Here are some tips on parking. They're for Los Angeles but most of them should apply anywhere.
I'll add one: For a while in recent months, I was going to Physical Therapy twice a week at a place where metered street parking was the only option. In that area, streets were cleaned Monday and Tuesday mornings. You couldn't park on one side of the street on Monday before Noon and you couldn't park on the other side of the street on Tuesday before noon. That halved the number of available spaces during those hours…so I learned to not make appointments during those hours. And if I made the appointment for Noon either day or even 12:15, I got there just as half the parking spaces in the area were open and available.
Jordan Klepper visits an anti-vaxx rally and, as he usually does, finds a number of people who are willing to sign releases to let him put them on TV making really bad, clueless arguments for their cause. I don't think these are always fair but I admire his courage to go there, engage and risk someone taking a swing at him…
You've probably read or seen a lot of news stories about the Biden Administration not doing a good and compassionate job of evacuating people who need to be evacuated from Afghanistan. If, like me, you aren't sure how to view the whole thing, at least consider the different view of the situation that folks like Kevin Drum and Eric Boehlert have.
And check out Fred Kaplan's interview with Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for much of the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. How often do you see our leaders admit they made serious mistakes?
…and I'm not sure why you would be but power was restored in my neighborhood at 12:38 and it remains on.
I have learned that when we have one of these outages, I should allow a one-hour grace period before I assume it won't go off again. I don't start resetting clocks nor do I open the refrigerator for one hour.
I lack many things in life but today, the most obvious one is electricity. Electricity is always a nice thing to have, especially when everything in your life plugs in (if only to recharge) and you have a script due.
The L.A.D.W.P. site is giving 7:30 tonight as an estimated restoration time…which I hope is just a placeholder announcement for a real, earlier restoration time. But we shall see, we shall see…
It will probably surprise no one who reads this blog that I think everyone in my state should vote NO on the current, money-wasting political stunt recall. This is part of the new dynamic in American politics: When we lose an election, we never accept it as The Will of the People. We don't care about The Will of any People but Ourselves…so we insist the vote was rigged and we really won or we try to overturn it. We certainly don't respect the outcome the way we insist outcomes be respected when they go our way.
Gavin Newsom has been a pretty good governor but like every single elected official who has had to deal with The Pandemic, he has had to make decisions based on incomplete, subject-to-change advice and information. It's kind of a game of Political Gotcha that when Our Guy says things that prove to be inoperative — like when Trump says that the virus will magically disappear in a few weeks and/or can be treated with hydroxywhatever — we overlook that. But when The Other Guy says something that turns out to be wrong or even arguable, that's proof positive of his incompetence and/or dishonesty.
There's no one else on the ballot right now with any experience and the Republican ones who've stated their positions on masks and vaccines (and most have not) mostly want to go all Florida on us, switching to the policies of a state doing way worse than we are.
Vote NO on the recall and leave the second question blank. I already did.
This morning, I find myself thinking about New York and all the surrounding areas being battered by Hurricane Henri…like that city hasn't been battered enough by one disaster after another. Which is why I decided it would be a good time to post this…
Here's what I'd do if I were in charge of Jeopardy!: Bring in Ken Jennings, Buzzy Cohen and Mayim Bialik for a two-week Tournament of Champions hosted by Anderson Cooper. Winner gets all the money he or she wins plus the job of permanent host.
This post has run twice before on this blog — twice! — but it's one of my favorites and I've done a few upgrades on it. So here it is again…
Shortly before Christmas of 1960, my mother entered and won a contest at the Robinson's Department Store in Westwood. It was one of those contests where it was hard to not win — hundreds did — and what she won was an invitation to bring her child (i.e., me) to a Special Disney Preview of a forthcoming movie called 101 Dalmatians.
It took place on a Saturday morning at the Ambassador Hotel near downtown Los Angeles. We reported at the assigned hour, checked in and were herded like cattle (or worse, Magic Kingdom visitors) into separate ballrooms. My mother was held captive, more or less, in a presentation for parents. They were served adult-type food and subjected to what I gather was an extended commercial for going to Disney movies, buying Disney toys for the kids, taking them to Disneyland, watching Disney TV shows, etc.
The gist of it was that you weren't a good raiser of children if you denied your offspring any part of the total Disney experience. A decade or two later while visiting Las Vegas, she and my father got roped into one of those scams where in exchange for allegedly free show tickets, they had to sit through a hard sell pitch to buy time share condos, and were almost forbidden to leave without doing so. When she got home, she said it reminded her of that Disney gathering.
Meanwhile back at the Ambassador, I was taken into the other ballroom, the one for kids, which was decorated as if for a child's birthday party. There were dozens of little tables and I was stuck at one with a bunch of other eight-year-olds I didn't know and didn't particularly want to know, and we were served hot dogs and potato chips and ice cream and cake. Some of this was eaten but most of it was thrown around or up. Disney cartoons were run and there was, of course, an extended preview for 101 Dalmatians along with training on how to properly throw a tantrum if our parents did not take us to see it again and again and again and buy us every last bit of 101 Dalmatians merchandise.
Mr. Nash and Mr. Duck.
There was also a live show. A woman dressed as a fairy princess of some sort sang Disney songs and then Clarence "Ducky" Nash performed with his Donald Duck puppet. I didn't understand a word he said in either voice but I knew enough to know he was the man who spoke for Donald, and it was thrilling to see him in person. There was also a Disney cartoonist — the "Big Mooseketeer" Roy Williams, I think — doing charcoal drawings of Mickey and the gang right before our eyes. I liked that part a lot.
Roy Williams.
At the end, before we and our respective parents were released from Disney custody and reunited, there was a drawing for prizes where everyone present was destined to win something. I wanted one of the charcoal sketches but had to settle for a 78 RPM Little Golden Record that featured two songs from 101 Dalmatians. One side had the movie's best tune, "Cruella De Vil." The other side had a title song that was very catchy and very bouncy and in the weeks that followed, I played it often on my little phonograph. The ending went…
Picture one hundred and one mischievious creations
One hundred and one puppy birthday celebrations
One hundred and one, that's a lot of doggy rations
One Hundred and One Dalmatians!
To my surprise when I made my parents take me to see the movie, that song was nowhere to be heard. It was not on the LP soundtrack of the movie, either. Throughout the sixties, long after I'd lost or broken my Little Golden Record I had that tune running through my head but could not find a copy of it to save my life. I couldn't even find any evidence that it had ever existed. Around 1970, when I began to meet Disney scholars and asked about it, none of them had ever heard of it. One told me I'd obviously made it up. "I didn't make up those lyrics when I was eight years old," I replied.
One day last year, I lunched with Greg Ehrbar, co-author (with Tim Hollis) of Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records, the exhaustive book on the topic, and I thought to ask him about it. He knew of the song and thought it had been written by the team of Mr. Disney's favorite tunesmiths, Richard and Robert Sherman. When he told me this, I felt like more of a ninny than even usual because I know Richard Sherman. For some reason — a lot of mutual friends, I guess, plus the fact that we're both members of the Magic Castle — I run into him at least once a month somewhere. I could have asked him about it years ago!
Not the actual record but a reasonable facsimile.
I did, the next time we were together and he was quite amazed that I knew those lyrics and could sing them, albeit poorly, from memory and from when I was eight. He was also quite flattered (who wouldn't be?) and he told me the story of its creation and omission. Basically, Mr. D. came to them. They were new in his operation, this being before Mary Poppins or The Parent Trap or all those great songs they wrote for Disneyland attractions. The Great and Powerful Walt suddenly decided 101 Dalmatians needed a bouncy title song and they whipped one up which everyone liked but which they couldn't find room for in the movie.
That Little Golden Record I won was apparently arranged before the movie was locked, at a time it was still believed the tune would get in. That it didn't was allegedly because some other high-ranked Disney official (not Walt) lobbied successfully for its exclusion.
Before I could ask my next question — where the hell do I find a copy? — Richard told me he thought it was being included among a bevy of "cut songs" on the new, then-forthcoming two-disc DVD release of 101 Dalmatians. I was delighted and a few weeks ago, while Costcoing, I picked one up and came home, gleefully anticipating being able to, at long last, hear this song I've had running through my brain since 1961 and last heard around then.
Well, guess what. It wasn't on the DVD. Fortunately, Greg Ehrbar helped me obtain a copy and it has since turned up on one or more CDs that Disney has released. There's also a stereo remake of The Song (very nice but not the original) on some CDs. It's difficult to find but it's not impossible as it was for many years.
It's not a fabulous song but I've had it caroming around inside my skull since around '62 or '63 or whenever I lost/broke that Little Golden Record. This is satisfying to me in a way that cannot possibly mean as much to you. I'm also delighted that my memory of the lyrics was dead-on accurate all these years. So I'll close this by offering you a sampling of the 45 year itch that I was finally able to scratch. Hope it doesn't haunt you as long as it's haunted me…
Every so often, I think that maybe people with different viewpoints could come together in some sort of middle-ground compromise or understanding. Then I look at how many people get outraged over the question of whether pineapple belongs on pizza.
Since then, I've received about a dozen messages from folks who want to debate the question of whether pineapple belongs on pizza. I'm not sure they all understood that I don't consider this an open topic. Not everything in this world has to be an argument and this certainly doesn't. Here — I'll give you the answer to the question…
If you want to have pineapple on your pizza, go right on ahead.
And I submit that if that doesn't settle the matter for you, you're just looking for conflict. Until such time as someone in power tries to implement a pineapple mandate for pizza or even a pineapple ban, that settles that. There are so many debates in this world today that will never reach any level of consensus and agreement, we don't need any more.
Amber the Fangirl — not to be confused with my lady friend Amber — is a British teen with grand talent and great enthusiasm for the world of Cartoon Voices. A month or three ago, I agreed to be her guest on a video podcast she does, usually interviewing great voice talent. We really just talk about folks who do voices for cartoons and our experiences with them…
If Johnny Carson was still on, his monologue tonight would include: "You know, television is a rough business. One minute you're on top; the next, you're on the bottom. As I was telling the shoeshine boy out in the hall, Mike Richards…"
