He's ba-ack. After Jimmy Kimmel's blistering monologue Tuesday night where he tore into the Graham-Cassidy health care bill and particularly co-sponsor Bill Cassidy (R-LA) for lying to him, the segment got a great deal of attention yesterday. A good deal with praise, particularly from families with healthcare concerns, but also some criticism, most notably on Fox and also the bill's co-sponsors. So, Kimmel came back last night with a response -- in fairness, showing the criticism and answering it, but being just as withering as before, if not more so. He also included a "Barrista Theater" comedy sketch to help explain some problems with the bill. And the monologue went on for an impressive 10 minutes. As I said yesterday, for a fellow who postured his career as a goofball shlub, not bad.
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Last night, I went to the "June Foray Celebration" that was held at the Motion Picture Academy in honor of the voice-actor legend who passed away recently at the age of 99, after a remarkable 80-year career. She was still working up to a few years ago and won her first Emmy at the age of 95, for playing a witch (she played LOTS of witches, most notably Witch Hazel for Warner Bros. cartoons) in an episode of Garfield that Mark Evanier wrote and voice-directed. Mark served as the host last night and was one of the event's producers, along with Jerry Beck, Bob Bergen, Howard Green and Tom Sito, to give full credit. The Academy Theater was so jammed -- and it's a very big theater -- that standing in line to get in was never a certainty. Eventually it started 20 minutes late, but it was thoroughly worth the wait. Among some of the highlights, that I recall -- Of course footage of her as 'Rocky the Flying Squirrel,' her iconic role. And footage of June as both 'Natasha' and 'Nell' on Rocky and His Friends. And her scene as 'Cindy Lu Who' in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And a scene of her as Grandmother Fa in Mulan. (She also played another famous grandmother, Tweety's owner, 'Granny' not to mention Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella, and 'Jokey Smurf'...sorry, that was a digression, and I could go on a really long time with the list, so let me continue with the evening...) There was a wonderful Stan Freberg sketch that was a parody of Dragnet called, "Little Blue Riding Hood" (only the color has been changed to protect the innocent) that was such a huge hit recording in 1953 that Freberg, June and Dawes Butler -- the voice of 'Huckleberry Hound' among much more) were brought onto The Ed Sullivan Show to recreate it. The event's producers showed the Sullivan video. (June did a lot of work for Freberg over the years, including his classic Stan Freberg presents The United States of America album. I met her a couple of times, the first by chance at a film industry event, but on the second occasion I knew she'd be there, so I brought along a hilarious 8-minute promotional 45 RPM record she had done with Freberg 30 years earlier for, of all things, a swimsuit company, Rose Marie Reid. She was stunned to see it, and happily signed the record's label -- which I subsequently asked Freberg to sign, as well, several years later.) Nancy Cartwright -- the voice of 'Bart Simpson' -- told about some lovely memories of being friends with June and working together on The Simpsons. They had footage of June winning her Emmy at the Daytime Emmy Awards (which had not been telecast), and also showed her receiving a second Emmy, the Governor's Award, which she was presented with later during a Primetime broadcast. Mark told a great story about accompanying her to that first event. He's written about it on his site, and I can't do it justice, so I won't try. But the point of it comes at the end of that evening when Mark (a large 6'3") and June (a small 4'11) were leaving and neared the rope-line jammed with a mass of fans hoping to see their favorite soap opera stars, making it very difficult to get away. The female emcee didn't have a clue who they were and asked Mark, rather than the tiny 95-year-old woman, if he had won an Emmy, "No, she did," he said, pointing to June and explaining she was the voice of 'Rocky the Flying Squirrel. This evoked the response, "You're shitting me!" When the emcee turned to announce this to the crowd, there was so much awe that they split apart to let June pass. And as Mark and June were walking through, a young girl -- who clearly had done a very quick search of June's credits on her cell phone -- cried out, "She was 'Cindy Lu Who'.". There's much more to the story, but that's the center. They also had a very entertaining sequence with film of her two famous "doll" moments. The first was a Mattel ad from the early 1960s for their doll, Chatty Cathy, for which June did the voice. And likely as a result of that, June was hired to be the voice of 'Talky Tina,' a malevolent doll in an episode of The Twilight Zone, titled "Living Doll." They showed an edited-down footage of the battle with the overbearing Telly Savalas. The producers even tracked down a couple of on-camera acting appearances by June, including one on the sitcom Green Acres, where she played a switchboard telephone operator who wasn't especially adept at connecting people. And the other was very early sketch with Johnny Carson from his pre-Tonight Show program, The Johnny Carson Show. At the end of the evening, there was a lovely moment when 18 women came on stage for a group photo with a picture of June in the center, each of whom spoke briefly about either working with June or how she influenced and inspired them to become voice actors. And after all the introductions, the final actress was brought out, winner of that year's voiceover actress award -- Lily Tomlin. She gave a warm and charming speech about working with June and knowing her and what she meant to to profession. There were speeches by the daughter of Jay Ward whose company created Rocky and Bullwinkle, and some words by the daughter of Chuck Jones, who directed so many of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons, both of whom talked about how June Foray wasn't just a actor for their fathers, but became almost a part of the family. And some stories from animation historian Jerry Beck. The evening came to a close with a Tom and Jerry cartoon where June played -- of course -- a witch. As well as playing the owner of the cat, Tom. Hey, you wouldn't think June Foray would do just one voice now, would you? Hat's off to all the producers who put together such a well-done, affectionate evening, to a full Academy theater. And here is that "Little Blue Riding Hood" sketch from The Ed Sullivan Show. I just bought the new Total Solar Eclipse commemorative postage stamp. It turns out to be heat sensitive and will change image! Very clever and fun. (When's the last time you said that about a stamp...?) By default, it shows a total solar eclipse, but if you press a finger on it the eclipse goes away to reveal the earth. But it's the gift that keeps giving, since when the stamps cools it will revert to the default eclipse. By the way, any heat will work, not just pressing a finger. The post office official told me about someone saying that they left a sheet of the stamps in a car, and when they got back to the overheated vehicle the stamps had changed.
Jimmy Kimmel began his TV career as pretty much a goofball shlub. And that's still been how he's developed his persona. But a funny thing happened on the way to the public forum. While Kimmel still have the goofball shlub in him, he's also turned in some thoughtful interviews and -- more to the point -- become outspoken and thoughtful on healthcare.
This is from his opening monologue last night. You may love what he has to say -- or hate it. But it's hard not to look at it think this is the work of a goofball shlub, but someone who has put a lot of blunt, outspoken thought into a political issue that's deeply important to you.
It's Talk Like a Pirate Day once again, and as always that gets me to think about the quite-wonderful video I've posted here before, but not for several years, Ahaarrrr. Today seems the ideal day to bring it back. This is one of my favorite videos I've ever tracked down. It's a little British film, 13-minutes long, which I came across back in 2010 and have been passing it around since -- mostly to friends of my who do voice-over work, on either side of the microphone. Oh, boy howdy, do they ever empathize with it... I don't know much about its history or the wonderful creative mind behind it, Jonathan Kydd, who wrote and stars in the short film (as both the voiceover artist and the director!). But it did win the (Mid Ulster) Critics choice at the DIY Festival LA. As it happens, I know very little about that festival -- other than that sentence I just typed. I do see on the iMDB that Mr. Kydd deservedly has had a long career with a great many acting credits -- not shockingly, most over the past 20 years in voiceover work, notably eight Harry Potter video games, as well as the Toy Story That Time Forgot video. And for the animated series, The Adventures of Paddington Bear, he provided the voice of Paddington. But yes, mixed in among that and especially before getting involved with voiceover acting, he has also done a good deal of live-action, on-camera TV work. As the description below says, this is indeed the voice over session from hell. For all the stories recently about Russia's use of Facebook, it was a story in Newsweek a few weeks ago about another social media site that first caught my interest. The site was LinkedIn, which surprised me since it seems the lesser of most social media sites. But what the story told was something else entirely.
LinkedIn tends to be used most as a professional service, and so people will list their resumes in order to drum up with. As a result, this gives a detailed profile of who people are, which makes them vulnerable to attack. The article begins with a look at Alan Malcher, a British military veteran who along with other critics of Moscow participates in a LinkedIn group on international affairs. He tells of going to a pub one day and getting into a conversation with a stranger having a Slavic accent, strongly supporting the Putin regime. Malcher says that later on, this stranger let drop some information he knew about Malcher that could only have been gotten from the LinkedIn site. It was a very subtle way, he says, of the other man letting him know that we know who you are, so be careful. At another point, the article explains in more detail. “The Russian special services are for sure exploiting LinkedIn to gather personal information on certain targets and possibly recruit and blackmail them,” says a close Kremlin watcher at a university in a former Soviet satellite state, asking for anonymity to protect himself. “They operate under fabricated identities and credentials, while the Russian propaganda and trolling campaigns are widely applied on the platform.” There's the story, for instance, of Giles Raymond DeMourot, a former U.S. national security expert who had been rebutting Kremlin propaganda on LinkedIn. He tells of shortly thereafter -- in fact, a few days before Malcher had been approached in a pub -- getting "stung" by the prick of an umbrella and ending up in the hospital an hour later, "infected by a potential lethal 'superbug.'" He's had several treatments, and is still under observation, but doing better. But then, perhaps it's all just the actions of a 400-pound man living in his parents' basement... You can read the whole article here. |
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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