Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Waiting for Stang


Came the message from McNeil: "I'm going to look up everything I can on 'Broadside', the short-lived sitcom mentioned in Stang's obit." Minutes later - minutes! - McNeil had provided a place where you can listen to the BROADSIDE theme song AND a means to watch an excruciatingly long clip from the pilot episode. O "internet," your bounty is indeed endless. Remember when Andy Hopkins promised us - and delivered - the longest two minutes and twenty-two seconds of our lives? Thanks to McNeil's clip, I have just endured the longest six minutes and thirty-one seconds of mine. Why not enjoy another youtube clip instead? How about this one? It's short! I watched all six-and-a-half minutes of the other one because I was waiting for Arnold Stang to show up. He never did. If you do want to watch the end of the BROADSIDE pilot for some reason (and you don't), do it now, because the scary thing about youtube clips is that you never know when "the man" is going to take them away from you for something called "terms of use violations." McNeil favors clips like this one, which you would think "the man" has forgotten about. Is it still there? I don't know! Because "the man" never forgets! I don't suppose I will be too upset if "the man" reclaims BROADSIDE. Perhaps it seemed so tedious to me because I was keeping my eyes peeled for a Stang who never arrived. I thought at first that McNeil's Stang research had yielded no Stang. Finally I realized that he was doing BROADSIDE research, not Stang research. I didn't feel any better about anything.