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Isn't Life Terrible

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

How to Survive the Apocalypse


1) Avoid crowds.
2) Sever ties to family and friends.
3) Be careful near big bodies of water.
4) Be on the move by the seventh trumpet blast, or - better yet - the fifth.

More survival tips here from my new best friend and favorite author Stephen T. Asma.

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

More Tom Snyder Audio - and Video

Some more Tom Snyder for those of us still in TS withdrawal. These won't play in Box.net's player, you'll have to download first.
1) With Jack Haley Jr. on Wizard of Oz (joined in progress; this is a good time to remind you to take Isn't Life Terrible's Impossible Wizard of Oz Quiz.)

2) With Tim Conway.

3) The Nightside Hour. Tom reserved the final hour of his three-hour radio show for audience members who wanted to call in. This is from Sept. 8, 1992.

And for those of you who may have missed it, from The Tommorow Show, a favorite episode featuring Disney animator Ward Kimball that somehow survived the years on my 3/4" video copy, taped off the air.

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Summer's Not Over 'Till The Fat Gentlemen Jump

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Saturday, August 25, 2007

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade, Scatter Squeezed Lemons Around The Floor, Slip On Them, Break Three Discs and Crush Four Vertebrae

I have searched for Terry Rivers online, but cannot find him. If he's alive (doubtful) I think he's owed a sincere apology from everyone on the planet. The line between comedy and tragedy has never been as thin as it appears here; this is life as a Laurel and Hardy comedy minus the laughs. I was going to redact the photo and address information; but then I thought, "Why? Because 'something bad' might happen as a result?" Be as incredulous as you like when you click on the picture to read about Terry's post-high school life, but please be aware that this is no joke. It is an actual excerpt from a 20th high school reunion booklet.

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Friday, August 24, 2007

Stan & Ollie, Bud & Lou, George & Gracie, Bob & Ray, Pete & Dud... Mike and Elaine!

Mike Nichols and Elaine May were a comedy team for a short time - from 1957 through 1962. Their recorded output was tiny – just three LP’s: Improvisations To Music (1959), which, powered by the team's television appearances, became a 'top forty' LP; An Evening With Nichols and May, which contained excerpts from their hit Broadway show of 1960, and their final record, Nichols and May Examine Doctors, from 1961.

Nichols and May were improvisational situation comedians: sophisticated, funny, and cool. They appealed not only to adults, but also to kids. Steve Martin says that each routine was "...like a song - you could listen to it over and over. I used to go to sleep to them at night."

The ten sketches on the final album, ...Examine Doctors, were originally recorded for "the greatest show in network radio history" - Monitor, an NBC extravaganza that ran pretty much the entire weekend, pretty much across the country, from 1955 through 1975. At its peak, the monitor beacon could be heard for forty hours, from 8 a.m. Saturday morning through midnight Sunday. If you'd like to listen to excerpts from Monitor, you'll need Real Player and Dennis Hart's Monitor site.

Nichols and May were Monitor regulars for a couple of years. The ten tracks on the ...Examine Doctors LP are but a small fraction of their work for Monitor. The rest remains unreleased, which is a shame, because it may well be some of their very best work. See if you agree.

Mike Nichols and Elaine May Unreleased Monitor Sketches, Part 1

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Mike Nichols on Down Time

A couple of years ago, Mike Nichols appeared on Inside The Actors Studio, the show hosted by what's-his-name... you know, the guy married to Kedakai Turner Lipton?

When Mike Nichols said the following, I grabbed a pencil and paper, backed up the Tivo, and copied it down word for word. It may well be the best advice ever offered to to anyone working on a creative project.

The most unacknowledged factor in our work is down time. Time not "working on it." You'll find that – over and over and over - you can't solve something... and you leave it alone, and you go away, and you come back... and you can.

That's your unconscious. Once you've acknowledged that it exists and that it works in this strange way, you can begin to cater to it more, by "putting things away."

This is really a very fancy name that I've given my own laziness. It's literally true. All my working life, I've thought, "I really am very lazy."

And indeed I am, in some ways. But we all feel lazy; there's always more work that we know we should be doing. And everybody says, "Lazy?! Are you nuts?! You've made us work now 48 hours in a row! And you say you're lazy?" Yes.

Put it away. So that you can rediscover it, or discover something else next time.

You know how, in rehearsal, almost invariably a very good day is followed by a lousy day. That's the unconscious. The lousy day is as important as the very good day.

My only remaining battle with the studios is that since they are not creative people, and they live their life in meetings, they think that things you say in meetings are work. 'Cause that's their only work! Therefore they can’t be expected to love, as we do, process.

The whole point of process is that you can only have one or two good ideas a day. That's all you can do! And then, with God’s help, you'll have another one tomorrow, and another one the day after... and then maybe none for days.

If our process can include that reality, then we are encouraging the unconscious, and we are able to keep having good ideas, which is the only thing that makes us happy when we're working.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Aged, Not At All Old

Ray Bradbury is 87 today.

Happy Birthday Ray!

Audio interviews:

2007 LA Times Festival of Books

A 2006 BBC 4 Interview

A 2002 KCRW Interview (starts about ¼ way through program)

There are two Tom Snyder interviews on this site; click Bradbury’s name in the links below.

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Larry King Sells, Shirks, and Sleeps

If you liked the previous Larry King Stories here on Isn't Life Terrible, you'll enjoy these three additional stories Larry King tells about his misspent youth:

The Baby Tender

Verr De Nights

Sleeping While on the Air

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

A Love That Should Last Forever





A cover from the British magazine Hello.

Click to enlarge.

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Saturday, August 18, 2007

It wasn't Disney, it was God

There's pointed advice about a specific human activity in songs from both of Disney's first two feature-length cartoons (or, if you're Neal Gabler, animations). Truth is stranger than fiction - listen to Fr. G. Sarducci. (3m)

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Thursday, August 16, 2007

A Tour of Hal Roach Culver City Laurel and Hardy Locations


Speaking of Hal Roach, as we were in the previous post, if you're interested in the Roach films, you might want to take a look at a video I posted on YouTube some time ago featuring my buddy Piet Schreuders.

And you might even want to read the full length article from his magazine Furore -

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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

If Hal Roach Had Made Newsreels



Sorry, couldn't resist.

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Saturday, August 11, 2007

Almond's Joy

Warning: eating a Valomilk can be dangerous to your sweater. Ask Steve Almond, or better yet, listen to an excerpt from the audio version of Candyfreak, narrated by Oliver Wyman - in which Steve pays a visit to the Valomilk factory (9m).

Second Warning: your mouth will start watering for a Valomilk. You'll need the web address for Sifers Valomilks - and a little patience, because the candy can't be shipped in hot weather. Third Warning: like any small taste of something delicious, you're going to want to get the rest of Candyfreak.

There are two basic levels at which you can like something. Level One, you like it. You recommend it.

Level Two, you want to go out, grab strangers, and shout, "You absolutely cannot miss this, it's unbelievably terrific and fun and wonderful and I feel sorry for you if you don't know about it!" That's essentially what's happening here. Steve Almond's Candyfreak is the first of a small, select group of items that will receive unqualified recommendation. These are the things you'd save if your house was on fire, take with you to the desert island, or, finances permitting, buy for all of your friends.

Candyfreak is Steve Almond's excruciatingly funny, unexpectedly touching, endlessly fascinating, highly personal odyssey into the world of those rugged confectioners who persevere against industry giants (and all the odds) to create quality candies of local origin and renown. The audio version of Candyfreak (available from Audible) is performed perfectly by Wyman and can be listened to as frequently as a favorite song. The print version? Happily, the author currently offers the bargain of the century: a signed first edition of 'Candyfreak' for $15. I'm ordering another copy.

Fourth and final warning: In a few days, you're going to want to grab total strangers and say, "Have you read Candyfreak? You absolutely must!" More about the author and his other books at Steve Almond's Website.

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Friday, August 10, 2007

News From The Future - A Report On Film Restoration as of Jan. 1, 2150

Do you remember the pre-virtual flatties? Don’t worry... no one does.

But a small band of so-called ‘film preservationists’ at UMCA have joined forces to restore and present these curios to anyone with the courage and patience to “sit through them.” Most flatties are missing and presumed lost, junked due to their near-total lack of commercial value when the first “immersive media experiences” (as they were then called) flashed onto parietal, temporal and occipital lobes around the world.

“What survived, survived piecemeal,” according to Sky Hepburn, who calls herself a ‘film preservationist’ even though, strictly speaking, there is no ‘film’ left to preserve. “We work with a variety of binary source materials which are themselves re-encodings of long-obsolete single-perspective external media. Sometimes we have just one channel of information to work with, so we can only approximate the original experience.”

“Approximating the experience” is challenging, to say the least. We asked Hepburn to comment on her most difficult restoration work.

  • Planet of the Apes (1968) – “We have the picture element and a commentary track by Roddy McDowell. All attempts to recreate the original dialogue through lip reading have come up empty.”
  • Cabin Boy (1994) – “We have a complete set of all the raw footage as well as the soundtrack mix elements from this classic comedy, but no information as to how it was assembled for release.”
  • Follow That Bird (1985) – “Again, picture elements but no sound. We’ve recreated the portion of the soundtrack spoken by human beings, but all Muppet sequences are currently mute.”
  • The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) – “A heartbreaker. The only John Huston film we have, other than Annie – and our print is missing the last reel. Surviving documentation indicates that the film featured Kirk Douglas, George C. Scott, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster, but we can only confirm the participation of the first two.”
  • A Cinerama Space Odyssey (2001) – “The last twenty minutes look as if the original negative was exposed to light during darkroom development.”
  • Scent of Mystery (1960) – “Missing picture and track, but we have the smells.”

There have been successful restorations, however. All of the materials survived for Memento (2000), but the film was, according to Hepburn, “…a hopeless mess. After years of fruitless analysis, somebody, I forget who, suggested we reverse the order of the sequences.” This provided a ‘Rosetta Stone,’ although Hepburn admits that the now fully restored film is “…kind of boring.” The ‘tails out’ technique has been attempted with other films for which all elements still exist, “…with mixed results,” according to Hepburn. “It improves some films, like Citizen Kane (1941), which is far more understandable when you know what ‘Rosebud’ is from the outset.” For other films – like those of David Lynch, for example – the technique yields no discernible effect.

Preservationists may differ in their judgment of individual flattie titles, but all are in agreement as to the most rewarding aspect of their work: discovering and identifying titles that have maltinized.

“We don’t fully understand the process,” says Hepburn, “but apparently, as a film ages, it becomes susceptible to maltinization.” Regardless of content, maltinized films expand over the years, ‘growing’ new opening and closing sequences. Thankfully, these are easy to detect, since the added sequences do not involve players or characters seen in the original film, but rather ‘a universal character’ whom Hepburn believes may well have been the most beloved ‘movie star’ of all time, judging by the sheer number of appearances he made. “Like the Greek chorus, this character exists to explain the story and indicate how an ideal audience would react,” says Hepburn, who’s currently working on “Glasses, Beard and Lapel Pin,” a loving two-week tribute consisting exclusively of excerpted maltinized material. “We believe these sequences stand on their own. They deserve to be seen and appreciated without having to endure the 90 to 130 minute ‘feature films’ that follow and/or precede them. You need to know about these ‘motion pictures,’ but you probably don’t want to actually watch them.”

The first program, subsidized by University of Murdoch California funds, will include the maltinizations of They Died With Their Boots On, Angels with Dirty Faces, Little Caesar, Yankee Doodle Dandy, McClintock, and a collection of shorts made by the National Film Board of Canada and Disney Productions.

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Monday, August 6, 2007

She Looks So Familiar...

Two stills, from around 1950, currently up for auction on eBay.

Recognize her?

You should.

You watched her as a kid. A lot.

Give up? Well, here's another item from another seller: A contract she signed.

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Saturday, August 4, 2007

The Player Returning to Earth First Ends the Game

Gold Discovered on Mystery Planet in Outer Space! Expedition Under Way Must Guard Against Space Bandits!

This is the first in a series of spotlights on Parker Brothers Games, specifically the ones that have gorgeous game boards. It's Parker Brothers Space Game from 1953.

Click the gameboard photo to supersize the image. There's a lot to like here.

- The delicate orange and green color scheme is spectacular, especially today, when we feel constrained to make space either black or blue. No satellite photos = green space, yellow stars.

- The smiling Conditioning Chamber: people enter in gray post-war garb and emerge in Chris Ware space suits belching orange flame.

- The rocket-ship design on the box cover looks like it was stolen from Ward Kimball's top drawer.

- The Disney dark ride serpentine gametrack.

- The Nicholas Tesla fever dream bad guys with big magnets in the upper right corner.

- There are rumors that Black Bandits are hovering in outer space - it is well to avoid these dangerous people, if possible, because they demand booty if they contact a Space Man.

- Black dots = Danger spots.

- Parker Brothers: At The Cutting Edge Of Science. Two wormholes, here called Short Cuts.

- And the classic Parker Brothers logo.

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Park'd - at Saratoga Springs

Dozens of individual entrepreneurs with homes near the racetrack convert these sites into money-making propositions using readily-available materials, and you can too!

MATERIALS NEEDED

1 stick
1 sq. ft., orange cloth
1 small roll, duct tape
1 pc. oak tag, white
1 Sharpie pen, black
1 folding lawn chair

To enter this rewarding industry, tape orange cloth to stick; write the word “Parking” on the oak tag with Sharpie Pen (as well as day rate); unfold lawn chair; sit down; using dominant hand, wave orange cloth at passing drivers with sweeping motion indicating that their money is far more important than your lawn.

- Excerpt from “So You’re Thinking Of A Part-Time Career In Parking: Secrets of the Pros”

Here in Saratoga Springs, you can find out just about everything you need to know from owner-operated parking lots.

  • If parking prices are increasing, you are moving towards the track.
  • If the numeral “6” (as in “$6”) was created by the addition of a pen stroke to the numeral “5,” or if an “8” looks like it was, at some point in the recent past, a “7,” then you are in Saratoga on the day of a big race.
  • Conversely, if the numerals have been subtly or obviously altered to create lower numbers, either a) attendance is down, or b) it is late in the afternoon.

How To Select Off-Track Parking

You want to select a parking entrepreneur who looks like he or she is truly ready and eager to park your car. The most reliable guide to selecting an owner-operator is past performance – how have they parked at this track in the past?

If you don’t have access to this information, look at the parker as he or she waves the flag. Note any signs of lameness, excessive sweating, foaming/drooling from the mouth, over-excitability, runny eyes or nose, or popping the tail up and down. Any of these is a negative sign.

What Are The Odds My Car Will Be Damaged?

Many people become confused when trying to determine the odds that their car will be scratched or dented in Off-Track Parking.

It’s important to remember that these odds are not set by the parking entrepreneur, but rather by the car owners themselves. The amount of money spent on an individual car determines the odds for damage.

Cars which take a great deal of money to purchase will have lower odds (indicating higher likelihood) than, say, a Kia or a Daewoo. Remember also that the odds change every minute – if a Mercedes CL600 and Bentley Continental GT pull in after you, your odds become higher (indicating lower likelihood).

Unpredictable Fun!

Even the most knowledgeable enthusiasts “make their selection” and “put their money down” without knowing how a particular parker will perform on a particular day. Even first-timers can “get lucky” picking a parking spot based on something as frivolous as the color of the parker’s shirt… or because “they have a feeling” based on the way a parker swings the flag.

At the end of a day of racing, when you return to your car, you may be a “winner;” you may be a “loser,” but one thing’s for sure: you won’t know which ‘till you check out your car.

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Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Mickey Press Book up to $550.00 on eBay

Closes in about an hour. No wonder they drew Mickey standing on a mountain of money!

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More Early Cartoon Music MP3's

Klaus Kinski ultimately portrayed the title character in Werner Herzog's masterpiece Fitzcarraldo.

Kinski was not the director's first choice, however. Neither was Jason Robards, who had signed on to play Fitzcarraldo and was fully four months into shooting when he contracted amoebic dysentery and left the Ecuadorian rain forest to return to the U.S. for medical care. His doctors forbade his return.

Herzog eventually gave the role to Kinski, but not before he renewed his knock-down, dragged-out fight with The Walt Disney Company, which refused to loan out Donald Duck for the role. (The duck's success in The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos made him an obvious choice).

The still above is all that remains of the nearly two months the duck spent at the jungle location. Herzog was so enamored with the idea of an unintelligibly-voiced main character that when the duck bowed out, the decision was made to shoot the film entirely in German.

For your listening and downloading pleasure:

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf - Harry Reser and his Eskimos
What, No Mickey Mouse? - Ben Bernie and his Orchestra
Mickey Mouse and Minnie's In Town - Don Bestor and his Orchestra
Mickey Mouse's Birthday Party - International Novelty Orchestra
Whistle While You Work - Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra
The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down - Russ Morgan and his Orchestra
Powerhouse - The Raymond Scott Quintette
It's A Hap-Hap-Happy Day - Bob Zurke and his Delta Rhythm Band
and, in honor of this week's stunning new Popeye DVD Box set (Thanks, Jerry!)...
Popeye Medley (Extended-play featuring Floyd Buckley, "Radio's Popeye," singing 'I'm Popeye The Sailor Man,' 'Let's Build a Bridge Today,' 'Hamburger Mine,' 'Popeye on Parade,' 'Won't You Come and Climb A Mountain with Me,' 'Clean Shaven Man,' and 'Brotherly Love')

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