The Sporadic Curmudgeon

In an earlier post I wrote about the surprising career of Pinto Colvig, who not only performed the voices of a number of famous cartoon charaters, including Goofy and Bluto, but was also television’s first Bozo the Clown.

It turns out there has been some controversy over who was really the first Bozo (an early televison franchise), and now the International Clown Hall of Fame has decided the matter in Colvig’s favor.

When I was a kid I saw Bozo in person in Los Angeles. At that time (1959, probably) the part may have still been played by Pinto’s son, Vance.

Most people don’t know this, but the old black-and-white TV cameras didn’t pick up light the same way the human eye does, and the makeup colors they had to use to make people appear normal on the tube could get pretty bizarre. White makeup was a particular problem, since it tended to glare out, leaving persistent streaks on the screen. The standard replacement was bright violet, which came out looking white when broadcast.

Bozo had just finished doing the show, and was in the parking lot of the studio surrounded by kids. He was as purple as a grape. I asked my Dad why, and he said, “Because he’s a wino.”

Wiseass.

I’ll write more about my father Gary Bryant at another time. He was a fairly famous musician in the 1950s, and was involved in the creation of a catchphrase that’s still a part of pop culture.

Today Al Gore, the man who was actually elected President in 2000, gave a speech at New York University.

You need to read it. For yourself.

The Flintstone’s beloved family pet, Dino, has been trapped by person or persons unknown and is now glued to the ground inside the caldera of a live volcano in New Zealand. In a macabre touch, his slow, agonizing, gruesome death from the crater’s corrosive atmosphere is being broadcast via a live webcam.

As reported in this story, authorities do not intend to rescue Dino, and are actually counting on the acidic atmosphere to “deal with the creature.” Their brutal indifference to Dino’s suffering is as puzzling as it is blood-chilling. Why, for example, do they persistently refer to Dino’s color as pink, when he is obviously purple? For that matter, why do they pretend ignorance of his identity? Dino has been one of the most easily-recognized housepets in the world for more than 40 years; generations of children would have no difficulty identifying him from the photograph.

Just what the hell is going on here?

UPDATE: The webcam has been slashdotted, so you might want to try here instead.

Special Five-Years-Later Update: Dino is doing just fine!

This Yahoo! story (from a news organization called PRWEB, for those of you keeping score) is not only claiming that Andy Kaufman is still alive, but that he is also a blogger.

I’m not sure where I fall in the gullibility spectrum on this one. On the one hand, he was such a sick bastard that it just might be him. On the other hand, here’s his death certificate. Which could be faked.

Are there any autopsy photos out there that would help settle this?

UPDATE: Snopes.com has just weighed in. Their verdict? Kaufman’s worm food. Thanks to Hawkins for the timely info. The internet moves fast, kids.

In the “news we’d rather not think about too long” department, a man in upstate New York has been arrested for smearing an entire hotel room with petroleum jelly. The bed, the furniture, the towels… even the television. The cops found fourteen empty Vaseline jars in the trash, along with several porn mags.

I think Vaseline has the makings of a spectacular advertising campaign here. At the very least, they should bail the guy out and offer him an endorsement deal.

I can see the commercial now. Salesman checks into a cheap hotel on a business trip. Minutes later, he’s sliding around the room like a seal, naked, with a fistful of Vaseline in one hand and a greasy copy of Black Booty Sluts in the other.

Paul Simon on the soundtrack.

Slip-slidin’ away…

According to Ananova, a mind-bogglingly unfortunate gentleman in Romania has suffered a rare malady: his penis exploded during sex.

See, he was banging his girlfriend, and–

Wait! This is better! She’d promised him a blowj–

Oh, never mind. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

But we can dream, can’t we?

Okay, okay. I know I’ve written about Caruso before. It’s obvious the poor guy can’t act his way out of a wet Kleenex® brand facial tissue, so why keep belaboring the point?

I’ll tell you why. Because he keeps trying to act, and it hurts. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to sit through an episode of CSI: Miami without throwing rancid leftovers at the screen while screeching vile, spittle-flecked obscenities? Somehow, someone has got to convince David Caruso that he’s dumbfoundingly unsuited for his chosen career and that to continue is just plain spiteful.

That someone may very well be Gary Sinise.

Last night CSI: Miami metastasized and spunoff a quasi-new series, and lo! it was called CSI: New York. Unlike the other two members of the CSI franchise (God, how I loathe that word when applied to anything other than sports teams and fast-food outlets), this one is set in New York and stars the aforementioned Mr. Sinise.

I can certainly understand the reluctance of the original (and always entertaining) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s William Petersen to water down the show’s impact with spinoff after spinoff. Do you know anybody that actually looks forward to Law and Order anymore? But what could possibly have led Jerry Bruckheimer to allow Caruso on the same set with someone of Sinise’s caliber? Sinise is one of the best actors of his generation. Caruso is… well, you’ve seen him. You know.

The scene where the two of them first meet kind of sums up the dynamics nicely.

In case you aren’t a fan of the show, Caruso plays a small, pompous, red-headed troglodyte of a crime-scene investigator named Horatio Caine (which happily rhymes with “fellatio stain”) who has an ego massive enough to bend light. He drives around the mean streets of Miami in a gigantic Hummer that may as well have personalized plates reading “SMLPNIS,” solving crimes and taking his sunglasses off and on meaningfully.

In last night’s show he deduced that his quarry had fled to New York City and vows to follow him. We then switch to the Big Apple, where Gary Sinise is investigating the murder of an undercover cop in a run-down apartment. As he goes about his work, he hears a sound behind him and turns. There stands David Caruso in all his backlit glory. Sinise asks, “Who are you?”

“My name… is Horatio Kane,” Caruso intones. He takes off his sunglasses. All of the establishing NYC shots to this point have been of a dark, gloomy day. He has presumably worn his sunglasses continually since leaving Miami.

Seeing the two of them onscreen at the same time made Caruso stand out like a Kabuki actor in a Tennessee Williams play. Oh, Caruso tried, all right. The patented Caruso Thesp-O-Matic™ has about a half-dozen settings, and he dialed through most of them. We got the sunglasses bit, the halting delivery, the meaningless and blindingly obvious rhetorical questions, the smug smile to himself and the insincere professional comraderie. It was not unlike watching a stranded fish flop about on a pier.

Sinise, of course, simply played his part quietly, with no “acting” detectable.

I’d say that counts as a bitchslap.

One of the holy grails of archaeology may have been discovered: the site of the Library of Alexandria. More than a mere book repository, for centuries the Library was the greatest university in the world. Among other things, the dig has uncovered thirteen lecture halls, which leads me to believe that they got it right.

Unfortunately, the BBC story inexplicably perpetuates Plutarch’s libel against Julius Caesar as the person responsible for the fire that destroyed the Library. I love Plutarch, but I think he let personal feelings cloud his judgement here. There’s a more evenhanded discussion of the controversy at eHistory.com. My prime suspect is the Church, but then, I tend to blame Republicans and the Church for just about everything, so…

I found an entertaining link at the must-read-daily-without-fail Fortean Times. The New Scientist story describes a theory that a bacterial invasion led to the evolution of sex.

Couple that with the fact that the Earth has been struck by flying chunks of Mars, some of which may have been carrying alien bacteria.

Mix well, and you come up with the possibility that Mars actually got the ball rolling viz-a-viz sex, so to speak. Not that I believe this, mind you. I’m just sayin’.

Remember, you read it here first, folks. I wonder how long it’ll take this meme to percolate into the public consciousness?

A sightseeing barge capsized on Lake Travis in Austin Sunday when all of the passengers ran to one side of the watercraft. Why would they do something like that? Why, to see the only public nude beach in Texas filled with gay and lesbian naked folks, of course. Luckily, nobody was hurt.

Favorite obtuse statement attributed to a public official: “[Travis County sheriff’s spokesman Roger] Wade said it was unclear why the people all were on one side of the boat.”

(I was going to illustrate this post with a photo from a Splash Day celebration held there back in the pre-hell-in-a-handbasket days, but they seem to have some weird image-linking hoodoo going on with their server.)