December 2009 Archives

Yeah, well, Happy New Year. Whatever. Here's 1966:

Let's hope 2010's better.

We were watching a "Password" rerun on GSN the other evening, and Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy were on along with Kitty Carlisle and Tom Poston, and a grand time was...

Well, of course, that was early 1960's television for you. You got lots of "entertainers," the talents of whom were undefined even as you saw them practically nightly, making the rounds of Merv and Mike and "Password" and "To Tell the Truth" and "I've Got a Secret," plugging nightclub appearances and Broadway shows you'd never, ever in a million years see for yourself. I saw Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy on television countless times in the sixties, and I never once cold figure out what, exactly, they did to rate being on television countless times. Kitty Carlisle, I remembered, was in a Marx Brothers movie at some point, so she must have been an actress, but by the time I encountered her on game show after game show, she was among the legions of people famous because we were told they were famous. Yes, people like Nipsey Russell and Fannie Flagg and Orson Bean and Charles Nelson Reilly had careers, solid, successful careers. I didn't know that back then, when I was a little kid. I'll bet that most adults didn't know that, either. They were just... famous.

Now, the first inclination of the culturally educated is to think, well, I wouldn't have been watching "The Hollywood Palace" or "Match Game" back then; I would have been into Lenny Bruce and grooving to Miles. This, of course, is utter bull. I was a very little kid, but I remember what most people were like, and they weren't hipsters or hippies or anything like the stereotypes other than that a lot of people who'd had crew cuts and pocket protectors started to sprout long hair and "flares" because everyone else was doing it. They may have had Lenny's Fantasy albums or "Sketches of Spain" in the LP collection but they watched the Andy Williams Christmas Special and listened to Ray Conniff albums along with the requisite Beatles records because that's what people did.

And that's okay, because the task of determining cultural significance is for the critics and writers and people like me who take things more seriously than we should. I do prefer "small" indie movies, my iPod is loaded with Big Star and Silversun Pickups and other "correct" indie rock and influence choices, I'm all about the "original, better" versions of stuff like "The Office." Left to my own devices, I'm a cultural snob. But today, people care about reality TV personalities and listen to generic pop and watch "NCIS." In the sixties, people watched "Password" and listened to Dean Martin croon "Everybody Loves Somebody."

Turns out there's nothing wrong with that. And, you know, there's a lot to be said for "Password." Man, that's a relaxing show.

Hey, look, here it is:

Busy day today, so just enjoy, while it lasts, WNNX (Rock 100.5)/Atlanta "Regular Guys" morning show video impresario Sebastian Daskewicz-Davis in his starring role in the major motion picture "The Blind Side." Note the chemistry between Sebas (as a cop) and Sandra Bullock (as someone trying to avoid going anywhere near Sebas):

Now, that's actin'.

Come on, you want this, right?

From January 1977, the Danbury Mint wants you to spend $20 (in 1977 bucks) for a gen-yooo-wine 10 karat gold medallion with Jimmy Carter's face on it, designed by "well known sculptor, Alfredo Marino."

I couldn't find any prices for what you'd pay to get this, um, priceless memento today, I did find an article from the time touting the medal and Marino (of Mamaroneck!), who modeled the medal after watching Carter in the debates on TV. "A studio setting is too formal and restrictive," Marino said, as if he could have gotten Carter to sit in his studio. "I was striving to capture his innermost feelings, and the debates enabled me to see a wide range of Carter's personality and the diversity of his emotional reactions under stress." Marino also sculpted a Chief Sitting Bull pewter plate, in case you're looking to complete your Alfredo Marino collection. And he did a Reagan medal, too, proving that presidential ephemera was his specialty.

Surely, someone buys this stuff. I'm surprised there aren't several on eBay.

UPDATE: Hold the freakin' phone! How about this one?

$19.95 for regular, $29.95 for "17-jeweled movement", plus a buck for postage and handling, waived if you buy two. And who wouldn't want two, one for each wrist? Someone's selling one for a hundred bucks. Act now if you want one, or if you're insane.

Another lost period wandering amidst the cultural flotsam of YouTube left me back in the mists of retail past. There are some great websites out there dealing with this stuff, but the commercials for stores with which we grew up and which are no longer around are great nostalgia for those who probably aren't old enough to really claim nostalgia rights. But here you are anyway....

Buffums department store was gone from Southern California shortly before I got here. Maybe this ad did it:

The very little information left on the Internet about Buffums, a mid-market department store, was surprising to me. Surely a store that served so many, and employed so many, should be better memorialized. In case someone stumbles upon this looking for more information, I can offer, courtesy of an ad in the February 14, 1986 L.A. Times, that the chain had stores in downtown Long Beach, Santa Ana, Long Beach's Marina Pacifica shopping center (the one over on PCH near Naples), Pomona, here on the Palos Verdes Peninsula (in Peninsula Center), Lakewood Center, Fashion Island in Newport Beach, La Habra, Laguna Hills Mall, Santa Anita Fashion Park, Westminster Mall, Glendale Galleria, Manhattan Beach (in Manhattan Village, I believe), and in the San Diego area at Fashion Valley and Grossmont Center. There, now it's on the record. Buffum's was done by 1991.

Zody's died in 1986, before we made it to L.A., too. Check out the 8-track:

They were, at the end, in 32 locations in the region, with Buena Park, Fullerton, Torrance, Hollywood, Inglewood, Lynwood, North Hollywood, North Long Beach, Norwalk, Redondo Beach, and in the 'hood on Slauson and at Slauson and Vermont for L.A. County. 12 of the stores became the short-lived Ralphs Giant semi-hypermart. I visited L.A. about that time and I seem to remember one of those stores being on Hawthorne Boulevard in north Redondo Beach, near the Galleria, maybe in what is now a Ralphs Marketplace store.

But Two Guys was from Jersey, just like me, and we shopped at the one in Totowa all the time. I especially remember when Passaic County still had the blue laws in effect; you'd go in on Sunday and the clothing departments were roped off because it was illegal for them to sell clothing that day:

Two Guys ended up worth more for the real estate under the stores. It was gone by 1982.

We occasionally shopped at Gimbels, although it was on the decline for a long time. I had one of those black-and-white Watchmen (but not for $199); they used a little mirror to project the image to the screen, and it wasn't all that clear:

Weird thing: Gimbels New York and Gimbels Philadelphia were co-owned but separate entities until 1983. You couldn't use a New York credit card in Philly or vice versa, and the commercials were different. In the final years, that changed, but by then, Gimbels was really ratty; I remember that the Philly stores became kind of sad well before the end, which was in 1987.

There was a big Alexander's at the intersection of Routes 4 and 17 in Paramus, NJ, across from Garden State Plaza, where the Ikea is today. I remember it having cheap clothes and a massive abstract mural facing the Route 4 side:

I'm surprised the chain held on until 1992. What I remember most vividly was that there was a constant bell ringing in the place; they used a rhythmic bell as a signal, and it would really get on my nerves. I also remember, as a little kid, running around beneath the clothes racks in the men's department and my mom telling my dad to meet her in the "chotchkie" department. They had one. I think it was the housewares section. Like Two Guys, it was more valuable as a real estate company than as a vendor of cheap polyester clothing.

This isn't one of the cool Dan Daniels commercials for Korvettes, but it's Korvettes, nonetheless, where I bought records at deep discount:

Gone by 1980. Loved the record department, loved the electronics department for cheap radios and turntables; we'd go to the big Paramus store across from Bergen Mall on Route 4, occasionally to the West Orange store (when my mom and sister would want to go to the Cancellations show store in the Essex Green shopping center), then to the Wayne store when they opened up in the little mall in the parking lot of the bigger Willowbrook Mall. Korvettes ended up another chain more valuable for its real estate.

As I mentioned, there are some great websites that look at dead or dying retail all over the place. Try Pleasant Family Shopping or Labelscar first and go from there.

Man, it's a dull Saturday afternoon. I'm paying Verizon for all of these channels; there must be SOMETHING better than the Meineke Car Care Bowl on right... heeeeyyyy, wait a minute. Lifetime Movie Network has WHAT on today? "The Perfect" what?

Let's go there and... oh...

What a disappointment.

But at least it's not "Beaches."

I took some nice holiday-themed pictures over at the Terranea resort, although I didn't get a shot of the whale we saw in the ocean (too far out for the pocket Canon to grab). I'd post them here, but I can't find my card reader, so... no.

And because of that, I'm bereft of original material today. I'll direct you to a very nice post by top baseball scribe Joe Posnanski about his childhood delivering the Cleveland Press and a particular client right here.

OK, how about a few seconds of static-y aircheck of the long-gone WCRV in Washington, New Jersey, at which one Walter Sabo once toiled:

It's amazing -- no ridiculous -- what's on the Internet these days.

Merry Christmas 1967, everyone! This is the kind of TV that made me hate the holiday when I was a kid, a "Hollywood Palace" special edition with Bing Crosby in '67, featuring none other than the King Family, Louis Nye, the Marquis Chimps, and Bing's own kids (no jokes, please):

Feeling a little better today, apart from the aches normally associated with getting repeatedly punched in the mid-section by someone significantly larger and more powerful than one's self. It's a grand holiday season, I tell you.

I did manage to get a few stories posted in the Talk Topics column at All Access, so that was something. And we did make it to Inglewood, of all places, to donate some of Fran's old chemo-covering hats to Helen's Room, a project that provides hats, wigs, and other necessities to lower-income women who are fighting cancer. They're doing wonderful things for people in real need; they're at 601 Grace Avenue, Inglewood, CA 90301 and at (310) 672-1010‎ if you're looking to do something nice for a worthy charity, especially before the end of the year.

Now, I'm going to lay down and ache.

So, yeah, it was food poisoning. One awful night and morning later, I'm feeling a little better; I wouldn't call it chipper, but after liberal doses of water and Gatorade, my stomach has improved to the point where I can go whole hours without trotting to the rest room. I still feel like hell, but it's less hellish than last night.

But that also means that I was out of action in every way all day. I didn't even watch TV. I just laid there and ached. I missed the news of Arnold Stang's death, of Connie Hines' death, of Alaina Reed's death, of Vazquez back to the Yankees and the Melkman delivered to Atlanta. I don't know the latest on Brittany Murphy's death, and the breakup of Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Turtle passed by me without notice. Somehow, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors caved to the pressure brought to bear by John and Ken and cancelled the $700,000 (!) office remodeling for Mark Ridley-Thomas, but they figured out how to get it through "piecemeal" so that nobody will notice (as if we're not paying attention now). I only saw Jim Zorn's One Shining Moment on a replay and couldn't believe it even though I knew it was coming (suddenly, Andy Reid doesn't look quite as bad). There's another blizzard in the works this week (but not, of course, here). So much news, and me unable to concentrate.

I'll have a tough job catching up to all this, but at least it'll give me something to do for the rest of the week. That is, if my midsection stops feeling like someone's been punching it for the last 24 hours. More Gatorade, please.

I would post something of interest here (as if I ever do that), but something I ate for lunch is clearly causing me distress at dinnertime. Feels like... well, it's not pleasant. I'm going to go lay down and let the Pepto Bismol do its magic. At least, that's the general plan. It seems to be helping a little, but the odds of my lunch making a surprise return appearance at high velocity are even at the moment.

You probably could have lived without that mental picture.

Citadel Broadcasting finally filed for Chapter 11. Farid Suleman's still in charge. I told you so.

The Eagles were mostly average in beating mediocre San Francisco at home. They've been like this most of the season. They're winning anyway, and they've clinched a playoff slot. They just don't SEEM like a great team. I guess the wins are all that counts.

Brittany Murphy died, and I can't speak to the causes or whatever she may or may not have been up to (as of now, they say it's natural causes). I interviewed her once for the radio, and she was nice, friendly, seemingly plenty grounded. That was at least 11 or 12 years ago, though, and a one-shot radio interview doesn't mean much. I don't even remember any of the substance of the interview, only that it was at some photo shoot, she was impossibly skinny (but not as skeletal as she later appeared), and she was only slightly guarded, much less than some celebrities I'd met. Too bad; she'll always be Luanne Platter to me.

All right, you don't care about any of this and I'm eager to get back to doing nothing. So I will.

On a glorious warm sunny day -- sorry, east coasters, it was 70s and clear here in Southern California today -- we spent the midday hours in a movie theater, to see the hit film by the hot director... no, not that hit film and hot director, the OTHER one. "Up in the Air" by Jason Reitman. Verdict: Very, very good. It's hard not to be moved by the (real, non-actor) people talking at the beginning and the end of the movie about being fired, and while you can guess what happens before even seeing the film, it's so well done and acted that you'll enjoy it anyway. When George Clooney achieves his victories and finds that they're worse than hollow, you'll feel the pain even though you're not exactly rooting for him in what he does as a corporate-executioner-for-hire. It's as good as advertised. As we walked past the queue for the 3-D "Avatar" (not as long a line as I'd expected, by the way), I was happy we'd chosen "Up in the Air" instead. "Avatar," well, I'm sure the visuals are stunning enough to overlook a standard "gone native" plot crossed with an "Americans and humans are evil" plot, but I can wait to see it.

It was interesting to see the hype machine in effect, though. I think the moment it cascaded over the edge into embarrassment was the "special episode" of "Bones" in which three characters were involved in a subplot regarding their queuing up for the midnight showing of "Avatar," complete with glimpses of the trailer and lots of dialogue apparently written by the studio marketing department. Granted, geeks in an FBI lab are probably excited about "Avatar," but, still, keep the ads in the commercial breaks, not in the show. Geez.

This was, by the way, the first movie we've seen in a theater in several months, and, yes, someone's cell phone kept going off with a text alert ring. The theater -- the AMC Del Amo 18 -- is nice and new-ish and plush, and the screen and sound are top-notch, but while I enjoyed the experience, it reminded me of why I don't like the movie theater experience as much as I used to: mostly, it's other people, the people talking through the trailers or clogging the hallways or queued up in the men's room. The home experience is better now.

Today: the brakes finally went to heaven, and that cost me plenty. And that was the first thing for the day.

But that drama was over by before noon, and the rest of the day was uneventful, punctuated by dodging bad drivers all over the place (good thing I have brand-spankin'-new brake pads AND rotors!) and a trip to the local mall, which continues to go decidedly downscale and was largely quiet, especially for the Friday before Christmas. Not a lot of buying going on, although who's buying at stores that sell "cell phone accessories" and "fashions" that appear to have fallen off the back of a truck, I wouldn't know. (Memo to the Simon (unrelated) family of malls: there's a reason the upscale folks from Palos Verdes go to the Westside or Orange County to shop and not your local mall. Ed Hardy and Juicy Couture knockoffs aren't big with the WASPy rich folk)

But that was all. We'd planned to go to a movie, but the car trouble knocked that off the list for today (and, considering how much it cost, knocked pretty much every discretionary expense off the list for a while). Maybe "Up in the Air" tomorrow. I know, going to see a movie that includes footage of real unemployed people talking about getting fired isn't necessarily a feel-good thing to do, but I'll take my chances.

Okay, I'll admit it. The real reason I dropped our newspaper subscriptions is...

Tipping.

Every year, it's the tipping for the holidays. The list keeps getting longer. There used to be just one pool guy; now, two guys show up every week. That's two. Then there are two gardeners, three guys on the garbage truck, the postal carrier... These things add up, and you can run into serious cash trouble making everyone happy.

So there was a Times carrier, and a Daily Breeze carrier, and they'd stick a card in with a paper several weeks before Christmas, a card with a convenient self-addressed stamped envelope. Those years when the carrier kept throwing the Breeze in the sprinklers? The carrier that would occasionally just not show up with the Times? They wanted tips, too.

But I'm not philosophically against tips. I know these folks work hard, and I tend to overtip at restaurants, so I know the drill. But cash seems gauche (although it would probably be the best way to go), so it's a stack of gift cards to as generic a retailer as we can find, namely Target. (Wal-Mart doesn't have as many stores in our immediate area) And, today, on the way to lunch, I picked up this year's gift cards, and... man, that's a lot. I wonder if they even remember who gave them what, or if our neighbors all give more. Or less. At some point, though, your concern about being seen by the people who work on your house as a cheapskate has to take second place to your concern that you'll be able to pay for all that largesse.

I think it was the third carrier that pushed me over the edge for the newspaper delivery guys, though. For a few years, we've gotten the cards from the Times carrier, and the Breeze carrier, and those were expected. But then we got greetings, and empty envelopes, from the person who dumps the local free magazine -- unsolicited -- on our driveway every month. Excuse me? We didn't even ASK for that thing. It just shows up. And we're supposed to tip you for that? Really?

So we didn't tip the free magazine carrier. And now, the newspaper carriers are done, too. Everyone else is still on the list, but I'm not looking at any tip increases in the foreseeable future. They'll get Target cards and they'll have to like it. If not, next year, it's Jack in the Box cards, or Subway or Burger King gift certificates. In this economy, you can't expect a lot more.

Random:

I'm okay with the Halliday deal, which is ridiculous to say; "okay" with obtaining possibly the best pitcher in baseball, sure. Lots of prospects given up over the course of two years, and it's sad to see Lee go so soon, but a) prospects are a total crapshoot, and the same people whining about trading so many top prospects are the same ones whining when the Phils DON'T trade prospects for help winning right now. Are they a lot better today than they were yesterday? No. Are they better off with Halliday -- a righthander to balance the rotation -- signed to an extension? Yep. Could they have kept Lee for the year? Expensively, and perhaps at the cost of being unable to obtain bullpen help down the line. Bottom line: They seem positioned to win. A lot. That's fine with me.

First day off major activity: billpaying and putting up curtains. Exciting. I "slept in," which is to say I was awakened at 3:15 am by the cat, got up, fed her, and went back to bed for a couple more hours. Not horrible. Let's hope she gets with the new schedule before long, though.

I'm still pissed off at being treated like dirt by that person at that radio group. It doesn't change how I'll cover them -- fairness, always -- but it's amazing when someone's so paranoid and unpleasant that they think it's wise to do that to someone who covers them in the trade press. It's also amazing that people like that get and keep their jobs.

Now I'm going to go enjoy the rest of Day One of the break. I spent far too much time here in front of the computer.

The work day is over.

The work week's over, too. And the month, and the year. After all these seven-day weeks, I get a few off to recover. I need them, badly. After today, which featured a testy exchange with one radio group's CFO -- don't ask -- I've had enough for the year, thanks.

So, tomorrow, I don't have to get up at 3. I don't have to write news all day, find topics for the daily column, think up something for the weekly column, make and take calls... I don't have to do anything. It's total, blessed freedom.

Um...

Okay...

Now what do I do?

I had a long piece planned for here, something about the Eagles and inevitability and the strange nature of being a sports fan and voluntarily having your heart ripped out on a regular basis by people who could not possibly care less about you.

And then I got the news that Clear Channel hired Washington Mutual's CFO -- the one who was in place when things went horribly wrong -- as its new CFO. And just like that, my mind went in a different direction. Okay, I'll write about that....

...and then the Halliday-Lee trade(s) talk exploded, and...

I give up.

Seriously, how much stuff can I process before overload?

Last things first: If the Phillies really can't sign Lee -- if they know now that they can't sign Cliff Lee after 2010, this is the only time they can get anything in return other than two draft picks. And if they can sign Halliday to an extension before closing the deal, there's a compelling reason to get this done. But at the moment, nobody's sure about who else is involved, or anything else about the deals other than Halliday's involved and Lee's probably going to have to go to make room (because nobody wants Joe Blanton, a free agent after 2010 as well). I guess I'll react more when it's official, but it's numbing now. It's just hard to adjust to this. I mean, after a lifetime in which the Phillies scuffled along behaving like a small market team and a have-not, they're big-time now, up there maybe a half-notch behind the Yankees and Red Sox and at least up there with the Angels as spenders and dealers and desirable places to go for free agents. I'm not used to it.

The Eagles are in a different position. We've been down this road before: They're doing just enough to make the playoffs, beating who they have to beat, and heading into the playoffs with optimism tempered by experience, which is:

1) McNabb will come up small when big is needed.

2) Reid will screw up the clock, his times out, the challenges, and crucial 3rd and 4th down plays.

3) Someone (Quintin Mikell, this means you) will take a moronic penalty at a crucial moment.

I can see it coming. I'm the truck stuck on the tracks, and they're the freight train bearing down on the grade crossing.

So, why subject myself to it? It's too late to pick another team; you don't invest decades in a team to abandon them. I'm not one for fantasy football, even if I have friends who are Actual National Experts on the subject; I don't have the time and can't imagine dividing my loyalties so that I could actually root for an opposing player to do well against my team if it'll get me fantasy points. Not gonna happen.

On the other hand, I could do what I did for hockey: give it up.

Not watching football would free up a lot of time, including every Sunday for half the year. It would eliminate the aggravation, not to mention erase Andy Reid from my consciousness. There are more reasons to drop football from my diet than to keep watching.

So I'll keep watching. I told you, it's too late now. It would take another strike or lockout to pry me away from pro football, which is what happened for hockey. I'll drop the NBA before football. I'm not planning that, even if the Sixers' mediocrity, Iverson or not, continues to make actually watching the games painfully boring. I'm choosing not to pay rapt attention to the NBA this season -- everyone's waiting for next season and the Great Free Agent Exodus, anyway -- but I reserve the right to return if things get interesting. Hockey's done for me. Football? Can't leave now. I'll watch all the way up to the moment McNabb pukes on McCoy's shoes as time ticks off the clock and Reid and Mornhinweg dither over the next play call. And I'll watch right through the Saints-Colts Super Bowl (although something will probably get in the way of two undefeateds matching up -- the Curse of the Dolphins). I should leave. I won't. Yes, I'm aware of the parallels with domestic abuse. I won't go there. And it doesn't matter. I'm all in. Too late to pull the chips back.

Oh, yeah, Clear Channel and WaMu. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to talk about that. I don't think there's anything I can add. It speaks for itself.

The L.A. Times wants me back. They really, really want me back. Not to write for them, of course, but to subscribe. Seems that my 14 years of subscribing didn't merit so much as a thank-you until I canceled; now, they're calling me every other night with another attempt to rope me back in. The offers were getting progressively better, then started to inch back the other way. Maybe they thought I considered it TOO cheap. But I didn't bite, because by the time the paper hits the driveway, I've seen what I need to read already, and what's in the paper is mostly dated, overtaken by the progression of life. The occasional valuable coupon and the pleasure of scanning the comics at the lunch table isn't worth the accumulation of piles of paper waiting to be recycled. It's 2009, almost 2010. News moved online.

The last call, however, reached new levels of desperation. The first voice was female, and she asked me why I haven't resubscribed, because I'm missing the....

"I told you guys the last dozen times you've called why I'm not taking the paper," I said. "You've been calling every other night, and the reasons aren't changing. I don't NEED the paper. I read everything in the paper online, and...."

The sound of a headset being physically transferred to another person interrupted my explanation. A male voice came on the line.

"I'm a supervisor here at the Times, and I just want to find out more about why...."

"Well, as I was just saying, I've told your people this before, but if we must, okay: I don't need your paper, not the physical one that you deliver, at least. I get everything in the paper online, and...."

"Ah, but you know that they don't PUT everything in the paper online."

"What?"

"They just put PART of the story online. It's a teaser to get you to read the paper, so...."

"You know that's not true. You know that the Times website has complete stories, sometimes updated from the print version. And there are other sources, but if I want what's in the Times, I can get it online, even T.J. Simers' column...."

"Ah. Are you a sports fan?"

"Yes."

"Well, you know that many people say that the Times sports section is the best in the West."

"And I can get it all online, including the late scores and news that sometimes miss the print deadline." I didn't mention that all my favorite teams tend to be covered a lot more closely by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, online, of course.

"Okay. But you know, right, that the Internet is an unreliable source for news."

"It is?"

"Not everything you read is true."

"But I read the Times website. Are you telling me that the Times website...."

"Take TMZ, for instance. Their standards for...."

"TMZ? Who's talking about TMZ? The Times, the New York Times, the...."

"TMZ is... um... well, you can't trust what's on the Internet."

"Look, I get my news elsewhere. And, if you're gonna tell me about the coupons...."

"Yes, you can find valuable...."

"...I get plenty of coupons on the Web now, for specific stuff I need. What good..."

"You can save up to $300 a week just from the Sunday coupons alone."

"...what good are all those coupons if they're for stuff I don't want or need? And I get circulars by direct mail anyway."

And my cell phone rang, so I had to end the call there. I didn't even get to the part where the Times' cutbacks of local coverage, fetish for covering New York as if everyone here cares about it, and often blatant political leanings in news coverage (including shameless all-tax-increases-are-good boosterism) have made reading the paper, even online, a joyless and increasingly pointless exercise.

It's interesting how the papers are addressing the circulation drop, though. These operators were ready with a talking points sheet to counter my objections, but their talking points were either untrue or pointless. Telling someone that the Internet is untrustworthy when that person is saying he reads typical mainstream media sites LIKE THE PAPER'S OWN makes no sense at all. Assuming that I'm a mouthbreathing TMZ reader is an insult. (And ignores the fact that it was TMZ that beat the Times on Michael Jackson's death AND Tiger Woods' travails; who's legitimate now?)

And that long-standing "$300 in savings!" argument assumes I'm stupid enough to think that I'll get $300 in savings without buying a ton of stuff I wouldn't ever use. Here, I have a News America Marketing newspaper Free Standing Insert coupon flyer from this week right here: Prevacid, Cold Stone, Cottonelle, Daisy Sour Cream, Farmland bacon and ham, Mazola, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf supermarket-bagged beans, Excedrin Menstrual Complete, Lamisil, Slow FE/Vagistat, Keri lotion, Doan's Pills/Bufferin/Mineral Ice, Wal-Mart PictureMe, Teleflora, Mucinex, Revlon, Colgate Wisp, Coit, Jose Ole, Universl Studios Hollywood, Lenscrafters. Not a single one we can use. Total savings: Zero.

So, other than the sheer tactile and portable pleasure of taking the paper into the lunch room or into the bathroom, they have no real argument to get me to pay for delivery of a physical paper anymore. It's over.

That doesn't mean that the Times is dead. It just has to recognize that its future is as an online product and that there will be a longer-than-preferred transition period before there's enough advertising revenue to support the newsroom and marketing operations. The readers who have stopped taking the paper have learned to live without it. Horse out of barn. Toothpaste out of tube. Genie out of bottle. I'm not subscribing again. I'm not proud or happy about that, not after reading a physical paper practically every day of my life beginning from when I was in early single digits. But technology, as it has for so many other businesses, has changed things, and a paper on the driveway at 6 am when I've been reading more up-to-date news online for three hours at that point is not an attractive consumer proposition.

I've moved on, Times. You can stop calling now.

Ate too many latkes. It's pouring outside, as hard as it rains in L.A. I'm in no mood to wax poetic about anything.

So here's Jerry Lewis' finest solo moment, from "The Errand Boy":

My Lord, look at this:

The Real Don Steele Show! May 11, 1974, with special guests The Hues Corporation and Gary Glitter! Dancing, early 70's pseudo-psychedelic colors, a commercial with a pre-fame Farrah Fawcett, a KHJ-TV ID... this thing has everything. It's local TV dance show goodness, with a radio legend hosting. It's what the Internet was made to do.

Part 2, with a dance contest featuring special guest Gary Glitter enthusing over the "really far-out birds" (uh huh) and prizes including tickets to Magic Mountain and Gazzari's, plus an AC spark plugs spot that makes fleeting reference to the gas shortages:

Part 3, with the Hues Corporation lip-syncing the immortal "Rock the Boat," plus dancing to "The LocoMotion" and a "wacky" gossip bit with not a laugh in the bunch:

That's cheesy. That's embarrassing. That's entertainment. I wish TV was still like that.

Still on the all-day work deal. So...

Check THIS out -- Don McNeill's Breakfast Club, the long-running morning radio show, telecast live for the first time in 1948 from the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, as kinescoped from the Dumont flagship WABD New York (now Fox 5, WNYW):

How DO people have this stuff?

Same for this -- the Morey Amsterdam Show, from 1949:

Anything that's left from those days is a bonus.

The Week That Hurts continues with a solid, top-to-bottom, nothing-but-work day. I barely left the computer to do anything. I have no frame of reference for anything beyond work, because that's all I did. Some FM translator sold in Jibip, Wisconsin? Some morning guy gets whacked in Stoltzfus, PA? I'm on it. Anything else? Sorry, what?

So I'm useless here tonight. Again.

Sorry. Again.

(P.S.: Feel better, Joan. Again.)

I told you it would be busy. It is.

But here's a link to a YouTube video that has embedding disabled: In honor of the late Soupy Sales, it's Philo Kvetch, ace detective. Oh, how my sister Joan and I howled at this one back in 1965. And someone posted some video of it. What a world we live in. Now, if only there was more Sandy Becker... they have the old WABD show, but not Hambone or Norton Nork....

I think I mentioned at some point that the next week and a half were going to be a bear, and it's starting; in a couple of days, I'll be carrying a very heavy work load, and there's lots to do before then. As a result, something will have to take a back seat, and, yeah, this got elected.

But I'll continue to throw random stuff up here, so in that regard, here's an epic bunch of 1971 British TV commercials, including some absolutely 1971 shirts, a slightly bizarre deodorant commercial, and more:

And from 1970, a plea for you to become a miner (for all the lovely perks, of course), that is, if the mines aren't closed down and you don't emigrate to Australia:

There, a post.

Philco-Ford made a movie in 1967 to show what the world would be like in 1999. Here's a clip, starring Wink Martindale himself as "Father," and they weren't far off:

Here's more on the film, including a link to where you can buy the whole thing.

Yeah, but what was 1967 itself like? Like this:

Okay, that was "Shrimpenstein," a classic kiddie-show-really-for-adults on KHJ-TV/Los Angeles. No, 1967 was all psychedelia and Vietnam and turmoil and... no, not that, not for most people. It was more like this:

Yes, someone's home movies. 1967, in my memory, looked a lot like 1966 or 1968. You ever watch "The Wonder Years"? Kinda like that. Most guys still had short hair and dorky glasses and "slacks." A lot of cars with tailfins were still on the road, although sleeker cars were coming out (we had a '66 Corvair along with the '63 Rambler). It was just... average. Kinda like now. You thought the recession/depression would be in black-and-white and everything would look sad and grey and depressing, right? Nope, it's in color and it looks just like 2008 and 2007 and 2006, only everyone has less money and a lot of people have no jobs.

And that's the kind of history I wish they taught in schools. In 1967, I thought everything that came before me was old and scratchy and black-and-white, too.

For no reason at all...

More station IDs: KCRA-TV Sacramento and that old favorite, Sid Doherty's WPHL-TV Channel 17 PhilaDELphia, plus Cox Cable Spokane (!):

One of the KOFY-TV San Francisco "dog bumpers":

Some weird vintage cartoons in an ad for the old KXLI-TV St. Cloud (a Twin Cities rimshot, later a proto-TV Land called "TV Heaven 41," now an Ion affiliate):

KTHI-TV Grand Forks-Fargo as an ABC affiliate in 1980, with a movie promo that includes "They Saved Hitler's Brain" (!):

The old bridge animation for KRON-TV San Francisco (The "4" merges into a silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge):

You've had enough, haven't you?

This week's All Access newsletter is the last for 2009. Enjoy:

2009 hasn't been what you'd call a great year for most people. With that in mind, and because this is the last column of the year (please, no emotional outbursts, and keep weeping to a minimum), I'm going to return to something I've talked about before and put it in the context of what's happening today.

And that's it for The Letter this year. I'll be back after the holidays; enjoy the season and we'll reconvene right here in 2010, okay?

Knoxville had its World's Fair at the tail end of the World's Fair era. In fact, it kinda came up after the World's Fair had run its course. I was graduating college at the time, and I knew a few things about the Knoxville fair, namely that a) it had a tower, and b) it seemed like a bad idea all around. There wasn't a buzz. Nobody was talking about it, other than news reports about financial problems. It turned out that nobody was interested in going to Knoxville for a World's Fair.

Or were they? It turns out that the fair broke even, which was a disappointment but not bad, given the circumstances. And the attendance was strong. But that news didn't filter out to the rest of the world. The Sunsphere -- the tower -- is still standing, and Knoxville's doing fine. I saw the '64 fair in Flushing and the '67 fair in Montreal; It would have been interesting to see how this one measured up.

One more surprise: They still hold World's Fairs, or at least "Expos." The next one's in Shanghai in 2010. Book your flights now.

My lack of inspiration has led me to explore more videos, and, sure enough, I found another thing that reminded me of how amazing this Internets thing is. Here, with music by Quincy Jones, and courtesy of YouTube poster 2nicks, are the opening and closing credits to a show I remember from my youth:

"Hey, Landlord" was about a guy from the Ohio sticks who inherited a New York apartment house and the stereotypical New Yorkers therein. The co-star, as one of the tenants, was Sandy Baron -- you remember him as Jack Klompus from "Seinfeld," I remember his standup on countless TV variety shows in the late 60's -- and another tenant was Michael Constantine of "Room 222" (and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") fame. Among the guest stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Sally Field (as the landlord's sister!), Rob Reiner. Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson were involved as producers, as was Sheldon Leonard. And it lasted one season, that's it. Sometimes, you can amass a lot of talent and what seems like a sure-fire premise, and it just doesn't work. "Hey Landlord" didn't work. But I remember watching it as a little kid; I remember an episode where they do medical testing to earn money, but that's about it. I wonder if there are any episodes to be seen out there; someone must have it.

There are sites where episodes of some obscure short-lived shows have been posted; even "O.K. Crackerby" lives on the Net. I'd love to see someone digitize and post every one-season wonder, every busted pilot, every "McKeever and the Colonel" and every "From A Bird's Eye View." If there's a copy someplace, I'd love to see practically ANY TV show from days gone by. Sure, they suck, but I'd like to revisit just how much they really DID suck. A TV addict can dream....

Continuing with YouTube space fillers, here's a whole playlist of TV station IDs and bumpers:

A lost art, indeed.