Year: 2007

Colbert On Demand

I’ve made mention that the one weak spot in Verizon’s otherwise fabulous FiOS TV service is the free video-on-demand selection. But heck, they’re new and have only 500,000 customers so far. Some bright spots in the free line-up are clips from Comedy Central.

The first few moments of the video has the intro. The reference Colbert makes to a previous appearance by his guest goes back to last October, during my first attempts at embedding video.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/ColbertFonda.flv 400 300]

Old Yorker, J. B. Handelsman

New Yorker cartoonist J.B. Handelsman has died at 85. Like a lot of artists and cartoonists whose eyesight holds up, he worked pretty much up to the end. He wasn’t a favorite of mine, but anybody with staying power at The New Yorker must be respected.

Here’s a mini-gallery of Handelsman cartoons from 1965-1970. Click to enlarge. I picked those years because Handelsman seemed conservative, and that was a time of great upheaval. I consider these to be the best of the bunch, and I’ll be honest and say that compared to other New Yorker cartoons, I don’t think they hold up very well. Handelsman’s humor could be dry to the point of being banal, even when insightful.

J.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New Yorker

J.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New Yorker

J.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New YorkerJ.B. Handelsman in The New Yorker
© The New Yorker

A Generation Fades Away

This is e-mail I received from Mr. D. F. Rogers. It is posted here by permission.

First Iwo Jima Flag Raising

The last of the Iwo Jima flag raisers has died. He was in the 1st group, of course, not the 2nd more famous group. He lived long enough to have his story told and to receive some credit for his participation. But that’s it, every day another wave washes away another group of WW II vets. [Link]

Charles W. Lindbergh (no relation to the Nazi sympathizer) is the guy standing behind the Marine in the foreground with the carbine. The guy in the cap, holding up the flag, is Hank Hansen, from Massachusetts. He was originally thought to have been in the famous Rosenthal pic and his mother was included in the activities back home during the bond tours, as shown in Flags Of Our Fathers. [Link]

They are also looking for the remains of the Marine who filmed the famous flag raising, standing right next to Joe Rosenthal. He was killed several days later and his remains were left in a cave that was sealed up by explosives. [Link]

There’s a signed lithograph available. [Link] The most poignant thing about this page is the photo of the men at the new WW II monument in Washington DC.

Vets at WWII Memorial

Over 60 years later, and the long shadows of WW II still remain, even as the people who lived and fought in that era fade away.

Romney P.S.

Speaking of Mitt Romney, I just heard that his former hang-out, Bain Capital in Boston, is buying the Guitar Center chain of music gear stores for almost $2 billion. About 20 years ago I had a job opportunity at Bain, doing computer work, when Romney was the top man there.

I was called out of the blue with a big sales pitch and an offer that was pretty much a “name your price” deal. This was during the days of the so-called Massachusetts Miracle, and the $$$ amount that was quoted as being “no problem” was twice my base pay at the time. The guy who called from Bain identified himself, gave me his title and phone number, etc., but he wouldn’t tell me how he’d heard about me until I was on board. I don’t like playing games, not when it comes to a job, so I declined.

Just days before that call, I’d fixed a networking problem that had stumped everybody else at a Boston hospital. My guess is that word got around. But I stayed put working where I was, which is where I still am, and it was the right decision.