Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:25 PM

My X-Mas Mitzvah: In some discussion or other, a friend wondered why The Odd Couple TV show was not yet out on DVD. Remembering that I read something about the show on tvshowsondvd.com, I did a little research and found that it was an exclusive on the Time-Life site. I told my friend and he bought a copy for his wife who is a fan of the show.

UPDATE: My friend's wife sold her DVD player so she could afford his present. Oh, the bittersweet irony.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:21 PM

I Did Not Know That Dept.: The lyrics to "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" include two stanzas involving figgy pudding: One requesting it ("Oh, bring us a figgy pudding") and one demanding it ("We won't go until we get some"). So basically the song is a "trick or treat/bring us something good to eat" type melody.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:00 PM

To you and yours, a Happy Life Day from me, Chewbacca, Mrs. Chewbacca, Itchy and Lumpy.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:03 AM

The Genius of Alan Sherman: Why are parodies of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" generally not funny? Because, by the nature of the song, you end up repeating the jokes and most jokes can't withstand the seemingly endless repititions. Alan Sherman was smart enough to, after day four, just do variations on "and the rest of that stuff: and avoid that problem.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:42 PM

When I first moved to LA in '98, there was much grumbling amongst comics that their jokes were in a joke-book compilation "by" Judy Brown (neither "Downtown" nor "Homecoming Queen Has a Gun" but a third one). One common complaint was that the jokes were obtained in her capacity as comedy critic in the LA Weekly: If you wanted your show to get a "Critic's Pick" you had to provide jokes for her to quote in the "Critic's Pick" blurb and many of those jokes ended up in the book.

Jay Leno, who has the money and the best claim of damages, is suing her. Article here. I'm amused that the UPI headline explicitly calls her a joke thief without scare-quotes.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:08 PM

Conversation at a British-style pub:

SOMEONE ELSE (ordering): I'll have the Welsh rarebit.
ME: Careful, you're going to have nightmares.

No one at the table got the reference. Damn people and their unfamiliarity with early twentieth century comics strips!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:04 PM

Normally with Seinfeld DVD sets, I wait a few months for them to go on sale for cheap. But Jesse Jackson's call for a boycott tempts me to buy it now. And, judging from sales America agrees with me.

A few things regarding this New York Times article:

• Maybe after Rev. Jackson gets people to stop using the n-word, he can work on getting people to stop using the h-word.
• Dick Gregory maintains his Lenny Bruce-esque view on the matter (and gets a plug for his 1969 autobiography in finer stores now).
• Jason Stuart was quoted in the article. Jealous?
• Knowing what the Laugh Factory pays, if they're going to fine comics for the use of the n-word, many comedians will owe the club money.
• Oddly, the article quotes Sarah Silverman without mentioning her racial epithet headache.

Of course, in Silverman's case, the slur was used in anti-racist context and she was being used by an advocacy groups that was trying to get racial slurs against the Chinese promoted to the same level of offense as those against African Americans. However, I remember arguing, at the time, that while I disagreed with the position, that if the exact same joke had been told using the n-word, it would have the same point but it a) would not have been allowed on NBC and b) would not have gotten laughs. Someone overhearing me informed me that when Silverman was developing the joke, she had initially used the n-word and it didn't get laughs.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:01 PM

So I was reading the latest Peanuts collection from 1961-62 and a strip I've read a dozen times had an element explained to me. In it, Linus's mother packed him pancakes for lunch and syrup is dripping from the bag. The weird part is the odd hats Linus and Charlie Brown were wearing. These hats were explained in a strip of a few months earlier: It was the Centennial of the Civil War and they were Union hats like all the kids were (presumably) wearing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:57 PM

Cool Link Department: In celebration of Fantagraphics reprinting of the comic strip of animation legend Gene Deitch, Deitch finds an unreleased Golden Record of said strip starring Art Carney and the Mitch Miller orchestra. Read more and download here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:54 PM

A few months ago, I learned that Archie of Archie Comics doesn't drive his jalopy anymore. Now I learn that he drives a Mustang (scroll down)?!?!?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:46 AM

Filming of the new Die Hard movie, Die Harder-er-er is shutting down part of the 105 which is a major access point to the airport as well as my commute to work. Grumble grumble, alternate routes, grumble. (Hat tip, TF).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:43 AM

Another Borat data point: The I-kiss-you guy is threatening to sue.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:38 PM

A new book suggests that Houdini worked undercover for Scotland Yard and the Secret Service. Article here. Teller of "Penn and" fame supports the hypothesis:

Law enforcement is about bureaucracy and cronyism. So they're going to let some entertainer walk in and escape from their jail cells? That suggests to me that (the authors) are on the right track.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:25 PM

The Rat Pack in a new series starting with Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime solves mysteries. Or helps a guy solve mysteries ("Hey, here's a clue, pally"). Or are in the general vicinity of mysteries. Future titles in the series include:

• Guys and Dolls...and Murder
• Yes, I Can...Murder
• When the Moon Hits Your Eye...With Murder
• I've Got You Under My Murder
• The Birth of the Blues...and Murder

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:52 PM

A conversation between myself and a friend*:

ME: Hello, I am Borat. I am from foreign land. I am wild and crazy guy. America, what a country! Watch my movie; in my country, movie watchs you! We do dance of joy!
FRIEND: There's a little more to the movie than that.
ME: Don't be ridi-cool-us.

*Adding some stuff I thought of later and omitting the part where I tell my friend to repeat his setup line because I had just thought of something.

UPDATE: In my country, 2000-screen opening scales YOU back to 800 screens. Maybe they should increase awareness by giving away cabbage rolls and coffee.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:51 PM

The good news is that they're releasing a DVD of old Sesame Street stuff (from our generation or so). The odd news is that the set has a warning that the shows aren't for kids. The terrific news is that Whoopi Goldberg isn't the one delivering the warning.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:35 PM

An interesting subtext in an early episode of Perry Mason ("Earl Stanley Gardner's The Case of the Crimson Kiss"): Paul Drake, reviewing how bad things look for Perry's client, says that she's going to the gas chamber "as sure as Hamilton Burger wants to be governor". Does Hamilton Burger have higher political aspirations that have perhaps been thwarted by constantly losing to Perry?

William Talman's bio including his (apparently unjustified) arrest at a "nude party" which got him fired from Perry Masonand his pioneering work as one of the first actors to do an anti-smoking commercial.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:26 PM

The shock over the plagirism in tonight's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip would be more believable if there weren't several dozen comedians with an "ADD? In my day, you were just stupid" bit.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:13 PM

Reader LC Seekins was nice enough to tell me that the song "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" is available on iTunes. Alas this version is not by Groucho but by Big Lou's Polka Casserole. Also alas they changed lyrics and, as one would guess, the new lyrics are inferior to the original.

While I was at iTunes, I also bought "Alfie the Christmas Tree" which was the portion of the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas Special where Denver wonders about those who've "never heard of the Son of God" and thus traumatized every Jewish child between the ages of 5 and 9. This web page discusses the special, that portion and the special's subtext:

John Denver the evangelical Christian battling Jim Henson the hippie Christian. Kermit's saying it's okay even if you're not Christian, and John is saying, no, but if we just tell them about Jesus... And Jim is saying, no, no, that's okay... if they're just groovy relaxed people, it's okay... That's the whole special, right there.

Speaking of iTunes, Tower Records was bought by a liquidator who're going to be doing a going-out-of-business sale for the next few weeks. Right now, it's 10%-off-everything thus following Tower's unofficial motto of "It's cheaper at Amazon". Presumably they'll get cheaper in the next couple of weeks. Look for various nostalgic "whither Tower" articles, some by the same folk who condemned Tower Records as an evil chain driving the little record store out of business.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:12 PM

I've been watching the Perry Mason Season 1. One interesting element: You know how in Perry Mason, Hamilton Burger would say about a piece of evidence, "I ask that it be marked People's Exhibit C"? In the first season, they'd actually show the clerk stamp the piece of the evidence.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:23 AM

Lego has a new robot system (warning obnoxious music), another exciting hobby I don't have time for! You can control the robot from your Bluetooth enabled cell! Toys R Us has a 10%-off-one-item coupon so I'm tempted plus there's the whole "Buy Legos! For Freedom!" factor. On the other hand, it uses Technic Legos rather than the classic Legos you and I grew up with.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:14 AM

An interesting development in last night's SNL: I still managed to watch the show through Tivo in 20 minutes but they had the following two skits:

1. One sketch ended with one character telling the other that they could sell what just happened to his friend who writes for Saturday Night Live.
2. Another sketch featuring Amy Poehler as Farrah Fawcett ended with Fawcett wandered the SNL stage area until she spots another sketch set in a bar and decides to stay there. They then proceed to do a sketch set in a bar and Poehler stays in character as Fawcett.

Both of these are basic Python 101 but SNL has been fairly uninfluenced by Python in its 30-plus-year history. I'll grant that doing the Python tricks is difficult on SNL with commercial interruptions and forty sketches written so that 10-15 can be performed (and sketches can get cut as late as post-dress rehearsal).

There are also isolated counter-examples one can give but I don't think I've ever seen two in one show. What struck me about the second sketch was I vividly remember a Tom Hanks sketch where he plays a doctor who criticizes the sketch he's in and encourages his patient to flee it, saying "I'm in another sketch over there; it's much, much better than this one." But they didn't follow through. We should have seen Hanks walk to the next sketch or something. As a 15-year-old Python nerd, I was metaphorically shouting "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:15 PM

Bob Newhart has a new book coming out called I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!. If I were publishing it, I'd call it either Uh...Hello? or A Little Something...Like This.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:41 PM

Judging from the premise, the movie Man of the Year was filmed in the past year. Judging from the jokes in the trailer, it was filmed in the late 90's. A "didn't inhale joke" and a "Did not have sex with that woman" joke. If he said "depends on what the definition of is is" and/or made a cigar joke, we'd have the full hack Clinton trifecta.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:04 PM

Spider-man on the Nintendo Wii.

Also Ken Jennings's self-rejected Superman parody for his book,
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:02 PM

Regarding this clip from Night of 100 Stars (vua Evanier):

1. I was initially amused that there was a number in front of James Earl Jones's name but not in front of Whoopi Goldberg's at minute 2:10 (meaning she wasn't a star) but they gave her one at 3:30.
2. So how come it's OK for Whoopi to do minstrel but when Warner Brothers' cartoons have minstrel punchlines I have to sit through a ten minute un-fast-forwardable introduction on all four of my DVDs?
3. After the Bert Williams minstrel segment, Mr. Jones sez "Things have changed...a little" and then we get Whoopi Goldberg doing her act. Is he saying her act is minstrel-show-like?

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:55 PM

Inspired by this video of Groucho Marx and Jackie Gleason doing a version of "Absolutely, Mr. Gallagher, Positively, Mr. Shean", I was curious if the Internet had any recording of the original Gallagher and Shean tune. The good folks at Marx-o-rama have three versions here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:48 PM

Jeff Lange at Jim Hill Media attended the 2006 Licensing Show and saw The Baby Stooges.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:53 PM

Mark Evanier has a long clip (divided into two YouTubes clips) of a 1985 Night of 100 Stars salute to television with a a verse for every show on then:

Lets send in the clowns
For comedy's sake
You say you want laughter
Then Give Me a Break

And so forth. You can see David Hasselhoff do some comic acting in the second clip as the Knight Rider verse insults him and then takes it back.

If I were teaching some sort of writing-for-TV class, I'd run the clip and the assignment would be to write verses for the Fall 2006 season with bonus points if the verse ends in the name of the show:

She catches the crooks
And puts them behind bars.
It's that spunky gal
Named Veronica Mars.

They're in Hollywood
Living it large
It's Vincent Chase
And his Entourage.

If action and no flying
Give you a thrill
Then don't miss a minute
Of the show called Smallville.

You'll love this next show
It's quite a pip.
It's Studio 60
On The Sunset Strip

The clues are obscure.
They might as well be in Spanish.
The mystery deepens
On each episode of Vanished.

To add to the realism, after the assignments are turned in, I'd say "OK, Kristen Bell can't make it but we have Enrico Colantoni. Also the only guy we could get from Entourage is the guy who plays Turtle. We need new verses in five minutes or the musicians get overtime."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:08 AM

I saw the Snakes on the Plane. It has everything one would want: a plane, snakes and Samuel L. Jackson doing that thing where he asks a question and then, when the guy answering tries to evade it, yells the question again. The only way my inner-12-year-old would have been happier is if a) Spider-man had been on the plane, b) it took place on the U.S.S. Enterprise or c) the plane had crashed on the Planet of the Apes.

A couple of minor thoughts (Spoiler alert):

1. The movie ends with the surfer witness teaching Jackson's character how to surf. If that's your ending, you should just go ahead and have the entire cast surf.
2. A regular reader of this blog will be happy to learn that Keenan "Could you kindly point us in the direction of the little girls' room?" Thompson contributes to the saving-of-the-day.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:51 PM

Tina Fey learns that a disadvantage of having Aaron Sorkin do a show with the same premise as yours is that the network apparently has no problem telling you to recast your friend's role with a standard Hollywood blonde.

Yesterday, it was announced that Rachel Dratch had been demoted from co-star of 30 Rock to variety of wacky characters. Today it's announced that Jane Krakowski is taking her part.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:12 PM

I may be reading too much into this but a partial joke in today's Dilbert is that the boss messes up the punchline. It's "$10 for the tap and $90 for knowing where to tap"; you say the expected part first and the unexpected part second.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:37 AM

Via Evanier, Chris Elliott parodies Shatner's rendition of Rocketman (You can watch Shatner's original here).

When I first saw it, I hadn't seen the Shatner rendition (it was pre-video-on-the-Net and I didn't have access to bootleg videos) so I just thought Chris Elliott was being silly. The other thing I vividly remember from that appearance was that Elliott gave Letterman a Malcolm X hat (popular with the kids at the time) calling it a "kiss" hat. Letterman puts on the hat and you have Chris Elliott in a tuxedo and bad toupee sitting next to Letterman wearing a Malcolm X hat. Letterman makes some joke about what the viewer just tuning in is thinking.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:06 AM

I was excited when I heard there was a movie coming out called Crank but I watched the trailer six times and I don't see J. Arthur Crank anywhere in it. Same damn thing happened to me several years ago when I went to see Fargo.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:35 AM

Box art and feature listing for the Police Squad DVD (which is, without exaggeration, the greatest television show in the history of television). Thankfully, unlike the Airplane DVD, we're spared Leslie Nielsen mugging on the cover.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:27 AM

San Diego featured two animatic clips of the Simpsons movie and, of course, they're now on YouTube. Clip 1 and Clip 2. I think I can say, without exaggeration, that this will be the greatest movie in the history of cinema.

UPDATE: The clips were dropped but I found two new links and updated. Enjoy while you can.

UPDATE 2: ...And those clips were dropped because how dare people be excited about a movie before they're told to. The Simpsons Channel is currently hosting the clips.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:48 PM

Via Cowan, a man who worked for GM/Hughes debunks the electric car movie. What always confused me about electric car advocates is "Where do they think the electricity comes from?"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:44 PM

I always thought the lyrics of "Has anybody seen my gal" were

Five foot two, eyes of blue,
Oh, what those two eyes could do

It's apparently "Oh, what those five feet could do", a vaguely dirty lyric suggesting I may have heard an expurgated version of the song.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:38 PM

Someone who sat through Little Man found three more jokes lifted from the cartoon. The first two (and the one I noted) are arguably obvious jokes in a midget-disguised-as-a-baby plot. But the third, the lights-out-click joke, is clearly theft. No reference to the cartoon's authors is in the credits, which argues theft over homage.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:19 PM

Whoopi Goldberg ruins the marginally-entertaining Universal tour:

Goldberg, who shows up in virtual form at one of Disney's California Adventure attractions, appears in several pre-taped segments here. She reminds riders that she is an Oscar winner and that she made her first movie, "The Color Purple," on the Universal backlot. Still, given the wildly erratic nature of her film career since that debut, she seems an odd choice for a tour celebrating the glory of Hollywood. Out-of-towners may find themselves researching if they will be stalked by another "Whoopi" at SeaWorld or Legoland.

And some of her shtick, such as when she advises filmmakers that the studio needs "less movies with giant monkeys, more movies with me," is not terribly inspired. The "Psycho" house gets more laughs than she does.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:13 PM

Suppose there's a movie whose plot is exactly the same as a Looney Tunes cartoon albeit with more breast-feeding and gay panic jokes. And suppose that movie features a scene that's actually in the cartoon ("baby" shaving with an electric razor while smoking a stogie). Is that scene homage or theft?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:07 PM

Via Evanier, a 1981 McDonald's commercial starring the great Frank Nelson. The commercial is interesting for two reasons:

• It demonstrates that Frank Nelson could make reading the telephone book funny, which is kind of what he's doing here.
• It features character who is clearly designed to evoke Jack Benny (money-grubbing, drives an old car) but just different enough from Benny to make the Benny estate lawyers happy.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:06 PM

I'm once again forced to apologize for the lack of posting with the excuse of a combination of an automobile accident and a vist to grandma with her circa-1992 technology.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:08 AM

Inspired by Mark Evanier's MASH IBM commercial video links, I tried to find Alan Alda Atari commercials or these Bill Cosby Texas Instruments commercials about how the TI had more cartridges. Instead here's a video of an Atari 800 laptop.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:05 PM

A 1978 collection of Donald Duck stories by the great Carl Barks features an introduction by Barks where he refers to the collection as a "radical new art form" and tries to convince the reader that comics aren't just for children.

On the subject of trying to get comix recognized as a legitimate art form, Fantagraphics is blogging unproofed pages of its upcoming history: Comics as Art: We Told You So.

And on the subject of comix history, the in-comix-stores-but-upcoming-elsewhere Arf Museum features a story by Mort Walker about the time in 1964 when the National Cartoonist Society invited Roy Lichtenstein to speak in order to abush him. Author Craig Yoe promises a shocking ending.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:08 AM

So rumor has it that Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties not only features Garfield and a Garfield-doppelganger but, like Tale of Two Cities, one of them gets beheaded by a guillotine.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:05 AM

A British 1980 PSA (or, as they're called in Britain, "spanner") features Superman:

1. Killing a guy for trying to get kids to smoke
2. Speaking in a weird accent (vaguely Schwarzenegger-esque but probably just a British guy trying to do an American accent)
3. Subjecting random people to deadly X-rays

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:29 AM

Thanks to this news about Spider-Man, they'll have to rewrite the Electric Company theme song.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:14 AM

Tom Spurgeon writes "There may be nothing more pathetic than watching people cut in line at a Southwest Airlines gate." I don't know if this is more pathetic or as pathetic but I once saw Jim Belushi (pre-"According to Jim") use his celebrity status to cut in line at a Southwest Airlines gate.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:56 AM

Since the comments below are discussing reality show Last Comic Standing, I should link to this ebay auction for a red envelope currently running for fifty-one bucks.

Tim Meadows as one of the talent scouts reminds me of the time Zach Galifianakis referred to Tim Meadows (in honor of the opening of The Ladies Man, I believe) as the "unfunniest person alive". Throughout the evening, I kept racking my brains trying to come up with an unfunnier SNL alum. "What about Robin Duke?" I'd ask, for example and Zach would say "No". At the end of the evening, I got him to admit that someone (and I don't recall who) was as unfunny as Meadows.

UPDATE:Chip's comment fired a few synapses which make me think that Brad Hall was the person Zach admitted was as unfunny as Meadows (although I wouldn't swear to it on oath). Once when I was trying to get a date with a lady comic, I tried to assure her that her being more successful wasn't a problem by saying, "I'll happily be the Brad Hall to your Julia Louis-Dreyfus."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:24 PM

The odds of a Police Squad DVD set look better per tvshowsondvd.com which reports a release date of November 7th.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:33 AM

Via Amber, a NY Times article about Blue Bell, the once-Texas-only bestest grocery store ice cream (as I noted and discussed here (Comments are still there, just not counted)). Interesting factoids are that Blue Bell outsells Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's even though they're more widely available (on the other hand, they don't sell in half-gallon containters like Blue Bell does) and that the Cookies & Cream of my youth was made by buying Oreo Cookies at retail price (if I'm remembering correctly that it was invented in my youth).

Speaking of great ice cream of my youth, when I was a kid and the family visited the grandparents in New York, we always went at some point (unless it was Passover) to Carvel, maker of the best soft ice cream. Now, not one but two Carvel stores are available within five miles of my apartment.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:25 AM

Reader "Johnny Storm"* comments below

Just noting, ME posts more in a day after undergoing surgery than you do in an entire month of eating brownies and frizzing your hair.

To my politer readers, I apologize that day job deadlines (that is to say, real job deadlines) have kept me from postng. I will try to post on a more regular schedule. And a note to Johnny*, I don't need to spend a month frizzing my hair; all-natural Jew-fro, baby. And if you're one of two suspects, at least I have hair to be frizzy.

*If that is his real name. I think the real Johnny Storm would be nicer about this (unless he was commenting on Ben Grimm's blog (Hey, what would that be like? It might go a little something like...[Gunshot])
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:11 AM

If you're not sick yet of movie-trailer mash-ups (or even if you are), here's one marketing The Ten Commandments as a teen comedy.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:29 PM

I haven't watched it yet so I can't comment but YouTube has the six-minute previewshown yesterday of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Comments later maybe.

In other SNL-related news, SNL is accused of ripping off a New York improv group because they both did that bit where misleading camera angles and misleading dialogue make the viewer think one thing which is humorously revealed to be wrong. Details here.

UPDATE NBC (or maybe Warner Brothers) made YouTube drop the preview so the link stopped working. When Grey's Anatomy kicks that show's ass, NBC is going to wish they had allowed Internet buzz.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:53 PM

A Page-Six report on the NBC upfronts makes a claim about 30 Rock, NBC's other backstage-of-SNL show, that I know is untrue:

"Aaron came up with the original idea and NBC bought it," our source said. "But then ['SNL' creator] Lorne Michaels found out and went ballistic. He said - and he has a point - 'someone is going to do a behind-the-scenes show about my show?' 'SNL' is NBC, and so NBC had to give Lorne and Tina their own show. It is costing millions. A big, expensive mistake."

Now, I know for a fact that the Fey show was kicking around well before the Sorkin show (as confirmed by this article about the Fey show dated from February 2005 and this article about the Sorkin bidding war from October 2005). Indeed if you examine the history of both shows, you can see why NBC is doing two behind-the-scenes shows. The Fey show was in development from February of last year. Sorkin writes a pilot without pitching it. This is an unusual move that very few writers could get away with; assumably, if he had pitched it to NBC, they would have steered him towards something else. Instead he gets a bidding war between networks (which means it was getting on the air regardless of whether NBC bought it or not). Meanwhile NBC doesn't want to sour their relationship with Lorne Michaels and Tina Fey (who wrote a #1-movie, remember) so they're not going to drop her show. Best of a bad situation, they buy both shows, try to juggle the schedule so they're not competing with each other (which would have been less certain if CBS bought Sorkin's show) and keep a relationship open with folk who might provide future hits. (Hat-tip to JW for the Slate item).

The Page-Six item, while untrue, gives me an idea for my TV show pitch. It's a behind-the-scenes show of a behind-the-scenes-show of a sketch show granted to the fictional producer of the fictional sketch show to keep him happy. The logo of the show will be a snake-eating-its-own-tail.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:19 AM

SNL really zinged it to Wheel of Fortune with a sketch on how dopey the contestants can be. [Taps watch] Is it 1984 again already?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:09 AM

"How Dey Do Dat?" Dept"There have been a couple of commercials for DirecTV where characters from movies interrupt the movie to talk about how great DirecTV is (one features Bill Paxton in Twister and one features Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Stein looks like he did twenty years ago but they weren't dubbing voices on the original footage since the lip movements meshed with what he was saying. I find out from an interview with Sir Ian McKellan that they have the technology to morph an actor to look younger:

I don't know if it's in the press notes, but the first time that Patrick Stewart and I appear in [X-Men: The Last Stand], we appear to be 25 years younger than we are. That's been done by a technology never used in film before, which involves no makeup, no special effects whatsoever. We just go into the studio and do the scene as is, and then they morph our faces on to photographs of ourselves 25 years ago. Lo and behold, there we are. They can take any shaped person and they can slim you down, they can build you up, they can bring out your shoulders, change the style and color of your hair. Remove every wrinkle. They removed so many wrinkles from my face, I looked so young that Brett Ratner said, "You've got to put a few wrinkles back. It's looking ridiculous." It would mean that I could play myself at 25, feasibly, as long as I can keep myself lithe and sounding young. I mean, that's the big story of this movie is once the stars realize that they don't have to have facelifts anymore, at least as far as their work is concerned, Meryl [Streep] and I can go on playing Romeo and Juliet for the next 20 or 30 years. It's astonishing. It's like airbrushing, but for the moving picture.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:31 AM

Johnny Depp learns the old real estate maxim that you don't buy a place for the view unless you own the view also (Article here.) He's doing it for the children claiming a Sunset Strip shopping center would block his kids' view (the same kids he said he was going to raise in France).

Developer Joseph Emrani of Venice Investments, who is a partner in the project with his brother, Youdi Emrani, said he challenged Depp's representatives.

"They said, 'The kids are playing over there and they don't want it to block their view.' I mentioned that his children live in Paris, and one of them said, 'That's very personal and we don't want to get involved with that,' " Joseph Emrani said.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:46 AM

A scene from my apartment on Thursday afternoon:

Daniel: Oh, boy, my Charlie Brown book has arrived in the mail! Even Whoopi Goldberg can't ruin this with her introduction!
[Reads]
Gary Groth: Did you read Peanuts as a girl?
Whoopi Goldberg: I've always read everything as a girl. I had to, because I was never a guy!
Daniel: Dammit!!!!!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:38 AM

I was watching yesterday's What's My Line rerun and they had subbed the regularly scheduled with a color episode. When I saw that the Mystery Guest was Big Bird, my first reactions was that I hoped Caroll Spinney was OK (since usually they sub episodes based on the obituary pages). Thank heavens, he's OK and received a lifetime achievement award from the good folks of the Daytime Emmies.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:57 PM

Simpsons writer extraordinaire Jon Swartzwelder has a third novel.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:55 AM

If you want to see a superb bit of comedic acting, Mark Evanier has a clip of a 1974 Johnny Carson interview with Jim Henson/Kermit the Frog. About a quarter to a third of the way in, Kermit mentions that Mia Farrow was pregnant when they shot the special he was plugging. Carson says "Well, don't look at me" and Kermit does a brilliant double-take.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:47 PM

Blowing Smoke's Jackie Danicki is surprised that Jerry Seinfeld used to be a Scientologist. (Source here.)

There was an in-joke about his being a Scientologist in the episode where the gang can't find where they parked in a mall garage. An attractive gal George has been eyeing offers to drive them around to find their car. Cut to the girl throwing them out of her car. Jerry then says "Boy, those Scientologists can be pretty sensitive."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:45 PM

Saturday TV Funhouse did a hilarious satire of the "Disney Vault", even if it will end up setting the back the DVD release of Song of the South another five years (Iger already delayed it from being released this year (Jim Hill story here). This was the best part:

MICKEY MOUSE: Remember all the laughs we've had together?
KID:Wait, you're supposed to be funny?
[Beat]
MM: Yeah...

UPDATE: Coincidentally Mark Evanier blogged about the holding-back of Song of the South.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:44 AM

Via Howling Curmudgeons, the Secret Wars Re-Enactment Society. A couple of commenters don't seem to realize that it's fictional.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:38 AM

Unseen Python: Mark Evanier has a youtube video of a 1973 industrial film the Pythons did for hairspray.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:33 AM

Mark Evanier did a bleg on the origin of the "You want it when?!" poster and gets responses including the identity of the probable artist.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:25 AM

The second part of the South Park "Cartoon Wars" episode (which featured a hilarious reference to the last time South Park had a much-hyped two-parter). When it came time to show Mohammed, the screen displayed "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network". I thought it was a joke since a) it was sort of foreshadowed in the "Tune in next week" message of the first part ("Tune in next week...unless Comedy Central wusses out.") and b) it hilariously undercut the message of the show.

National Review's media blog confirmed that I was mistaken and it was a Comedy Central decision.

UPDATE: In essence, it was both. According to this AP report, Stone and Parker were told several weeks ago that they couldn't run an image of Mohammed. So this two-parter was the result.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:22 AM

My favorite type of story is one where the story-teller receives advice, encouragement or compliments from a celebrity, not realizng that said celebrity was making fun of him. Like from this Onion AvClub interview with the four new SNL cast memebrs:

Jason Sudeikis:[B]efore my first audition, Chris Rock happened to show up to do some stand-up material at the club, and he went on right before me, and as he was walking out, he sorta tapped me on the shoulder and said, "They love original thought." If you just keep that in mind, as long as you know it's yours, you know that if they like it, it's yours to keep, regardless of being on the show or not.

Bill Hader: They would always rather you do what you like, rather than you do what you think they like.

A.V. Club: Chris Rock wasn't being sarcastic in that story?

JS: No, not at all. It didn't really—I mean, there's a lot of people that've auditioned for this show that we've never seen on the show, that we've seen do a lot of things that are great, and there's a lot of people that have been on this show that didn't do much on this show that's the same. It's very—[Laughs.] Maybe he was being a smartass.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:58 AM

Last Wednesday, South Park did a really funny take-down of Family Guy with interchangeable jokes unrelated to the plot and pop culture references in lieu of jokes. Cartoon Brew has the YouTube video here.

The Family Guy Steals blog would have a stronger case if its first example wasn't a reference to the Wheel of Fortune ceramic dalmation, a fairly common joke of the mid-80s, so much so that I remember Pat Sajak bringing one out at the end of a show "by popular demand". Sajak even jokes about the dalmation on his website.

(And, yes, this is what I choose to break my silence with. Sorry for the posting gap. Day job, grumble, grumble.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:42 AM

A NY Times article on Alan Moore's rift with DC contains one of the most implausible spins I've ever seen. It starts with Alan Moore receiving a phone call from Larry Wachowski about the movie:

"I explained to him that I'd had some bad experiences in Hollywood," Mr. Moore said. "I didn't want any input in it, didn't want to see it and didn't want to meet him to have coffee and talk about ideas for the film."

At a press conference for the movie, Joel Silver states

[Alan Moore was]very excited about what Larry had to say and Larry sent the script, so we hope to see him sometime before we're in the U.K.

Joel Silver's explanation for the misrepresentation?

Mr. Silver said he had misconstrued a meeting he had with Mr. Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 20 years ago, when Mr. Silver first acquired the film rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta." "I had a nice little lunch with them," he said, "and Alan was odd, but he was enthusiastic and encouraging us to do this. I had foolishly thought that he would continue feeling that way today, not realizing that he wouldn't."

Given that Silver specficially mentions the conversation with Wachowski, this explanation doesn't pass the smell test. My suspicion is that Silver was just repeating what Wachowski told him had happened. Joel Silver doesn't want to say that because you don't call the guy who made you millions and can make you more millions a liar.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:52 PM

Tony Millionaire is working on a Cartoon Network pilot based on Maakies. Story here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:03 AM

Build the Village (from TV's The Prisoner) with Legos.

For Freedom!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:16 AM

A nifty live-action version of the Simpsons opening.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:26 PM

If Defamer stops live-blogging, it's because his head exploded.

Speaking of Defamer, Crash and live-blogging, here's a great joke from him:

The presentation of Crash's Best Original Song nominee, complete with burning cars and multiculti couples dancing among the flames (of racism, we assume), is roughly 300% more subtle than the movie itself.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:22 PM

Ang Lee does a "I wish I knew how to quit you" joke entering in the Pantheon of Brokeback Mountain jokes.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:51 PM

Phillip Seymour Hoffman didn't bark! (Killing the joke by explaining it.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:40 PM

Will Smith also doesn't claim that a billion people are watching. And that's Academy scripted rather than Stewart scripted.

Also notice "Palestinian territories".
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:37 PM

Guess, Don Knotts gets next year.

And no love for John Fielder. Piglet! Jack the Ripper!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:22 PM

Oscar manages to make rap gay! And a song about being pimp, they made gay!

On a similar topic, if you ever wondered what it would be like if Ludacris had to read Bruce Villanch-scripted banter, wonder no more!

Update: I like to think that as Villanch was listening to Ludacris, he realized he should have included "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and rushed to Queen Latifah to have her deliver the bon mot.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:58 PM

Big screen spectacles. How many can you name?

(You know, when I started this running gag, I didn't realize there'd be like twenty montages. But I started this and, damn it, I'll see it to completion.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:53 PM

Is the reason they're showing clips of Best Picture nominees without intro to prevent unscripted speechifying?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:46 PM

Is the director trying to say something by cutting to Mickey Rooney when the Academy president talks about how nothing beats the in-the-theater experience? They cut to him just as I was mumbling "Yeah, yeah, grandpa."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:38 PM

Issue movies! How many can you name?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:16 PM

Film noir! How many can you name?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:03 PM

Allusion to the Rachel McAdams Vanity Fair thing. Nice.

UPDATE: So, wait, the tech ceremony actually is going on now?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:54 PM

Movie biographies! How many can you name?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:52 PM

Meanwhile in Japan..."Hey, she thanked us. That's so sweet. She didn't have to do that!"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:35 PM

Ways to guarantee applause: When you win the Visual Effects award in a theater full of actors, say you need an actor and thank him.

I liked that Stiller stayed in character and read the nominees in spooky special effects voice.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:24 PM

What's with the music underneath the speeches? Trying to avoid the whole "Don't you pick up that baton" thing, I guess.

"Clooney mentioned Hattie MacDaniel Cut to black guy cam! Cut to black guy cam!"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:10 PM

Stewart wouldn't use the "1 billion" myth in a joke set-up but rather said "hundreds of millions". Interesting.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:03 PM

Ways to abuse Tivo technology: Pause and slow-mo when Superman shows up in the computer-generated montage (How many can you name?) to see if it's Chris Reeve logo or Brandon Routh logo.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:59 PM

So Jon Stewart and the Daily Show gang are writing his monologue and Bruce Villanch and his folk are writing the celebrity banter. Yeah, that's not going to clash.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:48 PM

I was hoping the montage of Best Picture nominees would challenge us to name them but alas no.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:37 PM

For variety's sake, the pre-show has switched up the montage intros from "How many can you name?" to "Try naming these pictures".
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:25 PM

"Many movies are about people, places and things. We're going to take a look at movies about people, places and things both present and past. How many can you name?"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:32 AM

The History of Brokeback Mountain Jokes via Ted:

Some of the earliest examples can be found in Egyptian hieroglyphics. This one dating back to roughly 4000 B.C. shows two men, possible farmers, talking. One compliments the other on his hair and the other replies, "What is this? Brokeback Desert?" It's a weak joke, but not as bad as many that would come later.
[...]
In 1969, Neil Armstrong makes the first Brokeback Mountain joke on the moon to fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin: "Buzz, maybe we can start a little ranch up here, have a life together. Just like in Brokeback Mountain.
[...]
In its October 13, 1997 issue, The New Yorker finally publishes Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" for the first time. Centuries of gay cowboy jokes finally make sense.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:13 PM

Defamer points to this Craig's List casting call:

The sketch requires getting a direct shot of a woman’s vagina. To be specific, the role would have a woman walk onto a stage and sit on a stool with her legs open. Her face would not be shown, the camera would only show from the waist down.

I will bet anyone a steak dinner that the premise of this skit is that this is a commercial for the Vagina Monologues with the joke being that actual vaginas will be doing the monologues in question. [taps watch] Is it 2001 again already?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:32 PM

The Amazing Spider-Man Rockomic from Scarstuff, a nifty site of kiddie records and novely horror-related records. This record is perfect for DJs that love to chuck cool stuff into their sets.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:23 PM

A WSJ article on the disposition of collections after the collector dies. Often my reaction to seeing a complete or near-complete collection at a used book store or a comix store is "Who died?" Someone who went to the trouble of collecting and loveingly preserving that collection (in one case, library-binding his (or her) mid-1970's Marvel comics (who am I kidding? "his") was rarely going to give it up voluntarily.

A main exception is one in the article and has forced me to change my "Who died?" reaction to "Who died or got married?" Indeed, I've noted that part of the reason I'm collecting the Gasoline Alley collections is for when the hypothetical wife doesn't want me buying the Fantagraphics Peanuts collections and Krazy Kat collections. I can say "Fine, I'll drop the Gasoline Alley stuff. Happy?"

Exceptions to the death or marriage reasons for ditching collections are so rare that when I dropped in at an Austin science-fiction store after a two-year absence, the proprietor remembered me as the guy who sold a huge collection because I was moving to Hollywood.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:45 PM

After seeing the DVD for The Kid Stays in the Picture documentary* on sale for $4.99 at Big Lots!, I asked Robert Evans if he had any thoughts on the matter. This is what he said:

Does it hurt? Of course. It feels like a thousand tiny Spartans are stabbing my heart with a thousand tiny spears. Each! Each of the Spartans are holding a thousand tiny spears and stabbing my heart with them. How is that possible? I don't know. That's just how it feels. Write your own goddamn metaphors if you don't like it.

But you know, it's times like these that seperate the men from the boys and I'm not talking about a court order, buddy. The Chinese use the same word for crisis and opportunity. And that sort of know-how is why the Chinks are kicking America's ass in the manufacture of cheap tschotkes. When life hands you lemons, you have to grab life by the lapels, squeeze its throats, and say "Screw you and your crappy lemons! Lemons cost 70-cents each. I'll buy my own goddamn lemons!"

*I guess it's silly to give the Amazon link when I just told you you can get it for $5 elsewhere.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:01 PM

A Slate report on a study of the long-run impact of TV on test scores. The reason for the study is that most of your TV-impact studies don't take income into effect; no-or-little-TV-kiddies tend to be from high-income families. So the study uses the early days of TV to compare test results from 1965 based on how much TV was actually available to the kids. The idea is that since TV was available in Denver in 1948 and in Seattle in 1952, high school kids of 1965 from Denver would potentially have more exposure to TV than the Seattle kids. Or to avoid effects of different cities, you compare 6th-graders of 1965 in Denver (who grew up with TV their entire lives) with high-schoolers of 1965 (who didn't). The result: no discernable effect (other than a slight bump for ESL kids with potential access to TV).

Speaking of Slate and kids and TV, here's a Slate review of The Electric Company DVD set. In discussing whether a show like that could/would be made today, the author indicates that today's "Hollywood stars" wouldn't be willing to make the commitment of eight-hour-days of work. This ignores the fact that only two famous-at-the-time actors in The Electric Company were Bill Cosby and Rita Moreno (and, I guess, Spider-man). Morgan Freeman was in the Sidney-Poitier-is-the-only-black-actor-getting-dramatic-work phase of his career.

And on the subject of Electric Company, under the category of not understanding the target audience of the DVDs (nostalgic thirty-somethings), Marvel, as an apparent price for allowing the use of Spidey in the DVDs, had an ad insert for their toy line for the toddler set.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:11 AM

A Hit-and-Run commentator notes the likely path of the Cheney-shot-a-guy story:

1. Administration official does something stupid and incompetent, but, in the big picture, minor and not likely to upset Administration supporters.
2. Rather than admit any mistake, Administration jumps into CYA mode as soon as story leaks.
3. Liberal press and bloggers, seeing Administration in CYA mode, go into attack mode and blow up minor affair into "big deal."
4. Conversative press and bloggers accuse liberal press and bloggers of overreacting and acting like irresponsible "Bush haters".
5. General public loses interest, liberal press/blogger reputation for hysteria further cemented in mainstream mind.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:40 AM

Batman vs. Al Qaeda!

The reason for this work, [Frank] Miller said, was "an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now." He can't stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their '40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against."

It's been a long time since heroes were used in comics as pure propaganda. As Miller reminded, "Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for."

The downside is that Frank Miller's Batman work of the last five years has been terrible. The upside is that he actually sounds sincere (other than the title).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:19 AM

An article on the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue contains this puzzling passage:

Hollywood plastic surgeon Garth Fisher of "Extreme Makeover" stands on a golf course next to a giant breast, evoking the oft-parodied chase scene in Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex."

Oft-parodied? The number of parodies of that scene I can think of, including this picture of Doctor Fisher, is exactly one.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:08 AM

Truth and Beauty Bombs makes Garfield funnier/more interesting by removing Garfield's dialogue/thought balloons/whatever so it's Jon talking to his cat who doesn't answer back. (via Howling Curmudgeons).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:07 PM

George Clooney confirms Bill O'Reilly's paranoia that Hollywood stars get together to plan Oscar rants. (via Kaus).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:12 AM

The Danish editor who published the caricatures of Mohammed is now coordinating with the Iranian paper to publish the Holocaust cartoons (Story here). Fair, as the kids say, enough.

And For Better or For Worse's Lynn Johnston sides with the rioters. Can I get a "For Worse"?

(Both via Tom Spurgeon.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:56 PM

Cui bono from the Muhammed cartoon meshagos? Well, Daniel Dennett has a new book out...
UPDATE: Speaking of cui bono, an article about the guy who's cornered the Gaza market on Danish flags.
UPDATE 2: Buy Legos! For Freedom! Not to be confused with Mega Bloks who are relatively indifferent to the whole freedom question.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:51 AM

A leading Iranian newspaper is holding a Holocaust cartoon contest. Story here. 'Cause you gotta make it about the Jews.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:36 AM

Reason has the Mohammed cartoons on Hit & Run as well as three crude fakes that were included by Danish imams in a dossier on how offensive the cartoons were. In other news on the cartoons, the State Department forgets whose side they're supposed to be on.

Buy Legos! For Freedom!

UPDATE: From the LA Times:

"We must defend freedom of expression," French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said. "And if I had to choose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure."

The French government is now behaving with more backbone on this than ours.

UPDATE 2: Volokh notes that the statements of the State Department were more pro-freedom-of-expression than the wire reports made them out to be. Click on the "Show the rest" part to see a reporter do a moral equivalence between the cartoons and the broadcast of a Protocols of the Elders of Zion miniseries on government-controlled television.

UPDATE 3: Tim Cavanuagh notes there were three statements made by the State Department, two of which are "siding with the rioters".
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:20 AM

From Mark Evanier's TV Tickets site is a ticket to Amanda's, the 1983 Bea Arthur attempt to do an American Fawlty Towers. Bea Arthur's character was a combination of Basil and Sybil Fawlty, there was a foreign waiter, a wacky Southern guy and judging from the episode guide a throughline where Amanda falls in love and gets married to her late husband's brother.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:35 AM

Buy Legos! For Freedom!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:20 PM

The Sorkin behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show "skein" has been picked up by NBC for 13 episodes. Variety story here. D.L. Hughley will play a "major cast member on the show-within-a-show" which means they're already trying to make the show-in-a-show un-SNL-like ('cause he's African-American, ya see, and...Ah, forget it).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:19 PM

For students of urban legends, the Popeye comic strip from September 19, 1935 does a variation of the Uncle Don legend. Popeye, as dictator of a country (don't ask), addresses his people over the radio. In the fourth panel, he chuckles that the speech should make "the dumbheads" like him. In the fifth panel, he realizes what he's done and in the sixth panel he asks the audience to ignore the last crack because he didn't know the microphone was on. This request, as often happens with punchlines in 1930's comic strips, causes fainting (although that's the first time I've seen a crowd faint).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:50 PM

Via Defamer, the In 'n' Out 100X100.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:35 PM

Help, the magazine Harvey Kurtzman edited after MAD, is getting reprinted in a best-of book. TCJ discussion here.

UPDATE: There's some question in the discussion as to whether the reprinter has the rights to this material. However in equally good news, Humbug, Kurtzman's second post-MAD project (after Hugh Hefner pulled funding from his first post-MAD project), will be reprinted.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:56 AM

Wow! How bad was the planned SNL opening sketch and how poorly did it do in dress rehearsal that they had to cannibalize from the Smigel cartoon as an opener?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:32 PM

George Galloway, hero of many of the anti-war left, receiver of bribes from Saddam Hussein, and literal thief of food from the mouthes of Iraqi children is on the British version of Big Brother (along with Dennis Rodman and Rula Lenska). Details here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:27 PM

The original Jewish mothers: About 40% of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from four women. A spokesman for the women said that they don't want that you should make a fuss; they're just happy to see you and put a jacket on before you catch cold.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:49 AM

The great thing about the Internet is that if you ask yourself "Whatever happened to the guy who played the Jewish kid in Boys Town?", you can find out. The curse is, of course, that you feel obligated to.

His obituary says Sidney Miller died of a heart attack in September 2004. His role in Which Way to the Front? proves that he was taken down by the Hitler curse.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:42 AM

As I've noted before, I love nothing better than movie ads featuring the characters in the movie wearing/holding holiday-related regallia (Santa hats on XMas, hearts on Valentine's Day, Pilgrim hats on Thanksgiving, etc.). Plus, dating back to when Godfather III opened on Christmas, I've always wanted to see that done on an inappropriate movie. So I was amused by this Defamer article (and ashamed that I hadn't noticed the ad in the paper) about how Capote featured Philip Seymour Hoffman in a New Years Hat.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:00 PM

The JFK assasination conspiracy claimed two more victims as Jack Ruby friend Candy Barr died at age 70 of "pneumonia" and Lewis Hanson, the Presidential pilot who flew JFK that fateful day and flew Kennedy's body back, died of unstated causes (and we know what that means) at age 81 (hat tip to TF).

Oddly enough, Lincoln's pilot was named Hanson Lewis.
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