Could I have any higher regard for "Studio 60" before it even airs?

You wouldn't think so, given its cast and crew. But apparently, I can, because I just read in the selfsame EW that the writing staff includes Mark McKinney of The Kids In The Hall, who was hired to help out with the sketch writing for the show-within-the-show.

Come on, September 18!

Oh boy, "Girls."

So I'm flipping through the Entertainment Weekly TV Fall Preview issue. In the writeup on the new, Sherman-Palladinoless season of Gilmore Girls, they describe Lauren Graham deleting lines and generally being more "collaborative" and "a more active participant in the process" than was apparently the norm in the past.

Well, great. Graham is a talented, commanding, sexy and funny actress...but I have yet to read a single interview with her that suggests she should be getting anywhere near that creative process.

But then, most actors shouldn't. Occasionally you find one who's capable of looking at "the big picture," but they're rare as un-plastic surgery-ed faces in Hollywood. For the most part, actors creative decisions are based on who they like (I want to make out with him, not him!) or what they think will make people like them (this won't make me look unsympathetic, will it?)

Cruelty, thy name is theatre

Sideways was one of the movies I loved most in the past couple of years; I was pleased when it was nominated for and/or won all those awards. One of the things it gets absolutely dead-on is the soul-shriveling experience of the struggling writer walking downstairs to check his mailbox every day and finding...nothing.

(I've been known to joke that Sideways could have been made for me. I'm a struggling writer and I've had a crush on Virginia Madsen since 1985.)

So anyway, this evening, I go downstairs to check my mailbox. In it, I find an envelope with the return address of a theatre to which I submitted a couple of my plays a while back. Now, I don't mind so much these days, having one of my plays rejected.

Though obviously I'd be delighted if one of those messages in bottles I sent out so long ago suddenly brought me a production. But my ego isn't invested in my plays at the moment, not the way it is in my novel.

So I have no big problem with the fact that in the envelope was not a letter telling me they wished to produce one of my plays and send me some thousands of dollars. I do, however, think it was a bit chintzy of them to be sending me a fundraising letter.

I need Virginia Madsen to come and teach me about wine...

Oh, Mr. Varkentine...come now!

I've been noticed by the web page for The Jack Benny 39 cent stamp campaign. I share space on the page with (among others) a couple of non-entities named Neil Gaiman and Mark Evanier. I'm sure they're proud to be associated with me, even in this meager way.

As I've mentioned before, Benny is one of my all-time favorites from the golden age of radio. Actually, he's one of everyone's favorites from the golden age of radio, and...holy cow. I just found out that YouTube has a couple of short clips of a filmed recording of The Jack Benny Program in 1942.

This is the second part:



I want to make a sidenote here to say a few words abour Rochester, a little "let the clicker beware" if you will. His routine with Benny in the above clip makes use of some racist stereotypes, something his portrayal was sadly not free of up through about the second world war. I'm posting it because I believe the routine is still funny, due largely to Eddie Anderson and Benny's gifts as comic actors.

In his book Prime Time Blues, Donald Bogle makes the case that Benny & Anderson were the originators of the black/white comedy team we've seen so many variants on since, and I agree. First in performance and then in writing, as the staff got more "hip" to the realities of the black experience of living in America in the first half of the 20th century, Anderson's Rochester always transcended stereotype.

Benny was the acknowledged master of comedy timing, but Anderson was nearly his equal at the skill. That is why, in my view, such troubling material as they performed still holds up...which is more than I can say for Amos and Andy.

That team was just as popular in their day if not more so, but nowadays it's just not funny anymore, at least not to me (and for reasons that have nothing to do with the racial content). Anderson's characterization can still be appreciated today, both if understood as in the context of its time and because, again, it's just so funny.

That's what I think, anyway. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

"I don’t want to be the person I will be if I stay here.”

Harry Anderson is leaving New Orleans.

Harry Anderson, the illusionist, comic and former star of sitcoms like “Night Court” and “Dave’s World,” has lived in New Orleans since 2000, when he left Hollywood with his wife, the former Elizabeth Morgan. They rode out Hurricane Katrina in the French Quarter, in the building that houses Oswald’s Speakeasy, Mr. Anderson’s nightclub. Their home, whose ground floor was given over to Sideshow, their magic and curiosity shop, was in another building in the Quarter.

In the weeks after the storm, even before the power was back, Mr. Anderson opened his club for what he called French Quarter Town Hall meetings. The weekly gatherings, which at first offered little more than camaraderie by candlelight and warm beer, evolved into a de facto government for a part of New Orleans that had experienced little flooding but could not begin cleanup and rebuilding because of the city’s overall paralysis.

So it is especially poignant that the Andersons have now decided to leave. But their story is not unique: many in this city are suffering the same continuing loss and strain that led these two to their decision. So their departure raises the question of whether others who can afford to leave, those who have not sunk every penny into a now-moldy house or a devastated store, will also move on.

One reason they were leaving, they said, was that the tourists were few and even fewer were coming to see “Wise Guy,” Mr. Anderson’s engaging one-man show at Oswald’s. “I had more people in my car last night,” he said to his piano player during a performance in May.

Mr. Anderson said friends and relatives from out of town are happy to hear that they are moving. “It’s been a universal response from people who aren’t here,” he said.

Their New Orleans friends, too, have been supportive, Ms. Anderson said, and no one has expressed hostility. “I feel a little bit better now because I feel something is going to happen,” Ms. Anderson said. “I’m glad we tried to stay, but I don’t want to be the person I will be if I stay here.”

Okay...I freely admit this is a cheap shot...but come on...

Via A Socialite's Life:

Justin Timberlake...who will be voicing King Arthur in animated feature "Shrek The Third,"

You know...a lot of great actors have played King Arthur. Joss Ackland...Mel Blanc...Pierce Brosnan...Graham Chapman...Sean Connery...Peter Cook...Tim Curry...John Gielgud...Richard Harris...Harry Shearer...Martin Sheen...Dave Thomas...

...to name just a few, in alphabetical order (thank you, IMDB). Now, Justin Timberlake. Good work, guys. We just got the English to forgive us for the whole Dick Van Dyke's Cockney accent in Mary Poppins thing.

I suppose we can't really blame young Justin. The poor boy ain't that bright:

[Timberlake] finds himself dizzy when he tries to read books and scripts aloud - unless the text is always in the centre of the page.

He says, "I think I need to get my eyes checked. I don't have a problem reading scripts because all the text is in the middle of the page and you just scan down. "But there's something about going left to right, left to right that makes me dizzy."

A choice of replies.

One: He can't read left to right? Well, maybe there's a solution to that. Oh, Rabbi...

Two: Do all of you reading this know from just what state in our union Mr. Timberlake happens to hail, or would you like me to refresh your memory?

Now that, my friends, is comedy

Guerrilla artist Banksy hijacked a shipment of Paris Hilton cds and replaced the cd with a disc of his own music ... he also replaced the inner artwork with his own manipulated artwork. Here are a few photos of the jacked up artwork and the cd:

Banksy has replaced Hilton's CD with his own remixes and given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For? He has also changed pictures of her on the CD sleeve to show the US socialite topless and with a dog's head. A spokeswoman for Banksy said he had doctored 500 copies of her debut album Paris in 48 record shops across the UK. She told the BBC News website: "He switched the CDs in store, so he took the old ones out and put his version in" ... But he left the original barcode so people could buy the CD without realising it had been interfered with. Banksy is notorious for his secretive and subversive stunts such as sneaking doctored versions of classic paintings into major art galleries. His spokeswoman said he had tampered with the CDs in branches of HMV and Virgin as well as independent record stores ... No customers had complained or returned a doctored version, he said.

Via Pink Is The New Blog.

Labo(u)r day address

I refuse to believe that the hardworking people of these United States would not have wanted me to get my mail on this, their day. That said, I'm stealing a tip from Blue Gal and using this as an excuse to post the video for one of my favorite Billy Bragg songs.

It's not as explicitly political as some of his others, though Billy being Billy, a nuclear submarine and painful headlines do make it into the second verse. Most importantly as far as I'm concerned, it features Kirsty MacColl (sigh) banging on a tambourine, shaking what her mama gave her, singing backup vocals and generally taking the piss out of Bragg.

God, I love her.

Convergence

There was a month or so there, around 1984, when if you asked me who I would want to be if I could be anybody besides myself I would have said: Daryl Hall.

I also love theaters. Not "the theater," pls note (though I've loved that too in my time), but theaters. There is something romantic about a big, cavernous, empty theater.

And as you may remember, I'm also a sucker for water imagery. I think the ocean is beautiful and many of my favorite songs have overt or covert water associations.

What we have here is a few of my favorite things.

The lord taketh away, and the lord giveth.

As my friends and fans know, this season I expect to be saying "no, thank you" to Gilmore Girls after the departure of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan. Ah, but there's good news tonight.

As it turns out, this does not mean I have to give up watching Lauren Graham speak great dialogue by a writer who is a genius or something like it.Thanks to her recently announced two-episode appearance on...(wait for it)...Studio 60.

Random Flickr-Blogging: IMG_6074

Today I seem to be in the mood for a few romantic locales...



This is very much the kind of place I liked to play as a child when given the chance. A green and leafy glade, with stairs to run up and down and an archway for dramatic entrances. I would have figured out ways to "stage" Robin Hood or sumthin'....



See the lights, in the night sky...


This one makes me want to listen to a Ryuichi Sakamoto album. So I am.

Original sources here, here and here.

“I’m still hopeful,” he said, “but it’s an act of will now..."

Michael Tolkin is the author of the book The Player, a sexy Hollywood satire which he adapted into the screenplay for the Robert Altman film of the same name. His other writing credits include episodes of the sitcom Taxi-pretty great credit as far as I'm concerned-and the thought-provoking The Rapture, which he also directed. And the inexplicably memorable Christian Slater skateboard action-flick, Gleaming the Cube.

Now he's published a book sequel to The Player, and talking up (in the New York Times) his idea that the real Hollywood players are seeing that game over sign...

“I don’t think America’s had a good movie made since Abu Ghraib,” Mr. Tolkin said, before clarifying that he’s talking about big movies, not the minuscule ones that have met the industry’s quotas for unembarrassing award nominees. “I think it showed that a generation that had been raised on those heroic movies was torturing. National myths die, I don’t think they return. And our national myth is finished, except in a kind of belligerent way.”

...Now, as [Tolkin's lead character]Griffin Mill explains, the world has turned off the fantasies that America once fed it: “When the moral lessons of the movies can’t blunt the pain or give you energy because you’re too poor or hungry or scared or trapped — so trapped that the Journey of the Hero is the story of how your oppressors won King of the Hill — you can’t be helped by anything except violence in the real world, but it’s the kind of violence the movies lay off on the villain, mass violence.”

Mr. Tolkin said his book is about “the destructive power of despair and hopelessness.” Which may just deter Hollywood producers from stampeding, as they did with “The Player,” to make the sequel into a movie.

“I’m still hopeful,” he said, “but it’s an act of will now. Reason tells you otherwise.”

I admit the irony of this song was never really lost on me...

It's just in 1989, I never knew it was gonna be so ironic so quickly.

Sometimes I feel so alive
Sometimes I see so clear
Just like the way we always were
So young and free from fear

I lose my fear of war and dying
and all the clouds just disappear
Only my mirror sees me crying
Each time I lose another year . . .

Wouldn't be a drag to be like you
Settling down and having kids
and telling them what to do
Well I'm gonna stay . . .19 forever

We can do magic in these times
be what we want to be
We'll all be rock 'n' roll stars
immortal on TV

And if you see me looking tired
I've just been sleeping thought the day
But I got something to keep me wired
So we can dance the night away

Wouldn't it be a drag to be like them
They're gonna sell out everything
But I won't get fooled again
Cause I'm gonna be . . .19 forever

You better believe it - you know my dream's still alive
You can love it or leave it
But I'm never gonna be 35

-Joe Jackson-19 Forever

PS: As you may guess, I would love to have posted a video link to this song. However, the only version YouTube has at the moment is a live performance from the old Letterman show, and the sound is terrible.

Poetry corner

I don't know what I'm doing
Anymore
If I ever did

Noises from the outside world
Fill me with
Paralysis

There is nothing
There is no one
But letters.
No base
No home

I'm drowning
But the water is warm

--Anon.

I'm stealing this picture just because I like it

I stole it from Tom, on whose blog it's part of a post about climate change. This is an important topic...but I just like the picture.

The rule of threes...

Things that scare me

Three ideas:

-The idea that the current administration really has FUBAR'd things so badly it'll take 20 years to set them right.
-The idea that I'll die here.
-And the idea that something that happened when I was 15 has broken me beyond repair.

People who make me laugh

-Nathan Lane
-Maurice LaMarche
-Mark Evanier

Things I hate the most

-Movies with dialogue that makes me want to give myself a lobotomy just to make the pain go away. Also see: Wars, Star, episodes I and III.
-Hypocrites.
-Japanese comics and anime.

Things I don't understand

-How anyone ever thought John Kerry was a viable candidate.
-The overhyping of Tina Fey.
-" " Kevin Smith.

Things I want to do before I die

-Put together a movie soundtrack with My Favorite on it.
-Get the voices of all the people in my brain into more people's heads.
-Go to England.

Things I can do

-Write.
-This space intentionally left blank-just picture me giving a knowing smile...
-Spot an obscure eighties track within a couple notes.

Ways to describe my personality

-Weird.
-Wise (I'm not saying I've ever described it that way, but it has been so described).
-Lacking in tact.

Things I can't do

-Stop taking shots at Tennessee.
-Wait for the premiere of Studio 60.
-Really play the keyboards (or any musical instrument, but the keyboards is the one that hurts).

Voices I think you should listen to

-Annabel and Keitha. They're much smarter than me. (For newcomers, they're also characters that I created).
-Richard Kiley singing "Dulcinea"
-Kirsty MacColl singing just about anything.

Things you should never listen to

-People choking on their own irony.
-Any music that doesn't move you, no matter how much other people tell you they like it. I like what I like, you like what you like, and there's nothing wrong with anyone who doesn't like what you like.
-Anyone who tells you they don't like Joe Jackson. There's something wrong with them.

Things I'd like to learn

-How to pull out of a spiral.
-How to turn a nervous breakdown into a nervous breakthrough.
-To really play keyboards.

Favorite foods

-Insert
-Cheap joke
-Here

Shows I watched as a kid

-Cartoons both good and bad. Nowadays I try to limit myself to the good.
-Star Trek.
-Doctor Who

I got tagged by the aforementioned Jen, but I don't like tagging people. Anyone who wants to can pick this up...

Well it hasn't been your day, your week, your month...

Thanks to Jen, who sent me the School Reunion: The '80s set from my Amazon.com wish list for my birthday (not that the rest of you should feel guilty or anything).

I wanted this set because it has a bunch of tracks that not having in my collection made me feel like such a failure as an "eighties man.'

Oh, it's very '80s. How '80s?



...This '80s. I don't know about you, but I say these are (in spirit) the same two kids as in the video for that Yes dance remix I posted a while back.

Then there's another little gem, the video for which I once noted has virtually the same plot as Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Only the video does in less than five minutes what the great visionary needed two and a half hours to accomplish.


So thanks, Jen.

Katrina and the Waves

Just go read Krugman. Via the TG Women:

Last September President Bush stood in New Orleans, where the lights had just come on for the first time since Katrina struck, and promised “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.” Then he left, and the lights went out again.

Apologists for the administration will doubtless claim that blame for the lack of progress rests not with Mr. Bush, but with the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracies. That’s the great thing about being an antigovernment conservative: even when you fail at the task of governing, you can claim vindication for your ideology.

Maybe the aid promised to the gulf region will actually arrive some day. But by then it will probably be too late. Many former residents and small-business owners, tired of waiting for help that never comes, will have permanently relocated elsewhere; those businesses that stayed open, or reopened after the storm, will have gone under for lack of customers. In America as in Iraq, reconstruction delayed is reconstruction denied — and Mr. Bush has, once again, broken a promise.

New stuff from our man Mariano!

"...the unofficial official 'mystery artist' of Dictionopolis in Digitopolis." You can see more of his recently-posted work here.

You have to get used to losing things in life, or you’re done for

John Kander & Fred Ebb were so linked that the name of one was once a crossword puzzle clue for that of the other. As I've said before, I think they were the greatest show writing team of their generation, and I'm hardly alone in that estimation. But lyricist Mr. Ebb passed away a couple of years ago.

There's an article in the New York Times about what composer Mr. Kander has been doing since. Obstensibly it's about a long-in-progress musical begun with Ebb: Curtains recently opened in L.A. and is planned for Broadway.

I would dearly love to see it; have wanted to ever since Kander & Ebb talked about it in a book they published (and I reviewed) in 2003.

But it (the article) is really about coming to terms with loss. As Kander slowly and at first unsteadily begins writing again to his own lyrics, with the occasional "general ideas, sample lines and help in evaluation" by Rupert Holmes.

Eventually Mr. Kander found the way forward. “I made this switch in my head, quite consciously,” he recalled. “Instead of dealing with it as a big trauma and a big cry of grief, I started to think of it as just a different chapter. You have to get used to losing things in life, or you’re done for,” he added, a thought that evoked what seemed, at first, like unrelated childhood memories. The time his Aunt Rheta put her hand over his to teach him his first chord: C major. And the season, even earlier, he spent isolated on a sleeping porch recovering from tuberculosis. “I’ve always thought that I became a listening person then,” he said. “Listening for the sounds of footsteps coming toward me.”

If your ear, he seemed to suggest, was tuned to the frequency of human contact, it was necessarily tuned to the frequency of human absence as well. Love and loss were not separate channels. “And once I acknowledged that,” he said, “I felt free to go to work.”