The Robcat View

the gravity of paris

2010-09-01T19:55:00.003-05:00

If you despair that normal rules don't seem to apply to the very rich, take heart in the fact that this doesn't always work to their advantage, for I can not imagine how the laws of gravity you and I live with made this happen:

from a press report:

[Paris] Hilton was arrested inside the Wynn resort, where a police lieutenant reported a small plastic bag containing 0.8 grams of cocaine fell into his hand when Hilton reached for a tube of lip balm in a purse.

Somehow that (alleged) bag fell up from her purse, fell horizontally out the window of the automobile in the hotel parking lot she was sitting in, and then continued to fall straight into the hand of the officer who was outside the car testing her boyfriend for DUI at the time.

my fine scaled friend

2010-08-11T20:20:00.004-05:00

This morning I found a lizard treading water inside the bucket I put under my air conditioner to catch condensation.

I pulled him out and put him on the ground figuring he'd scram but he ran up on my shoe instead and wouldn't leave no matter how much I tried to direct him to an obvious escape route.

So I put my hand down and he crawled on board and stayed there long enough for me to go in the house, find my camera, find some batteries, find the memory card and go back outside to take these pictures.

Thanks for visiting, Mr. Lizard, and have a good life!

not the fox and the hound

2010-06-18T01:56:00.004-05:00

I just watched an animated feature that had to be an absolute nightmare to direct.

It allowed no comic relief, nor amusing animal sidekicks, nor even squash and stretch. Every line of dialog had to be said with either deep reverence or snarling cynicism.

And on top of that the main characters could never be shown on screen or even heard speaking. It was rather like watching a movie about the Invisible Man... if the Invisible Man had stayed in his trailer for the entire shooting schedule.

man vs. elements

2010-06-11T08:54:00.005-05:00

I've watched two of Robert Flaherty's famous documentary features. Somehow, in "Man of Aran" (1934) he's managed to make living in Ireland look even more bleak and hopeless than living at the north pole did in "Nanook of the North" (1922).

if i were china...

2010-06-04T14:07:00.003-05:00

... i'd invite North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his government to some sort of friendship and solidarity gathering. After they arrive, announce that they've all decided to retire to the Gobi desert to pursue their long-neglected interest in dinosaur fossils and that they ask everyone to respect their desire for complete and perpetual privacy in this endeavor.

Then give North Korea to South Korea. Within a year the South Koreans will start agitating for the US to pull its forces out. With the North Korean threat gone and with money tight, the US would just about have to.

Two problems solved for China.

first they came for the chicken costumes...

2010-05-22T23:01:00.002-05:00

Chicken costumes banned at Nevada polling places

... and I said nothing because I was not wearing a chicken costume.

get a load of those big brown eyes

2010-05-22T00:19:00.003-05:00

A critter that wandered into my backyard today.

tight pencil. really tight.

2010-05-18T16:47:00.004-05:00

Martin Hash was kind enough to give me some items from his collection of animatia. This is an animation drawing from the Disney TV series "Duck Tales".

I'm marveling at the microscopic precision of it all because the figure (Huey? Dewey? Louis?) is only about an inch across on the paper and yet it would have to withstand being blown up to at least television size. Some of the lines you see here are separated by maybe a hundredth of an inch?

Someone with very sharp eyes and a very sharp pencil was at work. A Chinese someone, I presume, as there is Chinese writing elsewhere on the page.

Update: After consulting the layout page that came with this I have ascertained that this duck is not Huey, not Louis, but Dewey.

it's jonny quest's fault 2

2010-05-16T11:22:00.003-05:00

I saw something last night I thought didn't exist... an episode of Jonny Quest I had never seen before.

A few scenes from "Pirates from Below"...

What are you staring at? It's a submarine. It's just a submarine! It doesn't look like anything else!

This must be how the Reverend George Rekers got that hernia he needed surgery for.

Mmmm.... Rayce!

Is it possible this episode was not as frequently re-run as the ones about pterodactyls and volcanoes?

your australian accent may be too thick if...

2010-05-08T17:38:00.002-05:00

... you and your seeing-eye "guide dog" are barred from a restaurant because they thought you said "gay dog"... and you're IN AUSTRALIA.

'Gay dog' refused entry to Adelaide restaurant

There's an Abbot and Costello routine in there somewhere.

form fails function

2010-04-23T00:12:00.004-05:00

From the New York Times report on the Milan Furniture Fair... a magazine rack:

1) Won't that look great when it has magazines piled on it?

2) Aside from your dentist, who keeps enough magazines around to need a rack for them?

It's a bit like haute coture fashion shows where they dress models up in stuff no sane person would actually wear.

burning the beatles

2010-04-19T10:17:00.003-05:00

You probably think the Vatican's recent pardon of the Beatles seems rather quaint and out-of-touch.

But back in the 60's parents and authority figures everywhere were seriously panicked over The Beatles.

One day when I was about seven or eight I went down the street to visit my friend Lori. She was a year or two older than I and very much into everything that was hip and groovy and rock and roll. On this occasion I found her sitting on the floor of her room with all her records (a disc-shaped audio format that preceded the CD), very unhappy.

"The President has passed a law, and now it's against the law to listen to Beatles records and my dad says we have to burn them all tonight or we'll go to jail."

I had no idea they were that dangerous. I knew The Beatles had a cartoon on Saturday mornings but in our house we only had records of Handel's Messiah and folk singers like Burl Ives so I wasn't well-versed in them. I do recall that when I had asked my mother for a record of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" she vetoed that because it was "not a very nice song". So my first impression was only that this new legislation wouldn't affect us much.

I don't know how long Lori's dad got away with this deception. Maybe a week of no Beatles records played in the house before Lori noticed that none of her friends had been shipped off to internment camps.

we have a winner

2010-04-13T18:23:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen... the direct mail advertising brochure image most likely to make me never want to buy a product.

I don't know if Time-Warner Cable thinks that is how I view myself, or if they think that is what I want to come to my home and install Time-Warner Cable, but I do feel better now about not having cable.

no names please

2010-04-12T17:10:00.008-05:00

Russian President Medvedev goes for the extra point while commenting about Obama:

He's (a) very comfortable partner, it's very interesting to be with him. The most important thing that distinguishes him from many other people – I won't name anyone by name – he's a thinker, he thinks when he speaks. Which is already pretty good.

Someone - I won't name anyone by name - won't be getting a Christmas card from George and Laura this year.

But I can see Sarah Palin shrewdly remixing this to her advantage. Her 2012 anti-Obama campaign will promote her "not a thinker" image.

my proposal for a palestinian-israeli settlement

2010-04-07T09:21:00.011-05:00

All the current focus is on trying to hammer out a two-state solution. The problem with that is no matter where the border goes, both sides are going to be disappointed that some portion is permanently out of reach. Also, there has been a de facto two-state setup in place since the 1967 war. How well has that worked? Calling the Palestinian part a country and planting a flag there won't solve much.

I'm proposing a one-state solution. That is not a new idea, a number of optimistic individuals have been floating such for years.

This is my version.

The most-mentioned problem with a one-state scheme is that the Arab population will eventually outnumber the Jewish population, win control of the government and pass laws detrimental to the Jews.

That demographic trend is a likely one, and the example the Israeli government has set in dealing with the Arab minority under their jurisdiction is not uniformly bright. Something other than pure, electoral free-for-all is needed:

We'll divide the new unified country into, say, 100 parliamentary single member districts. They are all gerrymandered so that no district is more than 60% Arab or Jew.

In the first election cycle, all the even-numbered districts must elect a Jewish representative and all the odd-numbered districts must elect an Arab. In the next election cycle, every district switches. Even-numbered elects Arabs, Odd-numbered elects Jews. This doesn't mean they'll only have one candidate on their ballot each time; both Arabs and Jews present several political parties.

In an elect-a-Jew year, even majority Arab districts will have to elect a Jewish rep and in elect-an-Arab year even majority Jewish districts will have to elect an Arab.

My expectation is that by eliminating Arab vs. Jew contests the population will gravitate toward more moderate, can't-we-all-just-get-along candidates. With several Jewish candidates on the ballot, a Jewish candidate will likely have to court Arab votes to get over the 50% mark even in a majority Jewish district. After the election the winning Jewish candidate will have to account for Arab constituent concerns if he hopes to win next time he runs.

Because the district is guaranteed to elect a Jew of some sort, the Jews in that district will not need to vote as a bloc out of fear of "the other side" winning. The Arabs in that district won't need to vote as a bloc either; what would be the point? Politics will organize along more practical issues like taxes, the environment, sex scandals...

And vice-versa in districts scheduled to elect an Arab.

Initially, election cycles would be short, perhaps a year, so even though all winning reps will not be eligible to run in the very next election (because of the required Arab/Jewish switch), the election after that, in which they will be eligible, is only one more year away. This prevents them from regarding their term in office as a lame-duck situation and disregarding the concerns of their voting constituents.

These short terms will allow the population at large to quickly see that the sun still rises in the east and that water still flows downhill no matter who is in office.

It's also entirely possible that non-ethnic parties will form, like the Green Party, that have suitable Arab or Jewish candidates available for each election, offering continuity from one cycle to the next, even though the actual person serving is not the same.

Won't this plan consistently result in a 50-50-stalemate in the parliament?

Possibly, but most practical issues in this new country are not Arab/Jew divisions. They are bread and butter issues like where to build roads and schools, who to tax, water management, economic development...

Coalitions beyond simple Arab-Jewish lines will form to get things done.

This alternation plan would continue for 50 years. For 50 years neither Arabs nor Jews need to worry about being an electoral minority. After 50 years the most extreme actors will have passed from the stage and people who do not know the current conflict will have grown up to take their place.

In the fiftieth year we begin to unwind the ethnic mandate. One Arab-majority district and one Jewish-majority will be converted to simple anyone-can-run status. In the next year, two more districts will be converted. I expect that before the next 50 years elapses we will have run out of Arab and Jewish majority district pairs, but we will continue converting two districts at a time. The overall effect is to push the minority's loss of guaranteed seats out to the latest possible time.

Obvious questions:

How will a "President" be elected?

This country will be a parliamentary democracy so the elected MPs will choose a Prime Minister. Electing a President at-large would be divisive at the outset. For the first 50 years the role of a head-of-state in such a country will be performed by an international panel, perhaps one delegate each from Russia, Europe, the Arab League and the USA. Each of these has significant ties to the people in Israel and Palestine and each has expressed serious desire to reach a settlement.

This head of state panel would have oversight powers over law enforcement in the new country to make sure it is fairly applied.

If this sounds like babysitting, it is.

After 50 years, a President could be elected at-large.

Who can live where?

It would be like the US. Anyone can live anywhere they can afford to buy a home or rent an apartment. Hopefully with 50 years of stability the economic state of the Palestinians will have risen.

What about Palestinian refugees currently in other countries?

Part of the plan is a regional settlement granting Palestinian refugees full citizenship in the country they are currently residing in. Most of them have been born and raised in these countries, like Lebanon or Syria or Jordan, and might well prefer to stay with what they know, especially if they had the full rights of citizens.

They could also choose to forgo that citizenship offer and return to the territory of the new country. Palestinians who still have legal titles to homes in what is now Israel would probably want to make this move and they could pursue their claim in the courts. Some internationally-funded financial assistance would be needed to ease the displacement of current Israelis who would have to give up land or to compensate Palestinians who would prefer to not physically retake the land.

What if Jewish extremists assassinated all the Arab candidates running in their district? Or vice-versa?

First, that's a crime that would be prosecuted and punished like any other murder. But were it to happen, an electoral commission would allot that vote in the parliament to whatever party won that district.

What if a candidate weren't really the Arab or Jew they claimed to be?

All candidate have to be party members so fake Jews or Arabs would be sniffed out pretty quickly by their parties. A party devoted to secretly fielding Manchurian candidates would be unlikely to be able to organize on a national level.

What about the people who are neither "Arab" nor "Jew"?

I've been using "Arab" and "Jew" rather simplistically here. There are a certain number of Arabs who are not Islamic but are Christians. There are also some Christians who are not Arabs (Greek Orthodox descended, for example).

For candidacy purposes, Arab Christians could run as "Arab" and non-Arab Christians would run as "Jews" for the first 50 years. That seems to be the way they are aligned currently. Once their district has been converted to anyone-can-run status it wouldn't matter anymore.

For voting purposes, anyone can always vote any way they want, of course.

What would this new country be called?

"Bob" would work.

How do you get them to agree to this?

At this point it's clear they're never going to agree to anything. This settlement would be imposed by the regional and world powers.

They'll never be able to live together in one country.

That wasn't a question! None-the-less, there is some success in Israel now with Arabs and Jews living together. There are a substantial number of Arabs who are Israeli citizens now, who serve in The Israeli armed forces now and serve in the the parliament now and are active in civic life now. It could possibly work.

And as I noted before, two states separated with a wall in between is not tenable. If it were no one would be trying to find a "solution" today.

How will we trigger the apocalypse to hear the seventh trumpet to raise the beast of the sea to cast into the lake of fire if Israel doesn't fulfill Biblical prophecy by resuming animal sacrifice on the Temple Mount?

Well, you got me on that one. In the meantime, could you put that lake of fire out? Brimstone makes my eyes itch.

What qualification do you have to devise a peace plan?

None, but the qualified people's track record isn't any better than mine so far.

things to not do at your DUI arrest

2010-04-02T13:58:00.001-05:00

I had jury duty yesterday and today. A young woman was charged with Driving Under the Influence.

Based on the testimony we heard in court and the video of her arrest we watched, here are my observations on what does not work well if you've been pulled over by the police:

If the cop asks you to recite the alphabet, do not ask to use the Russian alphabet.

If he asks when you last ate, do not say "two days ago".

If he asks what you ate at that time, do not say "nothing".

Then, don't volunteer, "That's why I get drunk so fast!"

If you ask the officer a question and he says he doesn't know the answer, don't keep repeating the same question.

And at your trial, don't laugh when this video is replayed.

Her defense attorney didn't have much to work with. He did all he could to suggest the Field Sobriety Test had been less than perfectly administered. But that wasn't a deal killer. It did not create "reasonable doubt" that she had been driving while intoxicated which, after seeing all the evidence, we decided she had been.

neither A nor B nor B nor A

2010-04-01T17:31:00.004-05:00

This is almost April-Fools-worthy...

Have you ever wondered about famous band reunion tours that don't reunite all the old band members?

The Dallas Symphony is currently promoting what they say it is "the most authentic ABBA show to date", an ABBA concert that brings together zero of the four signature ABBA members.

Whatever could the less authentic shows have been like? Muppets?

knitting an afghan out of nothing at all

2010-03-31T13:16:00.005-05:00

I think one of the most artful bits of Presidential speech I've heard recently was when Obama found a way to glide over the fact that our man in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, had obviously stolen his most recent election.

"Though marred by fraud, that election produced a government consistent with Afghanistan's laws and constitution."

Which is basically saying that if it at least has the title of a government, we'll take it.

Gee, if George Bush had said that about Saddam Hussein and his 99.99% election victories it could have saved us a mistake war.

what would jesus design?

2010-03-29T08:09:00.004-05:00

Crackpots make the lamest websites. "Hutaree" is a christian militia the FBI raided over the weekend.

http://hutaree.com/
(probably not appropriate for work)

Update: Their website seems to be disappearing already.

Short story, it was an ugly mash of "camo" background and bad page design.

Their organization has ranks:

RANKS:

RADOK [RD]

BORAMANDER [BM]

ZULIF [ZL]

ARKON [AK]

GOLD RIFLEMAN [GR]

SILVER RIFLEMAN [SR]

BRONZE RIFLEMAN [BR]

LUKORE [LK]

MASTER GUNNER [MG]

SENIOR GUNNER [SG]

GUNNER [GN]

I was sure a Zulif outranked a Radok. That shows how deluded I've been.

super squirrel

2010-03-26T13:13:00.005-05:00

If you're gonna be a squirrel you better be in shape.

Found on the web:

The squirrels in my yard aren't quite so ambitious. They've gotten fat on abundant acorns that fall from the sky. But now I'm tempted to set up a red, rocket-shaped roller coaster for them.

11 is the new 22

2010-03-24T11:40:00.003-05:00

When Presidents sign something really big they sign each letter with a different pen and give them to key participants as souvenirs. I've been wondering how he got through 22 pens on just "Barack Obama". It looks like he broke the "O" into five or six parts.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George Herbert Walker Bush were born for such occasions.

Someday we should have a President named Winchester Jamison Clarke Barrington-Smythefield-Hickenlooper IV and then we could all get a pen.

History doesn't record who received the ceremonial pens that got us into the Iraq War, but I'm sure they are proudly displayed on the mantle next to the gun they shoot their hunting partners with.

for luck

2010-03-23T15:46:00.004-05:00

The caption of this photo was "President Barack Obama holds a lucky charm given to him during the campaign, while on the phone with a Member of Congress in the Oval Office, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)"

I believe the image on the lucky charm appears to be...

..."Bee Gees" lead singer Barry Gibb.

die meisterstücker

2010-03-22T21:49:00.002-05:00

I don't know if the Germans get as frazzled about English phrases popping up in their language as the French do, but I'm always jarred when i see it.

"Barack Obamas Last-Minute Meisterstück"

(Meisterstück = Masterpiece)

Perhaps the Germans are so efficient and organized that they never needed to develop a native phrase for "last-minute".

"Gesundheits-Coup" is kind of weird too.

out of season

2010-03-21T11:15:00.002-05:00

Snow in Texas in Spring.

This has probably ruined the peachtree blossoms, so no peaches this year.

if i don't do it, who will?

2010-03-19T23:00:00.001-05:00

The only positive thing about baking your own birthday cake is you don't have to fight anybody to lick the spoon.

convenience food

2010-03-18T20:54:00.004-05:00

These are the steps to prepare the "Banquet Chicken Nugget Meal":

- Cut and remove film cover from chicken nuggets and macaroni & cheese but not the corn.
- Remove chicken nuggets.
- Microwave on HIGH 1½ minutes.
- Replace chicken nuggets.
- Stir macaroni & cheese.
- Microwave 1½ to 2 minutes.
- Let stand 2 minutes.
- CAREFULLY remove as PRODUCT WILL BE HOT.
- Stir macaroni & cheese.
- Check that product is cooked thoroughly. Internal temperature needs to reach 165°F as measured by a food thermometer.

another one from the bucket list

2010-03-10T18:02:00.002-06:00

I put in a new garbage disposal today, all by myself.

And it's not just any garbage disposal... it's a "WasteKing" garbage disposal!

The old one had rusted out. For a couple years I got by with cutting out strips of plastic from a milk jug and gluing that over the holes. But it got so rusted that there wasn't much holding the bottom to the top.

rabbit rant

2010-03-09T23:26:00.004-06:00

This is a Bugs Bunny Model sheet!

From 1943!

By Robert McKimson!

Follow it exactly!

It's all important!

You know that because every note on it ends in an exclamation mark!

Sheesh!

Save it for the Germans, OK?

different than you and i...

2010-03-08T11:14:00.002-06:00

In an NY Times article about The National Enquirer's recent brush with journalism, an Enquirer editor says their coverage of the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair showed that the wealthy "have the same types of problems that [ordinary people] have in real life."

Yes, I am endlessly plagued by attractive, talented, much younger documentary filmmakers who want to sleep with me. I'm sure you are too.

peter graves sighting?

2010-02-26T11:27:00.007-06:00

This looks like the scene they always had at the end of the classic "Mission:Impossible" television show, just as Agent Jim Phelps reaches up to rip off his latex mask and the bad guys realize they've been tricked into revealing their evil plan to keep the middle class from buying anything other than junk health insurance that won't actually cover them when they get sick.

I wish this were all just a bad TV show where the problem gets solved in 53 minutes.

unnatural acts

2010-02-20T00:21:00.004-06:00

With all the talk of repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a lot of people are wondering what will happen if two men get in bed together.

It's sort of like this...

... but without the trombone.

75 is the new 100

2010-02-03T19:06:00.002-06:00

An article in the NY Times reports that some biologists have discovered bees can recognize faces.

After several hours’ training, the bees picked the right faces about 75 percent of the time...

They went on to suggest that this knowledge might be used to improve "airport security".

Lets see... a swarm of bees at the airport who are right about 75% of the time.

Nothing could go wrong with that.

five is the new eleven

2010-02-01T12:54:00.001-06:00

In New York magazine, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman explains why he didn't like it when his online column was kept behind a paying-subscribers-only wall:

“What was coming to me anecdotally from my travels was the five worst words that as a columnist you ever want to hear: ‘I used to read you before you went behind the wall.’”

This proficiency with numbers may explain a lot in the newspaper business today.

the short list you don't want to be on

2010-01-27T23:15:00.003-06:00

If I told you our government has a list of American citizens to be killed, you'd say "crazy wingnut conspiracy talk!"

Well, here you go...

From a recent news report

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional Al-Qaida leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a short list of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said.

I guess the "or capture" part makes it OK, but it doesn't sound like their first choice.

I hope that list is more accurately put together than the do-not-fly list.

high-voltage entertainment

2010-01-15T23:03:00.002-06:00

It's either Martian tripods attacking or some sort of electrical problem up on that utility pole behind my house.

It was doing this for about ten minutes. I think I caught the best one.

today's anatomy lesson

2010-01-03T10:33:00.005-06:00

From the stuff-they-didn't-tell-me-in-junior-high-school-health-class department:

I had no idea.

one eye to the future

2009-12-29T21:28:00.008-06:00

So you want to go to Mars?

I can save you $80 billion. Just go to Spain, where they shot the Michael Caine film "Play Dirty".

It looks just the same.

"Play Dirty" is one of the better of the fictional-but-set-in-the-world-of-WWII films that seemed to be rather common in the 1960's

Directed by André De Toth, the one-eyed director who kicked off the 3D boom of the 1950's with "House of Wax".

like a white thumb

2009-12-22T10:49:00.010-06:00

Speaking of black Americans, I just watched "Stormy Weather", one of two all-black cast movies made by major studios in the 40's. The headlining stars are dancer Bill Robinson and singer Lena Horne...

... but the movie is devised to showcase many other entertainers like Cab Calloway and the biggest bow-tie in show business:

The Katherine Dunham dance troupe has an extended sequence. I don't recall Fred and Ginger ever pawing each other like this:

From this vantage point it's hard to know how much of the movie is stuff the studio thought had to be in a "colored" movie and how much is what the performers were doing in their acts all along. I'm guessing the black-face flowers was a studio idea.

Film ends with the completely amazing Nicholas Brothers.

I said this was an all-black movie. Almost. If you pause the DVD you can catch one white guy in the middle of Cab Calloway's Band.

The band sounds great, I'm sure he's doing his job, but he does stick out.

the duke of dc

2009-12-17T12:54:00.007-06:00

I just noticed the Washington D.C. quarter has Duke Ellington on it.

As far as I know this is the first working musician to be shown on a US coin, although some of the other state quarters have musical references.

I say "working" since Thomas Jefferson allegedly played the violin.

Not the first black American on a US coin however. A commemorative half dollar was struck in 1946 to honor Booker T. Washington.

But I've never found a Booker T. Washington half dollar in my pocket change.

"Booker" is an unusual name, obviously from an age before people were afraid their children would ever learn anything.

a nose for the cinema

2009-12-16T19:23:00.004-06:00

The guy with the poodle pelt on his head is Abraham Sofaer playing a judge in heaven in A Matter of Life and Death (1946). He's got the biggest nose I've ever seen in a movie not attached to an elephant or Jimmy Durante. I guess that was the film makers' way of saying God is Jewish.

If you have some red-blue glasses you can even see him in 3D in these views I reconstructed from frames off the DVD.

I don't know if this was intended as a wink at the whole nose thing, but in the very next shot this guy...

... just has to scratch his nose while the judge speaks.

A Matter of Life and Death is another movie cinematographed by Jack Cardiff, mentioned in my last post, and yet another movie that does not look like other movies of the time.

over the edge

2009-12-12T01:44:00.006-06:00

You just know this isn't going to end well as soon as you see it.

One of the Sisters of St. Faith is going to take a dive off that cliff, and it won't be the flying nun.

None-the-less, "Black Narcissus" is a beautiful movie.

A few posts ago I wrote about the film "Four Feathers" that looked not like other films of the time. "Black Narcissus" is famous for not looking like other movies of the time. It's a Technicolor© movie that does not try to contain a rainbow in every frame.

I've read that "3-strip" Technicolor© sometimes didn't get the color elements aligned properly. This is the first time I've actually seen the fringing on a DVD.

My big screen projection TV does that. I'm going to tell people it's really just the Technicolor© acting up.

"Black Narcissus" is also famous for its many matte and background paintings. Believe it or not, the guy who painted the matte shot at the top also did the painting in this shot for Méliès 45 years before.

I caught this movie because of comments about the cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, on animation artist Jenny Lerew's blog. Go there to read more.

Mind the cliff, though.

obama's bad decisions

2009-12-10T18:13:00.005-06:00

Whatever awful decisions President Obama makes during his term in office I at least have confidence that they aren't because he's trying to prove he's the...

roughest, toughest,

mesquite cuttin'est,

Major League Baseball team owningest (<2%),

imaginary WMD huntingest,

petty dictator (who just happens to have lots of oil) gittin'est,

had *no* idea his father's friend got him out of Vietnamiest,

can't explain why he didn't show up for Air Guard Training-est,

meanest, eat with the troops some army beans-est,

gonna show 'em I'm bigger than my daddy-est,

...manliest jumpsuit-wearer that ever claimed to be "a war President!"*

In other words, Obama's not operating on right-wing fantasies, focus-group tested for maximum trailer park appeal.

Being wiser than George W. Bush is setting the bar pretty low, but it's a much needed step in the right direction.

I'm glad Obama won and McCain didn't.

I'm glad Sarah Palin isn't attending Cabinet meetings today. I'm glad we have a President who's going to honor the agreement to get out of Iraq instead of dreaming up phony reasons to stay. I'm glad he wants to get out of Afghanistan in three years instead of ten. I hope he actually does.

I'm glad he didn't just let the US auto industry collapse, even though some free-market pundits, who couldn't make a car if you gave them a Revell Model kit for it, wrote an op-ed that that would be a normal thing to do.

I'm not going to blame Obama for inaction caused by right-wing obstruction. I'm not going to hold him to campaign promises he never made (eliminating the National debt? In ten months? After George Bush spent 8 years doubling it?)

I will blame him for continuing affirmative action for rich bankers. Possibly it's true that it had to be done, but I don't like it.

It's a right-wing fantasy that Obama is now a disgrace or a failure. They hope and pray for it like they hoped and dreamed of WMDs in Iraq. Their chronic, colossal mistakenness about everything is impossible for them to swallow. Easier to keep living in fantasy.

Pretty much the same right-wing fantasies that have been misguiding and ruining this country for the last 30 years.

* Update: Commenter John offers bonus alternate ending below.

economy tip for cat owners

2009-12-09T11:32:00.002-06:00

After I gave my cat a bath he ran off and didn't come back for a week.

This could save on expensive kenneling fees when going away for vacation.

john stossel admits he will just make things up

2009-12-07T16:05:00.010-06:00

John Stossel, the former ABC correspondent, talking about his new show at FOX Business Network in an interview on Daily Beast:

Stossel: ...50 years ago, Ayn Rand predicted today. It sort of sums up what I’m going to be reporting about.

Interviewer: Ayn Rand predicted what?

Stossel: Big government, nice-sounding legislation like “The Preservation of Livelihood Law,” which mandated that Hank Rearden’s production must not be bigger than any other steel mill, to make it a level playing field. It’s silly.

Interviewer: Is that a new law passed by this Congress?

Stossel: No, but it’s what Wesley Mouch, the evil bureaucrat in the book, passed. And what Tim Geithner and what Barney Frank might like to pass.

Frank or Geithner have never proposed such a thing nor suggested that they want to, but if some character in a novel or a comic book tried it, that's all the proof Stossel needs to say it might be true.

Hey did you know John Stossel might actually enjoy getting slapped around by pro wrestlers?:

aside from the way it looks

2009-12-04T19:14:00.003-06:00

Does anything say "Age of Excess" better than a $12 protective case for a 20¢ banana?

Well, OK, there was that pointless trillion dollar war in Iraq.

But besides that?

wannabe victim of the day

2009-12-02T14:27:00.002-06:00

Woman is suing Post Office because her son in the army turns out to be not dead after all.

Hey lady, your son is *alive*.

That would be more than enough for all the parents whose sons are not. Even they don't get $50,000 when they hear their son is dead and it is actually true.

or possibly Magical Mystery Tour

2009-11-14T21:58:00.011-06:00

Either it's another one of those awkward native costume photo ops at an international summit, or the leader of the free world is waiting for his entrance in a traveling production of "The King and I".

thank you, unknown person!

2009-11-11T23:59:00.004-06:00

Someone has kindly ordered me something from my Amazon wishlist, but it arrived in a plain shipping envelope with no invoice so I don't know who to thank.

Anyone want to fess up?

Update: Unknown person now known! see comments!

shake, rattle and squeeze

2009-11-06T10:45:00.003-06:00

For all of you who have had that nagging question in your mind, "What does an accordian virtuoso sound like?"

Myron Florin, step aside...Ukraine's Aleksandr Hrustevich:

He has a Youtube channel with many entertaining performances.

need a double wide?

2009-11-04T21:43:00.002-06:00

That's all I need to know except why the phrase was "wife" and not "ex-wife".

building a better (das) boot

2009-10-26T13:58:00.004-05:00

I didn't think the Germans were still building submarines, but here they are building a U-boat that runs on hydrogen powercells that is even quieter than our own nuclear submarines.

unspoken faces

2009-10-24T00:57:00.008-05:00

In silent movies you had to say it with your face, and these people had faces.

These are all from the 1920 D. W. Griffith melodrama "Way Down East".

getting yelled at by Walt Disney

2009-10-20T15:32:00.010-05:00

Back around 1991 I answered an ad in the back of The Dallas Observer for "animators". A local comic book artist was wanting to start an animation studio and his ace-in-the-hole was an old-time, golden age studio animator named Bill "Tex" Henson who was going to train us all.

Tex is probably most remembered as a supervising animator (Tex said "THE supervising animator") in Mexico for "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show" and he had a long career that included many Casper cartoons at Paramount's "Famous Studios", many commercials and other work in TV thru the 80's.

However, he got his start just out of high school at Disney around 1943 where he was originally hired as a "story" artist.

But in 1991 we were sitting around our "studio" (Krash. Pow! it was called) practicing our inbetweens while Tex spun tales about the old days. Someone asked, "So what did you and Walt talk about when you were at Disney?"

Tex explained that he was very low in the organization and he did not have much occasion to "talk" with Walt Disney.

"... I DID get yelled at by him once," he added but then turned his attention back to whatever he was drawing on at the moment.

"Oh, come on, Tex," I said, "you GOTTA tell us about that one!"

So he told us how one day they were having a meeting where the story artists were pitching their storyboards to the directors. On this occasion Walt Disney was sitting in on the meeting although not saying much.

Tex had just finished presenting his ideas and one of the directors said "Gee, Tex, that's funny stuff... but it's really more like what they do over at Schlesinger's."

(Leon Schlesinger was the original owner of the cartoon studio that we now think of as "Warner Brothers")

To which Tex replied, "Well, it wouldn't hurt us to be more like Schlesinger's!"

"GOD DAMMIT!" Walt stands up and shouts, "They can make their cartoons THEIR WAY... and WE... will make OUR CARTOONS... OUR WAY!" And then he stormed out of the room.

No one got fired over this. Apparently screaming Walt was not common but not unknown either. Tex continued at Disney for several more years (he was the one who came up with the names "Chip and Dale" for the chipmunk duo) until he was hired away by Famous Studios.

That's the way Tex told us the story and that's the way I remember it... so it must be true.

still cranking 'em out

2009-10-14T11:05:00.004-05:00

Recent art news headline:

Art experts find possible new da Vinci

How "new" can it really be?

Well, Mr. Art Buyer, I've got a NEW 1978 Gremlin in my driveway I think you should snap up. Tests will confirm it's authentic. Original tires and oil, too.

I'll even include the blocks it's currently displayed on for free.

it's epic

2009-10-09T13:58:00.002-05:00

One of my old employers, the Canadian telecom "giant" Nortel declared bankruptcy last January. The collapse took 10 years, but through diligent dumbness and fraudulent accounting they got the job done.

The company I now deal with to try to extract my pension dollars is called "Epiq Bankruptcy Solutions, LLC". I wouldn't think there's money in handling bankrupt companies but there must be.

I can imagine their slogan: "If your failure is epic, please consider Epiq."

Nortel was the site of my most memorable on-the-job kerfuffle ever. After I created an animation to be printed on the edge of a catalog as a flip-book, a manager said it was "sexually offensive" because it was obviously a depiction of the male member. She didn't say "male member", she used the medical term, but if you use that word too many times in your blog you get flagged as "adults only".

Shield thine eyes, here it is, member and all:

I wrote about this at greater length in one of my "Greatest Hits" you can find a link to over on the right.

at least they weren't whirling

2009-10-08T00:49:00.005-05:00

You know it's an exceedingly British movie when even the written out English doesn't make sense:

That's from "Four Feathers", an Alexander Korda epic of 1939.

It turns out the "Dervishes" are an Arab faction the British are fighting:

and the "Fuzzy-Wuzzies"?... they had big hair before big hair was cool:

If you wonder why old movies look the way they do, a lot of it is the lighting.

After the very expensive on-location debacle that was the 1925 version of "Ben Hur", studios tended to confine shooting to indoor sets whenever possible.

"Four Feathers" doesn't look like a lot of old movies because instead of trying to light indoor sets to pass for outdoors they actually went outdoors to shoot outdoor scenes.

These daylight shots look quite modern to my eye.

But when they get inside it's golden age studio look again.

saws all

2009-09-27T16:42:00.004-05:00

"Britain's Got Talent" non-winner Austin Blackburn performs grand opera on the musical saw. Infinitely better than the un-musical saw version.

His "Ave Maria" isn't bad either:

His only partially well-received BGT audition:

The musical saw is not a new instrument, its heyday was probably in the vaudeville era. Marlene Dietrich entertained troops during WWII with her saw performances. I'm sure the jokes probably wrote themselves on that occasion.

to the situation room!

2009-09-27T10:54:00.003-05:00

I can see President Obama picking up that ringing phone at 3AM... some new international crisis must be brewing.

Has Russia invaded Georgia again? No.

Has Israel bombed Iran? No.

Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland!

It would have been simpler for everyone if he had stayed out of reach. Not necessarily just, but simpler.

The Swiss must be trying to create awkward circumstances for Obama after the US made them give up some of their secret bank account customers. This can't be the first time in 30 years that Polanski has been thru Switzerland, but they decide to nab him now?

worst virginity pledge ceremony ever

2009-09-23T00:59:00.002-05:00

for me, it was "sky and telescope" magazine

2009-09-22T00:22:00.004-05:00

A Republican Senate staffer tells Values Voters that straight porn will make you gay.

“And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest."

except that we were in minnesota

2009-09-21T11:34:00.002-05:00

This guy used to be Secretary of Education under Reagan and it fit. He looks like every overstuffed, red-faced principal I had in elementary school.

For the first few grades I was confused. Why is the same overstuffed, red-faced man appearing as principal at these different schools but under different names? It was a very specific look, very similar to the stereotype of the rural southern sheriff.

and next year we're not going to tahiti*

2009-09-19T12:31:00.005-05:00

Russia has canceled plans to put missiles they couldn't afford next to Poland after the U.S. canceled plans to put missiles we couldn't afford next to Russia.

Neither admits it's about the money, of course.

This is a novel new approach to international affairs... calling off the war ten years before you stomp into it. How will we ever get a good war off the ground with planning like that?

*punchline from an old joke where a down-on-her-luck socialite has explained that she didn't go on an expensive vacation to Cannes because it was just "too boring" there.

guns don't kill people...

2009-09-18T11:19:00.004-05:00

... crazy people with guns, who want an easy way to kill someone as they drive by, kill people.

Too big to fit on a bumper sticker, I'm afraid.

The gun lobby promotes gun possession as a defense of liberty. But I can't think of any case in American history where an oppressive government policy has been rolled back because ordinary citizens took up guns against it.

The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790's did not succeed in getting the whiskey tax repealed. It got repealed some ten years later when the people elected new representatives in Congress who voted to repeal it.

Certainly the South's rebellion in the Civil War was the biggest example of taking up arms against Federal policy, but I recall that rather backfired for them.

Some might say the American Revolution was an example of people taking up arms, but that citizen effort floundered until it was organized into a real army under Washington and even then it required the intervention of the French to tip the balance.

(Washington and French General LaFayette)

The only examples I can think where people achieved an objective by taking up guns have been for totally nefarious purposes, such as the Klan suppressing the legal rights of minority citizens, or gangsters intimidating lawful authorities from curbing their illegal businesses.

People point to the Nazis' confiscation of private guns in Germany as proof of something or other but fail to note that the Nazis came to power while the guns were legal and consolidated their power while the guns were still legal and didn't get around to taking the guns until years later. The right to bear arms in Germany didn't do anything to stop tyranny.

Likewise, ordinary people could own guns in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It's hard to detect that that improved their liberty situation.

leavin on her jet plane

2009-09-17T02:26:00.003-05:00

Peter, Paul and Mary are one THE memories I have of growing up in the 60's. When I was little we simply did not have rock music records in our house, but folk music was permitted and Peter, Paul and Mary got played quite a bit.

In retrospect, they were the one folk act that didn't seem to become a self-parody. And as a college friend of mine once noted, no one could swell like Peter, Paul and Mary. It seemed like ghosts singing. In a good way.

So I'm sad to hear that Mary Travers has died.

And Henry Gibson has died too. He was part of that signature TV show of the 60's, "Laugh-In". That was another big memory of the 60's. If you see clips today it seems insignificant, but every week something on that show would leave us gasping with laughter and asking "can you SAY that on television?"

And of course he was the Nazi in "The Blues Brothers".

watch your back, guys

2009-09-16T10:41:00.004-05:00

Dick Cheney, toxic asset.

Although ex-vice-presidents do not usually get any Secret Service protection, President Obama has extended Dick Cheney's protection indefinitely.

Dick Cheney is probably the first time in the history of the Secret Service that they have to worry about the person they are protecting having a gun.

bob the seer

2009-09-11T12:50:00.006-05:00

A college friend, Bob Como, correctly identified the origin of the problems we're having today.

Years ago, when we were sophomores at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, he said to me, "Robert, can you believe this school has a Young Republicans chapter?"

Trying to be fair and balanced I answered, "Well, isn't there a Young Democrats chapter here too?"

"Yes," Bob replied, "but the Young Republicans actually have meetings."

.

even safety isn't safe anymore

2009-09-07T15:22:00.003-05:00

The AP reports that "nanny" software that you use to monitor your kids' online chats is also recording their comments and selling them to advertisers.

This is so the corporate powers that be can be ready for the moment when "tween" desire reaches critical mass for a product that somehow involves the mating of the Jonas Brothers with the Olsen Twins and to correctly identify which Jonas Brother should be the odd-man-out.

It's probably all buried in the EULA somewhere but I think most people stopped reading EULAs when they noticed most begin with something like "This software is not warranted to ever perform any useful function from the moment of purchase until the Sun runs out of fuel..."

the smell of manliness

2009-09-05T22:40:00.003-05:00

From the what-were-they-thinking division of Hollywood we get the Charlton Heston movie "The Far Horizons", an almost completely fictional account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

In which you will see:

Fred MacMurray... in satin knickers... descending a staircase... after a felicitous discussion... in a private room... arm in arm... with "John Hancock":

Sacajawea, the Indian guide, portrayed by... Donna Reed:

Charlton Heston kisses her quite a bit in this movie and I would too seeing as she appears to have the entire contents of a box of Betty Crocker Brownie Mix smeared on her face.

But Charlton is the focus of this movie, and I know that because he goes through...

... about a third of the movie...

... with a skunk on his head:

Imagine if this film had been a hit instead of "Davy Crockett" a year later.

BTW, that's William Demarest on the left...

... who would later be "Uncle Charlie" to Fred MacMurray in "My Three Sons"

four men, one cello

2009-09-04T14:56:00.003-05:00

You know things are bad when four guys have to split one cello between them. And it's clear to me that termites have gotten the better part of that cello.

WARNING: contains Ravel's "Bolero".

obama will unplug grandma's clapper

2009-09-03T22:03:00.005-05:00

But, shhh! Don't start shouting it until we've worn out the "death panels" thing.

Pass it on.

I'm reminded of an old porn movie where one character slaps another character on the butt twice... and the lights go off!

the stupidest man in America?

2009-09-03T00:17:00.004-05:00

Here's my reading of the current political situation:

The right wing bet everything, including a trillion dollars of Iraq war debt the rest of us will have to pay, on George W. Bush and his follies.

Now that everyone knows Bush was a disastrous President (you don't even hear Republicans referencing him as a model these days), the right wing is trying to save face by making sure that everyone who follows fails even more disastrously than Bush, even if they have to create the disaster themselves, even if they have to burn the whole country down to do it.

Either that is their clever plan or someone like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe really is the stupidest man in America with his claim at a town hall meeting last night that President Obama is planning to release terrorists into the U.S.

glove love

2009-08-29T22:40:00.009-05:00

During a thoughtful moment in "An Extremely Goofy Movie" one of the characters pauses to ask "Have you ever noticed that we're always wearing gloves?"

In "Father's Weekend" (1953) Goofy even wears gloves to bed:

Here's a shot from "Goofy and Wilbur" (1939). This is the only time I've seen a classic Disney character take a glove off:

This may raise more questions about Goofy's color than it answers. This is probably what Michael Jackson looked like about half-way thru the depigmentation process but before the nose job.

Here's the typically dystopic "Father's Weekend". Goofy was way ahead of the pack in exposing middle class suburban life for the nightmare it really is.

awkward meeting averted

2009-08-29T14:54:00.001-05:00

The AP reports that George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara canceled plans to go to Ted Kennedy's funeral "after learning their son, former President George W. Bush, would attend."

never around when you need 'em

2009-08-28T12:04:00.005-05:00

Surveys show that senior citizens are against healthcare reform.

Oh, if only we could find a Nigerian diplomat or an aluminum siding salesman to explain it to them in the terms they seem to be irresistibly drawn to.

because its cage needs cleaning

2009-08-24T11:49:00.005-05:00

A GOP congressman wants to sue Obama to release his birth certificate.

All this fury about "releasing" birth certificates is making me think they're not sheets of paper that you keep in a filing cabinet, but more like a pigeon that you have to set free so it can go peck at an old apple core.

RELEASE THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE!

signs of hysteria

2009-08-18T10:40:00.007-05:00

I went to the Healthcare Reform demonstration on Monday morning in Dallas.

I'd say there were about 300 demonstrator FOR reform and about 50 demonstrators AGAINST having Nazis wheel all the old people and crippled children into a bonfire of the burning pages of the US Constitution.

Here are some highlights of the agin' 'em side:

Remember, it's not about race at all:

"Texas Rejects Chicago THUGS!" says the sign:

(EDIT: Suddenly I'm getting a zillion hits from people who have Googled the exact phrase "Texas Rejects Chicago Thugs". Can any of you Googleers comment on why that phrase spontaneously became fascinating? I'm sure it's not little old me ;-) )

The LaRouche organization had a table set up:
They were handing out a rather large pamphlet about the Nazi threat.

Several signs asserted that the FOR side was all paid to be there:

Does the guy with the "Reform Congress" sign look like a health care expert?

And I wonder if the veteran in the Marines T-shirt is refusing all government supplied healthcare available to him?

It would be really poor of me to point out the irony of obese people saying that their health care is just fine right now. So that's not why I'm posting pictures of obese people saying that their health care is just fine right now.

I wonder if this woman understands that Federal regulation of meds is what keeps a company from selling baking soda as a cancer treatment?

Some video. The AGAINST people are on the left side of the police line and the FOR people are on the right.

john mccain is palin' around with a terrorist

2009-08-16T17:06:00.002-05:00

John McCain twitters his rendezvous with Quadaffi:

Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his "ranch" in Libya - interesting meeting with an interesting man.

i haven't admired graffiti before this...

2009-08-12T19:15:00.003-05:00

...and I admire it even less now.

with apologies to johannes brahms...

2009-08-07T19:15:00.004-05:00

If it has to be Sarah, I prefer Silverman. If it has to be Palin, I prefer Michael.

(consider yourself among the most highly cultured if you get all four of the above references.)

I think democracy is probably a hopeless cause when the leader of the Republican party can go around saying the completely vile and intentionally false things that she does.

.

strrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrretch

2009-08-04T11:13:00.007-05:00

A frame from Disney's "Frank Duck Brings 'em Back Alive" (1946):

I've read that one of the most withering put-downs at Disney went something like:

"Joe? Oh yeah, he's pretty good... for shorts."

I've been watching the complete Donald Duck DVDs. Even though a lot of them have some really awful story lapses the animation by the second and third-stringers is still impressive stuff.

who was that masked man?

2009-08-01T23:48:00.006-05:00

In the early days of network radio, "The Lone Ranger" originated out of a station in Detroit and, as was standard practice then, each episode was performed live twice; once for the east coast and again two hours later for the west coast. Technically it was possible to record a radio program in advance but the difference in audio quality was obvious and advertisers insisted on live broadcasts.

One of the trademarks of "The Lone Ranger" was that every episode ended with someone asking "Who was that masked man?" to which would always be the reply, "It was... the Lone Ranger!"

It so happened that one time that that last line fell to an older man who had been hired just for that day to fill an extra role. They did the first performance, which went according to plan, but when they were done, rather than just wait around the station the cast decided to all go to a nearby bar.

Of course they had too much to drink, and lost track of time and just barely made it back for the start of the second show. The director was expecting disaster but amazingly, the show went great; it was shaping up to be one of their best performances ever.

Sensing a chance to fine tune the performance the director pulled aside the older man during a commercial break and said, "That was just fine the way you said 'It was the Lone Ranger' in the first show, but this time I'd like you to really hit it."

"I want you to say it like you're talking about the most important person in the world... I want you to say it like you're introducing THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!"

He sends the guy back in and the show continues, still going great. Finally they get to the last scene and the question is posed "Who was that masked man?"

Silence.

Everyone turns to the older man. He glances at the director, takes a deep breath and stammers, "It was... it was... Herbert Hoover!!!"

I heard that story from Professor Dan Viamonte of the Division of Radio, Television and Film at the University of North Texas. So it must be true.

obama on a mastodon

2009-07-31T14:22:00.004-05:00

a painting by Jeremiah Palecek

I have no idea what this means.

If it had been John McCain on a Mastodon I would have said "Ah, I get it!" but I have no idea what Obama on a Mastodon means.

.

the truth comes out

2009-07-25T12:10:00.007-05:00

Original newspaper caption (from Shorpy.com):

News item, Jan. 20: "The first organized touring Coolidge Marching Club to work for the nomination of the president comes to Washington Sunday morning. It is composed of 25 European midgets, headed by I.S. Rose, New Englander and impresario. The midgets wear buttons and ribbons on which is inscribed 'Coolidge 1925.'"

Finally we know... Calvin Coolidge was in the pocket of "big midget".
.

yet another portent of impending climate catastrophe

2009-07-21T14:16:00.003-05:00

A news report of a desert city in Chile that, unaccustomed to precipitation, is thrown into chaos by a slight rain.

Less than 100th of an inch (about 0.2 millimeters) of rain fell on the Chilean port city of Iquique Monday afternoon, accompanied by moderate winds of about 10 mph (17 kph), according to the country's weather service. That was enough to knock out power to several neighborhoods and to damage the roofs of 4,000 houses, said Gov. Miguel Silva.

I bet 50 years from now old timers will be telling their kids "I remember the Big One of '09 when water droplets actually fell from the sky! We lost your grandmother that day; I threw her a rope, but she couldn't hang on... Oh, the horror!"

it's not cool, kids

2009-07-20T10:37:00.007-05:00

I'm very worried that if the kids watch much of the cable TV they'll all want to be a white supremacist "like Pat Buchanan."

Or maybe they'll just want to be Al Lewis.

"and who will that inconvenience?"

2009-07-18T00:35:00.003-05:00

Recent headline in the Huffington Post...

as others see us

2009-07-14T12:32:00.003-05:00

Hugh Laurie, performing on the BBC show "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" c. 1990:

And that's what our friends think. Imagine what the casual acquaintances or the people we pissed off in traffic on the way to work think.

Another Fry and Laurie sketch, not about us:

gay-ay-ay-ay-ays in the military

2009-07-12T23:38:00.007-05:00

A scene from the 1942 short "The Army Mascot"

This is not a common cartoon situation even in a Ralph Bakshi Cartoon. Someone in the Disney story department had getting drafted into that all-male army on their mind when they dreamed that up.

two thoughts...

2009-07-10T21:52:00.002-05:00

My first thought is: you've got to be pretty starved and desperate to to want to feel up New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And my second thought is: I must be even less desirable than David Brooks as this sort of thing never happens to me.

loose moose

2009-07-04T22:41:00.006-05:00

She hasn't actually resigned yet. She said she'd resign at the end of the month.

That gives her four weeks (half her vice presidential campaign) to come back and say that the people have begged her to stay and fight and that she's not going to be run off by the media elites.

It's not crazier than anything she's done already.

why lame movies happen

2009-07-01T09:04:00.011-05:00

I don't follow baseball since it's mostly overweight guys in full-length pajamas standing around waiting for someone to hit a ball in 2 out of 10 attempts.

But I've enjoyed some baseball movies like "Bull Durham" and "The Natural".

Currently there is a kerfuffle in Hollywood over the canceling of a big-budget baseball movie just a few days before the start of filming. The Sony Studio head didn't like that the director had taken out the high-larious comedy scenes a writer had been manufactured for what was originally a true story.

She couldn't countenance a movie without this in it:

In [the original] script, one of the coaches watches [potential recruit] Hatteberg taking ground balls at a Little League field, his wife armed with a plastic laundry basket full of baseballs. She hits the balls to her husband off a tee, with their 4-year-old daughter backing him up down the line. One ball takes a bad hop and goes between Hatteberg's legs. When his daughter scoops it up, the coach quips: "Maybe we should sign her."

Apparently unaware that "Bad News Bears" has been made several times already. Or perhaps desperately wanting onto that bandwagon.

don't bother the rich people

2009-06-29T19:01:00.003-05:00

It is possible to be convicted of first degree murder in this country and get a 15 year sentence. But if you make rich people poor you can get 150 years.

The dead can never have their lives restored to them, but it's conceivable the newly poor could be rich again someday.

I'm not saying Bernie Madoff doesn't deserve his punishment, but there's quite a paradox there in the punishment-fitting-the-crime department even if we dismiss the possibility of anyone's riches being restored.

I'm going to guess that the people most horrified at their losses are the ones who didn't really earn their money from scratch. Inheritance or by an over-paid job landed from connections rather than merit. These people know they don't have the skills to get back on top again and that's why they are horrified.

They do have the advantage of still being here to press for the criminal's punishment; something a murder victim can never do.

On the other hand, a dead person doesn't know he's dead anymore, but the new poor have a long stretch of poor to look forward to.

serendipity awkward

2009-06-28T21:23:00.006-05:00

So I go to Amazon to look up a book and what do they happen to be promoting under their banner tribute to Michael Jackson?

-Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Saints' Relics

-Relics: The Shroud of Turin, the True Cross, the Blood of Januarius...History, Mysticism, and the Catholic Church

-Weird Europe: A Guide to Bizarre, Macabre, and Just Plain Weird Sights

-Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

They say they are "Selected for You" but I wasn't signed in yet

the exact day in history...

2009-06-25T19:33:00.003-05:00

... when it all started to go wrong.

The day that the President of the United States gave Michael Jackson an award for...

-decoding the human genome? No.
-ending communism? No.
-preventing a space shuttle disaster? No.
-rescuing kittens from trees? No.

It was for allowing a brief snippet of a song that he had already thoroughly cashed in on to be used in the background of a public service announcement.

I think this is the moment when Michael Jackson started believing that anything he did, no matter how small, was of monumental benefit to humanity and therefore he should do anything he wants and as much of it as possible.

farrah dead

2009-06-25T12:38:00.005-05:00

You can't overstate how huge Farrah was in the 1970s. I can't explain it.

Certainly pretty girls have always been in ample supply in this country. Maybe it was a reaction to the flat-haired hippy look of the late 60s (which was a reaction to the bouffant look of the early 60s, which was a reaction to...). Maybe people were in the mood for something big and obvious again, I don't know. I remember trying to watch "Charlie's Angels" several times and not "getting it".

But EVERY girl in my high school HAD TO HAVE Farrah hair. There wasn't a pony tail, a bob, a flip or a page boy cut to be seen. It was as if a law had been passed. Somehow she represented a dream self-image that every girl wanted.

And many of them are still trapped in that look much as middle-aged women of the 60s adopted Jackie's pill box hats and continued to wear them even after she didn't.

I'm sure that when I'm 90 I will still see some of my female contemporaries with Farrah hair.

So good-bye Farrah. Farrah is gone but her hair lives on.

small ears

2009-06-24T13:48:00.003-05:00

I don't know how I'm going to pay the mortgage on the farm with a corn harvest like this.

No, I did not mistakenly plant "miniature corn".

if donald duck sang "shout"

2009-06-17T11:48:00.002-05:00

Lulu |MTV Music

No, really... close your eyes and try to tell me it isn't so.

I'm not previously familiar with Lulu. Apparently one of many one-named wonders from the UK.

fathers! lock up your daughters!

2009-06-16T00:09:00.006-05:00

Adam Lambert reveals the crazy things that can happen when he's had a few drinks in him...

he'll never work in this town again

2009-06-15T19:25:00.004-05:00

(photo Getty Images)

It occurs to me that if you were making a Hollywood movie about the Iran election, and one of the extras you hired for the big crowd scene jumped up in the middle of a shot wearing an "OHIO STATE" sweater, you'd fire the guy and then have to reshoot the the scene.

unbounded thoughtfulness

2009-06-13T09:35:00.008-05:00

I think it's very considerate of the riot police in Tehran to write "POLICE" in English on their uniforms so that Americans across the seas looking at pictures of them will know they are police.

It's rather like the old "Mission:IMPOSSIBLE" show where the team would be in some non-english speaking country deep behind the Iron Curtain, but all the important signs were written so you could sort of read them. Like "PRIZON" and "GAZ" and "SEKRET DOCKUM3NT".

I'm not sure how that works out for the local population, however.

"Call the police! Some guys with nonsense written on their uniforms are attacking us!"