For those Columbo fans among us, today -- Saturday -- the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel has an all-day marathon, on now until midnight West Coast time.
At the moment, they have the episode with Theodore Bikel as the Mensa-like genius who kills his accounting business partner -- and the scene on as I type this has a snarky waitress giving Columbo a hard time, until he finally orders something ("I can come back," she snaps), which ends up being a doughnut, displeasing her all the more. It's a day-player role, played by very young Jamie Lee Curtis. By the way, at 3 PM on the West Coast (I don't know how the schedule works out in other time zones), the episode is a good one with the murderer played by Jack Cassidy as a mystery writer. It's directed by an up-and-coming fellow named Steven Spielberg.
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Heading back out On the Road, this week Charles Kuralt has a short, simple piece about the old world way of making molasses in a Tennessee holler. Hats off to CNN for bringing a courtroom artist into today's White House press briefing, where the Trump administration has been banning cameras. Anything the press can do to shine a big Klieg light on the pathetic offensiveness of the Trump people blocking news access is great. The more the merrier. Perhaps at one point, John Oliver will do a similar thing with White House press briefings that his show has done with Supreme Court sessions, using dogs as stand-ins... I received a note yesterday from the founder of Feedspot, which among other things has a site called "Top 100 Funny Blogs," and was informed that Elisberg Industries had made the list. Certainly curious, I checked out the list and it turns out that Elisberg Industries clocked in at #60.
(Actually, the correct title is "Top 100 Funny Blogs on the Planet." I left out the qualifier since it seemed inappropriate for me to promote myself to that level when my own awareness of the field didn't reach that far. But for all I know, the Feedspot folks themselves have agents scouring Kazakhstan, Djibouti and elsewhere around the globe, including under the sea.) While not quite at the level of the Kennedy Center Honors, the Feedspot collection seems at the very least to have several sites on their list that I've heard of, although any collection of funny sites that doesn't include Mark Evanier's News From Me has some explaining to do. (I let the fellow who contacted me know about it so that he can correct the error of his ways. I also told him to check out Ken Levine's blog, which I recommend to folks here, as well. (Ken is the Emmy-winning writer of Cheers, Frasier, M*A*S*H and a great deal more, including being a professional baseball announcer -- really.) Most are totally unknown to me, but then the rest of the planet can say the same thing when they get to #60. Indeed, beyond the question of taste, how they even tracked me down is perhaps the biggest bewilderment. After all, as their list shows, this site's popularity on the Alexa ranking puts Elisberg Industries 2,927,429 on the most-visited sites. Really. (Though "most-visited" seems a contradiction in terms.) And that's just on the Internet, where it ranks on the planet is another matter entirely. Mind you, given all that I've been writing about the hell that is Trump and other politics, as well as technology, sports and dystopian philosophy (okay, maybe not the latter, I'll have to check the archives), I suspect the humor of these pages falls through the cracks on occasion, but it's always there in the Founders Manual, and if it's good enough for Feedspot, who am I to complain? (Feedspot, by the way, is an RSS content reader, and has a lot of "best of" collections, and accumulated news, and that's about all you need to know -- and I can't add a whole lot more.) If you'd like to see the full list, and figure out how Elisberg Industries somehow came to their attention, you can check it out here. In the meantime, at least for the time being I've chosen to include their badge in the sidebar on the right. It's colorful and adds some class to the section, which isn't difficult. But also, for all I know an investor from some Fortune 500 company will see it and offer to buy out the site, while allowing me to continue being in charge and write whatever I want. Hey, you never know. Though you can make a good guess.... You may have read about John Oliver being sued (along with HBO and Time-Warner) by the very litigious Bob Murray of Murray Energy over a long segment that the comedian did on the coal industry. Good news for you! We have it here below. Among the issues that Mr. Murray sued were Last Week Tonight's "intentionally, falsely, and outrageously" erroneous claims that Murray had no evidence that an earthquake caused a mining disaster, and that the show ignored other evidence and used quotes out of context. It should be noted that the evidence Oliver does present is a U.S. government study that says an earthquake did not cause the mine collapse. The show also presents an outrageously funny story on how Murray Energy was founded -- a story that the company insists is not true...though the story comes from Murray himself, and Oliver repeatedly says he too does not believe the story. The suit contends, as well, that the show presented "meticulously planned" and "ruthless character assassination" for financial gain and to hurt his mining company. Watching the segment, these appear to be massive hurdles to prove, though no doubt they'll provide their side or the argument. But given that Oliver and Company knew going in that Murray was highly litigious (as the host explains) and that they had even received a "cease and desist" letter before airing the piece, I suspect they were incredibly careful to get their i's dotted and t's very-well crossed, and vet the thing through corporate lawyers and then re-vet it. Besides which, it would seem they made it more difficult to prove damages to the business and Mr. Murray himself since they sued only days after the piece appeared. Add to that the burden that, as much as Last Week Tonight presents material in a news-story way, at heart they are a satiric comedy show which, while it doesn't let them off the hook at all, does provide a much, much much higher bar to prove damage, especially against a public figure -- which Mr. Murray is through his many TV and public appearances. HBO has released a statement standing by the program. After watching the piece, it's easy to see why. And not only is it very strong, it's also extremely funny. And in the best tradition of Last Week Tonight, do be sure to stick around and watch to the very end. The other day when writing about going to the Muppet organization's Puppet Up! improv event, I forgot to mention my favorite ad lib -- One of the Muppets that they use is a hot dog. (In fact, they sell it in the courtyard beforehand.) There was one improv sketch with four of these hot dog Muppets – one was a maid, another a doctor, one a cowboy, and the last just like this hot dog below. At one point in the sketch when things were getting loopy, this fourth hot dog started looking around at the other three, seeming to be a bit lost, and then suddenly jumped in, “Hey, I didn’t realize we were supposed to wear costumes.” And hey, as long as we have Puppet Up! on the table, here's another video from the folks. This is a less-intimate environment than at their home studio, but takes place at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. (As such, it's a well-produced video, so you get a good sense of the experience, seeing the performers in action, but also the results on the big monitor.) It's all enjoyable -- and that's Brian Henson, Jim Henson's son, in the first sketch, performing as the warthog -- but the second improv sketch that begins about at the 3:10 mark is particularly fun, especially for this very appreciative Aussie audience. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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