Reader Tips

Reader Tips 29 Comments

American actor Jim Backus, perhaps best known for his portrayal of slightly-addled upper-crust gentleman Thurston Howell III in the 1960’s sitcom Gilligan’s Island, had other famous roles as well. He was the voice of the bumbling, good-natured cartoon character Mr. Magoo, and he co-starred in the iconic Academy Award-winning film Rebel Without A Cause in which he played a cursedly ineffectual father whose bourgeois conformity drove his son, played by James Dean, into paroxysms of incoherent, scenery-chewing rage.
Backus also released two novelty singles, one of which is tonight’s musical selection. The humor in the odd little soundtrack-vignette stems from both its lack of context – all you can glean is that an unnamed man and woman are drinking champagne at a cozy table in a restaurant – and, especially, from the over-the-top giddiness of the euphorically tipsy couple, who give the impression that they’ve gotten away with something spectacular, perhaps a cleverly-engineered tryst.
From 1958, here’s Jim Backus and an unidentified actress performing the cartoonishly carefree Delicious.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

29 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. yeah – that’s one of the iconic scenes of ‘Rebel’ – Thurston wearing an apron. On that one i could see why James Dean chewed the scenery.

  2. There seems to be some doubt about the actress. Can’t imagine why. It’s Phyllis Diller’s voice.

  3. Sarah’s latest Facebook page has to be one of the greatest smackdowns of Oblameya yet.
    She destroys him citing his lack of executive experience in not dealing directly with BP’s CEO.
    She really kicked HIS ass with this sermon from the web.
    “(Remember the Alaska lawmakers, public decision-makers, and business executives who ended up going to jail as a result of the FBI’s investigations of oily corruption.)”
    and
    “Please, sir, for the sake of the Gulf residents, reach out to experts who have experience holding oil companies accountable. I suggested a few weeks ago that you start with Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, led by Commissioner Tom Irwin. Having worked with Tom and his DNR and AGIA team led by Marty Rutherford, I can vouch for their integrity and expertise in dealing with Big Oil and overseeing its developments. We’ve all lived and worked through the Exxon-Valdez spill. They can help you. Give them a call. Or, what the heck, give me a call.
    And, finally, Mr. President, please do not punish the American public with any new energy tax in response to this tragedy. Just because BP and federal regulators screwed up that doesn’t mean the rest of us should get punished with higher taxes at the pump and attached to everything petroleum products touch.”
    Priceless!
    (go ahead Gibbs, CALL HER and try to spin this one! LMAO)
    Picked up via HotAir
    http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin?v=app_2347471856&ref=ts

  4. I’m terribly sorry sir, but would it hurt your community’s feelings terribly if we looked into who killed my wife and my son?
    “Senior civil servants warned ministers that if they ordered a public inquiry into the July 7 suicide bombings it could ‘focus negatively’ on Britain’s Muslim community, it can be revealed.
    “The warning was delivered in a briefing paper to Charles Clarke, the then-home secretary, as he considered whether or not to launch an inquiry into the 2005 bombings, in which 52 innocent people were killed.
    “In the paper, Sir John Gieve, the Home Office permanent secretary, said that upsetting Muslims would be a ‘potential cost’ of ministers agreeing to demands for a full inquiry.”

  6. I’m not sure about that, Mike (10:14). The woman was unidentified on the record and in the press releases. I must admit it doesn’t sound a whole lot like Phyllis Diller, to me.
    This site says “the identity of Jim’s female friend on this recording is unknown; it is not Phyllis Diller.” According to this source, “The identity of the ‘& Friend’ is unknown, although various claims have been made for Phyllis Diller (which it probably isn’t, since the laugh is totally different from Diller’s trademark bray) and Hermione Gingold(!).”
    Don’t know. The original release just says:
    “Jim Backus, the voice of Magoo is aided by a fem friend on this zany novelty.”
    Anyway, here’s a Reader Tip. I find this interesting: Stanford political scientist Neil Malhotra and Columbia University’s Yotam Margalit conducted a study intended in part to “determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis.” They asked respondents “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?” 24.6 percent of non-Jewish Americans “blamed ‘the Jews’ a moderate amount or more, and 38.4 percent attributed at least some level of blame to the group.”
    From the study:
    “Interestingly, Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference). This difference is somewhat surprising given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals…
    (…)
    “Participants in a national survey were randomly assigned to one of three groups. All three groups were prompted with a one-paragraph news report that briefly described the Madoff scandal. The text was the same for all three groups, except for two small differences: the first group was told that Bernard Madoff is an ‘American investor’ who contributed to ‘educational charities,’ the second group was told that Madoff is a ‘Jewish-American investor’ who contributed to ‘educational charities,’ and the third group was told that Madoff is an ‘American investor’ who contributed to ‘Jewish educational charities.’
    “The responses of the members of the three groups are revealing and disturbing: individuals explicitly told that Madoff is a Jewish-American were almost twice as likely to oppose the tax cuts to big business. Opposition to tax cuts for big business jumped from 10 percent among members of group one to over 17 percent among the members of (the group) who were explicitly told about Madoff’s Jewish background.”

  8. “This difference is somewhat surprising given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals…”.
    The only thing liberals are racially tolerant to is POWER and MONEY.And by “presuming a higher degree”,this study gives itself away as the self-serving lieberal poll gone wrong it is.

  11. Police in southern Ontario are reported to be searching for a man who bought what they consider to be a suspiciously large amount of fertilizer — enough, they say, to make a bomb.
    The RCMP have confirmed to CBC News that a man purchased 65 25-kilogram bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on May 26 at a store in Lincoln, Ont., near St. Catharines in the Niagara Region.
    Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/08/fertilizer-alert.html#ixzz0qM8qrkak
    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/08/fertilizer-alert.html

  12. Obama’s Oily Albatross:
    KatrinaBP Gulf Oil.
    “*the Albatross
    About my neck was hung.”
    “Dropping beneath the surface the only thing I see is oil. To the left, right, up and down”.
    …-
    “AP journalist dives into Gulf, can only see oil
    By RICH MATTHEWS (AP) – 1 hour ago
    UNDER THE MURKY DEPTHS OF THE GULF OF MEXICO — Some 40 miles out into the Gulf Of Mexico, I jump off the boat into the thickest patch of red oil I’ve ever seen. I open my eyes and realize my mask is already smeared. I can’t see anything and we’re just five seconds into the dive.
    Dropping beneath the surface the only thing I see is oil. To the left, right, up and down — it sits on top of the water in giant pools, and hangs suspended fifteen feet beneath the surface in softball sized blobs. There is nothing alive under the slick, although I see a dead jellyfish and handful of small bait fish.
    I’m alone because the other divers with me wouldn’t get in the water without Hazmat suits on, and with my mask oiled over and the water already dark, I don’t dive deep.
    It’s quiet, and to be honest scary, extremely low visibility. I spend just 10 minutes swimming around taking pictures, taking video. I want people to see the spill in a new way, a way they haven’t yet.
    I also want to get out of the water. Badly.”
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hroA8GPVMZVXVml4WRJU3bTAV-pwD9G7M96O1
    (*H/T Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

  13. O’s Oily Albatross: O’s Legacy.
    “Where’s the Oil?
    According to new estimates, more than twice as much oil has flowed into the Gulf of Mexico in the last 50 days than was spilled from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.
    But where has all the oil gone?”
    …-
    “Hidden Menace in the Gulf of Mexico
    Oil Spill’s Real Threat Lies Beneath the Surface”
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,699382,00.html

  14. Lotsa BP comment so how about moving away from OIL?
    Tough sell. Lotsa diesel foot draggers to convert. Even at Forbs.
    [ Quote ]
    This burning of fossil fuels to boil water and drive steam turbines for powering electricity plants dates to the 1800s. Combustion engines in “horseless carriages” date from the early 1900s. We have come a long way since then. It’s time to significantly modernize our energy production and take advantage of new technologies.
    The usual argument is that fossil fuels are relatively abundant and cheap, and we need lots of electricity and gasoline. Well, the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones and the fossil fuel age shouldn’t end when we run out of fossil fuels. Rather, it should end because we move on to better, more efficient and less hazardous ways to produce power.
    In the process we can create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and entire new industries.
    [ /Quote ]
    http://tinyurl.com/2ayn9j4
    But diesel footdragger says.. [ Quote ]
    My ‘green’ solution is to use the hot air from windbags like Salzman for wind power and burn the load of crap they shovel as ‘insightful’ commentary to power steam turbines.
    What frightens me the most about…
    [ /Quote ]

  16. So diesel footdragger is frightened?
    How about BP platform Atlantis where there are not one, but 16 drill heads.
    A whistleblower engineer reports that the hundreds of critical welding blueprints = [operating manual] for it were not safety reviewed or approved.
    http://tinyurl.com/2fp7xpu
    Typical BP rush rush for profits policy that killed 5 workers in the 2005 Texas refinery explosion. Biggest industrial negligence penalty paid in US history.

  17. That link to the whistleblower BP Oil story on CBS 60 Minutes seems hard to find now.
    It’s not among the latest videos group.
    Of course BP has pull with CBS. They are a big advertiser.

  19. “The Obama administration qualifies the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as the worst environmental disaster in history. In this they show a short memory and a dim grasp of arithmetic. In World II five million tons of petroleum were cast into the Atlantic (about 32 million barrels of oil) from tanker ships sunk by Nazi submarines, in a period from 1942 to 1945, and with heavy concentration in the fateful year of 1942. Averaged over 1000 days the loss is equivalent to two to five times the oil now spilled into the Gulf of Mexico – every day – for the duration of the war.”

  22. Socialism in Friesland: Mens and Relatie.
    Liberal Ziffy has applied for a Re-Do, sources say.
    …-
    “Jobless women can go to dating agency
    City officials hope to save on benefit payments by funding beauty makeover for unemployed women and finding them husbands”
    “All you need is love, Dutch council tells jobless women
    Unemployed Dutch women are being offered a €1,400 (£1,150) fashion and beauty makeover and free membership of a dating agency to get them off the dole by finding a solvent husband. Single jobseekers will be given a new hairstyle and outfit, and tips from a life coach on how to attract a new partner or a job.
    They will also be given instruction in social and presentation skills and a place on the exclusive matchmaking service Mens & Relatie (People and Relationships), boosted by a professional photograph of their new image. Mens & Relatie claims a 75 per cent success rate in finding long-term partners for its clients.
    The thinking behind the scheme, organised by three councils in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, is that finding love helps to get the unemployed off state benefits by improving confidence, ambition and motivation. Some local politicians, however, have criticised it as unethical and a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7147122.ece

  23. EBD Thanks for the link to Alan’s post.
    After watching D-Day shows this past couple of days it struck me on just how powerful the US and the Allies had become because of the use of fossil fuels.
    The manufacturing capacity alone was massive without nuclear energy or other forms of alternative energy.
    I don’t know how to calculate the actual energy used between 1941 and 45 just for the US alone, never mind Canada and the other Allies. ( has anyone else ever figured it out?)
    My point being if I recall correctly the US had a pop of aprox 135M. The pop today in the US is over 300M. Is our use of fossil fuels less per capita now than during the war?
    ( any links or reference points from anyone would be appreciated. Thanks)

  24. Pls disregard my last post.
    Google is your friend. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff is still the problem.

  25. just saw this on msn and voted. lol
    1. Would you vote for a Liberal-New Democrat coalition party?
    1. Definitely
    22%
    2. Maybe
    18%
    3. Never
    60%
    3227 responses, not scientifically valid, results updated every minute.

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