Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:01 PM

Torahs getting rescued from Katrina floods.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:33 AM

Speaking of the Washington Generals, the story of Louis "Red" Klotz, the founder of the Generals and the owner of the New York Nationals, the current play-against-the-Globetrotters team.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:21 AM

Roy Disney, after his failed attempt to take over Disney, just bought a controlling share of the Harlem Globetrotters. In other news, Byron Allen, after his failed attempt to buy the Pax network, just bought the Washington Generals.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:45 AM

A prediction about Commander-in-Chief (based solely on the fact of the involvement of Rod Laurie who did the same thing in The Contender): We will not see Geena Davis's character for the first several minutes of the show. She will be referred to in non-sex-specific terms ("Get the Vice President on the phone!", that sort of thing). In her first scene, she will be with her husband and the scene will be staged in such a way as to make it seem like the husband is the VP with the reveal that the VP is a woman ("A woman Vice President?!?!?! Crazy!!!!") supposed to be a surprise twist despite the fact that the show has been heavily advertised.

UPDATE: Based on this review, at some point during the show's run there will be a scene where Geena Davis is talking to some high muckity-muck on the phone while trying to get the kiddies ready for school with the inevitable "No, general, I did not tell you to eat your cereal" punchline.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:33 AM

LA Times article about Albert Brooks's new movie which I am cautiously optimistic about. And an aint-it-cool-news review.

UPDATE: Tim Cavanaugh suggests the optimism is unfounded.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:31 PM

This obituary for Don Adams contains this puzzling statement:

The show [Get Smart] lived on in syndication and a cartoon series.

Cartoon series?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:05 AM

A frequently parodied scene is one where a pilot in a love triangle clubs the
other pilot in the love triangle over the head with a wrench so he can fly the suicidally dangerous mission. I vividly remember a Carol Burnett sketch with a punchline of a) the two pilots knocked each other out, b) the girl in question flies the dangerous mission and c) the two pilots wink at each other after she leaves as this was their plan all along. I'd also swear MAD did a "Scenes We'd Like to See" type parody -- not that I'm finding it in my CD-ROM collection.

So the question I put out to you good folk is what movie was this from? A Guy Named Joe was suggested to me but Spencer Tracy dies at the very beginning of the film. A Yank in the RAF seems like a good candidate but both pilots fly the dangerous mission so that can't be it. My Google skills are failing me. Or is this a cliche so widespread that there is no one origin?

UPDATE: Wings seems plausible but it has the same flaw as A Yank in the RAF, both gentlemen go on the dangerous mission. Test Pilot was also suggested but judging from this description, a) it again seems like Clark Gable also went on a dangerous flight and b) Spencer Tracy's character doesn't appear to be in love with Myrna Loy. It does make me realize that I assumed it was a war movie but could be any pair of pilots that do dangerous stuff. In fact, a war movie in this situation makes little sense since assumably all pilots fly the dangerous mission at the same time.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:48 PM

How far has Ben Affleck fallen? Not only is he doing commentary for Mallrats but Amazon can't spell his name right.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:06 PM

The irony of Mickey Kaus's billing situation with the LA Times is that the Times did an article about shenanigans used by various online companies to make unsubscribing difficult.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:04 AM

Arbitrators for the World Intellectual Property Organization awarded the rights to fatalbert.org to Bill Cosby and takes it from a Tennessee company (article here). In a side ruling, the WIPO also ruled that the Tennessee company was like school on Saturday.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:34 AM

Good news for loyal reader Jim Woster: Rockford Files is coming to DVD. Since it's Universal, probably no extras.

UPDATE: So is Mr. Peepers.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:00 AM

Not to start rumors or anything but apparently the new movie The Man consists entirely of Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy saying "You the man" "No, you the man" "No, you the man" "How can I be the man when you the man?" and so forth for 90 minutes.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:53 PM

The various Bob Denver obituaries I've seen have ignored one of his most lasting contributions: Thanks to Far-Out Space Nuts, NASA modified the design of future space ships to not put the Launch button so close to the supply/meal-loading buttons.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:41 PM

This radio broadcast is of the original March of Dimes show. Interesting if, for nothing else, hearing Bob Hope introduced as a rising young comic.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:30 PM

I went to Knott's Berry Farm Sunday. My thoughts:

• I found a carnival game I'm good at. I forget the name but it's a pinball game where you shoot the pinballs and try to catch them. I got 4-out-of-5 and won a 15" Homer Simpson doll on my first $2.


• Not having learned my lesson from Six Flags, I nearly wrenched my back on the Ghostrider. Grumble.


• How come if Dippin' Dots is the ice cream of the future, I only see it at carnivals, amusement parks and fairs?


• The fried chicken at Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Resaurant is quite tasty. And unlike other restaurants where if I'm eating alone they skimp on the bread basket, I was given a huge number of biscuits.


• The restaurant also, as one would suspect, had a nice selection of jams at the table. And I know it was jam because jelly don't shake like that.


• To my disappointment, the Snoopy store doesn't have any merchandise of relatively-but-not-that-obscure characters like Schroeder or PigPen. Or Marcy for that matter even though they have Peppermint Patty. They did have yellow T-shirts with the Charlie Brown squiggle design though.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:38 PM

The book Jerry Lewis has been saying that he's going to write about Martin and Lewis is apparently coming out in mid-October (Amazon link here). Given that every time he's talked about it, he's said stuff like "I just finished fifty pages about a dinner we had in March of 1950", I'm not too sure on the quality of the book.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:17 PM

A comment in this Hit and Run post answers the commonly-asked question, "How come gas stations raise prices when they didn't pay that price for the gas already in the storage tank?"

Most people think that the "fair" price for the gas they buy is the wholesale price of the gas the station has already purchased plus a reasonable markup for profit[...]However, the price of a gallon of gas you buy doesn't reflect the cost that particular gallon but rather the expected cost of the gallon of gas the station will have to buy to replace it. As the expected replacement price soars, so does the cost to the customer for the gas already in stations tanks because that is where the station is getting the money to buy the replacement fuel[...]It might look like price gouging when the local station raises prices three times in one day but if they didn't you might have cheap gas today but none tomorrow.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:10 PM

Snopes writes on the "looting" vs. "finding" photo caption controversy including quotes from the two gentlemen who wrote captions. An indirect quote from the "looting" photographer:

Jack Stokes, AP's director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. "He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods," Stokes said, "and that's why he wrote 'looting' in the caption."

And a direct quote from the "finding" photographer:

I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word...We were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.

Sounds like looting and finding to me.
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