Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:24 PM

I've heard of long tails but come on Dept.: I've mentioned before the upcoming publication of collections of Trump and Humbug, the magazines Harvey Kurtzman did after leaving Mad magazine. Now also upcoming is a collection of Get Lost, a 1953 MAD ripoff that got sued out of business by William Gaines. I don't know if this proves that we're living in the Golden Age of comix reprints or that the bubble is going to burst from too much product.

UPDATE: Mike Esposito's website in the bio section on Get Lost doesn't mention the Gaines's lawsuit and blames a failed attempt at 3-D romance comics for the death of Get Lost. Interestingly, Ros ANdru and Mike Esposito also tried a MAD ripoff in the 70's called Up Your Nose and Out Your Ear. More on that book here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:18 PM

There is a show that I have not seen nor have I gotten around to purchasing its DVD set but I hereby declare it the greatest show in the history of mankind. From the TVShowOnDVD item:

[T]he 1966 series Europe's Big Top Circus Stars Live From The Hippodrome brought all the fun of various circus acts right into your own home, hosted by different guest stars such as actor and comedian Jack Carter, singer/comedian Allan Sherman ("Hello, Muddah! Hello, Fadduh!"), Woody Allen, Tony Randall, Merv Griffin, singer and Las Vegas legend Trini López, Jimmy Dean, Bill Dana and Eddie Albert.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:15 PM

From a Reader's Digest interview with Tina Fey:

RD: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?

Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, "Woo-hoo." It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.

UPDATE: The item is covered in Defamer and predictably the commenters say she's just jealous about how great Jon Stewart is. Also funny are the theories that it's a cover-up for how her Hillary thing on Weekend Update bombed which assumes that Reader's Digest doesn't have a five-month lead time.

Myself, as longtime readers know, I've always attacked "applause lines" and always thought Craig Kilborn was a better Daily Show anchor.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:07 PM

This is perhaps something everyone but me knew about but Internet Archive (home of the Wayback Machine) has old-time radio shows which one can download to one's iPod or iPhone or Zune or YouTube or whatever the kids are using these days. In some cases, like the Jack Benny Show, someone was nice enough to set up seasons sets like this one for 1937 and 1938 which features the beginning of the Jack Benny - Fred Allen feud. This link has the 1973 Carnegie Hall Evening with Groucho.

UPDATE When I said that 1937 was the start of the fued, I didn't realize how much. The very first episode of '37 ends with Jack Benny thumbing his nose at Fred Allen for the Bee crack.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:26 PM

Juno wins Best Screenplay. New backlash in five..four..three..two
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:07 PM

For an audience that got self-righteous for the "How come Vanity Fair don't invite writers" joke, I didn't hear a lot of applause for the dead writers?

No love for Moneypenny?

Miyoshi Umeki got into the death montage but she never got a dinner.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:58 PM

Jon Stewart lets someone cut off have her moment; good on him.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:28 PM

Bourne Supremacy has won three minor Oscars. That means it's going to win Best Pict...D'oh!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:52 PM

If it's secret, how come there's a camera from the accountant's POV? Ha! I've wrapped rings around you logically, lighthearted film!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:32 PM

The Bee introducing his "previous work" is different from Oscar's Salute to Binoculars how exactly?

(Speaking of the salute to binoculars, kudos for including the Top Secret joke where the cow walks out of the binocular shape).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:17 PM

Red Buttons got a Best Support Actor Oscar but he never got a dinner.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:00 PM

Would it have blown the budget for them to put showgirls in rat and cockroach costumes?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:57 PM

Oscar audiences love falling surfing penguins!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:56 PM

It would be so cool with Persepolis being nominated if they did the "cartoon characters waiting in the audience" shtick for Best Animated Feature.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:50 PM

They acknowledge the existence of the Rob Lowe/ Snow White number. A few years ago, in an homage to Oscar musical numbers, they didn't
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:48 PM

"Hundreds of millions"? No longer claiming a billion?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:40 PM

Spike Lee and Wesley Snipes are apparently this year's designated "camera on the black guy".
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:12 PM

Miley Cyrus is going to present. For The Kids, the Young People!

Then we'll do a video of that song "Milkshake" (the kids still dance to that, right?) but it'll be "I drink your milkshake".

Speaking of "I drink your milkshake", here's a hypothetical conversation in the Oscars Writers room:

[BRUCE VILLANCH enters wearing a T-shirt reading "I drink your milkshake"].

WRITER: Hey, from the movie. Very funny.
VILLANCH: Movie?

Because he's a large gentleman who enjoys a milkshake now and a...Bahhh!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:11 PM

Regis is taking credit for the concept of the Red Carpet show.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:08 PM

I should grab a picture of John Travolta for the next time I'm tempted to invest in Just For Men hair dye.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:07 AM

A news item from the usually reliable tvshowsondvd.com says that I Spy is getting newly remastered season sets on April 29th (all three seasons!) for $20 each. I'm slightly concerned that the only thing I see on Amazon is a "Email me when something's announced" entry.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:53 AM

An op-ed piece on Los Angeles's Proposition S: "Reduction of Tax Rate and Modernization of Communications Users Tax".

Here's the basic story. The city extended a 10% telephone tax to cellphones. There were lawsuits against the city saying they were supposed to get voter approval and the tax opponents won. The Proposition asks for that approval (and approval for "communication services" so they don't have to ask again) and sets the tax rate to 9%. Hence the "reduction" although anyone I've told this story immediately notes that the base tax rate is actually zero.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:22 PM

Frank Coniff on Shemp:

I’d like to take this opportunity to address one of my pet peeves about certain fans of The Three Stooges. I understand why people love Curley, and I totally get why he may be the most popular Stooge: he was indeed a comic genius. But it really bugs me when some people, disappointed when they see a Stooge short that doesn’t feature Curly, speak disdainfully about Shemp, as if the presence of Shemp means they’re getting an inferior product. Obviously, W.C. Fields thought Shemp was funny, or he wouldn’t have cast him in “The Bank Dick,” and like I said, “The Bank Dick” is the funniest friggin’ movie ever made.

Cinematic Titanic is one of two "folks-associated-with-MST3k-doing-riffs" projects (This is the other one). The trailer sold me.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:49 PM

Six Months Later...

So I'm watching Hitchocok's Foreign Correspondant and there's a character who's been hired to kill Joel McCrea but pretends to be his bodyguard. There was something very familiar about his voice so, of course, I check imdb and he's familiar because he's Santy Claus!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:54 AM

My brother notes various facts that contradict the King of Kong narrative (includng the fact that the "why is the champ afraid to compete" throughline was somewhat Roger & Me-esque).

My complaint is more simple: How do you do a documentary about a classic arcade game and not use any songs from the Pac-Man Fever album? There's even a Donkey Kong song.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:30 AM

I was curious what the Net had on the subject of Superintendent Hassle, a sort-of reverse-Superintendent Chalmers in the Archie world. Principal Weatherbee would worry about the superintendent's visit; Archie would mess up; the superintendent would assume the snafu was on purpose for whatever convoluted reason and say "Good job, Weatherbee".

Obviously there's nothing. I did find this Wikipedia page on Alternate Universes in Archie Comics. I'm surprised the inclusion of Little Archie wasn't more controversial.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:21 AM

So an odd element in the current Peanuts collection (from 1965-6) has a character yelling "Sydney or the Bush" and Charlie Brown looking at the audience and asking "Sydney or the Bush?" This occurs twice.

Mr. Google reveals that it's an Australian saying meaning "all or nothing". I'm curious as to its origin in the strip. Was there a 1965 Australia-mania fad similar to the one from the late eighties? Did Schulz hear the phrase by meeting an Australian, going to Australia, or getting a fan letter from Australia?

Google also reveals that the joke was considered hilarious enough to be included in a 1969 Peanuts cartoon movie.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:08 AM

Speaking of this remarkable age we live in, when I was a kid, I knew that the good Popeye cartoons were the black-and-white ones. If I wanted to see one, I'd have to sit through three or four terrible cartoons from whatever local channel broadcast Popeye cartoons. Now I can just watch all black-and-white cartoons on DVD!

An interesting commentary was by animators Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua for "Blow Me Down". They're so happy to see Popeye interact with Mexicans that they don't mind that they're stereotypes, just like how I like seeing Jewish stereotypes in cartoons and old movies.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:55 AM

Sony is finally packaging the Three Stooges shorts in chronological packages rather than just putting three films on a disc. Story here. The means we can look forward to getting some good Shemps on disc!
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