A while back, I posted this series of videos here when Bonnie Raitt and her Broadway legend father John Raitt appeared as surprise guests on The David Letterman Show in a running bit when they'd pop out together to sing Broadway songs. It was a fun, quick comedy gag. But here they do it right, in a music video singing a ballad from Annie Get Your Gun, that John Raitt famously appeared in (though not in the original Broadway production.) It's no small touch that the name of the song is, "They Say It's Wonderful." It is.
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Whenever I watch TED lectures, I'm always deeply impressed by how thoughtful and entertaining they are. This one is only the final nine minutes, so it largely centers on the entertaining part. Though there's enough of the thoughtfulness in the opening few minutes. The whole thing was a talk on human behavior by master pickpocket Apollo Robbins. But this is largely the pickpocket part. Richard Wiseman posts a variety of videos under the Quirkology brand. Though ostensibly they're magic tricks, often they're more appropriately optical illusions. As such, he generally shows how they're done. And he does all this in a charming, whimsical way making his little excursions treats. Though he has performed as a magician, he has a very different day job. He's a psychologist. In fact, he's a professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. He's written numerous books on the subject, including The Luck Factor and Quirkology. This is a little different from most, which focus on one trick only. This is a series of little folderol, which he called "10 new bets that you will always win," particularly appropriate the next time you're in a bar. This is sort of a strange one. ("Sort of," in this case will be defined as -- utterly, totally 100%.) It comes courtesy of Ron Lux, though I have to take some responsibility for posting it here. This is the legendary R&B group The Temptations performing a long, 9-minute medley of songs from...Fiddler on the Roof. Yes, you read that right. I'm not completely sure what this is from. The best I can determine is that it's a TV special called G.I.T. on Broadway. Mind you, I have no idea what that is, but it's a start. And it's from 1969. It exudes 1969. It's even introduced by Diana Ross. The video quality is poor. The performance is worth it. Daidle-deedle-daidle... Yesterday, I posted a video of Kristen Chenoweth that I said came early in her career. Well, here's even earlier. This is not only from as early in her professional career as there probably is -- but it was the first time she came to the general public's attention. And what makes the video all the better is what comes at the end. The first thing that brought her to attention was the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, in which she starred as Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally. It was a small role, but she was so good in it that she won the Tony Award. She only had one solo number, but the Tonys have a history of recognizing true "Featured" roles for just that. Not supporting roles that are on the edge of being the star, but small, featured performances. (Two that come to mind are Ron Holgate who won the Tony as 'Richard Henry Lee" for really just one incredible song in 1776, "The Lees of Old Virginia," dumbed-down for the movie, alas, but brilliant live on stage, and Marian Mercer in Promises, Promises, for not just one song, but literally one scene, as a drunk barfly. As luck would have it, I saw both performances.) Anyway, this is Kristen Chenoweth's big number performed on the Tony Awards, My New Philosophy," (written for this production, it wasn't in the orignial show). And it's not only easy to see why she won, but from how she throws herself into it, why she became a star. But terrific as it is, what makes this video special is what came next. Because as it happened, the way things were organized, the very next thing after the number, while even the applause were continuing, was the nominations for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. I remember watching this live, and being floored by the whole thing. I still am. So, if you want to see "early Kristen Chenoweth"...this is about as early as it gets. (Note: This may not embed properly, but if it doesn't, it will display a link to click on which will take you automatically to YouTube, so that you can watch it directly there.) I don't feel any more personal or horrified by the recent mass shootings in Santa Monica that left five dead, just because it happened about three miles from me -- or about half a mile (or to put it another way, 900 yards) from where I had planned to go that day but got too busy and so put it off. I was under no threat, and my reaction is the same wherever it would have occurred.
My reaction is -- okay, is it not "too soon" to talk about the tragedy yet? And by "the tragedy," I mean the mass shooting at Newtown. Or, maybe I mean Aurora, Colorado. Or perhaps Virginia Tech. Or... The point is that I lose track. It's always "too soon" to talk about these mass gun tragedies for the gun manufacturer-owned NRA far-right fringe group. So, we've built up a big backlog of these mass gun tragedies. Having read yesterday that the gunman had 1,300 rounds of ammunition, it would seem like a perfectly fine time to start talking about this mass gun-killing in Santa Monica, too. But hey, that's just me. Me, I think a killing with one round is appropriate to start talking about and 1,300 rounds would demand it. After all, imagine if the gunman has been able to use all 1,300 rounds, which one has to figure was the point. That we lucked out that he didn't get that far is what makes it all the more palatable that we can talk about it. Otherwise, the world would probably be speechless. Having read today that a teacher once spotted the killer surfing the Internet about assault weapons, and that the police were informed and he was admitted to a psych ward, it would seem reasonable to assume that even when measures are taken properly with someone who has mental problems, that guns can still get in their hands. But hey, that's just me, too. Me, I just think that when someone with psychiatric problem can get his hands on so much guns and ammunition, it's an appropriate time to be taking about better controls. I keep thinking of the late-Charlton Heston's infamous line, when he was the president of the gun manufacturer-owned NRA, about us having to pry his guns from his "cold, dead hands." What tends to get lost in the chest-thumping bravado of the statement is that while the mass-murdering gunman was able to keep his gun in his warm, live hands, it was the innocent victims whose hands ended up very cold and even more dead. Though it's another quote from Mr. Heston -- who apropos of nothing, went to my high school, and whose sister Lila taught at Northwestern University in the School of Speech when I got my BS-Speech degree there -- that also comes to mind. That's when he said on Meet the Press in 1997, "Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people" Since "any" is pretty much all-inclusive, I would assume that in the Mr. Heston's all-continuing universe that would include the 4-year-old boy who just over the weekend accidentally shot and killed his father . On the other cold, dead hand, I'm sure that that father thought his four-year-old son was wonderfully decent. Even with the gun in his hands posing a tragic threat. By the way, it was a year after saying this that Mr. Heston was elected president of the gun manufacturer-owned NRA, so it would seem that the far-right outlier fringe group didn't have a problem with the sentiment. Which is why they have so much blood on those cold-dead hands. |
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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