Barbara Billingsley

I wasn't completely sure she was still around. But man, this lady was a champ.

Although it was already a bit long in the tooth by the time I was a kid, "Leave It to Beaver" was a huge part of my childhood. Can I tell you how much I love(d) this show? In the past year or so I had been combing through the archives, available for streaming on Netflix. It has not lost any of its charm. In fact, it may be better than I remember.

"Beaver" is constantly held up as a paradigm of cold war squeaky clean America, old fashioned and conservative. Well, kinda. Nuclear families. Bed on time. Wash behind your ears. Blah blah blah. But watching clusters of episodes recently made me rethink this.

Although Ward and June had rules for Wally and The Beave, they weren't total hardasses. They were always loving and understanding with the boys, even when they did really dumb shit. And when they lied, covered it up and -- inevitably -- were found out, Ward and June were usually more disappointed than angry. And they sat the kids down and spoke with them calmly about what they did and why they did it and exhorted them to come to the 'rents and talk to them whenever anything of the sort dealt with in that particular episode arose again.

The elder Cleavers weren't the type to say "In my day, kids had respect for their elders!" They knew that they weren't much different when they were kids and that boys will be boys. They knew that, ultimately, most of what Wally and Beaver learned, they'd learn it through experience, not by listening to a lecture. And as long as no one got hurt, it was all good. They never yelled. They never hit. It was, dare I say it, a pretty liberal show. And not just for its time.

Wholesome? Oh yes. But hardly the hoary cliche of Eisenhower America it's often made out to be. Yes, Ward went to the office and June stayed home and took care of the house, always immaculately dressed and coiffed. But the Cleavers were both active participants in their children's lives. And they discussed matters of discipline and the kids' well-being together. Ward never put his foot down and said "Because I said so!" or "I'm the man of the house, and what I say goes!" Ward and June both knew that even they didn't always know best and admitted when they were wrong. And not just between the two of them. To their kids.

I could fill up an entire post about the language on the show, which is utterly brilliant in its own right. Ward and June spoke perfect standard American English but the youngsters on the show had a patois all their own. I wasn't around when the show aired, so I can't tell you how accurate it was to the time. But there never was then and never was after that a show that had "goofy" and "crummy" and "hunka" and "hollerin' at" and "little creep" and dozens of other nuggets of linguistic awesomeness as part of its arsenal. The writing was only nominated for an Emmy once (and didn't win). This is criminal.

At the heart of the show, though, was the lady that just passed. She was filled with love for her family and a wisdom that is stereotypical of mid- to late- 20th century TV motherhood. But it all began with her. She was the mom you wish you had.

Free Speech = $$$$$

Here's Mitch McConnell on "Meet the Press" regarding this week's Supreme Court decision, giving corporations carte blanche to spend as much as they want to smear candidates they don't like. (Transcript here.) Host David Gregory has just asked McConnell if he thinks this will benefit Democrats or Republicans.

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, I don't know who it benefits, but it's an important victory for the First Amendment. Right now if you're General Electric and you own NBC, you can say anything you want to about any candidate right up to the day of the election. But if you're a corporation or a union that doesn't own a media outlet, you haven't been able to. So you've had this big gap in the First Amendment applying one standard to media-owned corporations, another standard to unions and corporations that don't own media outlets. Now the Supreme Court has said the First Amendment is for everyone. I think that's a step in the right direction.

Say what?

This isn't bullshit but it is serious spin. He makes a fair point about some corporations owning media outlets and others not owning them. (They just give to the candidates directly.) But the issue here isn't corporation vs. corporation. It's corporation vs. common citizen, the former a legal construct created by the state and the latter the subject of all of those supposed protections in the Constitution.

McConnell is basically saying that everything is fair now because Exxon/Mobil can now spend as much as GE to get its message out. But can I spend that much?

Well, I suppose I can. All I need is several billion dollars and I can have the same rights as Exxon/Mobil or GE. "Saying something", which is protected under the First Amendment, has now officially been equated with "spending buttloads of cash to influence an election".

David Gregory, of course, just lets the statement stand and doesn't once mention the effect on regular people.

Thanks, David, for your hard-hitting journalism. No wonder McConnell is like a barnacle on your freaking show.

Art Clokey

Geez, this dude was still alive? Apparently so. But not anymore.

Art Clokey was responsible for one of the most oddly beloved of animated characters, Gumby.

I used to watch Gumby when I was a kid, just like everybody else. And I can still sing the song, which is pretty whimsical. But the animations themselves were often really really messed up. I'm talking about the stuff of nightmares here.

This is one of the earliest Gumby shorts. Check it out. The visuals, the soundtrack, the plot (such as it is). Terrifying. This is better suited for college kids on dope than children.



Clokey talked about his scientific background and how he tried to make things realistic, like with a rotating module to create artificial gravity. (Kubrick had the same thing in "2001". Nice.) And yet how do they get Gumby down from the moon? With the effing firetruck!

And nobody ever asks how Gumby got there or why. They just look through the telescope and say "Oh, there he is" as if they had already checked the bathroom and the crystal meth lab and this was the next logical place to look.

And how do you like those little triangle creatures with the eyes that pop out. Eyes that get blown clear off one creature's head by Gumby's dad, by the way. Without even checking to see if the little fuckers just wanted to play. Did they really look that threatening? Did they have weapons?

Thanks for the nightmares, Art.

Ken Ober

Well, here's another one who dropped off before his time.

Ken Ober was known to many as the host of MTV's "Remote Control". It was the first, and probably best, of many game shows on the channel that subverted the format with jokey categories and gimmicks like a chair that sent contestants flipping over backwards when they lost and a spinning wheel from which contestants were supposed to identify music video "artists".

I had my shot on that wheel in the show's final season. The episode I was in aired on St. Patrick's Day 1990 but it was taped on a freaking freezing Manhattan day the prior December. I remember I had planned to wear my NYU sweatshirt on the show but they changed us all into green shirts and stupid hats for the occasion.

Ober didn't come backstage to greet the contestants. He just showed up on set. But he did show me some personal grace. There was a question about which four characters besides Barney and Fred could see the Great Gazoo. Deductive reasoning got it for me. Dino was one, of course. And the other characters must be the ones who weren't going to blab to anyone about it. Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, who didn't talk. And Dino's counterpart in the Rubble house, Hoppy the Hopasaurus, of course.

Ober, and everyone else on the show, seemed awfully surprised that I actually answered the question. I think it may have been intended as a stumper. (They often put in questions for which they didn't expect an answer.) After the question, an interruption from "Ken's mother" took place. Ken said "Wow, Mom, I'm just dusted that that kid got that one." Then he looked at me and gave me the thumbs-up while Mom said something stupid.

I ended up winning the day, even though I did something really stupid and almost lost because of it. (I won't go into it here. Ask me about it some time.) And I correctly identified all but one video in the Grand Prize round, missing out on a trip to, where else, Ireland. The video I missed was by Bobby Brown. My response upon learning what I missed? "I hate Bobby Brown!" I said this on national television at the height of the man's popularity. I really heard it from the studio audience, who had been totally with me up to that point.

The whole thing was totally fun and I went home with a bunch of prizes, including a motorcycle that I never rode, all of which I had to pay taxes on. Boo.

Thanks, Ken, for giving me my first and only (so far; I'll get on "Jeopardy" if it kills me) game show experience. You'll be fondly remembered.

Dumb Letters: The Oxy Morons

I don't get some people. Here's a couple writing to the NYTimes about what they didn't like about "Sesame Street".

Two decades ago, when our children were young, we weren’t wild about “Sesame Street.”

Most of the puppet characters were male, and the choppy format seemed designed to help reduce a child’s attention span.

Okay, I don't think that the first area of critique is an entirely valid reason for not watching something. If most of the characters were female, would that be okay? And the writers use the word "most". So there were some female characters, apparently. Not enough? What's the right amount? And were the male puppets (that, from what I know, lack genitalia) pushing some agenda of male-domination? If they were, I missed it. Which was probably part of CPW's nefarious plan, I guess.

The second point is a valid critique, althought the letter writers infer an active plot to reduce the chidrens' attention spans by using the phrase "designed to" instead of something on the lines of "had the unintended consequences of". This leaves a bad taste.

And no one really learns anything from a passive experience like television.
“Educational television” is still an oxymoron.

Okay, this is bullshit. We learn passively all the time. I'm all for hands-on education, but it isn't the only way we learn. I taught myself to read by watching "Sesame Street". I learned from it. It's simply impossible that I'm the only one. I continue to learn by watching television. It's not that you watch. It's what you watch. Just like it's what you read, what you listen to and who you talk to. And yet these snobs dismiss the entire concept with "no one really learns anything". So I guess they didn't ever tell their kids not to touch the stove. That would be passive learning. Better to let them learn by touching it themselves. "Educational television" is not now, nor ever was, an oxymoron.

But wait, these people can't leave well enough alone.

Our children preferred a now-forgotten series, introduced by James Earl Jones, called “Long Ago and Far Away,” which presented a wonderful tale accompanied by beautiful art.

There were no product tie-ins like Tickle Me Elmo, though, so that program wasn’t a moneymaker in the way that “Sesame Street” is.

WHAT? They went right from complaining about how nobody learns anything from television to extolling the virtues of...a television program.

And the fact that "Sesame Street" licensed their characters for merchandising is entirely irrelevant to the conversation. The program is the program. The products exist entirely outside of it. You can watch the show without buying the Tickle Me Elmo, believe it or not. I'm really not sure how one program is better than another because it didn't market its characters. Is making money a bad thing? Is it better to give money to CTW, that has a mission to educate kids, albeit in a way that these two chuckleheads find inferior to wonderful tales and beautiful art, or to some for-profit whose only interest is making money?

These are the kinds of people that even liberals would want to slap in the face.

Trauma

Well, this makes perfect sense. A giant Times Square-sized advertisement for an undoubtedly entertaining television program. Fire up the Tivo!

Here in New York City we enjoy seeing larger-than-life-size images of things on fire and people in states of panic (trauma, one might say), particularly on a lovely mid-September morning.

Thanks, NBC. Nice work.

Karl Malden

Admit it. You thought he had been dead for years already. He was 97, after all. 97!

Growing up, I knew him as the guy on the American Express ads with the funny hat. And as the dude on "Streets of San Francisco" with Kirk Douglas's son. And he was old then.

It was only later that I found his earlier work in two classic films, "On the Waterfront" and "A Streetcar Named Desire", both directed by the great Elia Kazan and both starring some dude named Brando. He was clearly meant to be a character actor. That mug and that schnozz were there even back then. Not a handsome man.

But, as it goes, he could act. And he had himself a long and distinguished career. He stands in stark contrast to this week's other celebrity snuffings. Unlike Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, he lived a long life unmarred by controversy or suffering. His greatest achievement? He was married to the same woman for 70 years. 70! That's beautiful.

A good and well-lived life. Thanks, Karl, for doing it the way it oughta be done.

I'm Not as Mad Now, Unfortunately

So, the NCAA Tournmanent kicks back into gear tonight. I feel like I should be more excited about it than I actually am. As we get deeper into tournaments, the excitement is supposed to build. Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty, with only the best teams vying for the top spots. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. That's good, right?

And for me, personally, this should be more exciting. For the first time ever, my bracket is actually in contention. (This is in no way due to any act of prognostication genius on my part. I picked only one team seeded lower than 4th for my Sweet 16, and that was #5 Purdue. Whoopee. My success is due entirely to cowardice. But hey, it worked.) So what's the issue?

I'll tell you. The tournament gets less interesting as it goes along because it gets less crazy. There's a reason they call it March Madness. It isn't because we all can't wait to see two big-conference teams squaring off in the championship game on a Monday night in early April when we'd rather be watching the newly-minted baseball season. It's because we love those first four days in which 48 of the 64 teams get knocked out in an orgy of hoops hysteria. It's a feast, particularly the first round, with 16 games on each day. 16!

The possibilities of those first two days are fantastic. Everybody's bracket is a potential winner. And is this the year that a 16-seed finally beats a 1-seed? And the fact that there are usually four games going at once means that if you're watching a dog from Boise, odds are CBS has something good ready to roll over in Dayton. And hey, you dopes! Why are we watching this game when the other game is so much closer and only has 1:27 left in it? Come on!

Then it's over. The George Masons and the Davidsons of the world eventually turn back into pumpkins and the North Carolinas and the UConns take their rightful place at the top of the heap. The level of play may be higher but it's just not as much fun. Oddly enough, focusing on only one game at a time seems like a letdown, even if it's a better game.

So go, all of the other teams in my bracket. At this point in the tournament you'll need to be twice as good to be half as interesting.

I Hunker for the Bunker

Holy crap, this is hilarious.

When Stephen Colbert spun himself off of "The Daily Show", I was dubious. The show seemed unnecessary. And difficult to pull off. Jon Stewart can smirk at the news for a half-hour because he's Jon Stewart. But Colbert was playing a character. One who presumably does not believe the same things the "real" Stephen Colbert does.

It was a shaky start. I was unimpressed for the first few weeks, in which I often hung around only out of inertia after enjoying TDS. But after a month or so, they figured this thing out. The show is, in some ways, even better than its predecessor. My hat is now way off to Mr. Colbert, who may be this country's best political satirist.

Here's a great bit that he did recently lampooning Fox News wackadoo Glenn Beck. (It was also linked on Salon's War Room, which is the place from whence I nicked it.) I had a difficult time stifling my laughter while watching this at work.

The second one is the really funny one, but you need to watch the first one to get the context. Unless you're a fan of Glenn Beck. In which case, what the hell are you doing here?

(I was trying to embed these, but I was getting some errors, so you'll have to follow the links. Or just go to Salon and watch them.)

The First One

The Second One

More Hot (Schoolhouse) Rocks

Since we're on the subject of Schoolhouse Rock, I wanted to give a shout-out to someone who was instrumental in their creation and is, fortunately, still among us. I'm talking about the great Jack Sheldon.

Sheldon gained a modicum of fame as a jazz trumpeter, but, like Blossom Dearie, he's remembered by my generation as one of the voices of Schoolhouse Rock. In fact, he voiced the consensus Schoolhouse Rock favorite, "Conjunction Junction".



I likes me the CJ, and the adjectives song that Ms. Dearie sang is also on my Top 5 list. But my all-time favorite is below, a dizzyingly hilarious number about pronouns called "Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla". The lyric, music and animation are fantastic. And Sheldon's vocal is utterly priceless, particularly the spoken-word interlude on the city bus, which makes me laugh every time.



Thank you, pronouns! And thank you, Jack.

Blossom Dearie

When Isaac Hayes died last year, there was an entire generation that said "Oh man, Chef died!" The rest of us went "Dude..."

The lady over to the right just passed, and I'm of the generation (which is the same as the above-referenced "dude" generation) that remembers the later pop-culture sensation but not the prior musical legacy.

The voice was instantly recognizable. And she was a talented and versatile singer and songwriter. Her career lasted from the 40s into the 21st century. But in my heart, she'll be remembered for two songs that she recorded for Bob Dorough in the early 70s.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the late Blossom Dearie. (Her real name, by the way. Didn't know that. Wouldn't have guessed it.)



And for something a bit more somber.

Majel Barrett

How cool was this lady? The obits all talk about Nurse Chapel. Which was cool. I loved that she had a crush on Spock. I also loved that she was the voice of the computer in every incarnation of the series. But I loved her most when she came back in The Next Generation and even Deep Space Nine as Lwaxana Troi. She was the mom you're glad you never had (or were annoyed that you did have). It was worse for poor Deanna, of course, because her mom, being a Betazoid, could read her thoughts. (What, you didn't know that?) And you only thought your mother could.

When Stanley Kubrick died, my first thought was "Oh, no!" but it was followed almost immediately by "Oh, no! Did he finish "Eyes Wide Shut"? I'm the last person earth who would suggest that the passing of Majel Barrett ranks up there with Kubrick's as a loss to our culture. But I was heartened to hear that Mrs. Roddenberry managed to complete one last turn as the computer's voice in J.J. Abrams' new prequel.

Trekkers of the world, raise a glass of, oh, I don't know, Romulan ale... Klingon bloodwine... tea - Earl Grey - hot... whatever ya got. She lived long and she prospered.

Inflation

So here's a picture I found in, of all places, ESPN's website. In a basketball preview, no less. [Insert your own basketball joke here.]

Apparently, this is an actress on AMC's well-regarded series "Mad Men", which I have never seen. Although I'm now one step closer to putting it in the ol' Netflix queue.

I was struck by the link above the picture that says "Enlarge".

My question, and I think it's an obvious one: Aren't they large enough already?