Lady and the Tramp

NewMexiKen has been watching Lady and the Tramp — and watching it and watching it and watching it. I’m certain we’ve seen the scene with the Siamese cats (Si and Am) at least a dozen times.

And, you know what? After 50+ years, it’s pretty darn good. It has some typical Disney pathos and a touch of anxiety for the little ones a few times (when mean dogs enter the picture), but considerably less than in the Disney animations of Grimm fairy tales. And much less of the singing and nonsense that I didn’t like in Disney films when I was five-years-old — and still don’t.

If you’ve got young ‘uns to entertain (under 5 especially), I recommend Lady and the Tramp. It’s good.

And a word about Verna Felton, the character actress who was a voice in many Disney animations — a matriarchical elephant in Dumbo, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp. I recognized her voice and did a little research. As I remembered, Ms. Felton played with Harry Morgan in an early fifties show, December Bride — and its 1960 spinoff Pete and Gladys. She died in 1966, but Morgan kept Felton’s photo on Sherman Potter’s desk on the M*A*S*H set to portray Mrs. Potter. Nice.

American Idol

Dan Neil has 800 Words on American Idol. Go read them all, but here’s some of them:

In this newspaper’s op-ed section, author Thomas de Zengotita theorized that the popularity of “Idol” reflected the onset of the “virtual revolution,” a pervasive self-publicizing impulse (blogs, chat rooms, MySpace.com) that has ordinary people “demanding a share of the last scarce resource in the overdeveloped world—attention.”

This is a grand bit of pop culture hermeneutics, and it’s just bull. “Idol” is a talent show, an amateur singing contest, no better and no worse—and no more driven by digital culture—than the “Original Amateur Hour,” which ran on radio and then on television almost uninterrupted from 1934 until 1970. Were “The Gong Show” and “Star Search” also manifestations of the virtual revolution?

In fact, it’s the celebration of amateurism that makes “Idol” so compelling; conversely, it was the Olympics’ semi-pro vibe that made the Winter Games so farcical and forgettable.
…

Far from polishing the almighty pedestal of celebrity, “Idol” takes a wrecking ball to it. Here is proof that pop stars are not so unapproachably special and rare that they deserve to be worshipped. People just as talented and just as worthy may be shelving your library books or cold-calling you for newspaper subscriptions or cleaning your pool. It turns out we’re a pretty gifted species, Homo sapiens cinderellus.

Oh, that Caesar

Woman: So what book does she want?

Chick: She says Julius Caesar.

Woman: What’s that?

Chick: Is that the title or the name of the author? Call her and ask her. I can’t find it.

–Target, 225th Street

Overheard in New York

Greatest moment in basketball commentary history

Billy Packer, NewMexiKen’s least favorite sports commentator, devotes his whole life to the game, gets to the big CBS selection show Sunday evening and, true to form, blows it. Commenting on the Washington bracket, Packer says he likes the 8-9 game between Arizona and Wisconsin.

Only problem, the Arizona-Wisconsin game is in the Minneapolis bracket, which CBS hasn’t gotten to yet.

Other NewMexiKen takes on Packer are here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

(All of them at one click.)