoke to him in September. "I went back to my hotel, devastated. I was about to pack up the next day and go back to Tel Aviv. I thought, That's it — I'm destroyed." But to Geller's astonishment, he was immediately booked on The Merv Griffin Show. He was on his way to becoming a paranormal superstar. "That Johnny Carson show made Uri Geller," Geller said. To an enthusiastically trusting public, his failure only made his gifts seem more real: If he were performing magic tricks, they would surely work every time.

That episode of The Tonight Show, which originally aired August 1, 1973 is being run this Saturday night on Antenna TV. Geller's segment can be viewed in many corners of the Internet but you might find it interesting to watch the entire show and see it in context.