A Couple of Notes

More "Odd Couple" blogging: Digging further into the Season 2 DVD, I found that the series reached its formidable plateau in episode six, "Murray the Fink." That's the one where Felix and Oscar end up in night court, and Felix puts Oscar on the stand and offers a ringing condemnation of Oscar's character, culminating in "J'accuse! Madison!"

What elevates that scene from exemplary situation comedy to a kind of genius is that Tony Randall pronounces the "Madison" in the same French accent as the "J'accuse." I wonder if that was Randall's idea; I like to think it was.

In a subsequent episode, Felix and Oscar both appear on a talk show hosted by David Steinberg, who apparently had the free rein to ask non-celebrities to appear with him. Steinberg's hair deserves a post of its own: it covers one ear but not the other, and his monobrow goes unplucked.

When I was in college I knew a couple of guys who did impressions of David Steinberg. The archetypal phrase to use to imitate to adenoidal Torontonian, as "Judy, Judy, Judy" is used for Cary Grant, is thus: "This is what I would do. I would boot." Just say those simple sentences, and you'll have the best David Steinberg imitation in town.

The Secretariat of Football Teams

We here at OPC were happy to see the New England Patriots complete their perfect regular season on Saturday night. We consider it a privilege to partake in history-making sports greatness as long as it does not include any team from the Bronx.

Among their other achievements, the Patriots won their division by a rollicking nine games, which is no mean feat over a sixteen-game season. Near as I can tell, this is an NFL record. Even the great 1985 Bears won their division by only seven games.

By comparison, the Patriots' hometown counterparts the Boston Red Sox haven't won their league or division by as many as nine games since 1946.

Headlines on "Slate" That Didn't Come Close to Getting Us to Read the Article

"Finally, a Movie That Gets Gardening Right."

OPC's Best Movies of 2007

One of the themes of "One Poor Correspondent" has been the way in which contemporary culture has been unshackled from its temporal limits and is now available to us regardless of when the work itself was produced. Pretty much every major movie ever made is now available to you whenever you want to see it. And this doesn't just extend into the past but into the future as well. I would like to see 2007's I'm Not There, but there is no need for me to see it in 2007; I can just wait five months and rent the DVD.

It's similar with music. It used to be that you'd have to go select whatever record you wanted to listen to, which was often something new, and older records often got pushed to the back of your collection. Now, with most of them set on shuffle, your iPod is as likely to cough up Len Barry's "1-2-3," from 1965, as it is Feist's "1 2 3 4," from this year. Or mine is, anyway.

So the best movie of 2007 is probably Notorious or McCabe & Mrs. Miller or something like that. They are certainly as much a part of my 2007 reality as any movies made and released this year.

The bottom line is, I didn't see enough movies that came out this year to produce a Top Ten of New 2007 Films. Let's see, there was:

Ocean's 13
The Darjeeling Limited (plus The Hotel Chevalier)
The Lives of Others
Once (and I can't wait for the sequel, just to see what it will be called: Once Again? Once More With Feeling? Twice?)
La Vie en Rose
Alvin and the Chipmunks
National Treasure: Book of Secrets


That's about seven and a half, and the last one wasn't good enough to be on a Top Ten list anyway. So I'll be able to come out with my Top Ten New Movies of 2007 probably in about 18 months or so.

A World Without Pity

In his song "Human Touch," Bruce Springsteen sings, "Do you think what I'm askin''s too much?" You know, if you write a sentence with a double apostrophe, that's a pretty good clue that it's too awkward for its own good. Why not just make it "Do you think that I'm askin' too much?"?

No wonder that album stiffed.

OPC Presents: Where Are They Now

Eddie Edwards was the best ski jumper in England in the mid-1980s, although that's not much of a claim since England doesn't really have any mountains; he was the 55th-ranked ski jumper in the world.

Still, that was enough to get him into the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary. He finished last in both the 70 meter and 90 meter jumps, but became a folk hero just for his efforts, and earned the nickname "Eddie the Eagle." At the closing ceremonies, the IOC president said "At this Games some competitors have won gold, some have broken records and one has even flown like an eagle." According to Wikipedia, that was the first time an individual competitor had ever been referenced at the closing ceremonies.

After the Calgary games, the IOC passed a rule tightening the requirements for people to enter events. It would no longer do to simply be the best in your country at an event. There would be no more Eddie the Eagles.

* * * *

I have been skiing the past few days in Winter Park, Colorado, and when I dropped my son off at snowboarding lessons this morning I noticed an instructor whose name tag read "Eddy Edwards, London, England." I said to him, "Are you the same person as the ski jumper Eddy Edwards?"

"I sure am," he said.

So there you have it. Where is Eddy Edwards now? He's a ski instructor in Winter Park, Colorado.

You're Gettin' Even While I'm Gettin' Odd

I got the second season of "The Odd Couple" on DVD for Christmas this year, and it's been really terrific to watch. As I mentioned earlier, this was when they switched it over from filming it to videotaping it in front of a live audience, and no series has ever been as energized by that decision as this one. In his book Tony and Me, Jack Klugman talks about how, as theater veterans, he and Randall thought they'd both perform better in front of an audience, and he was certainly right.

The first episode of the season -- "Natural Childbirth," a story about Oscar's niece-by-marriage coming to New York to deliver a baby -- still feels tentative, but in the second show, "Felix's Wife's Boyfriend," Tony Randall finds that sweet spot between heartfelt character work and broad, crowd-pleasing farce, and the series has finally found its footing. Even when the writing is less than outstanding, Randall and Klugman, from that moment on, are just ridiculously good.

Plus, I've been watching the DVD on this very computer I use to post to OPC, and I have been astounded by the resolution. I have never before seen so clearly Jack Klugman's toupee.

And the Christmas Spirit Escapes Like a Thief in the Night

Over in Bethlehem, not the one in Pennsylvania but the real Bethlehem, as soon as the Christmas holiday ended, people went back to having badwill toward men. The headline says it all: "Priests Brawl at Bethlehem Birthplace of Jesus." Apparently, Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests differed over how to most appropriately clean the site of Jesus' birth, and those differences didn't find resolution until "bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods."

Maybe while they were swinging those brooms, they got some cleaning done.

Let's Twist Again

Is it just me, or is Dire Straits' "Twisting by the Pool" pretty much the exact same song as Elton John's "Your Sister Can't Twist (but She Can Rock and Roll)"? Right down to the Danny and the Juniors-style vocal chording? Maybe there's some template out there for twisting songs that everyone has to follow.

Burnin' Love

Merry Christmas to all. While you're telling scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago, enjoy this Yule log: