Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:56 AM

I went ahead and got the Sony TV I said I was going to buy. The first thing I watched on it was Superman for two reason: 1) It was on top of the DVDs I had to box up since I was losing the shelves of my old TV stand and 2) it was the first thing that made me aware of VCRs or cable; I forget which but I remember being invited to a friend's house in 1980 to watch Superman on television and being amazed that such a thing was possible.

Fun time Activity: When the salesman hawks the extended warranty, ask if it covers burn-in. If he says "Yes", find the line item that says it doesn't cover burn-in.

Related Fun time Activity: Go to Best Buy. Ask various clerks if they have extension cords and if so, where. Collect the contradictory answers!

Speaking of the amazing age we live in, here's the link to donate to the American Red Cross via Amazon.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:22 PM

M.E. Russell reviews the Fat Albert and feels that it's like school in the summer: summer school. Two things in his review intrigue me:

1. There's an epilogue sequence featuring the real-life guys who inspired the Junkyard Gang (or actors playing the real-life guys).
2. There's a "musical montage where Fat Albert tries on a succession of funny hats" (no indication if someone gives approval/disapproval on the different kinds o' hats)

The fundamental thing wrong with a hat sequence (besides being cliche) is that Fat Albert doesn't normally wear a damn hat. If you were doing something with Beetle Bailey or Snuffy Smith, then sure, maybe you do a scene where someone sez "Hey, let's get you a more stylish hat" and then he tries on hats with "One Week" playing in the background or whatever the hell they're using for montages these days. But what's the point with someone who doesn't normally wear a hat?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:42 PM

File this story under "Maybe I'll splurge and get a flat-panel LCD television".

Instead, I'm considering this Sony model or an equivalent Toshiba, depending on what the post-Christmas sales look like. Thanks to your LCD's and your plasmas and your DLPs, a nice TV like that is "only" $1700, give-or-take. If I were posting this on Reason.com, I'd wonder how much of that price-tag is on government-required crap I don't want/need such as V-chip and closed captioning. Hell, my saving some dough by buying an HD-monitor as opposed to a fully equipped HDTV with tuner is an option that (if I understand the law correctly) won't be allowed in a year or two, despite the fact that many folk will be getting their HD programming from cable or satellite and don't need the tuner.

The fun part is reading FAQs like this or FAQs on burn-in and trying not to scream "Dammit, I just wanna watch TV!"

Speaking of burn-in, when's the first class-action suit against a network because their station logo or ticker tape caused burn-in? Someone get overlawyered on the phone!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:16 AM

How can you tell that it's Christmas time? Entertainment news sites have to fill space with articles like this one asking how come there ain't a Martian Manhunter movie in development.

My brother tried to create a tiff between Mark Evanier and myself by pointing out the quote where Evanier refers to the Manhunter as "the Shemp of the Justice League". Fortunately I remembered this article where Mark comes to the defense of Shemp. Comparing Manhunter to Shemp is an insult to neither; both are misperceived as lesser members of their group. In the Martian Manhunter's case, you have a hero with near-Superman-level strength, flight, telepathy, and shape-shifting. Who wouldn't want that on the team?

Via Evanier, a Shemp web site by his granddaughters.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:57 AM

Every year at my friend Robin Jones's Christmas Eve party, I learn of a movie to which my immediate reaction is "Why did no one have the decency to tell me thsi film existed?!?!?" This year the movie in question is Viva Max, a tale of a Mexican general retaking the Alamo.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:12 PM

Regarding the mini-controversy I posted here as to SNL depicting Limbaugh as a strung out junkie, reader Rolly reminds us in the comments that Smigel did a cartoon on his Comedy Central show called "Downey, Kidder and Heche" which made fun of the titular actors' drug abuse problems. Arguably the staff member's anger is with Lorne Michaels for approving the cartoon, not just with Smigel for making it but the point's the same.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:37 AM

This post by my brother on Overlawyered raises an important question: If I had two questions, one about frosted Pop Tarts and one about unfrosted Pop Tarts, can I consult a "frosted-sugar pastry expert" on both matters or do I need to find a seperate expert on unfrosted sugar pastries?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:42 AM

I link to this Reason Hit & Run article to call attention to the fact that there is a "Florida Tomato Committee", a branch of the federal government dedicated to determine tomato standards including, apparently, whether it's pleasing to the eye. More info in this New York Times article.

They've also declared that some old guy is Santa Claus; I'm not quite sure how that works.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:36 PM

An outraged SNL staff member expresses anger to Drudge over a Smigel cartoon featuring Limbaugh passed-out from drug abuse. "Did we ever have some laughs about Robert Downey Jr.'s serious drug addiction?" he asks.

A transcript from a Downey fansite indicates that Downey did a monologue making fun of his arrest.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:09 PM

Last Saturday, I played the role of Santa Claus. A friend of mine (the one I mentioned here) organizes every year a fun-time-activities/gift-giving deal for underpriviliged children. Her Santa flaked so I volunteered to save Christmas.

The ovation I got from the kiddies was, of course, the biggest I've had in my performing career. My portrayal of jolly St. Nick was phenomenal. How good was I as Santa? I spoke Dutch to a war orphan.

Kids are easy to fool. "Hello, Veronica," said I to a young girl. "How did you know my name?" she asked. The truthful answer was "It's on your name tag." My answer was "I'm Santa Claus! That's how I know."

In front of the kiddies, I took the role seriously. When I finished dressing in the gift room, I threw a pretend diva fit when I saw some individually-wrapped Lemonheads. "Lemonheads! Are you putting &%#^ing LemonHeads in the &%#^ing stockings going out in my &%#^ing name?!?! You don't cheapen the brand with &%#^ing Lemonheads!!! Spend a dollar and get real candy!"

And of course, I was careful to be off-mike when saying "That should hold the little bastards."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:06 PM

Today in Alternate History (via Instapundit)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:32 AM

Over in overlawyered, my brother wonders if there was any law suit between Sad Sack and Beetle Bailey. No reason for there to be as they were two different characters.

Sad Sack is a sad sack, that is to say a schlemiel. The humor there was that nothing would ever go right for poor Sad Sack ("Oh, Sad Sack, will you never win?", so to speak).

Beetle Bailey is a lazy ne'er-do-well. The humor is the various ways he avoids (or tries to avoid) work.

The same fella (my grandmother's brother Dave, as I recollect) who brought Sad Sack comics also brought over a huge chunk of the Harvey oeuvre as well as a mess o' Archie comics.

UPDATE: According to Toonopedia's Sad Sack entry, after WWII, Sad Sack had an unsuccessful career as a civilian. The same attempt to make Willie and Joe civilians didn't work either.

And once again, I post a link to the crossover between Sad Sack and Joe.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:35 PM

Penn and Teller will be on tonight's episode of West Wing (news here). They make the quality of the show disappear. Har! Har!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:37 AM

Speaking of the X-Mas, one of my all-time favorite movies is the original 1947 Miracle on 34th Street, the originator of the "That nut's not really Santa....or is he?" story structure. What I've hated about the remakes, both the David Hartman made-for-TV one and the Richard Attenborough one, is that they don't have the scene where Jack Albertson* the mail sorter gets the brilliant idea of forwarding Santa's mail to the sanitarium. Rather, the mail arrives there due to an idea had by the lawyer protagonist who runs to the post office to arrange it.

When I've made this complaint to others, I've heard the argument that the new way is better because now the resolution is due to actions by the protagonist. And I'm sure that was the logic behind the change. Except that the original way was due to protagonist actions. Natalie Wood, the girl who can't have faith, believes in Santa enough to write him a letter and addresses it to the home. This letter catches the attention of Jack Albertson and a Christmas miracle results. Whereas originally faith leads to Kris being declared Santa Claus, now it's the result of lawerly manipulation.

*Although I haven't found it yet, I'm sure there's a brilliant piece of fan-fiction telling the tale of how the mail clerk eventually raised a family and had a grandson who won a trip to a magical chocolate factory. And perhaps part of the money from his grandson's new chocolate factory was put into his Senatorial campaign.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:16 AM

Eric Akawie writes an interesting article that the Xmas-ization of Chanukah is antithetical to Chanukah's story. To wit, the Maccabees were fighting against assimilation and puffing Chanukah up to be just the same as the birth of a Messiah goes against what they were fighting.

I would argue that there's a difference between conversion/assimilation at sword-point and that due to peer pressure or whatever. The Maccabees were fighting for the right to choose (unless there was a purge of collaborators that's not included in the traditional tale). I sympathize with his trying to keep his household and his kids Xmas-free. I've come lately to side with the commenters to this Reason post that the secular parts are fun (now that I'm not the only Jewish kid in school) although I still keep my house X-Mas decoration free out of principle.

On the subject, a friend asked me to fill up some stockings for underpriveleged children, the most goyische task she could find for me and one I'm not entirely sure if I'm doing right. One little bit of humor I've injected is that I'm including in each stocking a bag of Paskesz chocolate coins, a traditional 7th day of Hanukah gift (socks were the 8th day).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:51 AM

Neil Hetzel buys a full Stormtrooper costume and goes to Wal-Mart. His friend takes pictures which are here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:19 AM

Seth Stevenson, while discussing the new NetZero ad which apes/mocks the Mom-crashes-an-AOL-board-meeting, states he doesn't recall ad campaigns which mimicked competitors' campaigns. I emailed him to remind him of an early MCI ad. AT&T/Bell ran a "Reach Out and Touch Someone" ad featuring a middle-aged, African-American couple. The husband can't figure out why his wife is crying when their son just called with good news. It turns out that she's crying because the son said he loved her. In MCI's version with either the same or similar actors, the mother is crying because she just saw the size of the long distance bill.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:55 PM

Now I Want to See It Dept: John Podheratz says that Alexander is laugh-out-loud bad.

While I'm linking to the Corner, I'll link to this report about the President's Thanksgiving menu. My brother and any Texan not living in Texas will appreciate that the President chose Blue Bell as his brand of ice cream (which may be part of why he spent Thanksgiving in Crawford). When/If I start to make hugh amounts of sitcom money, my look-how-crazy-rich-he-is gesture will be flying in Blue Bell from Texas.

UPDATE:Apparently I can get 2 gallons flown in for $89.

UPDATE 2: Judging from this What Folks Say page, Blue Bell is no longer Texas-exclusive like it was when I was a kid but available through the South. I am happy to learn that Blue Bell still eats all they can and then sells the rest.

Update 3: A history of the Blue Bell and the Kruse family. Their strategy is to dominate the markets they're in before expanding to new ones.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:43 PM

Items Not Good Enough for McSweeneys.net #1:

Rejected Titles for the Sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11
"Director Michael Moore is planning a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 [...] dubbed Fahrenheit 9/11 and 1/2" - Reuters

• Fahrenheit 9/12


• Fahrenheit 9/11: Episode II


• Fahrenheit 9/11, Too


• Fahrenheit 9/3-D


• Out of Context, Shmout of Context


• Fahrenheit 9/11: Electric Bugaloo


• Fahrenheit Ka-Ching!!!!


• Fahrenheit 9/11 Meets Frankenstein


• Fahrenheit 9/11 Rides Again


• Getting Republicans 55% of the Vote


• Fahrenheit 9/11 Finds a Son


• Young Fahrenheit 9/11


• The Martian Chronicles

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:20 PM

I'm proud to announce a brand new segment to the Hooray for Captain Spaulding blog: Items Not Good Enough for McSweeneys.net.

Allow me to explain: When I posted the Rickles-Lincoln bit, I, on a whim, sent a copy to mcsweeneys.net. The submissions editor wrote back that he liked it but that they preferred to only publish unpublished stuff, including personal sites. Fair enough. I wanted to publish the piece on my blog since I was feeling guilty that the blog had been too political as of late. Plus it was cool to learn that folks from McSweeneys were reading my blog (or had friends who read my blog and then forwarded the better bits to McSweeneys personnel).

However, I will be, in the future, giving them first crack on some things. If rejected, they will come here. The intent of the segment is to mock the comedy piece, not McSweeneys. (For example, the first item I have to admit was a correct call on their part.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:53 PM

The Muppet Show is reportedly getting season sets according to TVshowsonDVD.com. I'm saddened to say that, based on my recent viewings of the Muppet Show, it doesn't really hold up. Perhaps my problem is that I'm no longer 4-7. Or that the episodes I saw didn't have the Banana Sketch (Wait a minute, you've never heard of the Banana Sketch?).

The fact that I can hold an entire season of the Muppet Show in my hand would have been unimaginable to me many a year ago. Yes, as my brother said, we are living in the future we dreamed about as a child (including getting to meet TV's Butch Patrick)*. As good a segue as I can think of to say that I have much to be thankful of, including you dear reader for reading my nonsense and dopey jokes.

I'm also thankful that Moe was not the boss of the Three Stooges or else there would not have been a Three Stooges act.

*One minor difference between now and the future I dreamed of as a child is that in my dream future the Star Wars sequels were better and there were twelve of them.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:30 AM

"Spread out!"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:39 PM

Ann Althouse has noticed that Oliver Stone is laying the groundwork in Playboy and the New York Times to use, what I call, the Alfie excuse: "The political climate and those crazy moral-values red-states made my movie bomb." Blogger Steve Sturm suggests a benchmark for any movie using that excuse. Fahrenheit 9/11 made $150 million and so any movie that makes less can't blame the red states.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:00 PM

In other news, Yassar Arafat is still dead. By a crazy coincidence, he died on a major Jewish holiday.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:50 PM

The post below was slightly delayed because I honestly expected to find 500 sites of conspiracy theories and fan fiction about Chuck Cunningham and found absolutely nothing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:48 PM

I also learned of Classic TV Toys, a company making Mego-style dolls of Happy Days, The Munsters and other shows. I was tempted to get a Mr. Woof-Woof doll until I saw the $250 pricetag. For $250, I expect the doll be personally delivered by Butch Patrick. For $250, I also want a better punchline for that joke.

The purveyors of a certain web site will be happy to learn that Series 3 of the Happy Days dolls includes a "Shark-Jumping Fonzie". I am hereby now starting the rumor that Series 4 will include a Chuck Cunningham doll.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:34 PM

At the toy store yesterday, I saw a beanie toy of Guy Smiley, the host of game show parodies on Sesame Street. As tempted as I was to get this, it had the same problem I see with a lot of the plush Sesame Street toys made by this company: the doll usually does not fully resemble the character it's supposed to portray. In the case of Smiley, the nose is off and the hair's wrong (compare to the picture here).

The Smiley doll is apparently part of a 35th-Anniversary set which includes Sherlock Hemlock and the Amazing Mumford. I have to wonder/hope if we can look forward to dolls for Roosevelt Franklin, Harvey Kneeslapper, the "How'd-ya-like-to-buy-an-O" guy, Don Music (with a little piano to bang his head on), and the Jewish Muppet who was always the straight man in Grover-as-waiter sketches.

(As you can probably tell, Sesame Street Encyclopedia is my new all-time favorite site.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:27 PM

"Don Rickles could play Abraham Lincoln." -- Tom Hanks on performance capture technology, Entertainment Weekly, November 12, 2004.

Four score and seven years, that's the last time this fat guy in the front row could see his genitalia. Do you eat cannonballs for breakfast? Look at the size of this man. What are you, Irish? Oh, Welch. Like that's better? No, you're all right; give this man a big hand for being a good sport.

So four score and seven years ago, our forefathers---the queer in the back is saying "Four fathers? Where?" And the Jew, he's like "Four fathers? For the same price I can get you seven fathers!"

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. The Polack is wondering "What's civil about it? Everyone's shooting at us." We are met on a great battlefield. Well, most of us are. The Polack's in his tent trying to figure out how to put his pants on. The Jew's trying to sell tickets. The Italian guy, he's taking bets. The Irish guy is looking for someone to sell him a drink. The black guy keeps trying to plant cotton. The Chinese guy keeps trying to plant rice. And the queer's trying to get the drummer boy to "examine his musket".

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. Not that the Puerto Rican kid over there cares; he's just hoping I'll talk long enough to keep you from noticing that he's stealing the hubcaps off your wagons.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here. And look gang, I make fun of our differences because it's ridiculous, the bigotry and the nonsense. We need to come together, all of us, Jew, Gentile, Irishman, black man; we need to come together as a nation -- and do something about those goddamned Mexicans! I'm kidding, we need the Mexicans -- Why? Why do we need the Mexicans? Oh, yeah, somebody has to pick our crops now that I'm freeing the slaves.

Look I poke fun but every politician, big and small, needs an audience. Will Rogers once said, "I never make fun of the little guy, only the big ones." Well, folks, you're some of the biggest people I know. Good night!

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:04 AM

I think no matter what our views are about the results of the election that we can all come together as a nation to say that we can't wait for the new Marx Brothers and WC Fields boxed sets coming out on Tuesday.

We can also agree I LOVE YOU EGG.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:22 AM

On Thursday, Slate ran a series of articles called "Why Americans Hate Democrats" where writers were encouraged to give a post-mortem on the election while avoiding the "It's just a jump to the left. And then a step to the riiiight" cliches that Timothy Noah debunked. The subtitles like "The unteachable ignorance of the red states" or "More policy plans, please" caused the same response:"Har! Har! Har..Oh, wait, you're serious."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:10 AM

"Don't blame us - we voted for Carter!" Lileks takes advantage of the election to plug his new book on 70's interior decoration.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:55 AM

What's interesting about the Doonesbury's of yesterday and today is that Trudeau seems to have bought into the Nixon-refused-to-challenge-the-1960-election-although-urged-to-by-Eisenhower story. When Republicans were using it as anti-Gore talking point, historian David Greenberg wrote an article that it was slightly more complicated than that. Specifically, Republicans (if not Nixon) did issue challenges and there's some evidence that Eisenhower withdrew support for a challenge.

The main reason to question this story is that our source for it is Nixon himself and it follows the structure of other Nixon I-took-the-high-road-despite-advice-from-others stories. As odd as it is for Trudeau to say that Nixon has a lot of class, it's even odder that he's essentially taking Nixon's word for something.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:48 AM

I don't want to say I had trouble understanding my ballot but I think I voted for Grover Cleveland.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:45 AM

I can't find video for it but here's a transcript of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's appearance on Crossfire Monday.(Scroll to the bottom.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:48 AM

IFilm hosts the Triumph at Spin Alley video, relieving the server pressure on other folk.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:05 PM

Whatever our opinions on Bush vs Kerry or on the quality or lack thereof of Team America, I think we can all agree on one thing: I LOVE YOU EGG! (via Lileks)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:36 PM

Thanks to how terrible tonight's West Wing is, I find myself with a little spare time. I stayed tuned during the political point with the subtlety of a sledgehammer (missing only a flashing neon sign reading "As opposed to how Bushitler took advantage of 9/11 to invade Iraq") but turned it off during the montage think session of how to get the Israeli prime minister in a peace conference with the fictional doppelganger of Arafat. I'd say the scene was missing a clock with fast-moving hands and a wastepaper basket slowly filling with paper but I suspect I just turned off the TV before they got to that.

I don't know what idea they eventually developed although I suspect it involved inviting each to the White House without saying the other was there, having each get something from the cellar, and "accidentally" locking them in the cellar together.

Or you have them stuck in an elevator together and a pregnant woman who only speaks Spanish goes into labor.

UPDATE: While looking up the first-season episode that my brother alluded to in comments, I found a description of last night's episode. The part where it says "Kate [...]provides Jed with the hook he needs to get the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down together at Camp David" makes me suspect that said hook is so crazy that it just might work.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:30 PM

Thanks to spending a five-day weekend at my grandmother's (14.4K Internet connection and no Tivo; it was 1996 all over again), I'm behind on a mess o' stuff.

I should clarify part of the point of my "Humorless Left Review Team America" series which was to highlight reviews where the reviewer liked it up to the point where his ox was gored. So, for example, this Roger Ebert review doesn't count anymore than my grandma's elderly friend complaining about the filthy language does. And the review my friend Chip Pope posts in the comments here doesn't count since he dislikes the whole movie rather than the select parts and I respect his opinion (even if he did like In & Out (but then I liked Wrongfully Accused so who am I to talk?)).

Meanwhile Edelstein clarifies his review and makes fun of his right-wing critics here. He states that his critics probably didn't enjoy "The Passion of the Jew" episode to which I reply:

1. Sez you.
2. Edelstein commits what I call "the Lileks fallacy" referring to how Lileks notes that people often assume that a right-of-center view on the war on terror or taxes means that you're a gaybashing, fundamentalist bigot (or alternately the "Seipp one-drop fallacy").
3. Edelstein conveniently ignored the part of that episode where the Jewish characters were portrayed as overreacting and contributing to the tension caused by the film.
4. Edelstein, in assuming that pro-war folk hated the episode, ignores neocons a.k.a. the Jooooooooos.*

*I didn't use to buy into the idea that neoconservative was a code word for Jew until a) a non-Jewish, liberal, Nader-voter friend of mine asked me if neoconservative was code for Jew and b) I kept seeing Jonah Goldberg's name in neo-conservative lists and the only thing "neo" about his conservatism is his Jewish surname.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:58 PM

The JFK assasination conspiracy claimed another victim today as witness Malcolm Summers died at the age of 80 of a heart ailment. Or, as future JFK conspiracy victims lists will phrase it, he died of "a heart ailment."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:37 PM

Humorless Left React to Team America Part III: Kenneth Turan of the LA Times reviews Team America until it got to the part where it mocks celebrities. He calls the part where it goes from mocking the left to mocking the right a "flip-flop", the joke being that that's what the Republicans are accusing Kerry of.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:15 PM

Humorless Left React to Team America Part II: Slate's David Edelstein reviews Team America (WARNING: Spoiler filled). While he liked the skewering of the right, he didn't like the part where the leftist actors start fighting Team America. That's crazy!!!! That wouldn't happen in real life!

The reason that part is ridiculous is because "[l]eftist actors learned from Vietnam not to cozy up to dictators" to which one can only reply, "See Penn, Sean".

Spoiler Alert:Edelstein has a revealing Freudian slip when he refers to the part of the movie when "Team America destroys the Panama Canal" since it was terrorists who blew up the Panama Canal. And while the terrorists publicly claim anger over Team America's actions in Cairo as their motive, it is made fairly clear in the movie that even if Team America had done nothing that the terrorists would have blown up the Canal anyway.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:01 PM

So my gym was having electrical problems and was turning away folk but allowed me to exercise since I had an appointment with a trainer. The cardio area was like every movie or TV-depiction of a post-apolcalyptic world.

And then my reading glasses broke. Oh, the cruel, cruel irony.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:45 PM

There was a poster at the theater for the Fat Albert movie. I'll probably go see it but I'm worried that if I'm not careful, I might learn something.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:38 PM

Salon interviews Trey Parker and Matt Stone (Warning: Interview a) is full of swears and b) requires sitting through half-minute ad). Predictably, many Salon readers are not amused and write letters to that effect. Equally predictable is that one of the letters says Bush is worse than Osama and Kim Jong Il.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:05 PM

I saw Team America at sneak preview Saturday. Excellent movie. Brilliant parody of action movies which mocks both sides of the geopolitical debate: The titular team are ugly Americans; the peacenick celebrities go on a slippery slope from useful idiots to actively fighting for the villain. And since it's a Parker-Stone production, lotsa songs.

Contrary to earlier speculation, I did see the R-rated version. I judge this by the fact that the credits included a parody of Aerosmith's song during a sex scene in Armageddon which did not appear in the movie. And also the presence of kids in the theater. I don't mean a fifteen-year-old with his parents; I mean a family with little kids where either the parents couldn't get a sitter or just thought "Oh, how cute, puppets."

A smarter guy than I could write an essay on the fact that this movie is as close as we're going to get to a testosterone-laden movie where terrorist ass is kicked and what that says about Hollywood. Granted the lack could just be a matter of the importance of the foreign markets (and, until Pearl Harbor, many studios didn't want to make anti-Nazi movies for similar reasons). Still, three years after 9/11, this is as close as we've gotten to this war's Casablanca or even this war's You Nazty Spy.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:02 AM

Sean Penn writes a rambling letter to Trey Parker and Matt Stone (Warning: Penn uses a swear). He's less mad that they make fun of him and madder about Matt Stone's comments in Rolling Stone that "If you don't know what you're talking about, there's no shame in not voting." When he says that, Stone is not taking into account the vast pro-rape lobby whose hands he's playing into.

(Anecdotal Evidence that Newspaper Registration Schemes Are Dumb Dept.: I was going to link to LA Times story on this but they make their "CalendarLive" content subscriber-only. So I found a better link.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:15 PM

Heidi Macdonald expresses surprise that Fox News loved Team America. The clip I saw on Leno featured this exchange:

HANS BLIX: You need to let me inspect your palace. Or else.
KIM JONG IL: Or else what?
HANS BLIX: Or else we will be very very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.

Many folk were saying whatever administration figure told Drudge that he was angry at the film was an idiot. Or at least not familiar with the concept of the South Park Republican.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:58 PM

When I bought my ticket for the sneak preview of Team America, it was listed as rated NC-17. This means that either the theater was hedging its bets against the problem* it had getting an R was unresolved or the version being shown for the sneak preview is the full puppet sex version.

*(login: cptspaulding/cptspaulding)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:14 PM

Undeveloped Comedy Concept Dept.: Rodney Dangerfield, Jr, the less successful son of Rodney Dangerfield. He got a little respect, not as much as he'd like but some. So, for example, when he was born the doctor didn't slap his mother; the doctor just glared at her.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:11 PM

Last night, Letterman read some Rodney Dangerfield jokes. Here's one that was funny and I hadn't heard:

As a kid, I had no luck with girls. One girl told me "Come over to my place. No one's home." So I went to her place. No one was home.

The joke was so funny that the audience actually laughed at it rather than politely applauded to the APPLAUSE sign.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:33 AM

More on the alleged Moore/Rather connection. Michael Moore, who as you recall saw the documents and dismissed them as phony, trumpeted the upcoming 60-Minutes story based on them:

Later today (Wed.), the Boston Globe, the A.P. and Dan Rather all present new and damning information about how George W. Bush got moved to the front of the line to get in the Texas Air National Guard, and how he then went AWOL. I am putting every ounce of trust I have in my fellow Americans that a majority of them get this, get the injustice of it all, and get the sad, sick twisted irony of how it relates very, very much to our precious Election 2004.

(via Tim Blair)

UPDATE: When I said before that this was likely a publicity push because his DVD came out Tuesday, I was mistaken. It's a publicty push for five things that came out on Tuesday. More from Moorelies.com
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:24 AM

So in yesterday's debate, Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as FactCheck.com. If you click on the link, you'll see that George Soros bought the .com domain and had it redirected to his site. (Via Hit and Run where a commenter correctly notes that it would have been funnier if it had redirected to gay porn).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:46 AM

If there was any doubt about that the Dan Rather National Guard memos were forgeries, the fact that Michael Moore says he rejected them should put that to rest.

By the way, I'm positive that Michael Moore really did get the memos and isn't just saying he did to get publicity for the DVD release of his movie.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:37 AM

National Review's Kerry Spot's Jim Geraghty writes of a solution to Democrats' flooding online polls and editors saying that Edwards won the debate:

One Kerry Spot reader came up with an interesting jujitsu counter-move: Nothing. Let the DNC win the online polls and the e-mail wars. What will happen when MSNBC or CNN go to discuss the instant results of their online poll... and learn that 99 percent of viewers thought Edwards won?

He then suggested as "a truly nefarious" act of sabotage that readers start sending email to editors in the afternoon. One reader followed his advice and received a profanity-laden reply from an Ohio newspaper quoted in full in the article.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:38 PM

A reader posted in comments this link to a Reuters article about how Wal-Mart was pressured to modify a description of the anti-Semitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion which implied that the tract was true.Interestingly Reason's Jesse Walker wrote about the same article, noting that a simple Google search would have answered the unanswered-by-Wal-Mart question of whether the description was Wal-Mart's or the publisher's (Hint: the same description appears on Amazon's page for the book).

Walker also notes that the article mentions that Amazon has a disclaimer but that the author apparently couldn't be bothered to scroll down past the disclaimer to see that Amazon is still using the controversial description. I suggested in comments that the only reason the author knew of the disclaimer was that it was in the press release he copied the article from.

Update: I stumbled upon this page which links to a PDF and an HTML transcript of the 1921 article by Philip Graves who first demonstrated that the Protocols were plagirized from a couple of novels.


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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:25 PM

Speaking as we were below of otherwise timeless entertainment containing dated jokes, an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show had Laura Petrie accidentally overfilling a coffee cup, so shocked was she by something Rob had said. Rob then says "Honey, I don't want a cup-and-a-half. That only works on television."

Thanks to Google I learned this was an allusion to a Maxwell House campaign that its instant coffee had "a cup-and-a-half of flavor." Apparently also "a cup-and-a-half of flavor" is a techie expression for a meaningless metric.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:09 PM

From the What the Hell? Dept.: In the Charley Chase short "Mighty Like a Moose" (where Chase and his wife both get plastic surgery and then proceed to have an illicit rendez-vous with each other), the big-nosed wife is described thusly:

If Mussolini had a nose like hers, his wound would have been fatal.

I don't get it.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:11 PM

Kim Thompson of Fantagraphics reports that the second volume of the Complete Peanuts has arrived at the Fantagraphics warehouse and will be shipped to those who pre-ordered from Fantagraphics on Friday.

Ahem..cough...cough...Woo hoo! Everybody!


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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:32 PM

The comments to this post refer to a $49 per month Platinum Subscriber option. If I collect enough of them, I might be able to afford one of these. If you buy me one, you will be a lifetime Kryptonite Subscriber!

My brother in the comments to this post says

Dammit, we expected Emmy-blogging

. Choose your favorite humorous retort!

1. I have to have some exclusive content for the Platinum Subscribers.
2. I tried to live-blog but the Showtime Emmy party didn't have Wi-Fi.
3. And I expected you to complain about not getting it so we're even.
4. THIS ONE LEFT BLANK FOR THE READER TO FILL OUT

Feel free to liberally add the phrase "You clod" to get the full Al Jaffee effect.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:22 PM

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is being hyped as "Harry Potter for adults". The site for the book includes a letter to The Times from Mr. Norrell and other stuff.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:16 AM

Given that he's been linked by Best of the Web and Kaus and Mark Steyn, I think I now know who leaked the forged memos.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:29 PM

For reasons it's best not to go into, I was trying to find out some info on the Great Gazoo (Is he from another planet, the future, another dimension, what?). I learned he had a comic book, one which lasted at least 20 issues.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:05 PM

Nikki Finke, author of two articles accusing Jay Leno of rightward drift which I discuss here and here, interviews Leno here. Some thoughts:

1. Notice that when Jay talks of the two times he gave Bush a pass (just after 9/11 and just after the Iraq war started), he talks of doing jokes about Bush again when people were ready. This is entirely consistent with Johnny Carson's monologues. Like I said before on this matter, the reason politicians were in trouble when Carson made fun of them was because Carson was a good barometer of the public's attitude. He wouldn't make fun of something if people weren't going to laugh at it.
2. Note that contrary to stereotype and the leading question Finke asks, Jay's experience is that Republicans are more willing to make fun of themselves than Democrats
3. Maybe this isn't the best week for Finke to say "The media seems to only present the Republican spin and to not present the other side of what’s going on." Timing is once again the key to both comedy and articles about comedy.
4. Cathy Seipp provides some proof of why Finke's complaint of Leno's rightward swing should be taken with a shaker of salt. In this blog post, she notes that Finke complains of a right-wing takeover of the LA Press Club which seems to consist of Seipp's membership.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:15 PM

The Library of Congress presents 19th Century Periodicals online. Finally I can fill in the holes of my American Whig Review collection.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:59 AM

In other news, 60 Minutes has announced that they found new chapters of the Hitler diaries where Hitler sez that George Bush is just like him.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:47 AM

Terry Gilliam Barbeque Plagued by Production Delays. Heh.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:07 PM

On Labor Day, I caught a portion of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Two sequences illustrate all that is wrong with the movie. The first is, as I should have suspected, a guest appearance by Whoopi Goldberg, destroyer of all that is comedic. The second is this scene, a flashback of a meeting at the Berlin Wall between our Baby Hero and the Villain which I paraphrase:

HERO: Before you kill me, can I have one last word?
VILLAIN: Yes, say your last vord.
HERO: Duck!
VILLAIN: Duck? Vhat kind of crazy, nutsy, koo-koo, meshugennah last vord is "Duck"? You're not right in ze head, sonny. I mean...[Gets knocked on the ass by go-cart-sized car]

What's wrong with this scene (besides the fact that a movie aimed at five-year-olds has a scene set at the Berlin Wall) is that the car is not a flying car but a regular on-the-ground car. So even if the villain had listened to the hero and ducked, it would have done him absolutely no good! For the rest of the picture (or the rest we watched), anytime the villain would show up, I'd say "Vhy did he say "Duck"? Zat makes no sense."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:05 PM

The Komediant, an excellent documentary I saw a couple of years back, is now available on DVD. My review when I first saw it can be found here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:10 PM

Speaking of blog coverage of the convention, I'll recommend once again Reason's coverage at a slightly different address. This time they've got more posters and comments. That way when Julian Sanchez wonders here how somebody could be assaulted with a sheet of glass, I can suggest that perhaps it involved two guys carrying the sheet of glass and trying to cross the street.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:58 PM

Mark Follman wrote an article for Salon sneering at the bloggers covering the RNC. One of the posts he quotes is from Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom. Problem is that Goldstein isn't really at the convention and was himself making fun of convention bloggers.

In this post, Goldstein calls Follman on his gullibility. Follman replies in the comments. In his first comment, he clearly still thinks Goldstein is at the convention. After Goldtsein explains the joke, Follman's next few comments are of the "I meant to do that" variety.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:42 PM

"Jolly Jim" Treacher provides definitive proof that the Quentin Tarantino blog is a fraud.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:07 PM

I find myself more sympathetic with Peter Bagge's latest Reason cartoon than Marc Singer does. Perhaps it's because I and many of my friends have to take day jobs to support our endeavors in our "art" yet there's no National Endowment for Comedy to give us a helping hand or provide us with a venue where our jokes aren't interrupted by cappucino machines.

That's why Singer's quote of Johanna Draper Carlson that a cartoonist with failed projects (like this one) shouldn't be pointing to popularity as proof of quality is unfair. The difference between Bagge and the fine art establishment is that Bagge isn't asking for government support of his unpopular work. Bagge supports his (fairly or not) less popular stuff by doing work that perhaps wouldn't be his first choice (like his Batboy strip and his Spider-man comic book).

Also Bagge's referral to Mapplethorpe as "commercially successful" does not, contrary to Singer, link excellence with commercial successful; it illustrates an argument against government funding for the arts: Either the work is popular in which case it doesn't need government support or it's not in which case it's perhaps unfair to ask taxpayers to pay for art they don't like.

The comments on Singer's site contain an interesting discussion as to the causes of the art community's detachment from the public. Singer's complaint that "Bagge wants to turn this problematic inscrutability into an anti-government, pro-market diatribe" ignores the possibility that perhaps government funding is the cause of the problem. If funding to the art is independent of any appeal to the public, there's no incentive to bridge the gap between the public and the art community. Maybe the situation would improve if art was more dependent on paid admissions and/or private donations.

The status quo isn't great for the artistic community either. Their art isn't a pure expression of what Bagge calls "the genre" because what government pays for, the government controls. Thus the artist must self-censor for fear of providing fodder for demagoguing politicians. Or his funding has to be filtered through a few bureaucracies to give government deniability.

One final note: One of Shakespeare's plays has the same plot as a Three Stooges short**. Bagge's description of Shakespeare's works as 400-year-old situation comedies isn't entirely unfair.

**Also whereas Comedy of Errors features two sets of identical twins, "A Merry Mix-up" features three sets of identical triplets and is thus 2.25 times as funny. It's pure mathematical logic!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:15 AM

The Wayanses will be writing and producing a movie version of the Munsters. According to the Hollywood Reporter story), "[t]he Wayans version will stay true to the original characters, but will place them in a contemporary setting." In English, this means there will be fart and poo jokes.

(Via Defamer which also lists who will be offered and refuse a comedy pitch.)

UPDATE: I'm sure, by the way, that this announcement is in no way timed to coincide with the release of the Munsters 1st Season DVD set.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:13 PM

Baby Geniuses II is going to be released this Friday!! Our long wait really, really is over!!! (As opposed to the last time I thought our long wait was over when I thought the movie was going to open in mid-April.)

I have confirmation from the film's site and I saw ads in yesterday's paper. Now granted the latter could mean that it's just getting an LA and New York opening and then will be rolled out in other cities over the next month. I can't say for sure.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:00 PM

Bushisms? Today's Doonesbury is Bushisms? I expect to see this crap in my email inbox with seven "Fwd:"'s, not on the front page of the funnies.

At least one of the Bushisms has been debunked (context is a harsh mistress). Of course, Trudeau has a history of being gullible when it comes to anti-Bush claims.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:32 AM

You'll recollect a post of mine where I pointed to the story of a Palestinian lad who was killed trying to stop terrorists from installing a rocket launcher and that I predicted that the boy would be included in the "Palestinian deaths" count. Well, guess what? The Palestinians have included him in a list of people gunned down by Israeli military. Story here.

The story ends with your traditional comparison of deaths on each side. Here's another story of people who are included in the Palestinian ledger (login: cptspaulding/cptspaulding). Palestinians carrying explosives to be used in Jerusalem were stopped at a checkpoint. As Israeli forces approach to investigate, the payload is set off killing two Palestinians.

Note the article refers to two hundred attacks foiled. The relatively low death count of Israelis ain't from lack of trying.

UPDATE: The prematurely-exploded bomb was hidden in a baby carriage (Story here). Remember that the next time there's international outrage that Israeli soldiers are searching baby carriages.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:58 PM

Just a quick note that tonight Conan is doing an "infomercial" for his DVDs. Featuring Triumph, Bernie Kopell, and Bruce Jenner.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:24 PM

Another Michael Moore thing: Tim Blair points to a letter in the Australian which points out that if you do the math that, contrary to Moore, children of Congresspeople are over-represented in Iraq.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:31 PM

Scott Calonico posted in Comments this link of a series of photos of Hosam Abdoh, the 14-year-old, would-be suicide bomber who was fortunately stopped before anyone was killed.

This is what I was talking about here when I mentioned the Palestinian skill of public relations. This lad was caught the day after Ahmed Yassin, the so-called spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed. While the world community is condemning Israel, Palestinians are literally sending children out to murder.

For the Palestinian people to take advantage of good publicity, they would have to not try to murder Jews for a day or two. Apparently too much to ask.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:57 PM

My brother who's had to deal with Bill Kirchenbauer aka Baldguy96's "I'm a big star dammit!" behavior on Usenet (in this thread which continued into this thread and this thread) was extremely amused by the Defamer post that Kirchenbauer has joined Ramsey-Schilling Real Estate.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:46 PM

Catching up on links folks sent me, reader Beau Bahan sent me this list of Don Martin onomatopoeia. One of the things that sold me on Conan O'Brien his first year on the air was his interview with Don Martin where O'Brien had Martin come up with sound effects for given situations.

And speaking of Conan's first year, comedy genius Robert Smigel discusses Conan's first year and other things in this Onion AV Club interview.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:57 PM

Two phrases in the same review are guaranteed to make me avoid a movie. Those phrases are "Directed by Spike Lee" and "Running time: 138 minutes".
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:44 PM

On Tuesday August 3rd Turner Classic Movies, as part of its "Summer of the Stars" month, will be running a Bob Hope marathon. This marathon will be more in line with what should have been run last year when Hope died (which I complained about here). You might recollect the probable explanation for last year's poor showing of Hope films was that Universal had placed a moratorium on its film library until they got sold (as I noted here). Well, NBC owns Universal and Universal apparently sold TV rights to TCM (judging by the network's recent broadcast of Frankenstein movies and a few Abbott and Costello movies).

Speaking of Abbott and Costello, reader Monkeyboy aka Nathan McGinty aka Scott Calonico posted a link in comments to this review of Abbott and Costello's Jack and the Beanstalk as part of Film Threat's Bootleg Files column (more of which can be found in their archives.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:35 AM

Suppresion of Dissent Department: Tim Blair reports that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was thrown out of the Convention. (Be sure to read reason.com's convention coverage, particularly "[i]f fun, excitement, and adventure are the first things you think when you hear the words 'John Forbes Kerry'")
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:08 AM

The Spider-Man cartoon show is on DVD; yet no one has collected my first introduction to Spidey: his appearances on the Electric Company. This page has cast info and episode guides.

Unlike your modern Tobey Maguire Spider-Man who seems to always remove his mask willy-nilly, in the Electric Company version of Spider-Man, nobody knows who he is.

UPDATE: There's an extended disco version of the Electric Company Spider-Man theme, available here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:08 PM

A 15-year-old Palestinian is murdered by terrorists for trying to stop a rocket launcher from being installed in his neighborhood (Jerusalem Post story here). Link from Best of the Web which wonders if it will receive Rachel Corrie-level of outrage.

Realize the next time someone quotes the "X number of Israelis dead and Y number of Palestinians dead (Y > X)" statistic that this lad's death is included in the Palestinian count.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:56 AM

TvShowsonDVD says that Shout! Factory has announced October 19th as the release date for the second volume of SCTV.

UPDATE: TvShowsonDVD now has a list of episodes and extras in the set plus an announcement of Volume 3 in February 2005.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:29 AM

Mmmmm...donut-flavored beverage.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:22 PM

"Billionaire Bill" Sherman and I had a little discussion on his blog as to didn't Slimfast know Whoopi Goldberg would potentially be controversial. I was at a distinct disadvantage as I haven't figured out for twenty years or so why anyone would hire Whoopi Goldberg for anything.

Whoopi Goldberg is so unfunny that actual humor is destroyed in her presence. She made the Muppets unfunny. She made Bullwinkle unfunny. Why was the original Sunshine Boys a great comedy and the remake unwatchable? Remake had Whoopi.

She received the Mark Twain Prize in November 2001 and for two years Mark Twain wasn't funny! It took teams of Literature professors working around the clock to restore the humor and wit in Twain's work. And Pudd'nhead Wilson still isn't as good as it used to be.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:23 PM

Pop Culture Detritus I noticed over the past week:

• Why the Sixties were the Marvel Age of Comics:In Fantastic Four #18, Reed Richards has just finished describing his longshot plan to beat a seemingly unbeatable foe. The Thing asks "What if your plan doesn't work?" The Human Torch replies "Then he'll apologize, loud mouth."


• In the first Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movie Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes is not the star of the movie. Rather, the gentleman who played Baskerville was.


• The Voice of Terror was the first Sherlock Holmes movie made by Universal who had the strategy of placing Holmes in the modern era. As Holmes is about to leave 21B Baker Street, he grabs for his famous deerstalker. Watson tut-tuts Holmes, saying "Now Holmes, you promised." Holmes gives an exasperated sigh and grabs for the latest in early-1940's hattery.


• The Voice of Terror, which is about Holmes stopping a Nazi saboteur who broadcasts over the radio, was based on the Arthur Conan Doyle story "His Last Bow". They're both in English.(Use liberally for I, Robot.)


• Watching the UFO episode of that Penn and Teller show whose name I can't use in this family website, I spotted Harmon Leon, a professional hoaxter as one of the UFO kooks. It's arguable whether P&T were fooled (They noted the smirk of his partner in an interview). Here's the article of his adventures at the UFO expo and here are some articles he's written.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:20 PM

From the "Oh, Joy! Rapture!" Department: Digital Bits reports announcements from Universal including a set of the Paramount Marx Brothers films, a WC Fields set, and three more Monster Legacy sets: Invisible Man, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:59 AM

Miscellaneous stuff: In comments to a couple of posts (here and here), Peter Sean Bradley expresses amusement that Harlan Ellison wrote The Oscar. In search of what Ellison says of the movie now, I found this Usenet post on the matter and this amusing description of the film for those who want to catch the jokes they missed in "The Noble". I also confirmed my memory that the movie came up in the Sinatra vs Ellison exchange in the Gay Talese article about Sinatra.

Also my brother, in comments, posts the explanation for the (possible) in-joke of Stan Lee's cameo that I alluded to here:

As I recall (but can't find evidence to back up my recollection other than my brother's identical recollection of reading the same piece in either the New Yorker or Esquire), in the first movie, Stan Lee was to have a cameo in the Times Square sequence where, inter alia, he shouts "Look out!" and saves a small child from falling debris. The speaking part was cut out, and Lee only got a half-second or so of screentime. However, the line and action sequence is resuscitated for Lee in Spider-Man 2.

I was going to search for the article in question before posting the explanation but haven't had time. All I've found on the web is that a) several comic news sites quoting each other that Lee's cameo in the first movie involved his trying to sell official X-Men sunglasses to Peter Parker and b) that he was supposed to be the "Hey, Spidey stole that guy's pizzas" guy.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:54 AM

The World Court has ruled against the Israeli fence. Knowing the Palestinian skill in public relations, I predict that terrorists will murder five Israeli school children in the next couple of days.
UPDATE:Or something like this. Note that it happened in Tel Aviv which is occupied terriotory only in the sense that "from the river to the sea" is occupied territory.
UPDATE 2:One of the bomb victims was an Israeli Arab who protested the fence. He's changed his mind. Story here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:28 PM

I saw Spider-man 2 last night. And I think without exaggeration that it is the greatest work of film in the history of cinema. Did Citizen Kane have webslinging? No! Was there wall-crawling in Casablanca? There was not! Did you see Dr. Octopus in The Godfather? 'Cause I sure as hell didn't.

If you care you probably already know but the image of Parker throwing out his costume was a direct swipe/homage to this picture.

The science of Octavius's work and origin is laughable (I expected the element he was working with to be called Octavium or Shazamium) but at least they didn't linger on it like The Hulk spending an hour on the science of the Hulk.

I can't find the article to prove it but there's a hidden in-joke with Stan Lee's cameo (unless my brother and I are reading too much into it). There's also a nice little nod to Raimi's earlier work.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:59 AM

A documentarian tries to get an interview with Michael Moore:

we talked to some folks on the street, and then headed over to Dog Eat Dog[Moore's company]'s listed address. Turned out to be a Mailboxes Etc. But I went inside and asked the chick at the desk if Mike ever came in to check his mail. She said that he sends interns. But, luckily, I had noticed that next door to the Mailboxes, etc, was a florist. So I bought a very special bouquet that just rang out, “Congratulations on making $21million in two days,” while also saying, “Can we get that interview we've been requesting for a year and a half?” I also called Dog Eat Dog and tried to set up an appointment, but the receptionist wouldn't transfer me. You'd think I was trying to get in to see a multimillionaire CEO… oh, wait…

Update: And speaking of Michael Moore ducking interviews, a Box Office Mojo article contains this footnote:

NOTE: Box Office Mojo asked Michael Moore and company to comment for this story, but they wanted to screen the questions in advance. As policy, Box Office Mojo does not conduct interviews under such circumstances, so there will be no comment from them.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:06 PM

In my post about Ray Bradbury taking umbrage at Michael Moore for swiping his title, a commentator notes

Remember when Bradbury learned that EC was doing unauthorized adaptations of his stories? His reaction was to praise the job they were doing.

That doesn't appear to be the entire story. The consensus on the 'Net is that after Bradbury found out about EC swiping his stuff, he started getting paid (although it's not clear if EC did more adaptations or if Bradbury contributed original stuff for EC). It's also not clear if he was retroactively paid for the stuff they swiped or what would have happened if they didn't take him up on his offer of contributing to future issues. The book Bradbury, an Illustrated Life apparently has correspondence between Ray Bradbury and William M. Gaines and may be worth looking into.

Another Bradbury-getting-stolen-from story was told in a documentary of Ray Harryhausen. Bradbury was approached to write a movie. The producer told him that he swiped the plot from a story in a pulp magazine. As you can probably guess, Bradbury was the author of that story. He was sent a check a couple of weeks later.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:08 PM

"Pac-Man Fever" came up for reasons not worth mentioning in a mailing list I'm on. And the Google helped me find the official Buckner & Garcia site and a Pac-Man Fever fansite which helpfully notes that the CD Buckner & Garcia sell on their site is a re-recording and not the original 1982 album.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:36 PM

Because You Demanded It: A commenter asks for my thoughts on the new SCTV boxed set. What's to say? It's SCTV, legitimate candidate for the best television sketch show ever. It's great. Highlights include "The Nobel", a brilliant parody of The Oscar, the movie directly responsible for the fact that Tony Bennett now only plays the role of himself in movies.

One thing that dates the show are commercials for variety shows starring non-entertainer celebrities (Gene Shalit, some Russian weightlifter). The variety show format has essentially died, partially because it was used by the networks to exploit celebrities that the network didn't know what to do with.

Interesting fact learned from commentary: Bobby Bitman's "How are ya?" was a goof on Marty Allen's catchphrase "Hello dere".

And volume 2 is scheduled for October!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:12 PM

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are going to play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in a production of A Study in Scarlet. Details here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:03 PM

Dave Chapelle discovers that fame doesn't stop an audience from talking during your stand-up set and possibly makes things worse (since in his case, the audience keeps shouting that they were in fact Rick James). Tying in to our discussion of comedians' doing commercials:

They do what they do for money - that's all. I don't even know why you're listening to me. I've done commercials for both Coke and Pepsi. Truth is, I can't even taste the difference, but Pepsi paid me last, so there it is.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:01 PM

Mountain Dew is running a commercial (apparently one in a series) featuring a combined live-action and CGI version of Spy vs. Spy. It's a pretty faithful adaptation (except, of course, that the Spies are lured by delicious, refreshing Mountain Dew). I wonder if they'll do a commercial with the female, grey-checkered Spy of Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy.

They actually get right an important thing that I was convinced Hollywood would mess up. Specifically, when I first moved to LA, it was announced there was going to be a Spy vs. Spy movie (I can prove it too). As an intellectual exercise, I imagined how I'd pitch trying to get the gig to write the movie.

How the movie would likely be screwed up: The temptation would be great to make one spy the cool, hip spy, the one the audience should side with. Part of the humor of the cartoon was that the spies were essentially indistinguishable (a view I suspect Antonio Prohias did not feel about the Cold War what with nearly being jailed by Castro).

The plot of my version would have both Spies after a MacGuffin, let's say the Potrzebie Device built by Dr. Roger Kaputnik. They would fight each other in increasingly elaborate schemes to get their hands on it and swipe it from the other. Ideally the number of victories for each would be equal. The movie would end with the grey-checkered spy getting the jump on both and saving the Potrzebie device for America.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:48 PM

For those of my readers who enjoy the comic books, there's a nifty site of comix commentary called "Howling Curmudgeons" written by a Who's Who of early-90's rec.arts.comics.* posters. All of you Captain Spaulding completists might want to check out a discussion of Garfield's box office potential, including yet another why-January-box-office-rankings-don't-count rant (here's my first one). Of course, why anyone would think a movie about our 20th President would be successful is beyond me.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:32 PM

A reader (who now that we have comments can let you all in on his brilliance) speculates the possibility that Bob Odenkirk may end up known as the "President of Beers" guy. Perhaps. On the other hand, people who have never heard of Odenkirk or Mr. Show are getting their first exposure to Mr. Show-style comedy. Odenkirk has often argued that their stuff really isn't that crazy or out-there and would be appreciated by Middle America. These commercials might not hurt in demonstrating that. They're presumably successful enough that Budweiser feels the need to respond.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:31 PM

In celebration of my two-year blogaversary last week, I'm now providing comments, bringing me to the cutting edge of mid-2003. Keep the swears to a minimum.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:30 PM

The shame about the I, Robot movie is that one of the things Asimov wanted to accomplish with his robot stories was to prove you could stories about robots besides "robot kill puny hu-man", Frankenstein-esque stuff. Assumably his Three Laws of Robotics were a way to assure the audience that we wouldn't be seeing that sort of crap. So, of course, the movie adaptation is about robots taking over the world.

Rather than see this film, a better use of your ten bucks would be to buy Harlan Ellison's I, Robot screenplay adaptation from an attempt to film the stories in 1977.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:13 PM

Regarding the matter Jim brought up in the same post about comedians being sell-outs for doing commercials, I had the same argument back when George Carlin did long distance ads and someone said Carlin "didn't need" to do the ads. I suggested that we have no idea what's going on in Carlin's life and maybe shouldn't judge. As I learned a couple of years later, he had huge tax problems at the time and needed the money from those commercials to pay his tax bill so I was right. Besides no one could cite a bit of his which was contradicted by doing phone ads (other than a vague "But he's anti-establishment!!!!").

Similarly Jim judges David Cross for doing crappy movies when the thread he cites (an interesting one where Patton Oswalt defends himself and Odenkirk for "selling out" and gets in a plug for Sierra Mist while he's at it) notes that Cross was hoping to get a movie greenlighted by the same studio.

During the Carlin discussion, somebody quoted a Bill Hicks bit where he rants that comedians shouldn't do commercials. I replied that I wish he had a rule that comedians shouldn't drown out the comedy in their comedy albums with bad guitar music.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:42 PM

I thought "Jolly Jim" Treacher was joking when he said that Budweiser had its lizards goofing on Bob Odenkirk but then I found this article with dialogue and links to a couple of commercials. I was slightly misled by Jim since the ads are fairly generic and would fit any actor playing the "President of Beers" guy. I thought the commercials would be Odenkirk-specific:

FRANKIE: So what did you think of Run, Ronnie, Run?
LOUIE: It's cutting-edge! A parody of Cops in 2001!
FRANKIE: No wonder he has to do beer commercials.
LOUIE: How many shows has that guy tried to get on the air?
FRANKIE: Four or five.
LOUIE: I haven't seen that many failed pilots since I visited Southwest Airlines flight school!

[Disclaimer: I've been a fan of Bob Odenkirk since '92.]
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:07 AM

In this translation of a Norwegian interview with Ray Bradbury, Bradbury says he's mad that Michael Moore swiped the Farenheit 451 title. Bradbury tried to get in touch with Moore but Moore didn't return his phone calls. Maybe he should follow Michael Moore with a video camera and a guy dressed as a horse.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:03 AM

Via Hit and Run, Trey Parker and Matt Stone discuss in an E! interview the original plans for Team America, their new movie with an all-marionette cast:

"It started when we got snuck a script of The Day After Tomorrow, that Roland Emmerich movie about how global warming causes an ice age in two days," says Stone. "It's the kind of script where you know it's going to make hundreds of millions of dollars, which makes it the greatest dumb script ever."

"We planned to secretly shoot that movie with puppets, word for word, and release it on the same day. We thought that would have been hilarious, but our lawyer convinced us we wouldn't get it released."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:18 AM

The Action channel (part of the Starz superduper package) is broadcasting Green Hornet reruns and no one had the decency to tell me?

In other news, Turner Classic Movies is running Man of a Thousand Faces on Wednesday. This is of interest here since it features Robert Evan's motion picture debut as mogul Irving Thalberg.

Man of a thousand faces? Ha! More like 763 faces. But we can fake those missing 237 faces. After all, they don't call me the boy genius of Hollywood because of my good looks. Sometimes if life hands you lemons, you've got to throw those lemons back at life and say "Screw you and your crummy lemons."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:07 AM

Salon reported that Michael Moore interviewed Nicholas Berg for his new movie Farenheit 911. The loud noise you may be hearing is my snort of derisive laughter at Salon's claim that "word of the footage reached Salon through a source unaffiliated with Moore, or his film". Suuuuure.

Conveniently, the footage is not in the final cut and Moore's statement says that he's privately dealing the family. My uneducated guess is the interview didn't happen. It's not like there isn't precedent for Michael Moore making up interviews.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg reached the same conclusion. Also Berg's sister is suspicious

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:13 PM

Defamer has a couple of reviews of the Andy Kaufman back-from-the-dead show Sunday. Arguably topping the milk and cookie of the Carnegie Hall show, the show was continued at the Bunny Ranch brothel and all who showed there got a free round with a prostitute (and I don't mean a round of wrestling) (well, in a way, I guess I do). Defamner also has pictures from the Ranch
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:06 PM

I don't normally go to Star Trek conventions (yeah, sure-ed. Shut up!) but I'm strongly tempted to go to this one which supposedly will be James (TV's Scotty) Doohan's last convention appearance. (If you never go to Star Trek conventions, how come you were on the Star Trek web site?-ed. Yeah, well, at least I'm not a bad ripoff of Mickey Kaus shtick.)

UPDATE: The official press release from the convention organizers.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:19 PM

Andy Kaufman is back and has the Blog to prove it.

UPDATE: Although you'd think he'd be willing to pay a lousy twelve bucks to drop his banner ad.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:24 PM

Now that Blogger provides comments, I'm going to go ahead and turn them on as an experiment. Keep it clean.

UPDATE: I find that Blogger requires you to either be a member of blogger or sign your comment as "anonymous". To hell with that. I'll look into various Comment services and find something better maybe.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:40 PM

When I was purchasing Volume 2 of the Abbott & Costello boxed set, I noticed that Universal had also put the classic Road movies in a Franchise Collection.

In more important Universal DVD news, according to Entertainment Weekly's review of the Marx Brothers DVD set, the Paramount Marx Brothers movies (owned by Universal) are coming to DVD later this year.

Maybe hopes that the complete Laurel and Hardy set, currently only available in Britain, might come to America or that some sort of Laurel & Hardy release might come to America isn't a pipe dream.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:14 AM

Supposedly, Andy Kaufman spoke of faking his death and returning twenty years later. Kaufman died on May 16, 1984 so that anniversary is coming up in less than two weeks. The House of Blues is holding a special show on that day. This LA Weekly article is about that show and Andy and also points out that Zmuda's book said Andy spoke of returning ten years later.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:33 AM

The voice cast of the Simpsons have renewed their contract. Our long national nightmare is over.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:53 AM

Said LA Weekly article includes this link to video footage of Bush wiping his glasses with Letterman's producer's sweater. Said site states that this footage is proof of Bush's arrogance.

I pointed out to the friend who sent me this link that if the election is going to be decided by "most arrogant loses", then Senator John Kerry is in trouble what with the dozens of stories of his pulling "Do you know who I am?" status to cut in line (including one from Dave Barry).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:47 AM

The person who wrote the LA Weekly article complaining of the alleged rightward drift of Leno (which I discussed here) has a new article complimenting Letterman for doing wacky Bush footage. The article includes this slam against Leno

Both Leno and Letterman wished Clinton could have a third term, and while Jay is still flogging really old blow-job humor...

That quote would be more relevant if the article hadn't been released the week Letterman had been dipping deep into the Clinton well, including a top-ten list. Timing is thus the secret not just of comedy but of articles about comedy.

The article also mentions parenthetically that until May of 2001, the guy in charge of Leno's monologues worked for an ultraliberal Congressman. This raise the question of how come there weren't newspaper articles then expressing outrage that Leno was breaking tha political trust of the Tonight Show.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:20 AM

Speaking of Nightline, here the executive producer of Nightline says "Sweeps? What are these "sweeps" of which you speak of?"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:10 AM

A reader noted to me via email that it's been fifteen days since my last update. If that weren't enough to get me off my ass and updating, I thought I heard Ted Koppel read my blog's name in tonight's Nightline.

I was unable to post since I've been waiting in line for the release of the Marx Brothers DVD set. Finally the store manager told me to go home and that there'd be plenty of copies whenever I came to the store. "That's what you said about the Abbott & Costello DVD's," I pointed out. "And I was right, " he replied. "You win this round," I said.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:27 PM

Mark Evanier predicts that the top two spots of Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups list will be between George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Cynical prediction: If it's really between those two then Carlin wins because Comedy Central just recently obtained broadcast rights to HBO's comedy specials which includes pretty much everything Carlin has done on film stand-up-wise.

I do have to admit that I'm pleasantly surprised that Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and George Burns were in the 20-40 slots.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:09 PM

From the "Where's My Spy Camera?" Dept: Fantagraphics announces that they have volume one of the Peanuts collection and hope to have all pre-orders shipped by Friday. The Li'l Folks collection shipment arrived partially damaged and so only some will be shipped.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:54 AM

Documents relating to the failed attempt by Dustin Diamond, TV's Screech, to get the dustindiamond.com domain name. Of interest is the response to the complaint, particularly point 14 discussing Diamond's fame:

Mr. Diamond’s attorneys have sadly overstated the extent of their client’s renown and the value of his "brand." This becomes embarrassingly clear when they attempt to support their claim by pointing to their client’s video, "Dustin Diamond Teaches Chess." Their Exhibit H shows an advertisement for the video on a nonexistent web site [EXHIBIT G]. Their Exhibit I shows a listing (not an advertisement, as they claim) for the video on eBay from February 3, 2004, shortly before the complaint was filed. It is very possible that the eBay offer was posted by Mr. Diamond or his representatives. Apparently Mr. Diamond’s legal team can find no evidence that "Dustin Diamond Teaches Chess" is anything but a self-published vanity project, one that does not support the claim that the name "Dustin Diamond" has acquired secondary meaning. In fact, the video is listed in none of the standard on-line retail outlets (Amazon.com, bn.com, etc.), casting further doubt on Mr. Diamond’s claim that the video was "sold widely nationwide in retail stores and on the Internet."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:04 AM

"Billionaire Bill" Sherman in reviewing the Firefly DVDs wonders "how creator payment works for episodes that have never been aired on network television."

Basically the cast/creators were contracted to make thirteen (or whatever number) of for-broadcast-on-network-TV episodes of Firefly and are paid the same whether or not the episodes are actually broadcast. If the episodes are not broadcast on the network but later broadcast on cable or as part of a DVD set, whatever extra payments were contracted for broadcasting on cable or as part of a DVD set kick in (not a whole lot in either case).

Since the episodes get paid for whether or not they're broadcast, this is why networks used to "burn off" episodes of cancelled shows over the summer. Now that summer is potentially lucrative, it may be more profitable for the network to take the loss (same reason why they don't run reruns of some shows even though they paid for that too).

An interesting twist is what's happening with Family Guy where the DVDs were so popular that Fox is creating new episodes. Although it hasn't been decided if they new episodes are airing on Fox or the Cartoon Network, the future of television in cases where the studio and the network are part of the same conglomerate may be for the broadcast of some shows to be treated as a loss leader for DVD sales.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:55 AM

From the "I'll Supersize You..." Dept. : In the upcoming documentary Supersize Me, the documentary maker eats nothing but fast food (specifically McDonald's) for a month to demonstrate the unhealthy effects of fast food. However, he arguably skews his results by avoiding exercise and consuming a high-calorie diet. To demonstrate the dishonesty of his experiment and to show how easy it is to skew results the other way, Soso Whaley is attempting to lose weight with an all McDonald's diet. Her diary can be read here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:41 PM

One traditional Passover song is "Dayenu" which translates to "It would have been enough". The song lists the great feats done for the Jewish people during the Exodus and after each one says "It would have been enough." If He had split the Red Sea but had not drowned Pharoah's soldiers it would have been enough. If He had led us to freedom but had not given us the Torah, it would have been enough. And so on.

Leave it to the Jewish people to write a passive-aggressive hymn. "It's OK. You don't have to give us the Torah. We don't want to be a bother. No, you've done plenty."
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