It Ain't Me, Babe (?)

From Examiner.com:

About four weeks before The Last Waltz, The Band appeared on the second season of NBC's Saturday Night Live program. Buck Henry was the host.
According to the...clip (available below) found by Bob Dylan's friend Larry "Ratso" Sloman, there is a close-up of someone in the audience, identified as as "Electoral College Dropout." It's my understanding that if there is a closeup of an audience member, special permission must be obtained. This would explain why these "close-ups" usually featured the same staff members over and over again. Has this been kept a secret for over three decades?
Here's the blurb:
On October 30, 1976, The Band appeared as the musical guest on a weekly late night sketch-based comedy show. About 14 minutes into the episode, a man who looked a lot like Bob Dylan wearing a costume (and possibly prosthetics) was briefly featured in the audience. Could this have actually been Bob Dylan wearing a fake nose, hippie wig, and weird clothing?
What do you think? Is it Dylan? Is it Sloman?

Click here to see the clip; I tried to embed it but couldn't size it correctly. (Sorry 'bout that...)

Yabba Dabba DOO!

Happy 50th....

More here.

Larry Ling Is Going Part-Time.

I first heard Larry King when I worked the graveyard shift during late '70s summers on Lake Champlain. King was on the now-defunct Mutual Broadcasting Network in those days and was entertaining company. Then from the early-80's until 1987, I routinely recorded King's syndicated radio bits to replay on the radio stations I worked at during that time. He's always thrown softballs, but he's also always called himself an interviewer, not a journalist, and he's never attempted to confuse the two. I like the old guy--bizarre moments notwithstanding--and I know he's had a rough go of it, ratings-wise, over the last year on CNN. Maybe it really is time for Larry King to hang up his suspenders, but he's left his mark without screaming at guests with manufactured malice and I hope his farewell will be on his own terms.

MediaBistro.com, HELLO:

CNN's 9 p.m. host Larry Kinghas announced that he will be leaving his nightly talk show this Fall. King, who has been a staple on CNN for 25 years, will transition to a part-time role at the network, hosting occasional specials tied to breaking news and events.

King will dicuss his decision during tonight's edition of "Larry King Live."

Before I start the show tonight, I want to share some personal news with you. 25 years ago, I sat across this table from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast of Larry King Live.

Now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN and I told them I would like to end Larry King Live, the nightly show, this fall and CNN has graciously accepted, giving me more time for my wife and I to get to the kids' little league games.

I'll still be a part of the CNN family, hosting several Larry King specials on major national and international subjects.

I'm incredibly proud that we recently made the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest running show with the same host in the same time slot. With this chapter closing I'm looking forward to the future and what my next chapter will bring, but for now it's time to hang up my nightly suspenders.

TLC Or A Test Pattern, TLC Or A Test Pattern, TLC Or A Test Pattern...

You'll learn more here:

The Decline & Fall Of Western Civilization Will Be Televised.

The Grammys telecast was a Top 40 Caligula according to members of the uptight Moral Patrol who complained to the FCC about Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Pink and, um, feminine hygiene products (?)
Please, TV Machine; pop stars and tampons are rotting our childrens' minds and we can't figure out how to turn it all off!

Ah, puritanism! (H/T: Jezebel.com and The Smoking Gun.)

Idiot Box.

I Laugh & And I Laugh & And I Laugh (Until I See Either Of These Guys.)

The least-funny person on the TV machine:

Some other guy:

"Nowhere Am I So Desperately Needed As Among A Shipload Of Illogical Humans."

This post's title comes from Mr. Spock.

From Salon.com:

     Spock has been on many minds lately, and not entirely because of the new film. Big thinkers in both print media and the blogosphere -- from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd  to MIT media moguls -- have referenced the Enterprise's science officer in recent months, drawing parallels between the dependably logical half-Vulcan and another mixed-race icon: Barack Obama.

     They're not just talking about the ears. For those of us who watched the show in the 1960s (or during the countless reruns since), (Leonard) Nimoy's alter ego was the harbinger of a future in which logic would reign over emotion, and rational thought triumph over blind faith. He was a digital being in an analog world; the Pied Piper who led our generation into the Silicon Age.

     Anyone who followed the early "Star Trek" with regularity knows how charismatic Spock was. If there were two characters I wanted to be as a young man, they were Spock -- and James Bond. Both displayed total self-confidence, and amazing problem-solving skills. Both traveled to exotic destinations, and were irresistible to women. And both shared a quality that my generation lacked completely: composure.

     "I am a first-generation 'Star Trek' fan, and I've long argued that many of my deepest political convictions emerged from my experience of watching the program as a young man growing up in Atlanta during the civil rights era," declares Henry Jenkins, co-director of the MIT comparative media studies program and author of "Convergence Culture." "In many ways, my commitment to social justice was shaped in reality by Martin Luther King and in fantasy by 'Star Trek.'”

     Obama, Jenkins points out, positioned himself in the primaries as a man "at home with both blacks and whites, someone whose mixed racial background has forced him to become a cultural translator." In this sense Obama even surpasses Spock, whose struggle to reconcile his half-human, half-Vulcan genes is a continual source of inner conflict. In one episode, the entire Enterprise crew (except for Kirk) is infected by alien spores that turn them into doe-eyed flower children. The "cure" is anger -- thus Kirk is forced to provoke his first officer to rage. He succeeds, spectacularly, by insulting Spock’s racial pedigree: "All right, you mutinous half-breed! You’re an overgrown jackrabbit! An elf, with a hyperactive thyroid! A simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia!"

     Confronted with a similar insult, Barack Obama would probably just laugh. "The Vulcan side of Obama, the core of his character, and his character, hasn't changed [since the election]," Jenkins believes. "He's tough, he’s cool and he’s rational." His appeal stems from the self-aware integration of all aspects of his personality: black and white, wonk and poet, athlete and aesthete.