Sitting Out The Next "Dance" For Good

I am so done with "Dancing with the B-List". Tired of all the backstage romances that really clutter up the show, and the politics of casting the celebrities and pros to encourage this.

Show's run its course, why do another one?

And it would kill Betty White.

The Fix Is In

Season 6 runner up Blake Lewis on how Lee DeWyze's ascension to the finals was all but cemented by an over the top production number engineered by Simon Cowell.

Jack Hannah and Freeloading Feline

An important transitional cartoon for the Walter Lantz studio. Lantz was always on the lookout for castoff cartoonists from other studios, and when Walt Disney curtailed its shorts unit in the late 50's, it left a lot of talent looking for a home. Some went to work for Hanna-Barbera, but Jack Hannah - one of the last shorts directors at Disney, responsible for some screamingly funny Donald Duck and Humphrey Bear cartoons - found work with Walter Lantz for a few years. Hannah did some cartoons in the Doc series, the character originating with Alex Lovy a few years prior, as well as Inspector Willoughby, Woody Woodpecker, the Beary Family, and a character named Fatso Bear - a thinly-veiled knockoff of Humphrey Bear. This is his first Doc cartoon, "Freeloading Feline", which Hannah also wrote, and it's probably the funniest example of this character.

Hannah had been hired because Lantz was looking for someone with live-action TV experience to direct the wraparounds for the Woody Woodpecker TV show. Hannah brought with him some Disney colleagues such as animators Al Coe and Roy Jenkins and background artist Ray Huffine.

The credits of this cartoon reveal an interesting mix of old and new. This is animated by Coe and pioneering female animator La Verne Harding, who spent almost 30 years working for Lantz. Huffine does the backgrounds here with Raymond Jacobs, who left the Lantz studio after this cartoon (the other background guy at the time was Art Landy). Coe and Huffine got the most out of their Lantz experience: Huffine was with the studio until 1968 and Coe was still there at the studio's shutdown in 1972.

The music is by Eugene Poddany, who'd been working with Lantz since about 1956 or so to give Clarence Wheeler a break once in a while. Lantz at this time also brought back his classic 1940's music director, Darrell Calker. Poddany eventually became music director for Chuck Jones at M-G-M.

It's Crystal Clear

With just two weeks to go before "American Idol" leaves the air for the season - not coincidentally coinciding with the last day of May Sweeps - it's all but on paper that Crystal Bowersox is your next American Idol. Crystal of late has begun evoking the early Jewel, right down to the less-than-perfect smile. She has worked very hard since her pre-teens to get to this performance level. She above all others is worthy of the crown.

Crystal really did good for herself in both her solo and duet performances on Tuesday, but somehow wound up in the bottom echelon of contestants Wednesday night. Tuesday, Crystal mined deeper meaning out of the goofy Kenny Loggins "I'm All Right" from "Caddyshack", and really shone in her face to face duet with Lee DeWyze, while the dizzying 360-degree camerawork of director Bruce Gowers seemed to favor neither contestant.

Last year we had Adam and Kris in the finals; year before that the two Davids. Last female in the finals was Jordin Sparks three years ago, who won. I'm hoping for Crystal and Lee in the finals. Lee has just been a house on fire the last few weeks and should be on the Nokia stage with Crystal on May 25.

Next week, we will have video packages of Lee, Crystal and Casey's return to their respective home cities, and two songs from each contestant. The following week I think the finalists do four songs each. It should be entertaining.

Last point: as long as we're talking winning "Idol" it does not necessarily mean that second place is the first loser. Look at Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Chris Daughtry, Adam Lambert... all post-Idol successes who didn't win the big prize.

The Lives They Lived: 2009 Edition

Due to our St. John trip, we neglected to check the annual New York Times Magazine necrological feature and in particular the annual subject of one of my favorite writers, Elizabeth McCracken. Here is her write up of two people buried in their own way - one an underground explorer, the other a woman who spent 61 years in an iron lung.

A Sesame Street Flashback

Did you know that's GRACE SLICK singing on this? 41 years I've been watching this and I never made the connection. This short appeared on the very first episode of "Sesame Street" on November 10, 1969.

Allen Swift 1924-2010

Allen Swift, kids show host and voice actor, has died at the age of 86. The death was reported by animator Gene Deitch, who noted that Swift was "the last of my American buddies" and frequently visited Swift on trips to New York City from his home in Prague.

Deitch used Swift quite a bit in his cartoons. Here's a fun example, a 1962 Tom and Jerry cartoon called "Dicky Moe". Deitch made 13 T&J cartoons in Prague with varying results - it's said that the animators only watched about five of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons to get the characters down. But when Deitch played with the Tom and Jerry formula, the results were better than if he just stuck to the cat-and-mouse chases. Every so often he'd call in Allen Swift to do some dialogue in the otherwise silent cartoons and that made the cartoons so much more interesting.



(This is the English version. Leave it to me to link to a version that doesn't even have Allen Swift in it!)

In addition to being in cartoons, Swift also presented them, on a kids show for Channel 11 in New York, as "Captain Allen Swift", presenting a daily dose of Popeye cartoons. Swift's voice work eventually took him away from TV hosting and his replacement was that fine old Irishman, Captain Jack McCarthy.

The Carnac of Idol

Maybe it's just because of the relatively weak pool of talent that was pushed through to the Hollywood round this year, but since the Top 12 shows began at the Idoldrome, I've become something of a genius in picking who is going home this week.

With the exception of the Michael Lynche "save" week (in which I picked Tim or Andrew to leave - I forget which), I've correctly predicted the departures of all of the contestants from the top 12 on down. And it's great for my pool at work, in which I picked Big Mike to win as a pre-emptive strike, given that the wonderful Crystal Bowersox has the top prize all but sewn up.

I just wish I had this foresight when I originally predicted who was going to be in the top 12 in the first place. Look at my crib sheet:

Boys: Aaron Kelly, Alex "Not Adam" Lambert, Tyler Grady, Todrick Hall, Lee DeWyze, Joe Munoz.

Girls: Katelyn Epperly, Ashley Rodriguez, Janell Wheeler, Lilly Scott, Siobhan Magnus, Didi Benami.

And I had Tyler Grady picked to win it all.

No Big Mike? No Mamasox? What was I thinking? Anyway, three of the top 12 I had picked are still alive. Next week, songs of inspiration.

Another Essential Mets Website, Plus Site News

On the Blogroll we continue to have a great site for Mets minutae fans, "Mets by the Numbers" - run by Jon Springer. Jon's been doing this site since 1999 and features rosters by number, complete uni history of each player, etc. (Springer has another claim to fame - his father was the late cartoonist Frank Springer.) From either that site or the aforementioned No No Hitters you can go to any of a number of other entertaining Mets blogs. Some of these we won't directly link to as they run counter to our language policy, but try Mets Grrl, It's Mets for Me, Crane Pooled, and Yes, Joe, It's Toasted for starters.

Now, the site news. As you can probably tell we've changed our colors from blue to green. I am going to be trying to make the site less templatey (if that's a word). We now also have opinion boxes for each post. We've got three categories, from best to worst: "Good", "Meh", and "WTF?" Be sure to cast your vote on every post.

The No-Hitter Count Rolls On...

Starting Monday, we will begin once more the annual baseball-season chore of advancing the Mets No No-Hitter Count at right by one every time the opposing team gets one hit or more per game, which is always. In 48 seasons, no New York Mets pitcher has ever recorded a no-hitter. (There was one combined no-hitter in spring training but it doesn't count.)

The No No-Hitter Count originated on Robair's now-defunct blog, something about eggplants. When he decided the blog was no longer worthy of his time, we transferred it over here to the much more established and almost impregnable davemackey.com. In the interim, a full-blown web site sprang up, inspired by this noble idea - Dirk Lammers' "No No-Hitters". Oddly enough, Dirk, who writes on energy matters for the Associated Press in his workaday life, lives in the last place you'd expect a Mets fan to be - Sioux Falls, SD. Dirk has done so much more with the concept than Robair or I ever could.

Like with the MDA Telethon, we don't want this to go on any longer. We would like to see some Mets pitcher step up to the plate (better still, the rubber) and put the nice round number up under the opponent's H in the line score. This year.

"Idol" Needs Women!

What's with the ladies on "American Idol" this season?

With the exception of Crystal Bowersox (who is one of the most consistent performers this season) and maybe Siobhan Magnus (if she gets over her tendency to go for big notes), it's clearly not a strong female class this year as the first three eliminees (?) were all ladies - from left to right above, Paige Miles, last night's 10th place finisher Didi Benami, and Lacey Brown.

The last two American Idols have been male - David Cook and Kris Allen - and I'm starting to seriously think there's going to be a third, probably either in the person of Casey James or Michael Lynche.

Cartoon Brew In The Penalty Box

As much as we enjoy the Cartoon Brew blog of Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi, we have to remand it to the penalty box for a recent image displayed quite prominently on that site. If you clicked through to the blog and saw the image in question (a popular cartoon character with extra added "equipment"), we profusely apologize.

Stuff You Can't Possibly Make Up

I was with one of my fourth grade students today. We were going over a piece of music that had a measure with the notes A-G-E. I told him, "If you take the three letters of the notes in this measure, it spells a word that describes how old you are." The boy looks at me and gives me his answer - "Ten!" It took me a good five minutes to compose myself.

Popeye, The Ace of Space

Now you know how much I love to see these with the ORIGINAL titles...



This is one half of the 3D print. There were only a handful of big-studio 3D cartoons. Warner Bros. had "Lumber Jack-Rabbit", Lantz had "Hypnotic Hick", and Famous had two - this and "Boo Moon".

Celebrity Sweepstakes

Here is the first part of the final NBC network episode of "Celebrity Sweepstakes", a show that ran from 1974-1976 on network and until 1977 in syndication. The show, hosted by Jim McKrell, had an obvious horse-racing motif and a checkered production history. There were legal wranglings between the two production companies involved, Burt Sugarman Productions and Ralph Andrews Productions. By the time this episode aired, Andrews was in full control of the show. The other parts are available to you in the sidebar.



There were a few format changes by the time the show ended - the celebrities, in the earliest episodes of the show, wrote their answers to EVERY question, and the odds were set on the basis of the questions themselves, not on the categories. There was also a tote board shown periodically that indicated the correct number of answers for each celebrity. I like this format, however, since it plays a little faster than I remember it. There was also a theme music change for about a year or so - an sprlightly Alan Thicke composition incorporating the "First Call" bugle tune heard at racetracks replaced the Stan Worth theme song heard here. And one of the nicer things about this show was that all contestants kept their money, even if they lost. One episode featured the loser going home with about $11,000.

In starting gate #4 we see Carol Wayne, then married to Burt Sugarman. She was a little less ditsy than I remember her being on the show, but she always had a sweet nature about her.

New Blog

http://themouseclique.blogspot.com/ carries the flame of the late Lloyd Thaxton, whose blog we discovered and linked to during the final years of his life.

Tom "T-Bone" Wolk 1951-2010

The Music's Over blog is reporting that bass player and music producer Tom "T-Bone" Wolk, who played in the Saturday Night Live Band in the 1980's and 1990's, has died at the age of 58. Tom was also a member of Hall and Oates' backup band, along with guitarist G.E. Smith, who was musical director for SNL as well as Hall and Oates. Wolk was born in Yonkers, New York on December 24, 1951.

It's Wolk's insistent bass line introducing the Hall and Oates hit "Maneater" that draws comparisons to the bass player for the Motown house band, James Jamerson. Besides bass, he was also skilled on guitar, accordion, and organ. He played with and produced many other famous artists in a career that spanned almost 35 years.

Wolk and Smith joined the reconstituted Saturday Night Live Band in 1985 and brought a certain rock and roll style swagger to commercial breaks and other band appearances, so much so that after a year playing above the stage, producer Lorne Michaels brought the band center stage for the first time since the show's premiere in 1975 to give Smith and Wolk's performances more exposure. For his first several years on the show, Wolk shared the bass chair with Tony Garnier. Wolk left SNL after the 1991-1992 season and was replaced by a succession of talents: Paul Ossola, Tom Barney, and currently James Genus.

Tom "T-Bone" Wolk died Saturday night of a heart attack. Due to Wolk's passing, Hall and Oates have cancelled their expected appearance on tonight's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" anniversary show.

Crossword Puzzle Tournament

Visit The Puzzle Brothers for all the latest on the Crossword Tournament in Brooklyn this weekend.

Super Bowl Ad Review

I am going to put a link in this message to our replay of the event. Thank you for watching our live coverage.



I'm quite pleased to announce that this year's Ad Meter winner was the second spot thrown in the game - the first quarter ad for Snickers that featured 88-year-old Betty White and 88-year-old Abe Vigoda on rival football teams. One of my fellow game show watchers remarked, "Finally! A game Betty White can't play."

Bill Watterson Speaks!

This is said to be the first interview with the ultra-reclusive "Calvin and Hobbes" creator since 1989.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Interview