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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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:13 PM

The last issue of New X-Men had a huge revelation (which I won't spoil since I know I have at least one reader who reads the trades). This Usenet post goes through past issues and demonstrates that the revelation fits everything we were told since Grant Morrison's run on the title started.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:07 PM

A site all about Bring Back Birdie, the four-performance sequel to Bye, Bye Birdie that starred the late, great Donald O'Connor. And an article by a gentleman who remembers seeing the first preview of the show.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:30 AM

The Time-to-Make-the-Donuts-Guy has a name, dammit! Michael Vale and the character was apparently Fred the Baker.

And this page from Commercial Closet has a QuickTime film of the Fred-in-drag commercial as well as analysis of the ad in context of society's homophobia. Yeah, I rolled my eyes too.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:28 AM

Kenan Thompson of Kenan & Kel is joining SNL according to this article. If nothing else, you may remember him from commercials for the movie Good Burger where he, in a dress, asked "Could you kindly point us in the direction of the little girls' room?" Watch said commercial here.

I falsely remember him saying that line in a silly, high-pitched voice but appear to be mistaken. I may be mixing it up with my memory of that commerical with the Time-to-Make-the-Donuts-Guy in a dress tricking the grocery store clerk into confessing that grocery store donuts have neither the variety nor the freshness of Dunkin Donuts.

And here's the Good Burger fan site.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:15 AM

Author George Plimpton died yesterday...or he's researching for an article about what it's like to be dead.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:32 AM

A corn field picture of David Letterman. This can be done by people but circles are impossible and must have been done by aliens.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:30 AM

Tonight's episode of Saturday Night Live is "The Best of Chris Kattan". No word yet on what they're going to do for the other one-hour, twenty-five minutes.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:39 PM

Do you think that when Adrian Brody was cast as the lead in the movie Dummy that there were complaints on ventriloquist email lists and ventrioloquist Usenet news groups that they cast an actor rather than a real ventriloquist? Or perhaps a dummy would post a complaint and then his ventriloquist would post a follow-up scolding him for being mean to the nice people who are making the movie.

I was disappointed to find out from a friend that a screening of the movie was not filled with people holding puppets.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:30 PM

Life imitates the Simpsons as Red Lobster is forced to lower current-quarter earnings estimate due to losing money on an all-the-crab-you-can-eat promotion. Story here (and hat-tip to my brother for sending this to me).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:28 PM

There's a movie starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK and nobody had the decency to tell me?!?!?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:53 PM

Joe Rogan breaks the omerta surrounding Dennis Leary's stealing from Bill Hicks's act. Page Six article here and audio excerpt from the Stern show here. Hicks's biographer also confirms it here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:42 PM

I did not leave Anything Else with the level of hostility I felt towards Hollywood Ending, just the level of indifference I felt towards Woody Allen's two movies before Hollywood Ending. There are laughs in places but none that I can actually quote off the top of my head.

One thing that makes Anything Else a great bargain is that you get not one, not two, but three Woody Allens in this movie. You have Woody, of course. You get Jason Biggs as the Woody-esque protagonist. And Danny Devito as Biggs's ineffectual manager does a Broadway Danny Rose impression.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:01 PM

Jim Henson's alma mater dedicates a statue of him with Kermit the Frog. Article with accompanying picture here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:00 PM

This Newsday article confirms the suspicion that the corner Aaron Sorkin painted The West Wing into was his "screw you" to his successors:

Wells recalled that while on vacation in Hawaii last spring, he watched the show's two-episode finale (the kidnapping of President Bartlet's daughter). In what he described as a "self-pitying moment," Wells wondered to his wife, 'Well, how am I supposed to get out of that?'"

He later had conversations with Sorkin about the plotline, although "he felt I should go off and do what I want to do." Wells even "begged" Sorkin for some guidance on the season's first two episodes, "but he felt it was time for us to do it on our own."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:00 PM

"Police are currently investigating the death of police detective Leroy 'Encyclopedia' Brown, 49, whose body was discovered in a Dumpster behind the Idaville Public Library Monday." Heh. At one point, I was looking for the obvious joke, didn't see it and gave up and was thus floored when it did appear.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:17 PM

In honor of the recently-departed Gordon Jump, here's a site which has pictures and sound files of the "Dudley gets molested" episode of Diff'rent Strokes.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:41 PM

From the For What It's Worth Dept: If you look at the polling data of the "Was Hussein involved in 9/11" poll, the number of people who think Hussein was likely involved has gone down by 9% in the last two years and the number who think he wasn't likely involved has increased by 16%. (Thanks to Justin Katz)

Katz also points out something I noticed when I read the question: What's missing is a category for those who know the evidence doesn't exist but aren't willing to dismiss the possibility entirely.

And speaking of poorly worded questions, the fourth question of the poll asking if Hussein "had already developed weapons of mass destruction" doesn't indicate if it means ever or recently. If it meant ever, one wonders if the 19% not likely (either "very" or "at all") think Hussein gassed the Kurds in 1988 with his mind.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:32 PM

Mark Evanier wrote to tie together the origins of my obsession with the Richard De La Font Agency by telling me that Bill Kirchenbauer owns The Legends of Comedy show. He also says that he enjoyed the Legends show.
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