This letter was published in the Boston Globe on March 14, 2002…

To the Editor:

George F. Will writes: "Bush's terseness is Ernest Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley." ("Old Fashioned Values Return Since Sept. 11," Op Ed, March 12)

Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley's sermons, but I do know that to put George W. Bush's prose next to Hemingway is equal to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen.

Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies?  You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.

Here's a passage from "A Farewell to Arms." It has more going for it than "terseness."

"I was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice.  I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words you could not stand to hear… Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a democracy may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the scurvy manipulation of such words as "evil" and "love" by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president.

NORMAN MAILER
Provincetown

Paul Scrabo is a video guy and filmmaker in New York who shares, among other tastes, my interest in the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Over on his website — www.scrabo.com — he has some interesting pictures and articles about it.  He also offers loads of other fun stuff that will probably interest anyone who enjoys this site.  One treasure is an on-line version of the famous video of William Shatner performing his version of the Elton John song, "Rocket Man."  There are those who call it the single most inane and pretentious musical performance ever on television…and I'm not sure I agree but I sure wouldn't waste any breath arguing against that position.  Anyway, click on the link and go visit Paul's site.  (But first, click on the link below and donate some cash to this one.)

Matt Drudge is reporting that anonymous folks at ABC want Oprah Winfrey to host next year's Oscars and that, among "influential Academy insiders," Jay Leno is the odds-on favorite.  This is probably just the musing of two or three people who will have little or nothing to do with the decision…which the network and Academy won't even begin to address for many moons.  (Leno, I've been told, was offered the gig a few years ago but turned it down, allegedly because he feels a real movie star should host, but probably because he saw what it did for Mr. Letterman's career.)

In any case, the Powers That Be haven't even decided who'll produce the Oscars next year.  They certainly aren't going to expend any serious time thinking about possible hosts until they get much closer to the date and see who's hot and who's available.  My guess is the first call will be to Billy Crystal and if he won't do it, the second call will be to Steve Martin and if he won't do it, they'll start debating a list that includes Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams and maybe a dozen others.  One of these days, if and when Nathan Lane makes another successful movie, he'll shoot right to the top of that list…or maybe sooner.

April Fool's Day is next week and while I don't like most practical jokes, I do love witty, harmless gags.  I'm remembering the first April Fool's Day after I'd gotten a modem and begun calling computer bulletin boards.  This was before Al Gore invented the Internet.  I logged into a B.B.S. I called once a week or so and there, in its "announcements" section was a serious, deadpan notice that due to complaints from callers, three regular users of the system — two unfamiliar names plus mine — were being banned for being obnoxious and offensive.  I did a double-take that would have been considered overacting in a Ben Turpin movie and began pondering what I'd posted that could have ticked people off.  Took me about ten seconds to realize that I'd been had; that the system was configured so that everyone saw their name as one of the three in the bogus announcement.

One of my favorite April Fool's Day gags was perpetrated by the Cartoon Network back in 1997.  Rather than describe it myself, I'm going to quote verbatim, a squib from the daily fax report that was issued that day by the newspaper, Electronic Media.  Here it is…

The Cartoon Network pulled its regularly scheduled programming in lieu of an April Fools' Day stunt.  Since 6 a.m., the network has been repeating a single seven-minute short (Screwball Squirrel's Happy-Go-Nutty), along with occasional on-screen notices claiming the animated character has taken over the control room in an effort to have April 1 declared a national holiday.  All fooling aside, the channel plans to resume normal programming at 6 PM — after the cartoon has run more than 140 times.

The stunt was, I thought, hysterical — the same cartoon over and over and over.  They did not even rotate the five classic cartoons that Tex Avery directed of Screwy (sometimes known as Screwball) Squirrel.  They ran the same one over and over and over and over.  Even after it was apparent what they were doing, I found myself tuning in to Cartoon Network throughout the day, making sure they were still at it, and checking out the little announcements about the Screwy Squirrel hostage crisis.

They left all the promotional announcements and bumpers intact as per the schedule, so they'd announce, "Coming up next — The Flintstones," and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty.  Or they'd say, "We now return to Thundercats" and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty.  For twelve hours straight.  I found myself laughing, just at the sheer silliness of it all.

Someone at Cartoon Network has a great sense of humor and a hefty serving of guts.  For the sake of a great gag, they ran the risk of outraging cable subscribers — and, indeed, judging from Internet postings, a few were incensed sufficiently to phone up the channel's headquarters in Atlanta.  This did them no good, of course; all they got was a recorded announcement that said that they were doing their best to get Screwy out of the control room.  Others called their local cable companies to report technical problems.  At least one cable service out in the Valley began carrying the channel on the first of April.  One wonders what those new viewers thought.

But I know what I thought: I thought it was brilliant.  And, looking at the above report from Electronic Media, I wonder if Cartoon Network played a trick on them in a press release, or if no one at Electronic Media knows how to multiply.  Even if you left out commercials and promo announcements — and they didn't — it would take a lot more than 12 hours to run a 7-minute cartoon 140 times.  Either way, somewhere Tex was laughing his wings and/or ass off.

Just to remind (or warn) you: I will be among the guests at this year's Wonderon, a fine comic book convention which is being held in Oakland, California from April 19-21.  As has become my lot in life, I will hosting a mess of panels, including a 20th anniversary Groo discussion, a Golden/Silver Age panel and a "quick draw" competition which will pit a bunch of cartoonists against one another to see who can whip it out fast.

I'll post a list of the panels here in a week or two, and the whole schedule will be up shortly at the convention website, which is www.wondercon.com.  You'll also want to go there for further info on the event.  After 30+ years of attending comic conventions, I have seen it all, done it all and generally grown "conventioned out," turning down most invites.  I always try to get to WonderCon, however.  It's a friendly gathering of just the right size: Large enough that you'll never run out of things to do and people to meet, but not so overwhelming that just getting from one end of the Dealers Room to the other becomes some kind of Bataan Death March past rows of comic books for sale.  Try and be there.

Flix — another one of those channels you probably don't get unless you have a satellite dish — has been running Movie Movie, a very funny movie that a lot of folks never got.  Written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, and starring George C. Scott, Art Carney, Trish Van Devere and other fine thespians, Movie Movie is two films in one.  First up is Dynamite Hands, a parody of a thirties' boxing flick.  Then comes Baxter's Beauties of 1933, which burlesques the musicals of the period wherein the star can't perform on opening night and a girl from the chorus takes over.  Both mini-films have much the same cast, and there's a trailer in between…and the whole thing is a lot of silly fun.

Both halves of Movie Movie were filmed in color and, when it was previewed, they experimented with making one half black-and-white.  (They also had a newsreel segment then, which was eliminated, and Dynamite Hands had a different ending.)  In the initial release, the prize-fighting movie was black-and-white and the show biz musical was color…but the prints now being run on cable have both halves in color, which I think is a mistake.  Dynamite Hands was funnier in monochrome, and the shift to color was effective.

The film was not a big hit and never received much exposure on home video.  Gelbart wrote Movie Movie II, the script of which reads even funnier, but it never got in front of a camera…so we have to settle for catching the first one on cable.  If you get the chance, I suggest you do so.

Just got an e-mail from Batton Lash pointing out the real punch line to the Reuters "correction."  They corrected the line where it said he plays at Elaine's to saying he plays at Michael's Pub…but, in fact, that's wrong, too.  Michael's Pub was sold some time ago and for years now, Woody and his band have been playing at the Hotel Carlyle.

These are the people who tell us most of what we know about what's happening in our world.

One more thought on the Oscars and then I'll shut up: I think there's a silly tendency to try to discuss "The Vote" as if all the voters were working towards one goal and with one motive; like they all got together in a big room to mark their ballots and said, "Okay, it's time to make a racial statement.  Everyone vote for Denzel and Halle, but we'll give Best Director to Ron Howard because we liked him when he was Opie!"  Amidst this morning's web chat about the event — including, what a surprise, many who thought it was the Worst Oscar Show Ever — I see a lot of this.

A large group of people voted without consultation, and we have only a tiny piece of information as to how they voted.  We know which films and people got the most votes but for all we know, each winner could have gotten 21% of the vote in a razor-close five-way competition.  Nonetheless, we not only act like the whole Academy chose Halle Berry, we pretend they all had the same thing on their brains…then we further extrapolate to discuss the mindset of the voters in all categories; what they were collectively trying to say with this year's awards.

Fact is, there probably isn't one — or even one dominant — trend.  We do this with political elections, as well ("Twelve states voted Republican because they're fed up with high property taxes") but at least there, we have various opinion polls and the exact vote totals from which to speculate.  We still go too far, trying to assign one thought process to a large group of divergent minds — we color a whole state red or blue based on 51% of the vote — but there's some basis, however vague, for interpreting the win.  Oscar votes, apart from being even less important, have the luxury of no data whatsoever that can ever validate or belie any analysis.  We can say, "Well, this year, Academy voters were trying to say they don't like the price of Raisinets at the refreshment stand," and nothing can ever prove us wrong.  I think it's silly to pretend that a whole group of people — whose identities none of us really know — all spoke with one set of sensibilities and purpose.  For all we know, this year's "statement" was about the price of Raisinets.

Okay.  Now, I'll shut up.  By the way, they still have no idea if it's going to rain Thursday.

For some reason, this kind of thing interests me.  The Reuters News Service put out a story around 9 PM (Pacific) last evening that included the following paragraph…

Allen, who is also a jazz musician and usually spends Oscar night playing the saxophone at Elaine's restaurant in New York, received a standing ovation from Hollywood's finest inside the Kodak Theatre and said, "Thank you very much … that makes up for the strip search" — a reference to the strict security surrounding the Oscar presentations.

About three hours later, they transmitted a corrected version that amended the name of the place wherein Mr. Allen plays jazz music:

Allen, who is also a jazz musician and usually spends Oscar night playing the saxophone at Michael's Pub in New York, received a standing ovation from Hollywood's finest…

Okay, first question: Who noticed the error and felt it was significant enough to warrant moving a correction?  I mean, given all the erroneous news stories that don't get corrected, why this?  Did Michael's Pub call up and complain?

Second and third questions: Doesn't Woody Allen play the clarinet?  And doesn't he do this on Monday nights, which are no longer Oscar nights?

Woody Allen at the Oscars?  How exciting is that?  There aren't too many folks whose surprise appearance would mean boo but Woody, plus a lot of the "right" people winning, might mean we'll hear fewer folks tomorrow morn saying, "Boy, that was the worst Academy Awards show ever."  They'll fault it for being long, and for the presenter banter (which I thought was better than the norm, and almost pain-free) but, all in all, I thought it was a pretty good show.  Here are some other thoughts off the top of my cranium…

• As always, the show ran longer than advertised.  The "official" length, as per the announced schedule, was 3 and a half hours — which is when my TiVo shut off, somewhere in the middle of the montage of dead folks.  Credits finally rolled around an hour later and, of course, the producers knew well in advance they'd be around that length.  No one made an extra-long speech, no one took eleven minutes to walk onto the stage.  Absolutely nothing occurred that could not have been estimated in advance.  So how about if we just admit in advance that the show's going to run 4 and a half hours?  That way, those who went out and set their VCRs would get to see the presentation for Best Picture.
• Woody's appearance was a stunner…though did you get the idea that a few of those who stood and clapped were a little unsure if they wanted to do that for someone with his, uh, personal history?
• One of the few "missteps" I thought occurred in the broadcast was in the performance by Cirque du Soleil.  Whether it's worth taking X minutes of Oscarcast time for a great act that has nothing whatsoever to do with movies is arguable.  But if it was going to be included, I think it was a mistake to try and pretend it had something to do with the field of Visual Effects and to throw all those clips of special effects sequences in the background.  Cirque du Soleil is a visual feast without any help and, with the film montage running, there was just too much on the screen: You couldn't see the clips, you couldn't see the acrobats.
• The footage accompanying Bill Hanna's "in memoriam" salute should have been from a Tom & Jerry film.  He didn't win Oscars for his TV cartoons.
• First rule of directing the Academy Awards Telecast: Any time anyone says anything having to do with race or brotherhood, cut immediately to a shot of Samuel L. Jackson in the audience.  And then, if there's time and he's in his seat, Will Smith.
• Boy, the Kodak Theater looks nice on camera.
• Boy, Randy Newman's win was sure popular with the audience.  (But you see, this is the kind of thing I was talking about, earlier.  The main thing that makes an award show fun to watch is when the "right" people win and they get up there and give charming, funny speeches.  But when that doesn't happen, critics dump on the folks who produced and wrote the telecast, as if they've screwed up…)
• Same thing with Halle Berry's acceptance speech.  To some, it will always be a memorable high point, and perhaps it is.  But when this kind of thing doesn't occur — when the Best Actress doesn't cry and have an emotional outburst, people fault the guys who produced the telecast.
• Whoopi G. did not one but two Liza wedding jokes, and she did a slightly different Ashcroft line than we predicted.  I didn't watch the middle so I may have missed an Enron or Gary Condit joke.
• Having Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close as announcer/hosts would have been a better idea if they'd had fewer off-topic trivia lines to read.  And it would have been even better if real, professional announcers had done the honors.  (If ever a show didn't need big names to draw an audience, it's the Academy Awards…)

And that's all that comes to mind at the moment.  Tune in next year for the next "Worst Oscar Show Ever."

Speaking of predictions: Earlier today, the Southern California forecast from the National Weather Service said showers were possible for Wednesday-Thursday.  Now, it says Wednesday will be partly cloudy and we have "A chance of showers" Thursday through Friday.  How solid is this projection?  About as solid as smog.  The following is currently posted on the website where the weather forecasters discuss why they're predicting what they're predicting.  (By the way, "CWA" stands for "County Weather Area" and all the other unfamiliar terms refer to different computer model projections based on satellite readings.)

BEYOND TUESDAY THE FORECAST REALLY GETS TRICKY. AS HAS BEEN THE CASE THE LAST FEW DAYS, THE MEDIUM RANGE MODELS HAVE BEEN ALL OVER THE PLACE, THOUGH THE TREND HAS BEEN TO TAKE THE LOW FURTHER AND FURTHER WEST (A VERY COMMON PATTERN WITH THE MODELS IN A SCENARIO LIKE THIS).

THE 12Z CANADIAN AND UKMET BOTH KEEP THE UPR LOW WAY TOO FAR OFFSHORE TO BRING ANY PRECIP TO OUR AREA, AT LEAST THROUGH WEDNESDAY. THEN MOST OF THE MODELS SEEM TO DROP THE LOW QUITE A WAYS SOUTH BEFORE SWINGING IT INLAND FRIDAY SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SAN DIEGO AND ENSENADA. WITH THIS SCENARIO, THE CENTRAL COAST WOULD NOT SEE ANY PRECIP FROM THIS SYSTEM, AND QUITE LIKELY THE REST OF OUR CWA WOULDN'T SEE ANY EITHER. HOWEVER, GIVEN THE CONTINUING UNCERTAINTY AND MODEL INCONSISTENCIES, WILL ONLY MODIFY THE EXTENDED BY PUSHING BACK PRECIP CHANCES BY A DAY, WHICH WOULD BE THE THURSDAY/FRIDAY TIME FRAME.

THE AVN DOES INDICATE QUITE A DEEP LAYER OF MOISTURE MOVING IN AT THAT TIME, BUT CONFIDENCE IN THIS SOLUTION IS EXTREMELY LOW, PROBABLY 1 ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10.

I'm not faulting the folks at the National Weather Service who, I believe, do a much, much better job than we admit.  They're too often judged by that one day in a thousand when an inland front backs up against high pressure and it showers on a day that was supposed to be Mostly Sunny.

But there are times when predicting the weather is easy; when they can say, days in advance, that a storm is impossible or almost certain.  And then there are times like this coming week when several scenarios are possible.  Personally, I find it somewhat refreshing — and surely more useful — to hear someone in a position of authority admit that they really don't know.  Would that the atmosphere in Washington were such that our elected officials could say that when that's the case.  Because, very often, they don't know…but they can't own up to that.

And, oh yeah, Whoopi will do a joke about John Ashcroft wanting to put brassieres on all the Oscar statues.

I was going to take a stab at some Oscar predictions here but decided against it.  I haven't seen any of the nominated films — not a one — and figured that might work against me.  However, I can predict this: The ceremony will be very long and everyone will bitch about that and call it "The worst Oscarcast Ever."  The ceremony is always very long and everyone always bitches about it and calls it "The Worst Oscar Ever."  Until the following one.  It's about the only thing you can bank on.  What's more, they often act like the thing is supposed to be short and it only ran long because someone screwed up.

In point of fact, the producers of the telecast know pretty much exactly how long the show's going to run and it's fine with them.  It's especially fine with the folks at ABC, who sell a lot of very expensive commercial time for the broadcast and would have to sell less if the show wrapped up in less time.

We can also predict that there will be a number of references — not necessarily "on topic" — to 9/11 but that Whoopi will say something that someone will strain hard to interpret as unpatriotic.  (I find it interesting that, this week, a lot of ultra-conservatives are extremely critical of President Bush for saying he'll sign the Campaign Finance Reform bill, and also for what he may do with that immigration plan.  These are the same people who charge treason when Bush is criticized by anyone for anything else.)  I suppose there'll be Cheney heart attack jokes and something about Liza's wedding and — who knows? — there may even be some mention of Gary Condit.  Nathan Lane is among the presenters and that might afford a dandy place for a line about how Max Bialystock got out of the play-producing business and launched Enron.

We can further predict that some actress will wear an outfit that is so outrageous — in concept or exposure — that everyone will be talking about it for weeks after.  One of the great crimes against humanity is to not be properly dressed for the Academy Awards.

And we can just about wager the farm that the reviews tomorrow will say, "Worst Oscar Show ever" and fault its producers for factors beyond their control, like who won and whether they gave memorable acceptance speeches.  It will remain "Worst Oscar Show ever" until the next one, whereupon they'll long for the memorable, classy moments of this year's ceremony.  Enjoy the festivities.

Warner Brothers has released a tribute drawing to Chuck Jones that's running in all the appropriate places.  Artist Spike Brandt did the honors…and a fine job he did of capturing key characters and moments from some of Chuck's films.  Click on the picture above to see a larger version.

At WonderCon, my pal Nat Gertler was doing a brisk business with his book, Panel One: Comic Book Scripts By Top Writers.  This is a dandy volume for those who ask — as someone seems to do every ten minutes on the Internet — "What does a comic book script look like?"  As you can see in this collection, there are many formats…and there are actually quite a few not represented here.  But you can get a good education on the way nine writers do it, and enjoy their actual words and the descriptions they gave to artists to create nine comic book stories.  It's a great idea and even those of us who write comics can learn a little something by seeing other writers' approaches.

You can purchase the book from Amazon.Com and if you click on that word here, I get a tiny cut.  Or you can scurry over to Nat's website and order it there.  (Nat also has a terrific guide to the books reprinting Mr. Schulz's Peanuts strips.)  Consider this a POVonline recommendation.