Here's an interview with Penn Jillette about how he and his partner Teller work together. I find those guys kind of fascinating in the way they work…and how much they work. I don't mean how often people want to hire them. I mean the sheer volume of things they say yes to.
My pal Keith Scott is not only a top voice actor but probably the leading historian out there about those who preceded him in that profession. Here, he writes about Mel Blanc, specifically about Mel's many contracts over the years and how his fame and fortune rose. It has been widely believed that Mel's various deals with Warner Brothers precluded the other voice actors in those cartoons from getting credit — a belief spread by many of those other actors saying that was the case. Keith says it's not so.
Aidan Colvin is a 16-year-old boy with dyslexia, who has been writing to successful dyslexics for advice on how to cope with his condition. He got some sound advice from Jay Leno.
Here's a handy-dandy guide to Donald Trump scandals. In another year with another candidate, any one of these would lose him the support of many of those who now hail him as their savior.
Two film critics rate all of Woody Allen's movies from worst to best. This is one of those lists that you read just so you can go, "Are they insane? They think Interiors is better than Radio Days?" But it does remind us of something amazing; that Woody Allen has made 47 movies…and made them pretty much on his own terms and without pandering to any visible notion of what's commercial.
Two days before 9/11/01, George Carlin performed in Vegas, prepping and honing lines he'd perform on his forthcoming HBO special, which was tentatively called, I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die. Ian Crouch fills us in on what happened to that material when a lotta people did die.
Lastly for now: Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwanese-American scientist who in 1999 was indicted, first in the press and then in courtrooms for allegedly stealing secrets about the U.S. nuclear arsenal and passing them on to the People's Republic of China. He spent nine months in solitary confinement and had his life largely ruined by the accusations…but eventually everyone had to apologize to him and some paid him a lot of money, though he probably did not receive enough of either. Lowen Liu looks back on this injustice and how it impacted the way Chinese-Americans view the United States.