Monthly Archives: June 2003

Here's another really good artist: Steve Lieber. Nice guy, too. His website will tell you all about him. (I'm a little crushed for time tonight…)

I have a "thing" for great Vegas-type acts and it's time I wrote about one of my favorites. Ever since singing impressionist Danny Gans began selling out showrooms in Sin City (@ $100+ per ticket), the town has been filled to overflowing with guys who get up there and try to warble like Frank, Dino, Sammy, Tom, Elvis and others, one after the other. Gans is very good, though not as good as his ticket prices would indicate. For years, the best of them — playing intermittently in lounges and smaller rooms up and down The Strip — has been a long-time practitioner of the art, Bob Anderson. He's an amazing talent and he's one of those impressionists who teaches others.

You see this on the comedy circuit a lot: No one is doing a certain celebrity…and then someone with a good "ear" figures out how to do the person; how to caricature the voice and maybe the gestures, as well. Then suddenly, everyone's doing the celebrity…because the first guy showed them all how to do it, what to emphasize. Bob Anderson is such a pioneer. A lot of folks believe that when you see Billy Crystal doing Sammy Davis, what you're seeing is Crystal doing Bob Anderson doing Sammy. There are also voices that Anderson does that almost no one else does — The Righteous Brothers, Mel Tormé, Otis Redding, etc.

There's a 2-and-a-half minute video demo over on the Official Bob Anderson Website that will give you a little taste of what this man does. Unfortunately, it doesn't include some of his more obscure impressions (which are the most amazing) and the brief snippets don't adequately convey how Anderson captures not just the pitch of his subjects but their manner and presence with an audience. He doesn't just manage to sound like Frank…he really transforms himself into Ol' Blue Eyes for a few minutes there, then does a sudden left turn and becomes Neil Diamond.

So where you can see this man? Amazingly (and sadly), not in Vegas anymore. He recently announced that following an upcoming booking in Laughlin, he's abandoning Nevada and taking up residence in Branson, MO where he has a new and permanent gig. I don't know where or when he'll be performing but to those who've followed the Vegas entertainment scene, this is a stunner. He told The Las Vegas Sun, "There is a changing entertainment scene in Las Vegas, and for whatever reason, there is no place anymore for some acts that may have thrived here in the past, and may one day thrive here again." This is bad news for the town…and worse news for those of us who loved going to Vegas and seeing Bob Anderson, especially in a late night lounge performance. I never get to Branson — though maybe I will, someday. I now have one more reason to go.

My e-mail buddy (and fellow It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World expert) Paul Scrabo works up at NBC in New York. He writes…

I see Don Monday thru Wednesday when I do Last Call with Carson Daly (he hangs around to get some coffee) and also on every live SNL show. He comes to see me to rehearse the live opening. When Darryl replaced Don that time, it was because Don was ill. One other time, Don was sick and before he went home, we pre-taped his opening. He is still the SNL announcer and does it live.

Amazing that here is the guy who introduced not only Caesar's Hour, but Abbott & Costello on the Colgate Comedy Hour!

Amazing, indeed. Now, the next question for announcer fans is one that Dave Mackey also asked on his site. Is Jackson Beck still working? He'd be 91 by my count and just a few years ago, was still doing commercials for Little Caesar's Pizzas, among others. (By the way, here's a link to Paul Scrabo's fine site, with much stuff on Mad World and on Paul's own productions.)

Former Senator Max Cleland gives it to the Bush administration — and good. Here's the link.

Had an interesting e-mail exchange this morn with a writer-friend who complained that I keep linking to interesting-sounding articles (like the one about the Rosenbergs) that are on sites that require registration. Even though it's free, he says, he refuses to register anywhere because he fears it will only contribute to the flow of spam to an e-mailbox that is already crammed full of offers of guaranteed loans, Russian brides and larger tallywhackers. I don't think The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times sell e-mail addresses — at least not to vendors of herbal viagra — but I made a suggestion that hadn't occurred to my friend: Get a junk mail address.

No law says you have to have but one e-mail address. Your I.S.P. (Internet Service Provider) probably provides you with the opportunity to register several other Screen Names for the same fee. If not, there are always services like Hotmail which can give you another, wholly-separate e-mail identity. Use your "junkmail address" whenever you need to register for something and let its mailbox fill with spam. You can then check it every so often to see if anything in there matters to you, or when you need to confirm an address to complete some sign-up. If you haven't considered this, maybe you should.

David Letterman has been losing to Jay Leno for a long time, and losing by a wider margin than ever lately. But last night, a guest appearance by Hillary Clinton helped Dave pull slightly ahead, at least in one night's overnights. It wasn't as big as the last time Hillary appeared with Letterman but last night, it brought in a 4.6/11 rating. Leno only had a 4.4/11, while Ted Koppel had a 3.1/7.

I just changed the link address in the referral to the Charles Vess website. I accidentally linked to a fan site for Charles instead of his official site,which is what I thought I was linking to. Now it goes to the real place. Thanks to "Stephen" for the catch.

Robert Meeropol is the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for spying. He has long been on a personal journey to determine their guilt or innocence and has come to some interesting conclusions.

I've said this about others but it's as true of Charles Vess as it is of anyone: He showed up in comics one day and did a few of them in the classic tradition. Then he blossomed into a unique and glorious illustrator. There are several nice examples over on his website.

Hey, you hockey puck! Why don't you sit in a hot tub and watch a duck sink? Go suck sap out of a rubber tree while the wife just lies in bed and goes, "Help me with the jewelry." No, but I kid websurfers…especially those that go over to the Don Rickles website.

My pal Dave Mackey reminds us that yesterday marked the 59th anniversary of announcer Don Pardo going to work for what was then (1944) the NBC Radio Network. Fifty-nine years in any job is impressive. To last that long in the highly-competitive (and high-pressure) world of radio/TV announcing is astounding. How many commercials must that add up to? How many game show prize shpiels and pauses for station identification? It's a skill that is generally unappreciated. To do it well, you have to make it sound easy…and year after year, Pardo has made it sound easy, squeezing awkward copy into tight time slots and sounding enthusiastic about intros and sponsor plugs that must have bored the hell out of him.

Being a network announcer has often been a very political position. Networks are often unbelievably fussy about their images, and it has generally been believed that an off-camera announcer somehow becomes "the voice of the network," especially when delivering promos or station identifications. They've gotten a little less anal about this in recent years but still sometimes insist that a given voice job be filled by someone from their "approved" list. Names come and go from those lists but Pardo has managed to remain on them longer than most people currently active in the voiceover field have been alive. For years, he was known primarily as a game show announcer, most notably on the Bill Cullen The Price is Right and the Art Fleming Jeopardy! Later, Saturday Night Live made him even more famous. He was the announcer on the very first broadcast (where he accidentally billboarded "The Not For Ready Prime Time Players" — a gaffe fixed for some reruns and not others). He quickly became the most "permanent" member of the cast — though there was a brief period where, trying to "freshen" the show, they replaced him with Mel Brand. Somehow, it wasn't Saturday Night Live without Pardo, and they brought him back. Those who decided to get rid of him should have known better. (This was during a period when Michael O'Donoghue had returned to the show and was trying to force a lot of odd ideas into the mix. Reportedly, he not only wanted to dump Pardo but to fire him on the air during a broadcast. Yeah, that would have been real funny…)

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not sure if he's still announcing the show. I gave up watching it some time ago…and the last time I tuned in, I believe the opening announce was cast member Darrell Hammond imitating the sound of Pardo. If he's semi-retired and doesn't want to stay up that late, I could certainly understand. The man is 85, after all. I hope he's around for a while longer but even after he's gone, his voice will be heard, and not just in reruns. A couple of generations of radio personalities, disc jockeys, announcers and voice actors have learned how to do it from Don Pardo. If he got royalties for imitations, he could buy the network.

A lot of Republicans fear that their greatest electoral danger is within; that the extreme right-wing, having tasted more power with this president than they've known before, will try to drag the rest of the party into positions that will lose moderates and swing voters. Here's Senator Alan Simpson doing what little he can to head that off.

A brief interview with Jules Feiffer.

You find the darnedest things up for sale on "The World's Online Marketplace." An auction house is currently selling the 1929 Caerulia, which was the yearbook for Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, California. This is of interest because one of the graduates therein was Lindley Armstrong Jones, who would later be world-famous as either the funniest bandleader in the business or the most musical comedian, Spike Jones. That's his class picture there, back from the days he marched in the school band (he was the drum major) without firing a single pistol shot.

I love old Spike Jones records, radio shows and TV programs and have avidly collected them for many years. He was a very funny man and when it came to music, he really knew what he was doing. But I'm not bidding on his yearbook. Some artifacts are too trivial, even for me.

Mort Walker has been producing Beetle Bailey since it took place in the Civil War, and also dabbling in other strips including Hi & Lois, Boner's Ark and Sam & Silo. I liked Sam & Silo even better in its original as Sam's Strip. He has lots of fun stuff over at his website. Fall in.