I got up early this morning, which was a major deal because I was kept up last night by a loud party down the street. When we’re in Santa Barbara we live about 0.4 miles from Oprah on the same street she lives on. You probably read about her big fund raiser last night for Barack Obama. Well, it was loud (especially Stevie Wonder) and mildly annoying. Anyway, I got up early and dealt with ALL the comments that have been stacking up. So, if you’ve had a comment languishing in comment Purgatory, it’s now up. Sorry for the delay, but I’ve been covered up with other projects. I’ll try to do better.

Here is a an article in the LA Times by Matt Welch, one of the bloggers I read daily. Matt writes for the Times, but he also has a quirky blog on the stuff that interests him along with insider Los Angeles info and a lot of funky music videos that I really enjoy. The times article deals with the law of unintended consequences (one of the most powerful laws in the universe that few people ever think about) as related to passports and fathers who run out on their child support.

A great YouTube video of Luciano Pavarotti singing a duet with Bryan Adams. Shows just how weak the voices of the mega rock stars are when compared to someone who really has a voice.

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I’ve posted a great YouTube video below that shows in excruciating detail how to deal with a hostile interrogator in the media. The only thing is that this interrogator wasn’t hostile; she was very nice, just not very smart.

I was once told by Reid Buckley (William F. Buckley, Jr’s younger brother and a famous debater in his own right) that the most potent force one has in dealing with a hostile interrogator on TV or radio is silence. Silence is death to them. Silence makes them keep on jibbering and end up looking the fool. But most people fall into the trap of the much more experienced talking heads and end up looking the fools themselves. In the clip below, you can see what I mean about the silence and one word answers. Watch the poor woman conducting the interview struggle.

MD and I have been on many, many TV and radio shows, and what we’ve learned from it all (plus from talking to a lot of people in the biz) is that it’s all entertainment, pure and simple. Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, all of them, are entertainers. If their shows aren’t entertaining, they lose ratings, and they ultimately go off the air. Many people think of these folks as hard news people, but they’re not, they’re entertainers. So they’ve got to be entertaining. And the way most of them are entertaining – especially the Sean Hannity types – is by attacking their guests.

Most guests who go on these shows are experts of some kind and they know their stuff, so they figure they can hold their own with O’Reilly, Hannity or any of the rest because the expert knows that he/she knows way more than the interviewer about the subject in which the experts are expert. What the experts don’t count on, though, when they walk into the lairs of O’Reilly, Hannity, Matthews et al are that they are experts in doing live TV and in savaging guests whose opinions they don’t like. And the guests pay the price for their hubris.

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I love the light comic operas of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan: the melodies are infectious and the librettos are hilarious, especially if you lived in fin de siecle London. Many of the characters are spoofs of people (usually politicians) who were in power at the time. My favorite is H.M.S. Pinafore, which contains my favorite number Now Give Three Cheers. This song I have sung countless times in the shower performing not just the captain’s part but all the rest as well.

A close second to the H.M.S. Pinafore is The Pirates of Penzance and during one of those bizarre wilfings I often do late at night and unsupervised (I was searching for Linda Rondstadt; don’t ask why) I came upon a segment of this opera, which led me to the bizarre selection that follows.

Take a look at this rap video. Watch it all the way through and note the language, not necessarily the vulgar language (which seems to b e common to most rap songs), but the construction of the song, the libretto, if you will. Then imagine that William Gilbert, the librettist for the Gilbert and Sullivan operas had presented this libretto to Sullivan to set to music. This has been done by someone who is extremely creative and has a ton (no, two tons) of time on his hands.

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I’ve been traveling today (left on the 6:05 AM flight to Dallas) and haven’t had a chance to really get to posting.  I’ve got about a zillion comments that have stacked up.  While I deal with them, you can watch the hilarious YouTube below of a PETA-phile getting the pants frightened off him.  He was set up by a friend for the TV show Scare Tactics, the theme of which will be apparent as you watch the film.

Enjoy while I turn to all the comments.