A new Saturday feature, this one spotlighting vintage TV ads. Here's one for Royal Crown Cola. I remember a version that played exclusively on Met games, spotlighting Tom Seaver dancing with "rising young star" Pamela Austin. In lieu of that gem's availability, I bring you Dino, Desi, and Billy.
Dinner last night: Super Dodger Dog at the game.
One picture is often worth a thousand idiots.
Do not use the Super Cuts this family visited. The hair is more than teased. It is ridiculed.
Thanks for dressing, asshole. And on a national holiday to boot.
And to think that my grandmother grew rhubarb. Her plants never looked like these idiots.
Is it me or does this guy have the same eerie look that Anthony Perkins sported at the end of "Psycho?" And what is she holding? Looks like one of those creme-filled Drake cupcakes.
The Family 139. Think about it.
Printed exclusively for the delight and amusement of Mr. Anonymous from the Barbara Judith Deluxe Furnished Apartments on Hollywood Boulevard. 
Aunt Bessie's last good lei.
Dinner last night: Bacon, onion, and cheese omelette at Cafe 50s Diner.
Except for the fawning details of the Obamas' big date night in New York City, there has been nothing more nauseating in the media the past week than the public flogging of Susan Boyle.
You obviously know the details. Here's the poor singing shlump who went on "Britain's Got Talent" and wowed one and all with her talent. The audition video on YouTube got more hits than a buxom hooker during Fleet Week. And the rest was history. I know I got sucked in early on to the song stylings and I was duly impressed. Good for her. A big and deserving break for somebody who probably wouldn't have gotten a sniff from anybody.
But, as soon as Susan Boyle got hot, the media went into overdrive. Because once you are successful, the real "fun" comes in knocking you down. The Day of the Locusts arrives one more time. Let's get a carcass going ASAP because the crows are hungry.
And, as the media starts their demolition derby, the general public are fed the same meal. They also go into the wrecking business because, for a reason no decent person should be able to explain, it has become a great party game to destroy somebody else's reputation. Pain needs to be dispensed like Pez at a kid's birthday party. It is a horrible thing to watch. Yet, we all have to. And then the media gives us some more. And the public eats it up. And then the media gives us some more. The purest form of a vicious cycle.
I sense that lots of folks couldn't wait for Susan Boyle to be upended. Even by simply coming in second in that talent competition, her pain was deemed incomplete by her fellow men. Nope, one news story after another kicked her some more by focusing in on her life, her looks, her everything.
"The unworld spinster..."
"The plain-looking old maid..."
"The dumpy songstress..."
I saw all those descriptions in print and I wonder what kind of satisfaction came from describing her in that way. At the same time, I looked at the same overzealous news stories on the Obamas in NY and I didn't see this.
"The big-eared President and his chocolate-tinted wife..."
How much more different and inappropriate is what I just wrote when compared to how the press described Susan Boyle? A lot, apparently, because certain folks are currently deemed as "off limits" to media scrutiny. So, why can't everybody get the same velvet glove?
What did Susan Boyle do to you or me that warranted such treatment? Allegedly, over the course of the talent competition, she got testy. Threw some water at a studio worker. Had a hissy fit at some photographers. I'd challenge anybody to maintain their own personal dignity and demeanor when suddenly thrust into the spotlight with an unforgiving and watchable media at every turn. I couldn't do it and neither could you and you and, yes, even you.
Susan Boyle wound up in some hospital from exhaustion and that, too, is over-reported. She succumbed to the treatment that was doled out and now that's also her shortcoming. Shame not on her. Shame most certainly on everybody else.
Of course, I can hear some of you now. "Gee, Len, I read your blog and you can really be nasty on some people." You betcha. If you're deliberately in the public eye like a politician or an octomom, your stupidity, arrogance, and pomposity is fair game. You made the choice and lay your sorry self out there for all to lampoon. Susan Boyle did not do that. What is her ultimate sin? She joined a rather public talent competition and did so innocently, simply because she likes to sing. So, her punishment is nowhere matching her crime.
Now, I realize that, early on in this entry, I referred to Susan Boyle as a "shlump." Duly noted. So, Miss Boyle, on behalf of the rest of the world, let me be the very first to apologize.
Dinner last night: Louisiana hot sausage at the Dodger game.
Who's on first? What's on second? GM just struck out.
---If the United States citizens now own 60 percent of General Motors, I want to know which tire belongs to me.
---I am very proud of my tire. I really hope it's an all weather radial.
---So when do we get to see Michelle Urkel in the grease pit?
---Fantasy phone conversation: "Hello, this is the White House? How may I direct your call?"
---"Parts and Service, please."
---About that $24,000 Saturday night date in NY, I offer this advice to POTUS and FLOTUS: next time, don't use a midtown parking garage.
---If that evening out for the Urkels cost so much, I hope he got some when they got home.
---But, realistically, we're the ones who got fucked.
---Rumor has it that Saturday night at the Bidens was a game of Scrabble.
---And they're probably still in the first round.
---"Joe, you spell "dog" with a "g."
---For a while, that French airline disappearance sounded suspiciously like an ABC promotion for "Lost."
---Who are Jon and Kate and what the hell do they have eight of?
---And why do I care?
---I'm a white guy and, with my life experience, I think I can do a better job being nasty on this blog than a Latina woman.
---Since when did growing up in the Bronx become so chic?
---Ride the IRT 2 Train past the Simpson Street stop at midnight and then tell me how great it is down there.
---The new prospective Supreme Court Justice went randomly knocking on doors around the Senate yesterday. And now I'm wondering if some goofy Senator responded by saying, 'That's okay. My trash can isn't full yet."
---In his entire 17 years as Tonight Show host, I think I watched about ten minutes of Jay Leno.
---Is it me or did Jay's departure not get the same attention as when Johnny hung it up?
---Now the show is turned over to some guy who looks like a priest at St. Brendan's and I will watch even less.
---Meanwhile, Leno moves to 10PM in the fall and who wants to watch a late night talk show before they have brushed their teeth?
---That primetime hour should be reserved for sheer light entertainment. One of those Law and Orders where somebody is brutally murdered.
---One bad thing about the Dodgers' success this year? They'll show up a lot on ESPN with those two idiots, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan.
---Watching the game last Sunday night was sort of like trying to get through college calculus all over again.
---Why does it take Joe Morgan an hour to describe a curve ball?
---And Miller with his self-important pronunciation of names...Rafael FOUR-cal.
---Of course, with digital TV, you can no longer dump the TV audio in favor of the radio play-by-play. One or the other winds up being ten seconds behind.
---Where's Lindsey Nelson when you really need him?
---Still dead, I suppose.
Until Tomorrow, who happens to be our pitcher today.
Dinner last night: Pot roast, mashed potatoes, and carrots.
Even though it was up against a couple of Middle Eastern sob stories, Japan's "Departures" was the surprise win of this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Now that it has been finally released in America and I have seen it, this is no surprise to me.
"Departures" does what every good foreign film should do. It takes you to another land and introduces you to another culture and, hopefully, does so in an entertaining way. Bingo and bonzai! I was tranasported to the Japanese countryside and learned about some fascinating customs. In doing funerals. Six Feet Under Goes to Japan.
"Departures" is the story of a young cello player whose orchestra gig melts into a bad economy. No dollars, no yen. All the same. Out of work and with a new wife, Daigo Kobayashi (also available with noodles) answers an ad for a job as an assistant "handling departures." He thinks it's with a travel agency. Nope, a different kind of departure. A permanent one. Prepping some dead person for the eternal journey. This is a challenge for Daigo, who never even saw his late mother as a corpse. And his dad disappeared ages ago, a plot factoid that you'd have to be deaf, dumb, and a registered Democrat to think it won't come up again by the end of the film.
The whole undertaking process in Japan is called "encoffining" and it's done in the house. In full view of the family that watches as you wash the body, dress it, and gently put it in the casket. Thank God I don't live in Japan. But, I was still amazed to watch the ritual which is quite precise and moving. At first, Daigo watches as his mentor does the tough stuff. But, eventually, Daigo learns the trade and encoffins as well and as beautifully as he plays the cello.
While they take great care to perserve the dignity of the deceased, there are really funny moments along the way. As they are washing one dead girl who committed suicide, they discover that she was indeed a he. One other encoffinment winds up with the family arguing over the makeup used on Mom and that erupts into a hilarious fist fight.
What I also did not know is that the profession of undertaking is generally looked down upon in Japan. You are viewed as being weird and one level above garbageman or the guy down on the dock chopping up freshly caught eel. Even Daigo's own wife has an issue and leaves him for a while after she discovers just what his hands were doing when he was at work.
About fifteen minutes before the end, the plot gets as squishy as last night's octopus. As I mentioned, the notion of "Dad re-emerging" was, unlike Pearl Harbor, no big secret. But, still, the story ties up exquisitely and your two hours have been well spent.
As long as I can attend these encoffinments on film and never in person. Yuk!
Dinner last night: Salisbury steak at the Cheesecake Factory.
Johnny and Ed as you have never seen them before. Doing an off-air promo for a sponsor and it gets a little, well, obscene. Actually, a lot obscene.
Dinner last night: Salami sandwich.
No uncertainty in the title of today's entry. "The O.J. Simpson Murders." Yep, crimes tied to him. No dispute. A homicidal maniac.
Coming up on the 15 year anniversary of this dual mutilation, I am thinking about several odd ties I have to the event. And it didn't take me long after my move to LA in 1997 to get sucked into these coincidences.
When my writing partner and I first settled in SoCal in 1997, we were first isolated out in an Oakwood Apartments complex out in Woodland Hills. We might as well have lived on the moon. As soon as we got there in the Valley, we desperately started to figure out how to get to the other side of the hill. The fun side. That would be the apartment on Clark Drive. Not exactly in Beverly Hills, but on the border. Not exactly in West Hollywood, but on the border. When there was a reason to call the police, no cops wanted to claim the neighborhood. Our apartment was in Nowhere Adjacent.
But, early on, we found out just who we were adjacent to when we got on the elevator one night.
Famed houseguest Kato Kaelin.
Imagine our surprise that day when we loped onto the lift and heard a familiar voice utter "three, please." He even sounded stupid just saying those two simple words. Not only was he going to the same floor as us, his apartment was only two doors down. The first couple of weeks, we would purposely bump into the wall of his unit, just like OJ supposedly knocked into his air conditioner on that fateful night.
Over time, we were able to discern some interesting factoids about our neighbor. He didn't seem to work. No surprise there. Sometimes, he would simply 
bide his time by sitting on the street curb outside the building. A professional dodo. We learned from other tenants that Kato actually lived in the building during the trial, which meant that papparazzi were camped outside for two years.
About a year into our tenure there, we noticed Kato with a packing tape gun. He was either moving or perhaps trying to hold his brain in. And, suddenly, like a carpetbagger in the night, he was gone. Except for one last calling card left behind.
He decided to dump a lot of scripts in the ;aundry room. We immediately brought them upstairs and began to digest them. All were essentially soft porn projects offered to this D list star. Most of the screenplays had notes on the title page.
"Kato, you're going to be Danny, the horny pool boy."
"Kato, you're perfect for Marco, the horny tennis pro."
"Kato, we want you for the horny horn player. Get it? Wink wink."
I am guessing you can see any or all of the above during the overnight hours on Cinemax.
Moving on from Katoland, I simultaneously developed another bizarre OJ connection at work. A data input guy in the office and under my management looked damn familiar in both looks and name. There was something very, very nagging about Steven. And then it finally came to us third hand.
Steven was the guy who was walking his dog and found Nicole's dog with the bloody footprints. His testimony was memorable because he was the one who verified his movements that night by what shows he was watching on TV Land.
If you remember him and what an idiot he sounded like, trust me when I tell you he was as moronic in the office as he appeared to be during the trial. Ultimately, even the E list celebrity status he brought to my work life was not enough. His work habits were atrocious and I got to fire him a year later.
The final connection is probably the best, but sadly before the days of my digital camera.
I saw O.J. Simpson himself.
My writing partner and I were in Westwood and sitting in the window of a restaurant that sold nothing but French fries (don't ask, it's closed since then). As we alternately dipped the taters into ketchup, ranch, or barbecue dressings, we suddenly felt a pair of eyes staring at us through the window. It gave us a jolt like a 7.5 tremor.
There, on the other side of the glass, was a murderer. Or so everybody but 12 numbskulls think. Watching us dip French fries. He didn't look for more than 15 seconds but it seemed like an eternity. And then he was off.
As we watched him limp up the street, I could see a guy who did have that crippling arthritis which was a major part of his defense. Here's a dude who couldn't get around well at all. Hmmm, maybe....
Nah, he did it!
Dinner last night: Sausage caccatiore at Miceli's.
