WEDNESDAY, May 12, 2010

GROTON, CT (AP) - Since the announcement that women would be allowed to serve on submarines for the first time, several shakedown cruises have been completed with no problems reported.  Well, there was one.  First time the captain yelled “Dive!” a gal replied “If you won’t tell us where we’re diving, can we at least ask someone for directions?”

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Under terms of the city’s firearms-buyback program, former gun owners collected a total of $198,000 in Ralph’s Supermarket gift cards -- $100 for each pistol or rifle surrendered and $200 per assault rifle.  O.J. Simpson is anxiously awaiting the knife buy-back program.

ROME (BBC) - Italy hosted its first “divorce fair,” to help couples untying the knot in a country where until recently, the Catholic Church has kept the divorce rate low.  The week-long schedule of workshops, panel discussions and seminars began with keynote speeches by Elizabeth Taylor and Larry King.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Zoo’s Reggie the Alligator, a 20-year old lifelong bachelor who eluded wildlife officers for months until his capture in a nearby lake, has a new pen-mate -- 40-year old Cajun Kate.  Keepers aren’t concerned about  their age difference, but just in case, they’ve hired Ashton Kucher as a technical advisor.

NEW YORK (BBC) - Twitter has patched a major bug that allowed users to add others to their list of followers without their consent or to remove followers from others’ Twitter sites.  In non-tech terms, a Twitterer could have lost so many of his Tweetees, that he might have been forced to get a life.  

_______________________________

Excerpted From THE LAUGH MAKERS  

One year, we taped a Halloween special on which one of the guests was Cassandra Peterson, well-known as a Charles Addams-like character named Elvira. She appeared in a parody of the popular sitcom Cheers as a customer in the bar opposite Hope as the show’s bartender, Coach. In our sketch, Cassandra entered the bar, looked Hope up and down, and said, “Nice job. Who’s your undertaker?”

The special was set to air on Sunday night but on Friday, Nick Callesandro, the actor who played “Coach” on Cheers, suffered a sudden heart attack at his home in Burbank and died. Minutes after the grim news was broadcast, my phone rang. It was Hope with instructions to call the writers and have them begin working on a replacement line that could be dubbed onto the master tape, which had already been delivered to the network. In the meantime, he said, he would notify Cassandra to meet us at the sound studio for the emergency-looping session. The line we were to come up with not only had to make sense in the context of the sketch, but it also had to match as closely as possible the actress’s lip movements.

We tried five or six replacements until everyone settled on “Nice job. Did your makeup man quit?”  The syllables matched perfectly and even on a large studio monitor, it was difficult to tell that her voice had been dubbed.  It was only a small change, but Hope had gone to the trouble and expense of fixing the line, knowing that failure to do so might make him appear crass and unfeeling to a television audience unaware that segments of so-called “live” shows are often taped well-in-advance.  When it came to protecting his image in the eyes of the public, Hope’s judgment was usually sound.

(Tomorrow:  The night we thought Hope had a heart attack…)

Order THE LAUGH MAKERS on line:

http://www.amazon.com/LAUGH-MAKERS-Behind-Scenes-Incredible/product-reviews/1593933231/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=2
 
Also available in an unabridged audio version read by the author: 

http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0545479184.1272211432@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccjadekfdmleefcefecekjdffidfmf.0&productID=BK_BEAR_000001
 
UK orders:

http://www.audible.co.uk/aduk/site/product.jsp?p=BK_BEAR_000001UK&BV_SessionID=@@@@1904657385.1272326590@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgadekffeehdjcefecekjdfikdffg.0