Monthly Archives: April 2005

My friends who live around the west side of Los Angeles will be thrilled to know that as of this morning, Zankou Chicken has opened their latest outlet. It's on Sepulveda, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, in an area that had no decent restaurants when I worked over there in the early eighties. Zankou serves exquisite rotisserie chicken which most diners slather with the garlicky Zankou sauce.

Right around the corner is a shopping center with a Koo Koo Roo Chicken…so in one block, you have my two favorite places in the world to devour poultry. I may just camp out on the block from now on.

This article over on Slate says that Jeff Foxworthy is the best-selling comedian of all time, at least in terms of selling record albums and CDs. A couple of folks have written to ask me if this is so.

Well, maybe. Foxworthy has sold a lot more records than you'd imagine. The problem is that no one can say for sure how many were sold by the only other real contender. Redd Foxx made and sold a ridiculous number of comedy albums, many of them for obscure companies whose sales were never charted via mainstream measures. In many cases, Mr. Foxx didn't know how many he sold. He did them either for flat fees or for dishonest companies that never paid him his royalties. Some of those records were revived, repackaged and reissued over and over with different jackets, especially after he became popular on Sanford and Son. There's no way to ever prove it but it wouldn't surprise me if all those Foxx "party records" collectively sold well over the fifteen million total that Slate reports for Foxworthy.

And actually, there's another contender, depending on your definition of a comedy record. Some of the albums by Ray Stevens would probably qualify. Some, obviously, would not. Still, if you counted singles and compilation albums, there have probably been fifteen million records sold that contained Stevens' recording of "The Streak"…and that's just one of many. The guy's been making records for 48 years and he still sells millions of his "comedy classics" videos.

I can't think of anyone else who might be near the 15 million mark…so I'll just mention that if you want to read an article I wrote about Redd Foxx, click here.

A hovering grey cloud of a deadline will probably keep me posting very much here the next few days but I wanted to link to two items, both of which I came across on Talking Points Memo, a fine political weblog maintained by Joshua Micah Marshall.

One is this item where he's quoting Andrew Sullivan and…oh, here. I'll save you all that mouse-clicking effort and quote it myself…

QUOTE FOR THE DAY I: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials." — President John F. Kennedy.

At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn't the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn't Bill Frist see President Kennedy as an enemy of "people of faith"? Just asking.

Good point. Someplace — I wish I could find it — I once read a fine article by Kurt Vonnegut which said, of various religious-based political movements, something like, "They don't understand that in America, we allow different religions to co-exist not by denying their worth but by agreeing to set them aside in matters of public policy." I even find a certain amount of arrogance in the very term, "People of faith," because it presumes that people who are not of your faith — or even of the way you spin a political matter as an expression of your faith — are people of no faith at all. Anyway, on to the other item…

I feel like everyone who lives in the state of Pennsylvania owes the rest of the country an apology for making Rick Santorum a Senator. And don't write and tell me you didn't vote for him. You should have tried harder to keep this guy from getting into office. This is the man who compared consensual homosexual sex to someone having sex with a dog. This is the man who is taking outright bribes from Walmart to push legislation favorable to a company that already thinks it's above the law. This is the man who tried to gut medical malpractice awards even though his wife recently won a large one. His latest gambit is that he wants to block the U.S. Weather Service from making its weather data available for free on the Internet. This is the weather data that is paid for by our tax money. Santorum has introduced a bill — and apparently, a vague and sloppily worded one, at that — that would stop that because it cuts into the profits of private services like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. Do I even have to explain what a rotten, unfair-to-us idea this is? Hope he got paid well for this one.

I'm going back to that assignment. I'll check in from time to time over the weekend.

Rogers Cadenhead is a clever writer. We've crossed paths a few times — I don't recall if I interviewed him or he interviewed me but it was one of those — so I was surprised to see him on Countdown With Keith Olbermann yesterday on MSNBC. (And by the way, that there's just about the best news-type show on TV these days, as far as I'm concerned.)

With a bit of foresight, Rogers managed to grab up the domain name, www.benedictXVI.com before some porn huckster or online casino could get to it. Very swift. And he doesn't intend to keep it; not unless they don't want it over at The Vatican. On his weblog, he explains what he intends to get out of this, and I'm cheering him on. I'm hoping they go for the World Peace but I'll settle to see him get the hat. Can't believe that some people apparently think he's doing something wrong here.

My spy at GSN says that the new (old) show going on in the late night black-and-white slot is another run of the old To Tell the Truth episodes hosted by Bud Collyer. Not a bad choice. And in case you haven't noticed, the GSN morning schedule now includes the 1990-1991 daytime version of To Tell the Truth, which was hosted by Gordon Elliott, Lynn Swann and then Alex Trebek. No matter who hosted, this one never caught on.

Given how much I've mentioned it on this weblog, I feel like Paramount Home Video owes me a commission on their new DVD of the 1959 movie of Li'l Abner. (Actually, I'm receiving a small one. You folks out there have ordered enough of 'em through the Amazon link on this site to pay for the copy I purchased.) I received mine today and it looks like a good (not great) transfer and of course, there are no extras. I'm guessing it'll be at least 2-3 years before they bring out a more expensive version with bonus features.

It would have been nice if they'd lassoed a couple of cast members for interviews, especially Peter Palmer, who was so perfect in the title role. I interviewed Mr. Palmer a few years ago for this article and this one, and recently a reporter in Tampa, Florida interviewed him for this article about what he's up to, these days. Not mentioned in that article for some reason is the fact that he's been working with a little theater group in his neck of the woods, directing (among other plays) a production of Li'l Abner last year. You will note that he's annoyed about the mislabelled DVD of the other Abner movie, which we told you all about here.

For those of you who buy the new Abner DVD, here are the answers to the questions you'll otherwise send me: Yes, that's Valerie Harper (of Rhoda) and Beth Howland (of Alice) among the chorus ladies. Yes, that's Donna Douglas (of The Beverly Hillbillies) with one line as a Dogpatch resident. Yes, that's Paul Frees doing the voiceover of the newsman. Yes, Leslie Parrish's singing voice was dubbed…by Imogene Lyn, whose voice you know from many Tex Avery cartoons. (See here for details.) Yes, it's true that Ms. Parrish married Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, then pretty much disappeared from Hollywood. Yes, that's Jerry Lewis in a brief cameo. No, that is not Jamie Farr playing Evil-Eye Fleagle. Yes, the movie is very similar to the Broadway show but with some songs cut or altered. No, although there have been rumors in the past that a Broadway revival was planned, one does not seem imminent.

The oddest plan I heard of to bring the show back to the Great White Way was a few years back. It was optioned by some group with which Tony Curtis was affiliated and as I understood it, the idea was that Mr. Curtis would serve as a producer and play several small non-singing roles in it. The late Elliott Caplin, who was Al Capp's brother and a manager of the property, told me about the deal. I asked him what he thought the odds were of it actually reaching New York. He said, "Oh, about one in a thousand." Then he paused and added, "If they get rid of Tony Curtis, maybe one in five hundred."

So don't hold your breath. Just enjoy the film version.

Charlie Brown really gets no respect.

(By the way: The reference in the article to a "1957 Peanuts storyboard" is misleading. A storyboard is something created for animation or film, and '57 was before Peanuts was ever animated. What was involved in this story was obviously the original art for a Peanuts newspaper strip.)

I don't always agree with every word of the opinion columns to which I link, and sometimes not even to most of the words. But I can't find a single point of argument to this article by Adam Cohen. It's about "judicial activism."

With the rise of the Internet and 24/7 cable news, reporting in this country is getting more immediate. Something happens at 1:00 and it's unthinkable that we all don't hear about it before, say, 1:01. More than ever, this makes me admire the guts and wisdom of Garry Trudeau, who has to address topical events in Doonesbury, a newspaper strip that is written and drawn a minimum of 10-15 days before publication. (The Sunday pages have to be done even farther ahead than that.) A lot can happen in those 10-15 days, and strips have occasionally been yanked or altered because of unexpected events…but not as often as one might expect. For the most part, he's been pretty good with his projections.

Last June, he had a sequence going about George Tenet taking the blame for CIA errors when Tenet resigned. A few lines of dialogue had to be changed at the last second but Trudeau wasn't really wrong. Tenet's downfall just occurred a little sooner than expected. This week, Doonesbury is holding a "Tom DeLay Deathwatch," based on the premise that the House Majority Leader can't possibly retain his job for long…I guess. I mean, Trudeau may have already drawn strips in which it's revealed that this Deathwatch was premature on the part of the press, but I don't think that's where he's going with it. I think he's operating on the premise that DeLay's going down.

Is he right? We'll see. What I find interesting here is that of the many pundits one can read in the daily newspaper, Trudeau is the one who's in the most trouble when his predictions don't pan out. He has to work a week or so ahead of everyone else, and with the knowledge that if he's wrong, he may have to throw out a lot of work and dig himself out of a deep hole. In politics, a lot of things that seem certain turn out to not be so certain.

I thought about that today when things took an unexpected turn in the John Bolton confirmation hearings. Columnists and reporters of all political persuasions have said that the Bolton nomination is a lock to be voted out of committee, which will presumably mean he gets in. The few who've hedged their bets have suggested that if there is a defection in Republican ranks, it would come from either Lincoln Chafee or Chuck Hagel. But today, both indicated they would vote for Bolton, and it was Senator George Voinovich of Ohio who caused the vote to be postponed to allow for more investigations. No one — but no one — saw that coming ten minutes before it occurred.

Here's what's currently up at over on the Fox News site…

When a performance artist makes a deal to play some auditorium or other venue, there is often a document called a Contract Rider. This is the section of the contract that itemizes special conditions the artist has — how the stage must be arranged, how the publicity must be handled, how the dressing room must be configured and stocked, etc. The folks over at The Smoking Gun have assembled a fascinating online library of these, and it's amusing to see that this band demands a certain wine and that act expects cherry-flavored LifeSavers and so on.

Well, they've just added a most interesting Contract Rider to their collection: It's for the 1965 tour of the U.S. by The Beatles. Things were a lot simpler in those days. Tickets were also $4.00-$6.00.

For those of you who've been looking for a good website devoted to airline food…here you go.

My favorite current stand-up comedian, Lewis Black, was the featured entertainer at the 61st Annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner where he drew the kind of spot that is every comic's dream: Following Dick Cheney paying tribute to a dead Pope. Talk about your great warm-ups. He was also required to wear a tux and to avoid the use of naughty words or inflammatory rhetoric. In his regular act, Black has been known to describe Cheney as "pure evil" but I guess you don't want to use that material when the guy's seated on the dais about five feet from you.

You may or may not be able to view video of the event over at the C-Span website, where things don't seem to be working too well. What you'll want to do is go there and do a search for "61st annual." Then if the site's functional and you have Real Player installed, the whole 80 minute event just might load. Mr. Black goes on around 36 minutes into it and you'll probably want to Fast Forward to him.

It's an odd performance and Black spends much of it discussing how it's a bad place for a comedian to work. The audience is not well-miked so I think he got more laughs than the video would seem to indicate, but it's still far from him at his best. I just mention it because if you think Lewis Black looks uncomfortable on The Daily Show, you oughta see him trying to amuse the Washington elite. I try to watch these every year and I don't recall any comic doing all that well with this crowd.

This is for those of you watching GSN's late night/early A.M. broadcasts of old Goodson-Todman game shows. They've gone through all the episodes of The Name's the Same. Tomorrow morning, they air the first of four episodes of What's Going On?, a short-lived program that Mark Goodson used to cite as the worst show his company ever did. It's nowhere near that. As a matter of fact, it was probably a better show than The Name's the Same and it was certainly better than Choose Up Sides, which will take its place on the GSN schedule after the four episodes air.

Goodson's negative view of the show may stem from all the production problems involved. The show used live remote cameras, which were a big (but not bug-free) feature of television in 1954. The producer of What's Going On? was Allan Sherman, who was later known for brilliant song parodies but who was then a producer for Goodson-Todman. It is said that when things weren't going well, as was apparently the case with this show, Mr. Sherman was difficult to deal with. (What's Going On? was cancelled after five shows aired. Only four episodes still exist.)

While I've got you here: Thursday morning, GSN should be running the 3/11/56 episode of What's My Line?, which as originally broadcast featured two Mystery Guests — Dinah Shore and famed clown Emmett Kelly. The segment with Ms. Shore is apparently lost so the episode has awkward continuity and GSN will probably have to pad out the half-hour with ten or eleven commercials for the Rascal Scooter. More significantly, that episode represented Fred Allen's final appearance. He died six days later, on Saturday, March 17. The following night, a rather glum episode of What's My Line? was broadcast, and GSN will presumably run that on Friday morning.

Front Row, which is a radio show on BBC4 in the UK, recently did a nice half-hour interview with Stephen Sondheim. Go to this page and select the broadcast from last Thursday…and do so before it's displaced by next Thursday's show. You'll need to have Real Player installed to listen in.

Speaking of Mr. Sondheim: If you're a fan of his and you're in Southern California, you might want to get tickets to be at the Hollywood Bowl the evening of July 8. Here's why.