I have relatives in Cincinnati. They are all a little bit crazy. Probably from watching this guy on the local news.

Charles Durning 1923 - 2012

If you read my reviews of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and Home for the Holidays (1995), I had nothing but praise for Charles Durning.  Durning was one of those supporting actors who could raise a movie up just by the fact that he was in it.  Durning’s dance steps in Whorehouse was the  highlight of that film, and he practically stole the show in Home for the Holidays as the father who was trying to not only cope with the changes in the world around him, but with his dysfunctional family as well.   Even as the villain trying to convince Kermit to become a spokes-frog for his chain of frog leg restaurants, you couldn’t help but love the guy.  And can you really picture anybody else wooing a cross dressing Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and have it not come off as over the top silliness?

It didn’t matter if Durning was in a bad movie or a good one, he always gave his best effort, even when the material he was working with was nothing more than a quickie made for TV feature.  He was a class act and I’ll miss him.

From the Washington Post:

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982’s “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film’s show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after “Best Little Whorehouse,” Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks’ ”To Be or Not to Be.” He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975’s “Dog Day Afternoon.”

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald in the TV film “The Kennedys of Massachusetts” and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Here’s a link to a pretty good short Charles Durning story.

Meme of the Day: This is how I felt at about 8:30 this morning.

How about another one?  This is exactly what I wanted to say to people all those times I was stuck working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Jack Klugman 1922 - 2012

I’m going to be honest here.  I saw many episodes of The Odd Couple, the TV series Klugman starred in with Tony Randall based on Neil Simon’s broadway play, but it was never must see television for me.  There’s probably more episodes I didn’t see then those that I did.  And if you asked me about any of them today I’d be hard pressed to give you a synopsis of any of them.  The Odd Couple  is not available for streaming on either Netflix or Amazon, so if I were to revisit the show now, it would mean either buying it outright or renting the discs of all five seasons one by one.  What I have discovered is that watching a series that ran many years by renting the discs is slow going.  Once I get into a series, I like to be able to watch  it at my leisure.  I became a huge fan of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and How I Met Your Mother because only because I was able to do this.  There’s just so many vintage shows I can afford to buy, and with most of them going to burn on demand at premium prices, collecting has become an expensive undertaking.

As for Quincy M.E., it is available for streaming on Netflix and has been in my queue for quite a while now so maybe I’ll make an effort to give it a try. 

But what I do remember about Jack Klugman is that he starred in four episodes of what I consider one of the top ten televison series of all time, The Twilight Zone.  Twilight Zone is one of those classic series that I do own in it’s entirety.  But even if I didn’t own them, I would still remember the Klugman episodes, which showcased how good of an actor he was even in the early sixties.   Each episode he starred in was some of the best of the series, and it’s hard to choose the best among the four.  These are my recommendations for essential Jack Klugman and I don’t think you can go wrong with these. The episodes are as follows:

1.  A Passage for Trumpet (1960) – Available for Streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Musician Joey Crown is down on his luck. A recovered alcoholic, he can't find work because no one trusts him. Broke, he hocks his trumpet but then steps in front of truck which knocks him onto the sidewalk. He awakens in a strange world where no one can see him and he presumes he's died. He eventually bumps into someone who can in fact see him, a fellow horn player who tells him that it's still within Joey's power to decide on life or death.

2.  A Game of Pool  (1961) – Available for Streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Jesse Cardiff is a frustrated pool player. He's very good at his game but his frustration comes from the fact that no matter how well he plays or how often he wins, onlookers always conclude that he's not as good as the late, great James Howard "Fats" Brown. He says he would give anything to have had the chance to play Fats and his wish comes true when the man himself suddenly appears. They agree to a game but Fats warns his eager opponent that winning has its consequences as well.

3.  Death Ship (1963) – Not available for Streaming on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

The Space Cruiser E-89 is on a mission to investigate new worlds and determine if they are suitable for colonization by Earth. The mission of the three man crew, composed of Captain Paul Ross, Lt. Ted Mason and Lt. Mike Carter, has been routine. But while investigating an apparently uninhabited world, Mason spots a metallic gleam in the landscape and conjectures that this might be a sign of alien life. The Cruiser prepares to land next to the mysterious object.  After landing, the men are astonished to find the wreckage of a ship exactly like their own.  This episode is part of Season Four.  None of the episodes from this season are available for streaming.

4.  In Praise of Pip (1963) – Available for Streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

In the early 1960's, small-time bookie Max Phillips (Jack Klugman) hates his life. His only pride is his son, Pip, then serving in the U.S. Armed Forces in Vietnam. When a young bettor uses company funds to bet with Max, then loses everything, Max returns his money, angering Max's bosses.

These are my recommendations for essential Jack Klugman and I don’t think you can go wrong with these.  You can read the TV Guide obituary here or watch the embedded video.

 

Meme of the Day - Playing Madden Football

7 Worst Product Flops of 2012 as told by Huffington Post

Yes boys and girls and mommies and dads.  It’s that time of year when every web site and magazine has a best and worst list for just about every category imaginable.  Huffington Post has come up with it’s list of biggest flops of the past twelve months.

They are:

1.  Apple Maps
2.  Dodge Dart
3.  John Carter
4.  Sony Tablet
5.  Nokia Lumina 900
6.  Pan Am
7.  Ultrabook
8.  Playstation Vita

Now, I may disagree with at least one of these.  John Carter’s ranking comes from the fact that some people still of are the mindset that North American Gross is the only thing that counts.  In fact, according to Box Office Mojo, while Carter only made $73,000,000 domestically, it made over $209,700,000 in foreign theaters for a total of over $282 million dollars on a $250 million dollar budget.  That doesn’t even include movie tie ins.  DVD/Blu-ray sales, digital sales, pay per view or anything else.  Granted, the film may have been a flop and may never turn a profit but this idea of it being the biggest flop of all time falls into the Waterworld category, a film that fell into that mythical chamber of money making disasters when it in fact, turned a profit.  Blame Disney who took a $200 million dollar write of for letting production and marketing costs spiral out of control.  Then again, for the studio that showered George Lucas with $4 billion dollars for Lucasfilms, this is all chump change.

My son was one of those who bought a Playstation Vita.  He sent it back.  And with two products on this list is it any wonder that Sony is losing money hands over fists?

I didn’t even know that Chrysler had reassembled the Dodge Dart.  I owned one once – back in the 70’s. 

I intended to check in on Pan Am but the show was gone before I ever got around to it.  That happens to me a lot.  Is it on Netflix or Amazon Prime?   (Neither.  As it turns out the series won’t be released on DVD until the middle of January but you can preorder it.  You can put it in your saved queue on Netflix but that doesn’t mean anything as it’s never a guarantee they’ll stock it.  Especially these days.)

As for the Nokia Lumina, I upgraded my phone this year.  I went with the Galaxy SIII, the larger screen winning me over because when you get to be my age, the eyesight is the first thing to go.   I previously had the Apple 3GS and was conflicted about it.  I hate Apple, and I hate Apple fanboys even more.  And the Google maps app. on the Galaxy works great and the GPS locator has saved me a couple of times already.

Maybe I can come up with some kind of a list of my own over the next week or so.  We’ll see.

They’ll Be Back: Cast signs on the dotted line. How I Met Your Mother Goes for Season Nine

If it weren’t for Netflix, I never would have watched a single episode of How I Met Your Mother.  But since Netflix gives you the opportunity to watch past seasons in their entirety, I decided to give it a try and was hooked instantly.  In no time my girlfriend and I had gone through six entire seasons, and then caught up with Season Seven by purchasing it on Amazon Digital.  Since then, Season Seven has been added to Netflix.  We’ve been watching Season Eight episodes as they air. 

But I’m not sure how I feel about a ninth season.  How long can you drag this out?  If we meet the mother of Ted’s children at the end of this season, it could possibly open a whole new ball of wax for the final season.  If we don’t, then it could end up an exercise in tedium.  However, I am anxiously waiting to find out what disaster takes place at Barney’s and Robin’s wedding.  If you’ve never watched the show, and unless you catch it on Netflix, you won’t care either way.

From Hollywood Reporter:

How I Met Your Mother, currently in its eighth season on CBS, is nearing a deal for a ninth and most likely final run to air during the 2013-14 season. News of a pickup was announced with a Saturday tweet from the series' production account, but The Hollywood Reporter has since learned that the green light most likely won't come until after the Christmas holiday weekend. Representatives from the network and 20th Century Fox Television declined to comment.

This comes after months of co-creators and co-showrunners Craig Thomas and Carter Bays saying that they were approaching the series' natural end.

Meme of the Day from Reddit

This blog has 12,976,432 views. Actually, no it doesn’t but then a lot of those Youtube numbers are as phony as hell. But nobody’s going to take down my phony number until they pry it from my cold dead hand.

The Daily Dot has the story:

Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site.

Universal's channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company's YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday.

Inflating view numbers or ratings is nothing new.  I actually did find a way to hack a site’s rating system once.  It was a matter of survival.  Something I was writing was getting a lot of attention and very favorable ratings.  I actually found some of my stories at the top of the heap a few times, something not easily achieved when there were about  300,000 other stories being told. 

Then for no reason the ratings on those stories began dropping like turkeys being thrown out of a helicopter in a Thanksgiving Day Promotion.  Mathematically, there was no way that the ratings could drop as fast as they were which was literally in a matter of minutes. 

It always troubled me that the same authors on this particular site were always very highly rated although much of their stuff was pure crapola.  So I worked on figuring out how it was being done. 

I actually watched the ratings of some of my output drop several points in just seconds of real time.  After having discovered the secret forumla, I  would raise the ratings right back up.  Not just of my stuff either.  I did it for other writers I knew were being given the shaft as well.

I knew who was doing it.  I even wrote some mods of the site to let them know it was being done and how it was being done especially since many users had long suspected something was dead fish rotten.  This particular company had always denied  that ratings manipulation was taking place.  Did they fix the problem?  Not really, so I left and took my wares elsewhere.  But not until after I raised the rating of one of my stories to over six points.  That got some attention.  Why?  Because the highest possible rating was only supposed to be 5 points and if everything were on the up and up, that could not have happened.  After that, they finally changed the system, but I didn’t hang around.  Nor was I ever acknowledged for spilling the beans.  Not so much as even a kiss my ass from them, or a kiss your ass, or kiss anybody’s ass..  

Want to know the complete story and what company it was?  It’s really quite a bit more involved and only worthwhile to tell if enough people ask.  So maybe someday.