Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:00 AM

From the "Brush with Something" Department: I just realized I was a member of the gym where Arnold had his gangbang. Maybe I would have worked out more often if I knew stuff like that was going on.

Meanwhile, Matt Welch has Bill O'Reilly using the Oui story as an opportunity to act like a loon about the Internet again.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:10 PM

The brilliant pilot Lookwell starring Adam West as an Adam West-esque actor who played a seventies TV detective will be airing on Trio this weekend. Details here and schedule here. I talk about the show here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:57 PM

From the "The Left is now entering Vince Foster-ville" Department: From a Village Voice article complaining about the upcoming Showtime 9/11 docudrama:

Bush's approval rating was hovering around 50 percent on the morning of September 11. Indeed, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have done so much for Bush's presidency one might reasonably suspect they're being held in a witness protection program.

Reasonably? Reasonably?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:49 PM

My objection to Alabama's Ten Commandments display is the same as it's always been to Ten Commandment displays: I want equal time for the other 603 commandments that they leave out.

This page gets more specific on the matter:

For some reason, many people have the impression that there are only ten commandments. Everyone has heard of the "Ten Commandments," or at least they've heard of the movie.

I'll tell you a secret. There's no such thing!

Nowhere in the Torah is the phrase "ten commandments" used at all. When referring to these ten, the Torah always calls them the Aseres Had'vorim, the "Ten Statements," or the "Ten Words." In Aramaic, that comes out as "Aseres Hadibros," which is what we usually call them. It means the same thing: the "Ten Statements."

The Hebrew words for "Ten Commandments" would be "Aseres Hamitzvos." But no such term exists anywhere in the Torah or in Rabbinical Writings. Anywhere.

However, in Exodus 34:28, the King James' Bible uses the term "ten commandments" to translate the phrase, which is absolutely incorrect.

The original Hebrew, however, doesn't say that. The Hebrew says "Ten Statements." The same is true in Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:14.

So get this: Millions of people in the world are confused because of a poor translation in the King James' Bible. They all think that when the Torah refers to "doing Hashem's Commandments," the Torah is referring to those Ten Statements that Hashem spoke at Mount Sinai, and no more! And the truth is, they're wrong!

To be sure, the Ten Statements are also commandments. They are ten of the 613 Commandments of the Torah.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:53 PM

I want a "Dave Grayvis for Governor" poster!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:48 AM

Tom Green's personal ad. (Story here.) He wouldn't answer a question about whether he attends religious services but I know of one religious service he didn't attend.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:16 PM

At a bookstore Saturday, I happened to notice that the spine of the Gene Simmons book Kiss and Make-Up has one-fifth of a picture of Mr. Simmons. My friend and I speculated whether KISS fans were dopey enough to buy five copies of the book to get a complete picture. (Leaving aside the fact that the title was the same as a Paul Lynde punch line when KISS was on his Halloween Special.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:00 PM

A story about a scientific study of astrology. The study took 2000 people born in early March 1958, most within minutes of each other, and compared 100 characteristics. No similarities were found. The study also reviewed studies where astrologers had to match birth charts to a given personality profile and found the results about the same as random guessing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:14 AM

When I saw the trailer for Anything Else, Woody Allen's latest movie, something seemed off and I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't Woody's absence from it; he's had others play the lead before. I finally realize what it was; the trailer features a song that was written in the last forty years.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:27 PM

A friend pointed me to an ad from Craig's List whose headline says it all: Actor Needed to be my Boyfriend for TWO Weeks!. Yes, a young lady, to get her parents off her back, told them that she'd be bringing the boyfriend over for a family visit. The only problem is she doesn't have a boyfriend! She offers to pay all expenses and something extra. The ad ends with essentially "P.S. I am not a crackpot."

I see Kate Hudson as the woman, Ben Stiller or a Wilson brother as the actor, Jerry Stiller and Mary Tyler Moore as the woman's parents and Eugene Levy as the actor's favorite uncle who needs some nature of expensive medical treatment (hence his being part of the deception). There will be a montage of wacky people applying for the gig (I'm thinking a cowboy, Tony Randall, a burly Russian guy (with fur hat), the butler from Joe Millionaire, a fat guy, a gay guy, a rude New Yorker, a guy with a mohawk, Tony Randall again but with a fake handlebar moustache). The idea will be so crazy that it just might work. And, of course, someone will be standing in the rain shouting that falling in love wasn't part of the deal.

The sad part is that this is actually the best gig in the tv/film/video/radio jobs section or at least the only one that seems to guarantee payment.

I'm tempted to reply just so I can ask "Is falling in love part of the deal? I don't want to be saying it wasn't part of the deal and then finding out that it's covered in the fine print. I'm not saying I'd turn it down if it were part of the deal. I just want to know where I stand."

UPDATE: Craig's List has since removed the ad.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:20 PM

A review of the Smoking Gun TV special on next week:

I'm attacking it a week early, though, because its particular type of awfulness deserves attention — and advance warning...[Court TV's] taken a concept that was close to perfect to begin with, and dumbed it down into something idiotic and unwatchable.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:11 PM

SCTV is coming to DVD, according to this article (link courtesy of Mark Evanier). Eugene Levy states that obtaining music rights is why it took so long which confirms what Joe Flaherty once told me a couple of years ago when a friend and I asked him when SCTV would be released on video.

Actually, the music licensing may also be the other reason why they're starting with the NBC 90-minute shows. According to Flaherty, when the show started , they didn't concern themselves about music clearance. If they were doing a Towering Inferno parody, they'd just use the theme to Towering Inferno. They were a dinky little Canadian show and nobody noticed. It was only now that it was causing trouble.

Flaherty also noted that back when NBC was rerunning SCTV at 1:35 AM, he'd wonder why they chose the episodes they did to broadcast. He figured out that music rights was the main deciding factor.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:03 PM

An LA Times article about the launch of a new humor magazine in Los Angeles LA Innuendo. I'm liking what I'm reading so far even if having the articles in RTF format is annoying. Here's my favorite part from an article by comedian Paul F. Thompkins comparing LA to other towns:

Stop telling me how “cool” Austin is. I finally went there this year, if only to make people stop telling me that I had to go to Austin. Well, I was not impressed. The music scene! So many places to see bands! So like any other largish city in America! I can go to several clubs in Los Angeles and see professional musicians play music I like.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:11 PM

Another reader provides an explanation for the lousy selection of movies for the AMC and TCM Hope tributes: Vivendi/Universal owns the Paramount Hope movies (most, if not all, of his best work). They've recently placed a moratorium on TV licenses of their library because of their current auction of their assets.

Vivendi wanted to move as much existing Universal home video stock as possible... increase cash, decrease inventory... and make the balance sheet look better. Universal had too many Hope tapes in stock and distributor consignments from their late '90s releases (which did not sell well).

So, Universal did a 100th Birthday home video marketing push a few months ago. The studio did not renew TV and cable film leases, hoping to steer consumer interest in the 100th hoopla toward tape and DVD purchases, and comply with Vivendi directives to shrink inventory.

Then Hope died and all that was available for AMC and TCM was public domain, MGM, and other non-Paramount Hope movies.

To my mind, this is slightly short-sighted on Universal's part. A person wondering what the hoopla's about may have wanted to sample Hope's work on TV and would have not gotten the best examples. This person's resulting low opinion means he's less likely to buy a Hope DVD set. But what the hell do I know?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:07 PM

Reader Jim Woster points to a famous/infamous episode of The Tonight Show from 1969 (featuring drop-ins by Hope and Dean Martin) as evidence of Hope's wit (and his (Woster's) moment of realization that Hope was funny).

This episode is available on Carson's site on DVD and video. I may have to buy it for myself as a birthday present.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:24 AM

While defending Hope, Wilfrid Sheed suggests essentially that Hope couldn't go to the bathroom without taking three writers. While Hope's reputation as an ad-libber was exaggerated and perhaps writer-aided, I have to think it was partially justified because of the story of how Groucho got the gig as game show host. The story is that he ad-libbed a line while doing a radio sketch with Hope which resulted in an ad-lib free-for-all that had to be mostly censored. The future producer of You Bet Your Life approached Groucho and suggested that they do a show which used his ad-lib talents. The thing is though that the story usually notes that Bob Hope was able to keep up with Groucho.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:14 AM

The anti-Hope backlash begins in this column by Christopher Hitchens, the man who debunked Mother Theresa (To be clear, that's not meant as an insult. The book is highly recommeded).

Hitchens's comments are based on the elder Hope. While perhaps justified, I would note that his criticisms could apply to any of his counter-examples in their elder years. Woody Allen hasn't made a good movie in years. Mort Sahl became obsessed and unfunny after JFK's assasination (possibly his comedy has improved since). John Cleese is well-paid to appear in terrible movies (He seems as sharp as ever but any quotes of funny Cleese lines are going to be from Python or Fawlty Towers). Milton Berle was arguably as funny in his old age as he was in his youth but one could also argue that if you do primarily hoaky jokes and slapstick (albeit very funny), it's not hard maintaining that level. Certainly there were those who didn't think elder Berle was funny; see how SNL treated him.

The fact of the matter is also that Hope influenced Hitchens's counter-examples. Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl had careers because Hope was the first comedian to just come out and tell jokes about topics of the day. Before Hope, a joke teller would often have to juggle or carry a violin or something to justify his standing on stage. And Woody Allen's original screen persona is a direct (and acknowledged by Allen) lift of Hope's cowardly, wisecracking shnook (as I noted before).

And to answer Hitchens's challenge, here are two funny jokes that can be attributed to Hope:

1. Welcome to Oscar night or, as we call it in my house, Passover.
2. In They Got Me Covered, Hope narrowly avoids getting fired as a reporter. When he offers to shake on whatever deal allows him to keep his job, he spills a bottle of ink. The editor fumes and screams. Hope, cleaning up the mess and making it worse, says "Sorry, I didn't know you used the wet kind."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:40 AM

"Billionaire Bill" Sherman suggests in the comments to a post where he also complains about the weak movies chosen for Bob Hope tributes that the problem was the last minute schedule change. I would argue (hoping not to sound callous) that this should work like obituaries do. TCM should have prepared a list of movies for any actor/actress/director/whatever over seventy that's going to get an immediate tribute, updated to reflect any movie rights that are lost. It certainly should have been in the works when Hope turned 100. I mean, come on, Road to Hong Kong?

My friend "Rocking Robin" Jones points out that last-minute tribute specials that ran on our local PBS showed more Hope humor in the hour or two than the entire day of Hope movies.
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