Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:57 PM

For the record, my second favorite Halloween game is to grab the hand of someone in costume and say "Come on, we're leaving this creepy joint" and after a few seconds of walking, turn around to see whose hand I'm holding and then get scared when I realize it's a monster of some nature.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:54 PM

Mark Evanier writes that he hates Halloween. I like Halloween because I get to play my favorite Halloween game: pretend to be scared of the Halloween decorations. Usually a simple "g-g-g-ahhhh" will suffice or a "M-m-m-m-m-monsters!" Now that I own a gray derby for my Halloween costume, I now have a hat to shake in a Lou Costello manner.

Appropriately enough, the hat was purchased for a Halloween costume as Lou Costello. I thought it was going to be one of those lame costumes you have to explain but at a party last week, people seemed to understand what I was going for. A couple of people thought I was Oliver Hardy which is also a reasonable interpretation (and when a cute gal asks me to do the Oliver Hardy tie fumbling thing, I ain't gonna say no). Hell, Edgar Kennedy would have also been appropriate.

Evanier also notes that he stocks up on Halloween treats even though trick-or-treaters never visit his door. Even though nary a kid has knocked on my door (am I the neighborhood creepy guy and no one had the decency to tell me?), I too buy three or four bags of treats because, let's be honest, if a kid shows up and I don't have candy, something anti-Semitic will get said.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:28 PM

You'll recollect my telling of the man selling Beanie Babies left behind by his ex-wife. The plot thickens as the woman who won the auction (also the woman who had written to the man in his auction update) complains to TraderList that the rare Beanies were indeed fake. TraderList contacts our hero who tells him to go to hell.

This comes to my attention through today's Best of the Web [scroll to the bottom] which also notes that claiming to not know where items came from is a common ploy to sell fake collectibles or fake collectibles mixed with common (less collectible) stuff. If it is a con, it's a con in the classic sense where your greed and hopes of making a sucker of somebody gets you suckered. (If you'd like to read more about cons, The Big Con is an excellent book on the subject.)

My brother also pointed me to the TraderList tale and he points me as well to this ebay auction where our formerly less-than-gay divorcee tells what tools he bought and offers a certificate of appreciation to anyone willing to give him $1.50.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:30 PM

This article on Black Lightning contains more on DC's pre-Black Lightning plans for a black superhero:

I will say that I created Black Lightning after convincing DC not to publish another "black" super-hero on which they had started work. The Black Bomber was a white bigot who, in times of stress, turned into a black super-hero. This was the result of chemical camouflage experiments he'd taken part in as a soldier in Vietnam. The object of these experiments was to allow our [white] troops to blend into the jungle.

In each of the two completed Black Bomber scripts, the white bigot risks his own life to save another person whom he can't see clearly (in one case, a baby in a stroller) and then reacts in racial slur disgust when he discovers that he risked his life to save a black person. He wasn't aware that he had two identities, but each identity had a girlfriend and the ladies were aware of the change. To add final insult, the Bomber's costume was little more than a glorified basketball uniform.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:27 PM

Tony Isabella, creator of Black Lightning, writes a Usenet post about what DC Comics is doing to his character (They gave him an out-of-wedlock daughter and had him kill a guy). Said post contains this fascinating tidbit:

I created Black Lightning because DC couldn't. Their idea of a black super-hero was a white bigot who took part in experiments to help him blend into the jungle better and who turned into a black man in times of stress. I talked them out of publishing that book and created Black Lightning.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:32 PM

Tomorrow's episode of Smallville features Perry White. If he doesn't say "Great Caesar's Ghost", I may stop watching the show.

And none of this "Great Shades of Elvis" crap!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:25 PM

This passage from the Slate article

The ZAZ players, who had slummed in the kind of films they were now parodying, brought a blessed obliviousness to the stock roles. (A Mike Myers or Adam Sandler would smirk and ruin the whole effect.)

reminds me of a view I have (often expressed to annoy somebody) that in some ways, Craig Kilborn was better than Jon Stewart as anchor of the Daily Show.

Consider the Daily Show as a parody of network news. Kilborn was the perfect pretty-boy, blow-dried anchor (Indeed, he was that anchor, pre-Daily Show), adding a dimension to the jokes coming out of his mouth. And he reads the joke as straight news whereas Stewart will smirk or shrug apologetically or otherwise acknowledge that he is telling jokes.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:23 PM

A Slate article about the work of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker and why their casting of straight men in comedic roles worked.

The article calls The Naked Gun the "funniest movie they ever made". To me, it was the start of the decline of ZAZ. It featured less deadpan humor and more slapstick. It was less Airplane! and more Pink Panther (arguably literally; after Ghost was a success for Jerry Zucker, a tape started floating around Hollywood showing Naked Gun gags followed by similar gags done by Inspector Clouseau or Maxwell Smart).

Actually, the best representation of ZAZ's work was Police Squad, the far superior television show that the Naked Gun movies were based on. A difference between the two can be seen by how they do the same joke.

Police Squad: Leslie Nielsen, in narration, says he's going to Little Italy to interview a suspect. Visible from a window in the suspect's arpartment is the Coliseum. No one reacts to it; nobody mentions it. Why would they? In the crazy world of ZAZ, Little Italy has a Coliseum.

Naked Gun: Leslie Nielsen is driving and mentions in narration that he's on his way to Little Italy. The Coliseum is in his back window. OJ Simpson, sitting in the back seat, points to the Coliseum, tries to get Nielsen's attention and does about 97 double-takes. The only things missing were a laugh track and a large sign with an arrow reading "JOKE!!!!"

Naked Gun can also be blamed for the bizarre notion that Leslie Nielsen was a comedy star (such as movies like this) as opposed to just good at reading funny lines in a deadpan style

Parenthetically, I'd argue against the author's claim that spoofs disappeared during World War II. They existed but they were less parody style and more of a "make Bob Hope the hero in a [genre] picture" type.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:33 AM

A man sells on ebay a box of Beanie Babies left behind by his ex-wife with high-larious consequences. Auction page here Highlight:

Final Notice and Disclaimer: I know nothing about these stuffed Beanie Babies. I offer no proof of anything. It is a stuffed animal, get over it! I don't think my ex-wife was in the Black Market Beanie Trade..but then again, I didn't know she was having an affair either!

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:15 AM

Thomas Pynchon will be guest-voicing on the Simpsons. Details here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:16 AM

A NY Times article about network and Neilsen executives puzzling over a huge dropoff this season in viewers, particularly the coveted male youth demographic. It's not until paragraph thirteen that the possibility that the shows are terrible is considered.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:55 PM

For all you Mad, Mad, Mad World fans in LA, it's playing at the Cinerama Dome this weekend with tickets, I believe, still available. It's not the full road show version but will include the police calls that played during intermission.

Said police calls were found by a guy who's trying to rebuild the full road show version. His struggle is detailed here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:23 PM

This Slate article talks of a popular Japanese character:

Also cute is a giant robot panda character, of which many toys and T-shirts have been made. This is, as you might expect, a giant robot panda, which I guess might do battle with other robots or something. The beauty part is that when you lift the top of the robot panda's head, it reveals a control room, from which the robot panda is operated, and sitting in a chair in the control room, pushing buttons and pulling levers, is a real, non-robot panda—presumably one gifted with superb mechanical skills and a deep understanding of robotics.

The character in question is Panda Z, available for sale here and here is the character's home page. Panda Z is apparently a parody of some show called Mazinger Z.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:51 PM

TVBarn reports that the Hallmark Channel is running M*A*S*H reruns uncut.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:39 PM

My brother called to ask me if "Red Apple" cigarettes (featured on a billboard in Kill Bill) were also the cigarettes used in Pulp Fiction. This page on MovieMistakes.com confirms it. However the same page makes this claim:

The sign advertising Butch's fight reads, "Coolidge vs. Wilson" and, beneath, "Clash of the Titans". Coolidge and Wilson were formerly opposing candidates in the U.S. presidential race and the slogan was applied to their contest.

That is untrue as this chronology of Coolidge's life confirms: He become President as Harding's Vice-President (who became President post-Wilson) and ran against John Davis in 1924.

I should submit that to MovieMistakesMistakes.com.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:51 PM

Michael Moore's new book is entitled Dude, Where's My Country?. Gievn the timeliness of this title, I predict we can look forward to Michael Moore telling some cutting-edge Gigli jokes in 2006.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:00 PM

This picture from Lileks inspires the question: "What the hell are Polly Begren and Mark Hamill co-starring in?" Here's your answer.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:05 PM

According to my Tivo listings, the episode of Duck Dodgers where he gets a Green Lantern ring will air Saturday of next week.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:26 AM

Heh. From Mickey Kaus, Battle of the lame post-recall cliches:

1. 'Earthquake' -- 91 NEXIS hits in the past week. (Includes 3 hits for '10 on the political Richter scale')
2. 'At the end of the Robert Redford film, The Candidate, ...'-- 29 NEXIS hits
3. 'Now the hard part' -- 9 NEXIS hits

Kaus also gives an excellent analysis about why he voted for the recall and Schwarzenegger (Scroll down to "Why I Voted for Schwarzenegger").
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:41 PM

CYCLE OF VIOLENCE, SHMYCLE OF VIOLENCE: This Jerusalem Post article notes that Operation Desert Shield seems to be working:

In the intifada's grim second year, from October 2001 through September 2002, Palestinians killed 449 Israelis and foreigners present on Israeli soil, including both civilians and soldiers. Yet for the year that ended last week, this figure was down 47 percent, to 240.

On a monthly basis, the comparison is even more dramatic[...][T]wo of the worst months of the past year were months in which military activity was drastically curtailed: June 2003, with 32 deaths, and August 2003, with 29. June was the month of the road map "peace process," during which Israel largely suspended military operations so as not to disrupt the "momentum toward peace." August was the month of the famous Palestinian cease-fire, to which Israel responded by restricting its own military activity. (In fact, the death toll that August was higher than in 22 of the 34 months without a truce!) One could thus reasonably assume that had Israel maintained the military pressure over the summer, the year's death toll would have been even lower.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:19 PM

This bio of Mavis Leno credits her for shutting down the Unocal pipeline in Afghanistan in 1998. Given that the overthrow was about OIIIILLLL and specifically this pipeline, I guess we can infer that if she hadn't succeeded, Afghanistan would never have been invaded.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:17 PM

This LA Weekly article (courtesy of Mark Evanier) complains of the rightward drift of Jay Leno. The problems with this article are:

1. Schwarzenegger's announcing his candidacy on the Tonight Show (a move that surprised Leno not to mention everyone in Schwarzenegger's circle, up to and possibly including Maria Shriver) and a Leno appearance at a post-election rally is not a Leno endorsement by any definition of the phrase.
2. The author points to Leno telling jokes about Clinton as proof of a rightward drift, conveniently ignoring the fact that Letterman just as frequently dips into the Clinton well.
3. The Tonight Show has never been a place of cutting-edge political satire. The reason they used to say that a politician was in trouble if his scandal was fodder for Johnny Carson's monologue wasn't because Carson was a "kingmaker"; it was because Carson was really good at reflecting the national mood. He knew when a topic was safe for jokes and when the folks were sick of that topic. Similarly, if people hated France jokes, Leno would stop telling them.
4. If Leno telling jokes about Schwarzenegger is proof of his support, I wonder what his not telling jokes would have meant? If mediocre jokes are proof of endorsement, then presumably Schwarzenegger was endorsed by Letterman, Kimmel, O'Brien, and Kilborn as well as every mediocre comedian who can do an "Ah-nuld" impression.
5. I honestly do not recollect any pre-9/11 derision of Mavis Leno for championing women's rights in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. I'm not sure what the point of mentioning Mrs. Leno was besides noting that the White House "claimed the women's issue" (possibly because they, ya know, solved it).

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:37 AM

Westchester County, New York is using Archie Andrews and the gang to help stop teenage drinking (article here). This raises the question: Were Dion and the Belmonts booked?
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