It’s a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World

With the passing this week of Mickey Rooney at age 93, the last of the principal actors in Stanley Kramer’s epic comedy film, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, is gone.

A key feature of the film is that it starred everybody, from those I am identifying as principals to supporting roles to brief cameo speaking parts to even more brief non-speaking appearances.  It is certainly the only movie in which you will find Spencer Tracy and the Three Stooges.

The principals, of course, start with Tracy, who provided the film’s center as Police Captain Culpepper, and include everyone in the photo above.  They are (of course in alphabetical order):

Edie Adams
Milton Berle
Sid Caesar
Buddy Hackett
Ethel Merman
Dorothy Provine
Mickey Rooney
Dick Shawn
Phil Silvers
Terry-Thomas
Jonathan Winters

Now they’re all gone.

Naturally there are some performers from the movie who are still with us at this point, among them Barrie Chase and Marvin Kaplan who just last year joined Mickey Rooney at a 50th anniversary celebration of the film.  Both Chase, who portrayed Dick Shawn’s bikini-clad dancing girlfriend, and Kaplan, who was the Irwin of Ray & Irwin’s gas station, had memorable, if brief, roles.

Carl Reiner, who portrayed one of the air traffic controllers, is alive and well today, having recently reached the age of 92.  Stan Freberg, who appears in a non-speaking role as a Sheriff’s officer seated behind Andy Devine’s Sheriff, and whose voice is heard on a police radio, is still with us at age 87.

There may be others, but it was a large cast and it was more than 50 years ago now.  Little by little, we are losing any direct connection to this sprawling film.  And with the passing of Mickey Rooney, we have lost the last of the principal players.

John Travolta is Younger Than Me

John Travolta – a fellow New Jersey native – made it official Sunday night: I am a clueless old person.

Seemingly everyone, including those who were not watching the Academy Awards ceremonies, now knows that Travolta botched the name of Broadway singer Idina Menzel during the broadcast by introducing her as “Adele Dazeem.”

I, on the other hand, was right there in front of my TV and had no idea that he had screwed up.  This because I had never heard of anyone named either Idina Menzel or Adele Dazeem.  For all I knew, the woman who belted out the song from the film Frozen was in fact named Adele Dazeem.

(I am using the phrase “belted out” here to be polite.  Dazeem – I mean, Menzel – struck me as yet another of the modern hollerers, substituting volume for songcraft.)

If I had seen the Broadway shows Rent or Wicked perhaps I would have known who she was.  But I hadn’t and therefore I just sat there in my chair, rocking softly, just like any other out-of-it old person.

Orphan Blind

Intrigued by the promos, I watched the premiere episode of Orphan Black, the new series on BBC America.  The show captured my interest, so I watched the second episode.  The second was as good as the first, so I am ready for the third episode.

The underlying premise, if you are not familiar with the show, is that a woman, named Sarah, witnesses another woman commit suicide by throwing herself in front of an oncoming train... but not before Sarah realizes that the suicidal woman looks exactly like her... a twin.

Because the suicidal woman left her purse on the platform before stepping in front of the train, Sarah, being somewhat ethically challenged, picks up the purse and makes off with it.  She later concludes that the suicidal woman’s life was better than hers, and arranges to have the dead woman identified as herself and to assume the identity of the dead woman.

Complications ensue.  With twists and turns that hold my attention despite a couple of lapses in plausibility.

Among the complications – and key to the show’s ongoing plot – is that additional women begin to appear who look exactly like Sarah.  In a tour de force acting opportunity for the show’s star, Tatiana Maslany, these women may look the same but are vastly different characters, distinguished by their backgrounds, mannerisms, and speaking voices.

But there is a problem... and it is me.  For years, I’ve joked that criminals would like to have me as a witness to their crimes, because I have great difficulty discerning the visual differences in people and things.  If I were to meet you for the first time today, I could not later describe what you looked like or what you were wearing.  If you returned tomorrow, I would likely not recognize you.  If asked to describe someone... I can’t.  It takes me a long time to learn new friends and associates.

People often say they are no good with names.  I’m fine with names, it’s faces I can’t remember.

The problem, then, for my enjoyment of Orphan Black is that I do not recognize the various roles that Ms Maslany is playing.  Because she is wearing different clothes and makeup, and because she is speaking in different dialects, I see only distinct characters.  I don’t recognize Sarah’s twins.

This is not a fatal flaw, I still very much enjoy the show and I catch on relatively quickly to what’s what and who’s who.  But I do so through context and dialog more than through visuals.

And I’ll be watching this week.

Where is The Big Guy When We Need Him?

Recently, Virgin Atlantic airlines’ owner Richard Branson publicized the addition of a new route to the carrier’s schedule by wearing a kilt.  Appropriate enough, given that the new route will take passengers to and from Edinburgh Airport in Scotland.  But as part of the publicity he lifted the kilt to reveal briefs lettered with the words "Stiff Competition."

We were reminded immediately of a long-ago episode of the television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, wherein the down-in-the-ratings radio station’s staff created an upbeat and catchy jingle for an advertiser... a funeral home.

The commercial was likely to be the one that pulled the station from its financial doldrums.  The advertiser – a riotously dour caricature of a funeral director – was making a substantial purchase of airtime, and the station’s staff was excited by the prospects of raises and better times ahead.

But Arthur Carlson, the radio station manager portrayed brilliantly by actor Gordon Jump, declined to run the ads and turned down the lucrative account.  Clearly pained by the economic impact of his decision, Mr Carlson nonetheless stuck to his values and told his program director, “Where I come from, that commercial is in bad taste.”

At the time that this episode first aired in 1979, the notion of there being any remaining sense of taste in advertising was already somewhat quaint, and Mr Carlson’s decision was plainly old-fashioned.  But there was a message in his having put principles ahead of profit.

Branson, already a billionaire, needs an Arthur Carlson to tell him that his promotion is in bad taste.

(Want to hear the Ferryman Funeral Home jingle from WKRP?  A somewhat obsessive fan of the show has posted it here.)

Babs and The Donald

I have never seen an episode of The View, ABC’s morning television gabber that skews heavily to a female demographic, but this afternoon it was widely reported how Barbara Walters called out Donald Trump on this morning’s broadcast.

Identifying herself as a longtime friend of Trump, and in the context of Trump’s latest bloviating about President Obama’s college and passport records, Walters said, "Donald, you're making a fool of yourself."

Did you just stumble onto that idea, Barbara? Trump has been making a fool of himself for quite sometime now, long before he became the standard-bearer for the “birther” crowd.

With his hair alone he makes a fool of himself.

How Much Junk Mail?

Like everyone, I receive what seems like waay too much junk mail. So last year (2011) I decided to conduct a little experiment.

For the calendar year, January 1 through December 31, every credit card offer I received I tossed not into the trash, but into a box. (Actually, I never toss them into the trash, I toss them into the paper shredder, for security purposes. But never mind.)

At the end of the year, the box contained 154 individual mail pieces, ranging from ordinary #10 business envelopes to custom chipboard packets.

That's one year’s worth of credit card offers, only – it does not include the similarly-plentiful mailers about switching my phone to the cable company or switching my cable to the phone company or switching my cable to the other cable company or switching my phone to the other phone company.

Nor does it includes all the other “normal” junk mail, such as supermarket fliers, local merchant coupons, driveway paving offers, roofing company mailings... you don’t need me to tell you how long the list can be.

Nor does it include my two favorites, regular mailings from two national organizations to which my wife and I have belonged for several years, inviting us to join.  How much lower might our annual membership cost be if it were not supporting repeated membership solicitations to people like us who are already members?

Anyway, back to the year’s worth of credit card offers. 154 individual mail pieces means that, on average, I received a credit card offer every 2.37 days last year. If we eliminate weekends and holidays, including only business days in 2011, then I received a credit card offer every 1.63 days.

Sadly, if was seeking to document a large volume of junk mail I may have chosen the wrong genre to collect.  I think that the phone/cable mail pieces outnumbered the credit card offers, as they frequently arrived in multiple numbers on a single day.

Earlier this year I started the process of putting all these credit card offers through the paper shredder.  Saving a year's worth doesn't seem like such a good idea any more...

A Night to Remember. Indeed.

This past weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, an event which dominated the headlines at the time of its occurrence and which has remained newsworthy for a century.

Lessons learned from the Titanic disaster are still being applied at sea today, and the larger lesson about hubris in human endeavor has remained vivid for 100 years as well.

But it was one small moment this past weekend which galvanized our attention. We sat down Saturday evening to watch the TCM broadcast of A Night to Remember, the 1958 film about the sinking. (This movie, which we had not seen previously, is vastly superior to the sappy James Cameron - Leonardo DeCaprio - Kate Winslet blockbuster of 1997 which is currently in a trendy 3D re-release.)

The 1958 filmmakers quickly moved the story from the ship’s launching to the at-sea disaster, and as part of the depiction of the launch they incorporated a few seconds of original newsreel footage of the ship’s departure from Southampton.

A chill went down our spine.

We were looking at the people on board the Titanic, waving happily. We were not looking at Hollywood actors or extras, we were looking at the actual passengers on board the doomed ship.

More than 1500 of them would perish.

And yet there they were, in grainy, scratched images, giddily waving to us, 100 years later.

It was a powerfully moving few seconds of film.