From The New York Times: From TV Role in ‘Dobie Gillis’ to Rights Fight in Legislature

Sheila Kuehl, who played the tenacious busybody Zelda on the classic sitcom “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” is in the news because of her activities in the California Legislature.

From USA Today: ‘West Wing’: A great show limps away

This article says everything I’ve been saying about the show, only more elequently.

Received this sad news a few minutes ago from our friend Barbara Watkins:

We just heard this morning from Jan Merlin that Frankie Thomas, Jr., died
last evening at the Sherman Oaks Hospital of respiratory failure while recovering from a stroke.

Frankie Thomas was, of course, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. More to follow, including some personal photographs.

Update 8:59 pm: Barbara sends more information regarding the arrangements; Frank requested that he be buried in his Space Cadet uniform, and will be placed in a plot next to his father and mother, Frank Thomas and Mona Bruns, at Forest Lawn. There will be a short service at the burial at Forest Lawn on Tuesday at 3:00 pm, and any inquiries about flowers or donations should be directed to Frankie’s stepdaughter, Julie Alexander. (Write me via the “Contact the Webmaster” button on the left for contact information.)

From Ars Technica: TIA (aka Topsail) unveiled: the real scope of the NSA’s domestic spying program

Also check out USA Today’s original reports on the NSA acquisition of every telephone number called by innocent American citizens, the CNN story on the President’s response, and if you have a subscription (or use transparent proxies and BugMeNot), the more in-depth New York Times article.

For those of us with a strong desire for personal privacy, this is a whole lot worse than the store “loyalty cards” we usually whine about…

As it does every once in a while, the subject of, “How do you visualize OTR” has come up again on the Internet OTR Digest. The question always seems to come up in terms of, “do you see color or black-and-white?” No one else, apparently, experiences OTR the way I do, or there’d be a third choice - none-of-the-above.

See, I don’t visualize OTR…never have. I don’t see the room, or the walls, or the gun, or the moll (sorry, thinking about Phil Marlowe). I don’t “see” much of anything, although I might occasionally get a glimpse of something, the same way you might remember seeing a friend at FOTR when describing it. But I don’t have moving pictures running in my head when I listen to Old-Time Radio. I experience it aurally.

About the closest I can come to describing something so terribly subjective and, frankly, non-intuitive, is…well, think of yourself listening to your family at dinnertime while sitting in the closet. I know, it’s an odd concept, but while you’re “eavesdropping” on a conversation, you don’t “visualize” the dining room, the curtains, and such, you instead concentrate on the discussion while seeing nothing more than the darkness of the closet. This doesn’t take anything away from the experience…indeed, it has a tendency of placing me “within” the action, as I’m right around the corner listening to the action as it takes place…a gunshot in the darkness is much more terrifying than one you see.

This might explain why I am so easily able to enjoy television and films; unlike some extremists, I enjoy television as a separate yet equal medium from OTR, not comparing the two and finding one or the other lacking because of some romantic connection to a favorite artform. (Although I’d love to have the disposable income to produce an audio drama version of 24, but that’s a pipe dream for another post.)

When people talk to me about how characters like Philip Marlowe or Luigi “look,” I admit I get a little confused, since I have no “mental image” of any of the characters I hear…they are disembodied voices that waft in over the transom of my consciousness, as near to me as voices outside in the hall, sometimes plotting a murder, other times opening a closet door…

From CNN: The worst president ever

No, no, we’re talking about 24’s Charles Logan…

In this missive: “Truthiness Revisited,” “Mice…In The Air,” and “Christmas on the Moon”

Truthiness Revisited: Since the entire blogosphere (yuck) is commenting on the White House Correspondents’ dinner where Stephen Colbert appeared, let me throw in my two cents. I was unimpressed. Not that Colbert and his alter ego isn’t usually humorous; I enjoy anything that barbs anyone in power, be it conservative or liberal. I thought this particular performance, however, was underwhelming. The routine probably looked pretty good to him on paper, but he had a seriously off night, and couldn’t maintain his character. That he was clearly nervous, tripping over lines, literally forgetting his routine at one point, was painfully apparent. Suggesting the members of the press there were too “conservative” to laugh is plain silly; Colbert was nowhere near at the top of his game, and even threw away the best line of the bit. I didn’t laugh out loud once, although I did chuckle a time or two, and felt sorry for him more times than that as he stumbled through his performance.

I also thought the President/President bit, with the “ruggedly handsome” Steve Bishop, could have used some rewriting. Bishop’s over-the-top caricature of the President is a hit on The Tonight Show (this should be differentiated from his appearances in prime-time dramas where he successfully performs a subdued imitation), but in the middle I was wishing some of Leno’s writers would have been called in to polish…the ego/id routine kept switching…I understand the President wanted some of the laugh lines, but they should have maintained the “characters” of the two nevertheless, and unfortunately they didn’t.
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Ok, normally I don’t post about things like this, but it’s so truly bizarre I have no choice. See, Dutchman Jeroen Offerman memorized the Led Zeppelin song, Stairway to Heaven backwards, and sings it in this video. He says, “I went up to the steps outside Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London and performed it for an audience of confused passers-by, pigeons, and a video camera. Back home I reversed the tape and put a karaoke track underneath.”

Edit: Seems the guy who posted the flash file was told to take it down. That’ll teach me not to always download interesting content with the VideoDownloader plugin for FireFox… –cfs3

From Wired: The RFID Hacking Underground

So you think RFID is safe and will protect you? Read this article, and discover how simple it is for RFID to be used against you. And then be afraid…be very afraid…

From The Register: ‘Spamford’ Wallace fined $4m over spyware biz

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving slimeball. When he had his amazing “reformation,” I told everyone I knew not to believe it - this was a criminal who would never reform. Seems time has proven me correct.

Al posted to the OTR Digest:

I’ve been given access to a collection of ETs that appear to number about 400 disks. I’ve begun photographing the labels so that I can catalog the collection with the initial goal of locating anything that is not now in circulation. The collection is in the library of CKUA. I’ve also located another collection locally that has, I’ve been told, at least 200 disks, and I’ve been in contact with the owner.

He was kind enough to supply some photos; on the left, only a few of the many transcrtiption discs in the discovery. In the table below, a selection of the disc lables - check out the “Hear it Now” and “Fibber McGee and Molly” shows among the hundreds of discs.

Who knows what long-lost delights are sitting in those boxes? Kudos, Al!

I had an experience at my local Credit Union that got me thinking…hard.

I took our federal income tax refund check into the Credit Union (White Rose Credit Union) to deposit into our non-interest-bearing share drafts account…I thought it was a simple-enough thing, but there was a sudden panic - the teller needed to consult with someone else (supervisor, perhaps?) to find out how to make the deposit. I admit I was curious, but I’ve learned I find out a whole lot more if I shut up and listen, so I did…and I did. There was to be a three-day hold on the amount deposited.

Now understand, I don’t need that money today, or tomorrow, or even the next day. But when I heard that, I demanded to know why a check clearly made out to my wife and me, clearly signed by my wife and me, and clearly from the Feds, would be held for three days. And the answer absolutely astounded me; the supervisor (?) explained that because the federal government had seven years to reclaim a fraudulently-endorsed amount, their policy was to place a three-day hold on the check to be certain it cleared. When I asked what they did to protect themselves for the other six years, three-hundred-and-sixty-three days, I was greeted with a blank stare, and the suggestion I, “talk to Brad” (Brad R.Warner, CEO and President).

Now I’d expect such supreme bureaucratic stupidity from a large corporation, but the idea that a three-day hold will protect them for seven years is ludicrous enough I wouldn’t expect it from a “People Helping People” credit union. This started me thinking about credit unions in general, and I admit I don’t like where my thoughts are leading.
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Alex Curtis’s blog discusses the new Senate Draft Telecom Bill which includes, yes yet again, a “broadcast flag” to prevent you from being able to time-shift or otherwise commit any fair-use on future television. There’s also a PDF of the draft on the blog.

Read it…and be very afraid.

From CNN: Dude ranch reopens as nude ranch

From the article: “‘It’s hard to go back to wearing a bathing suit once you’ve tried it nude,’ said Dave Landman, one of six new owners.” Al…righty then.

From USA Today: 10 questions as ‘24′ winds down

We joke that the difference between being a FOJ (Friend of Jack) and an EOJ (Enemy of Jack) is not whether or not you’ll survive, it’s the pain level when you die. FOJs tend to really, really suffer…