Author: DOuG pRATt

The Truth Behind Truthiness

The music that played under the end credits to the finale of “The Colbert Report” was “Holland, 1945”, a 1998 song by Neutral Milk Hotel.

Why did Stephen Colbert pick that particular song? It’s explained at this link to a Maureen Dowd column.

[Colbert] had 10 older siblings. But after his father and the two brothers closest to him in age died in a plane crash when he was 10 and the older kids went off to college, he said, he was “pretty much left to himself, with a lot of books.”

He said he loved the “strange, sad poetry” of a song called “Holland 1945” by an indie band from Athens, Ga., called Neutral Milk Hotel and sent me the lyrics, which included this heartbreaking bit:

“But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on. . . .

And here is the room where your brothers were born

Indentions in the sheets

Where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore.”

Comedy Central Casting

I don’t have to post all of the screen grabs I made with great effort from Colbert’s finale, because Josh Marshall’s site Talking Points Memo has their own, and they identify everybody. TPM also embeds the video, and I will too.

I knew Emily Bazelon would make an appearance. Colbert often had her on the show as a “guest at the desk.” Besides being an excellent reference source, it was obvious Stephen was smitten with Emily, but his wife Evelyn is also on stage, so no worries.

The Cold Beer Rapport

Colbert23

“All of life’s important answers, must be in the form of a question.” So says Alex Trebek, and so ends “The Colbert Report”. It’s been a wacky, brilliant, and inspiring 9-year ride with Stephen Colbert, who has caught up to the age I was when his show began. Later I’ll be posting pictures of everybody, or almost everybody, who joins Stephen to sing “We’ll Meet Again”, the same song that ends “Dr. Strangelove”, which adds an ironic twist to Henry Kissinger’s presence.

Rudolph the catalog reindeer

Who remembers that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by Montgomery Ward, the now-defunct retailer/catalog competitor of the almost defunct Sears? Here is the first animated appearance of Rudolph, directed by Max Fleischer and beautifully restored, with its original music, and presented by the Library of Congress. Santa has the barrel-chested build of Popeye’s nemesis Bluto!

P.S. The LoC took the video down a day after posting it and I don’t know why. There is no possibility of a copyright issue, so I will assume the problem is technical.

P.P.S. I asked why the video was down, and as I had assumed…

Server problems! It’s back up now.

Mike Mashon
—
Head, Moving Image Section
Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation

P.P.P.S. A notorious, nit-picking Internet troll going by the handle “Denro,” but who is, in fact, Dennis F. Rogers of Massachusetts, has requested — nay, demanded — that the first sentence of this post be changed as follows.

“Who remembers that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward, the now-defunct retailer/catalog competitor of the almost defunct Sears?”

American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered

Starting this coming Tuesday, the PBS series American Masters is presenting “Bing Crosby Rediscovered.” Don’t miss it!

I was 22 when Crosby suddenly collapsed after playing golf in Spain on October 14, 1977. Bing sure seemed old to me at the time, but he was only 74. To put that into perspective, Ringo Starr is 74.

The day after Bing died, Denro and I were at the Boston Newcon comic book convention, interviewing the one and only Joe Sinnott, who was, at the time, starting work on inking the Silver Surfer graphic novel by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, released in 1978. Dennis asked Joe, addressing him as Mr. Sinnott, “What do you for enjoyment? To get away from comics?” Here is what Joe said, as recorded by me on October 15, 1977.

We knew that Bing had died, so I wasn’t completely clueless and, yet, being the callow youth that I was, stupidly I asked, “So how do you feel about it?” Duh! The next day, October 16, would be Joe’s 51st birthday and, my goodness, how young he sounds in that recording.

I don’t know yet how much the American Masters documentary will ac-cen-tu-ate the positive. Gary Crosby’s memoir damaged Bing’s reputation as a father, but the multi-talented, multi-media Crosby remains an undeniably significant and pioneering figure in entertainment history. As I have pointed out in the past, Crosby was the first to see and exploit the potential of magnetic tape recording. A few months ago, someone working on the American Masters documentary spotted my posts and requested a photo for “Bing Crosby Rediscovered,” which I gladly provided. I can’t say for certain if the picture is in the final edit, but if you see it you’ll know where it came from.

Jack Mullin, Frank Healey, Wayne Johnson, Bing Crosby