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"Daniel Frank is a very funny guy with a funny weblog." --- Mark Evanier.

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Saturday, January 31, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:24 AM

Happy National Gorilla Suit Day!!!!!!!

I over-explained the joke at this time last year.

Bob Trancho provides a couple of sample panels from the cartoon which started it all.

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Thursday, January 29, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:33 PM

Girls are Pretty's own Bob Powers is this week's Onion AV Club's "Say Something Funny".

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Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:51 PM

New accounts of Dr. Mengele's experiments reveal that there was actually more torture during the Holocaust than we thought. The story here.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:45 PM

My brother suggests that Al Franken's joke may also be an allusion to this story about the Rosie O'Donnell-Rosie magazine dispute and that the allusion went over the head of the tourists in the audience (and mine too, I guess).

I sort of gave credence to Franken's story, mainly because something similar happened to Dick Gregory in '63. His son died while he was in Brimingham protesting. He tells the tale of a call he received from Alabama in his autobiography:

"I just heard on the radio your son died, and let me tell you it serves you right, I'm real glad that happened, you coming down here where you don't belong and stirring up all..."
"I'm glad, too. I had five million dollars' worth of insurance on him."
There was a long silence, and then she said: "I'm sorry, please forgive me."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:44 AM

I need to defend Al Franken against "Jolly Jim" Treacher.

Treacher attacks the end of Franken's Letterman appearance where Franken how his mother had died a couple of months and some jerk posted on an Amazon customer review of his book that "You know what happens to people who write books like this? Their moms die." Treacher omits the punchline "What really bothered me was that above that review it said '29 out of 37 people found this review helpful.'"

Now the punchline was slightly inaudible since the audience was being horrified by the part about what the jerk said. And arguably Franken should have known that this would happen in a story about a dead mother. But Letterman's people vetted the story since Letterman asked a question which led to the anecdote.

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Friday, January 23, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:31 PM

I link to this LA Times article (login:cptspaulding/cptspaulding) about a screenwriter who became the first person arrested by the Feds for videotaping movies at pre-release screenings because of this sentence:

Still, he pursued his dream of selling his script, "Between Heaven and Hell," which he described as a science-fiction/martial-arts tale about five border patrol agents.

Erik Blevins, call your agent!

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:09 PM

I always had a fondness for the ping pong balls falling on the Captain. Its core is a standard Niagara Falls-type bit where wacky things happen when a code word is said. But it lasted the life of the show. Imagine Costello/Curly/Lucy living with the "Slowly I turned" guy for twenty years.

And it's not like the code word was a common one. Unless you work at a rec room, a sporting goods store, or a ping pong ball factory, the phrase "ping pong balls" doesn't come up in regular conversation. As opposed to Milton Berle actually needed "Make-up!" as part of his show biz duties.

It must have been a real challenge to the writers. After all they could only dip into the "I'm not going to say it!" "Say what?" "Ping pong balls!!!" well before even little kids notice that it's getting repetitive.

UPDATE: This was Mystery Science Theater 3000's version of the gag (in this episode):

Mike: It was kinda like the old "Captain Kangaroo" show.
Tom Servo: Oh, yeah! I remember that! What _was_ it exactly that they used to drop on his head?
Mike: I think it was ping pong balls. [Ping pong balls fall]

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:01 PM

When asked to comment on Keeshan's death, Wesley Clark said "With all due respect, he is a captain and I'm a general."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:00 PM

Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo, died this morning. The report is unclear about whether his death is ping-pong ball related.

Here and here are a couple of TVParty pages on the good Captain (the second page includes a discussion of a second show Keeshan and CBS did to force out a third party who co-owned Captain Kangaroo with them). Mark Evanier tells the secret origin of Clarabella the Clown.

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Sunday, January 18, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:24 AM

This article about Popeye's 75th-anniversary states that Paul Reiser has scripted a Popeye TV special. Now, I'm not saying I have a list of people that I want to write Popeye cartoons but if I had to make such a list Paul Reiser would not be on it.

"What's the deal with spinach? It's supposed to be good for you but people don't seem to enjoy it."

Was Kevin Pollack unavailable?

Not to start any rumors, but I hear Paul Reiser's Popeye cartoon is suspiciously similar to the Popeye cartoon Richard Lewis has been doing for years.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:05 AM

Our long wait is over!!!!! Baby Geniuses II now has a release date of April 15, 2004! Can a new special edition of the DVD of the first film with exclusive coming attractions be far behind? I notice that Amazon only has five copies of the current edition.

Here's my speculation on why Scott Baio has to be in movies like this.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:57 AM

In this interview with Family Circus cartoonist Bill Keane, I learned some interesting facts including that the real-life Billy is a big-shot at Disney animation, Keane enjoys Zippy the Pinhead (hence his willingness to do this crossover) and that he claims that he enjoyed the Dysfunctional Family Circus until it started using way too many swears.

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Monday, January 12, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:47 PM

A commercial for M&Ms to plug their "Find Our Colors" contest has Judy Garland telling the M's of a dream in color. What's impressive about the commercial was that the voice of Judy Garland sounded like Judy Garland.

Something I noticed when the Forrest Gump technology was new and modern people were being put together with figures of the past is how terrible the voices often were. Thousands were spent on placing Tom Hanks next to John F. Kennedy but about thirty bucks was spent on the guy dubbing in JFK's voice. I mean, come on, Vaughn Meader wasn't available?

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:39 PM

I can not recommend highly enough the You Bet Your Life - The Lost Episodes DVD set that I got for Hanukah.

One interesting bonus feature was a record that DeSoto gave away in 1950, Season's Greetings from DeSoto - Laughs with Groucho, a best-of compilation. One of the segments is an excerpt from a show featuring Mr. and Mrs. Storey, a couple from Bakersfield with 20 children. You probably know that episode better for the segment that was not on the record and its discussion of Groucho's love of cigars.

One of the episodes includes a reminder from the National Safety Council to remove your keys from the ignition when you park.

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Thursday, January 08, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:15 PM

Billionaire Bill Sherman complains that in yesterday's West Wing, President Bartlett visits the Lincoln Memorial without Secret Service protection. I personally was waiting for a guy to ask Lincoln if he should grow a moustache (and on a similar theme, Bartlett would have been safer going alone to the Jefferson Memorial since no one ever visits it).

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:23 PM

Harry Shearer is called to jury duty on the Robert Blake case as is Christina Applegate and tells his tale to Lloyd Groves.

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Sunday, January 04, 2004

Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:14 AM

This LA Times reports on American beef industry practices "that convert every last scrap of slaughtered livestock into ingredients for consumer products." So using the entire cow is bad and proof of "the notion that every last bit of the cow must be turned into profit". No reports yet on whether Native Americans' using all parts of the buffalo still demonstrates a love of nature and respect for the environment.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:56 AM

Judging from this report by Mark Evanier, the Game Show Network is on its way to step 4 of the evolution of niche cable networks that has been followed by AMC and the Sci-Fi Network:

Create niche network.
Urge fans of niche to lobby their cable companies to pick up "the only network that's all [science-fiction, game shows, classic movies, etc.] all the time"
Now that network is on the air, decide that fans of niche are not enough.
Create new programming to move away from niche and towards gaining audience of 18-35.
Cancel new programming as it gets lower ratings then just running niche shows.
Go back to step 4.

On a similar subject, a little ad for TCM is included with the Warner Legends box set. It boasts that TCM does not edit films nor does it run commercials as presumably a knock against AMC.

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