Two weeks ago, I had a terrific time at the Pasadena Pops show in the Los Angeles County Arboretum, featuring the pop opera group Poperazzi. The duo in this video covers one of the songs performed at the Pops show, but in its own unique way.

According to these kids, making sales is easy. (If surreal.)

I read yesterday’s LA Times summer movie sneaks section — but saw nothing about this.

In which Philip Glass writes music for… “Sesame Street.”

For years, I’ve said that “Sesame Street” teaches kids one thing — to watch TV. So while I’m not sure it’s filling an educational need, I am sure that it has a 43-year history of getting very cool creative people involved, from Jim Henson to Bill Irwin to Eric Idle to Cab Calloway to Jughead Jones (?). Maybe it’s not an educational program that we’re all funding. Maybe it’s an arts program.

In this video, you can watch the daughter of a Dutch filmmaker age 12 years in 3 minutes. It’s fascinating to watch because it shows just how quickly our lives pass. Just yesterday, I emailed a photo of my wife and me with our first-born when he wasn’t yet one year old. My caption: “Look how young we were before these rotten kids aged us 20 years.”

This video also holds relevance for me because I have a daughter who is now 13 (and will soon be 14). Note in the video how, from age 10 on, the girl is gabbing incessantly in every frame. We’ve had a similar experience at our house. As for the aging aspect, I aged 12 years in 3 minutes just last night when she recounted something she’d watched on Netflix streaming with her friend. For just a moment, I considered blocking the service — then remembered watching secretly “Satyricon” late at night on an early pay service at my brother’s apartment at age 11. At least she told me. I told no one — until now.

I was sad to see that Jonathan Frid, the actor who cast a large shadow on my childhood by playing Barnabas Collins on “Dark Shadows,” died the other day. (And here’s the joke: Seeing the trailer for the campy new Tim Burton version killed him.) Like many other kids in the mid-to-late 1960s, I raced home from school to watch it; that’s what one had to do in those pre-VCR, pre-DVD, pre-DVR days: catch it in real time or miss it. My daily viewing was further complicated by the Glen Jupin factor. Glen Jupin was a classmate that my grandmother watched along with me in the afternoon for a little spare cash. He was also a fraidy cat, unable to handle the gothic horror of “Dark Shadows,” or its implications that various family members could be ghosts or secret monsters. Every day it was a battle with my grandmother over Glen Jupin, who wailed that the show was too scary. My retort was the obvious one: If he didn’t like it, couldn’t he go do something else? Why did I have to suffer because he couldn’t handle it? Some days I’d win, some days Glen Jupin in his pathetic striped lime-green shirt would win, and now as an adult I understand my grandmother’s decision-making process. I’m sure it seemed fair to take turns letting one of us win. To me, it just seemed arbitrary, and made me argue all the more.

In my playwriting workshop on Saturday, as we were discussing “Dark Shadows” and the late Mr. Frid, my friend and fellow playwright Tira volunteered that one could watch all the “Dark Shadows” one could ever want online via Netflix streaming. She said that she and a friend got roaring drunk and watched a bunch of them. So that night I fired up the xBox, logged onto Netflix, and started with the first episode featuring Barnabas (almost a year after the show’s debut). I watched three 22-minute episodes (22 minutes because of the lack of commercials), committing the terrible error of not having a friend over and getting roaring drunk first. At some point, I’ll watch some more, because my thinking is this: maybe they get better. In fact, I’m sure they get better; they would have to, because there is nothing conceptually possible below the nadir.

The first episode with Barnabas was episode 210, and the only part of Barnabas that was in that episode was his hand, at the very end. What precedes that is the most plodding of soap operas anyone has ever witnessed. Almost every bit of the preceding 22 minutes is a roundelay of inquiries about the whereabouts of a young ne’er-do-well named Willie Loomis whom everyone wishes gone. Here’s somewhat how the dialogue sounds:

Elizabeth Collins (to Jason McGuire, who is blackmailing her): You said that Willie Loomis would be gone!
Jason McGuire: Did I? Well, perhaps he is.
E: Well? Is he?
J: He may be. Have you seen him?
E: I haven’t. But Victoria may have. Vicki, have you seen Willie Loomis?
V: Willie Loomis! That awful man. Why, have you seen him?
E: I haven’t. Have you?
V: No, I haven’t. I thought he had gone.
E: Did he?
V: I don’t know. I didn’t see him.
E: So you don’t know if he’s gone.
J: See? He may well have done.
E: But we don’t know. (To the maid:) Have you seen Mr. Loomis?
Maid: Willie Loomis? I thought he’d gone.
E: Has he?
M: I don’t know. Should I make up his room?
E: Has he gone?
M: Not that I know of. I could make up his room.
E: Not until we’re sure he’s gone.
V: But we can’t be sure he’s gone.
J: He may well have done.

The last time I heard dialogue like this was in a production of “Waiting for Godot,” but that was purposely comic. Had Beckett and Ionesco not predated “Dark Shadows,” I’d think they owe a royalty. I can’t help thinking that Tim Burton got roaring drunk watching this and finding nothing but humor in it. Me: I fast-forwarded. A lot. In watching three 22-minute episodes, I’m estimating that I watched about nine minutes, because that seemed like the amount of actual content. Everything else was stuffing.

The pace is glacial and the staging awkward. (In the first few minutes, I watched a camera pull in for a closeup — and cast a huge shadow across an actor’s chest. Nice.) But one thing was palpable: Why Barnabas Collins, and the show featuring him, became, for a short time, such a sensation. Right at the outset, Jonathan Frid and the writers establish the anguish, the loneliness, and the inner torment of someone cast out of his own time and condemned to play a role he doesn’t want: that of someone who feasts on others. It’s a nice performance of a conflicted character, someone struggling to be evil, which would be easier, while trying to hold onto his goodness, which is harder. That made an impression in 1966, and it still does today.

This perfectly illustrates why Europeans think what they think of Americans. Exciting, no?

Thanks to Mark Chaet for letting me know about this.

I’ve met Mel Brooks three times, and he’s been kind, warm-hearted, and funny all three times. Almost 20 years ago, I attended Buster Keaton’s 100th birthday party at Silent Movie. (Buster, being dead, wasn’t there.) Before the screening, I got into a nice conversation with my seat mate — Eleanor Keaton — and then afterward did the same with three other fans who turned out: Mel Brooks, Ann Bancroft, and Dom DeLuise. Mel was especially effusive about Buster, and I had the advantage of having seen not only all of Buster’s silents, but also “Silent Movie,” so I had a lot to contribute to the conversation.

This terrific interview with Mel Brooks, which I just found online today, shows just how great an influence Keaton was on him. I think Mel is absolutely right about Keaton:  that he was an astonishing performer, and that even if he were starting out today, he’d be a sensation.

In which Christopher Walken reads — and interprets! — “Where the Wild Things Are” for us. Just another wonderful thing found on the Internet that completely validates the existence of humankind.