Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:29 PM

WARNING: This blog post has such limited appeal that it would probably would have been more efficient to email it.

Diane Holloway has a blog.

To explain for the majority of you, Holloway is the TV critic for the Austin-American Statesman. She was/is so out-of-touch that she once expressed confusion as to what house the title of the sitcom In the House alluded to.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:59 AM

The cover of Red Skelton's Favorite Ghost Stories (from this site). This was part of a larger series that included Milton Berle's Tales of Mystery and Morey Amsterdam's Sci-Fi Wonders.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:25 AM

My decision to not watch Commander in Chief is validated by this Bill Sherman post that they did a "Will no one rid me of this archbishop?" episode.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:38 PM

In the comments to my novel post below I was going to make a joke that Frankenstein's monster met Dracula at the Monster Mash. But now that I look at the lyrics, there's no indication that Frankenstein's monster was at the party. He may be the titular monster who was born mashing and he may not be. I care too much about you the reader to deal in "may be"s.

Speaking of the Monster Mash, here's Bobby "Boris" Pickett's website with an excerpt from his autobiography of that magical moment:

Lenny sat down at the piano and began futzing with various four-chord progressions and I stood next to the piano. Like me, Lenny was a major horror movie fan from childhood. He loved Bela Lugosi as Dracula. He knew I had the Boris Karloff voice pretty nailed, although in reptrospect, I feel that what I actually had was a very cartoonish rendition of that wonderful actor's voice. In any case, we'd both seen how the audiences had loved it when I was with the group and we'd sing "Little Darlin'" and I did the monologue in the middle of the song in Boris's voice. We agreed that the Karloff voice was the most obvious one to tell the story. And what was the story?

"Well," Lenny suggested, "Maybe the Frankenstein monster should start a dance craze."

"That's it!" I said.

Sure the writer of the song says it's Frankenstein. And Arthur C. Clarke says HAL isn't one step beyond IBM.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:46 PM

Mark Evanier points out the upcoming release of the new Allan Sherman box set, particularly its inclusion of Sherman's normally bootlegged My Fair Lady parody. He notes that normally the folks controlling Lerner and Loewe's estate refuse to allow parodies. I have two thoughts on why they're tolerating the Sherman release:

1. They've become more tolerant. They also allowed the My Fair Lady parody on the first SCTV boxed set.
2. They're tolerant of this release because only 4000 copies are being sold.
3. Possibly a chunk of the $119 price is going to pay for music rights (for My Fair Lady and other things).

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:38 PM

Speaking of Frankenstein's Monster, scroll down to the October 15th entry of Fred Hembeck's blog for one of those goofy publicity photos, in this case of Ole Olsen and Glenn (Frankenstein's Monster) Strange reading a Batman comic book. I'm not sure if the photo is selling a Frankenstein movie, Hellzapoppin' or Batman.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:34 PM

One advantage of apartment hunting and probably moving is that I have an excuse to skip National Novel Writing Month. The world will have to wait for my tale of Sherlock Holmes teaming up with Frankenstein's Monster to fight Nazis.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:20 PM

I apologize for the non-existant posting but my apartment building got sold and is going condo so I've been busy apartment hunting. You'd think there'd be colorful pamphlets outlining exactly what I'm entitled to ("Am-scray, Baby: Condoization and Your Rights") but I had to dig into the landlord side of the LA Department of Housing to find out anything. Good thing my throw-out-all-those-damn-boxes-from-the-closet project never came to fruition. Also a good thing I didn't buy the Calvin & Hobbes super-collection.

In more pleasant news, I got confirmation of weight loss, not just from my visiting parents but from some photos a friend sent me from Xmas parties from 2003 and 2004. Of course, the euphoria of "I look much better" devolved into "Did I leave the house looking like this?"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:49 PM

Fantagraphics' blog sneak-previews the coming-in-April Complete Peanuts volume 5 (this, you'll recollect, is the one Whoopi Goldberg is going to ruin). The interesting revelations from the never-before-republished strips are that 1) Linus has a weight problem and 2) Schroeder is gay.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:17 PM

A Malcolm Gladwell book review in the New Yorker discusses how the current college admission system with its essays and letters of reference and extracurricular activities list has its origin in keeping Jews out of the Ivy League.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:25 PM

Some readers of my site will want to know that Chris Elliot just published a novel called Shroud of the Thwacker, a parody of the historical mysteries that have been popular with the young people.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:02 PM

More on the "Was Jack Benny gay" question:

1. I recently listened to a Burns and Allen episode where Gracie catches Jack going to a beauty parlor and blackmails him to let George Burns sing on his radio show. Granted that's arguably less "Jack is gay" and more "Jack is vain".
2. I was watching A Love Letter to Jack Benny, a 1981 clip special/homage (which as it turns out was my first exposure to Jack Benny) and a running joke was that Jack had a mincing walk. The Smothers Brothers, trying to figure out Jack's real age, were speculating on why Jack hadn't served in WWII and Tommy Smothers says "Look at how he walks." Johnny Carson told a joke that when he started out in show business, he did everything like Jack Benny. He talked like Jack; he paused like Jack. But when he walked like Jack, he got arrested.
3. Mike Tucker who selected the "Horatio Hornblower" episode which inspired this speculation was nice enough to comment on the original post and stated that he also interpeted the gay jokes as I did. (Mike's marvelous Tucker Mike Show deserves a plug and I just gave it one.)

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