Monthly Archives: June 2005

A rushed day, running around to doctors with my mother…who's doing much better, thank you. Here are a few loose ends and updates…

Thanks to all those who sent donations after my little appeal the other day. When I get some time (ha!), I'm going to try and set up a little private "extra" area on this site for folks who've contributed to its upkeep, and all of you will be included.

I am told that Chita Rivera did cuss (the "s" word) on the Tony Awards when she accidentally killed John Kander. I assumed she hadn't because there was no audience reaction, but I guess Broadway audiences don't really care much. Also, several folks have written me that Nathan Lane's shaven dome was because of the recently-shot prison sequence for the end of the movie of The Producers. (And boy, I wish they wouldn't call it that. It'll just confuse people. I don't know how many times I've seen some home video ad or purchase that mixed up the non-musical version of Little Shop of Horrors and the musical one directed by Frank Oz. If I were the guy in charge, the movie version of the musical of The Producers would be called Springtime for Hitler with "The Producers" in a sub-title.

I have, alas, confirmed the death of comic book writer and cartoonist John Albano. I'll try to post a more formal obit later today.

And I'm sorry to hear of the passing of a very classy lady named Anne Bancroft. I can't say that I knew her well but the few times I was around her, she seemed just as delightful in person as you'd expect. And she and Mel sure made a fine, loving couple.

For years, I've told my pal Earl Kress that the best steak house in America is Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. Don't think it isn't, just because it didn't make the list of The Original Great Steak Houses of North America or The Top 10 U.S.D.A. Prime Steakhouses or any of those other bogus surveys that they put together for the in-flight magazines. Every time I fly, I stow my laptop, buckle my seat belt and then immediately check the magazine to see if by some fluke of honesty, they've put Peter Luger's in its rightful position atop the lists. That it is nowhere in evidence proves that the lists are just advertising scams and that the listed eateries paid their way onto those rosters. The way I see it, Peter Luger's is so good, they don't have to pay to have someone say so.

Earl has heard me say this so often that on his current trip to New York (this week), he decided he had to try it for himself. For a moment there, I thought my bluff had been called and that I'd so oversold the place that it could only disappoint. I imagined Earl calling me in a fury, yelling that he'd shlepped all the way out to Brooklyn on my say-so and discovered that it was not a life-affirming, deeply-moving and multi-orgasmic experience; that it was just steak.

Last night, when he got back to the hotel, Earl phoned and said, "I've just had the best meal of my life." I feel as proud as if I'd picked out the Porterhouse and cooked the meat myself.

At this moment on Court TV, the discussion topic is if Michael Jackson goes to prison and if the rumors are true that a portion of his nose is a prosthetic piece, will he be allowed to have it in his cell or will they take his nose away?

And if that eBay auction doesn't satisfy your urge to browse Spider-Man collectibles, here's an even bigger collection. Thanks to Paul Merolle for telling me about it.

Some articles on taxation to call to your attention. One is this page from FactCheck.org which shreds the myth that Estate Taxes (what some call "The Death Tax") can wipe out your inheritance and force your heirs to pay tax on wealth that has already been taxed. This is one of those Big Lies that keeps getting debunked but some people just hear "Death Tax" and think it's everything its opponents say it is.

Meanwhile, this blog post by Kevin Drum analyzes data that says that very rich folks are now paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than a lot of us. And this post points out that in the last quarter century, the "Super Rich" have seen their taxes go down 9% whereas the Middle Class has seen theirs increase 1%. The latter may actually be fair on some levels but I'll bet most people think it's the other way around.

If you're a big fan of Spider-Man, you might want to bid on (or at least browse) this eBay auction. It bills itself as "The World's Largest Spider-Man Collection" and it sure gives you an idea of how many Spider-Man items there have been for which co-creator Steve Ditko never saw a nickel. Thanks to Pam Noles for the pointer.

Pat O'Neill writes to say there was a brief shot of Jerry Orbach in there as an intro to Jesse Martin's rendition of "Razzle Dazzle." Bet I wasn't the only one who missed it. My thought was that they were singing that song because Fred Ebb wrote the lyrics and only later did I connect it with Orbach, and I don't think this is just me being dense. I think it was rushed to the point of confusion.

One more awkward moment at the Tonys was the segment devoted to the deceased. Pressed for time, they had to rush through a very incomplete list…which may be worse than doing nothing at all. Did they really leave out Jerry Orbach? That's a pretty big Broadway star to omit in favor of a couple of agents. Christopher Reeve was there but they cut to his picture so late that most people probably didn't see him.

Then came the "Razzle Dazzle" musical number which might have made sense if someone had reminded us that its lyrics were by the departed Fred Ebb (or even that it was introduced on Broadway by Mr. Orbach) and if the director hadn't opted to cut to a camera located in upstate New York. The long shot may have been because one of the dancers was showing a bit too much dorsal cleavage…but if so, that's like the silly need to bleep words in a pre-recorded musical number. Weren't the Standards and Practices people at rehearsals?

The Supreme Court says that laws against medical marijuana can and should be enforced. I suppose this may be an example of non-activist judges at work. Those laws are idiotic and illogical but they are on the books, and perhaps it is not the job of any judicial authority to parse them in a manner that weakens them. Justice Stevens, in his opinion, made clear that he was not cheering the federal ban on marijuana; just that it was up to Congress, not the courts, to repeal those laws.

Which means Americans oughta start pressuring Congress to do so — and in a hurry, since people who might be helped by the drug are suffering, and the enforcement of those laws is a splendid waste of resources and manpower. The decision related to a couple of cases, one being that of an Oakland woman named Angel Raich. Ms. Raich, it is reported, suffers from a wide array of ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. She has been able to alleviate some paralysis by smoking marijuana but we sure can't allow that to continue. Let's pull some law enforcement folks away from watching for terrorists and send them to arrest this woman, who is clearly a threat to us all.

I don't know why there isn't some national doctrine or A.M.A. precept that says that anything that can be done to alleviate pain and suffering can be at least tried. The bureaucracy involved here helps no one, to say nothing of the inconsistency. "Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion," says John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy. "To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective." Yeah, right. That's why all drugs are thoroughly tested before the public is allowed access to them — like, say, Vioxx or whatever other widely-used pain reliever will next be judged unsafe after hundreds of thousands of people have used it for years. But we can't let Angel Raich have something that she's found works for her.

Would someone ask Mr. Walters if excessive consumption of alcohol is safe or effective? I've had more friends killed in one way or other by Jim Beam than by pot…and yes, I know this is an old argument. But for 40 years, I've been asking why using marijuana should be put in a different category from drinking vodka, and I've never seen an answer more useful than Jack Webb's in a 1967 episode of Dragnet. He said something about how booze does a lot of damage but it's here and it's not going away, so why do we need to add marijuana to the list? (Actually, the most honest answer I've seen was a guy on the old Joe Pyne Show, also in the sixties, who once said that alcohol was the establishment drug and marijuana was the anti-establishment drug, and the establishment has a selfish duty to deny "the enemy" everything.)

It was interesting to see that today's Supreme Court decision had Rehnquist, O'Connor and Thomas in dissent. There's a strange mix. I've always thought Thomas was a judicial mediocrity but he does seem to believe in states' rights…so give him points for consistency.

Several folks who didn't catch the Tonys wrote to ask me to quote Mike Nichols with his counsel to the losers. It was as follows: "Cheer up. Life isn't everything!"

Let the record show that in this post, I predicted the winners in 25 categories of Tony Awards, and that I only missed in five: Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play was Bill Irwin in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Best Revival of a Play was Glengarry Glen Ross, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play was Liev Schreiber in Glengarry Glen Ross, Best Scenic Design of a Play was Scott Pask for The Pillowman, Best Costume Design of a Play was Jess Goldstein for The Rivals. That's not a bad track record when you consider that I haven't gotten to New York for a couple of years and so did not see any of the shows.

There's something wrong with a Tony Awards broadcast where the high point is a surprise walk-on by Al Sharpton.

I'm usually quick to defend these shows because folks don't appreciate how difficult they are to put on, how many things could go wrong and don't, and because a lot of the high and low points are things are simply beyond the producers' control. Still, you had to wince at all the tech mistakes and bad choices. Especially baffling was how, at least on the New York telecast which I watched out here, gibberish kept popping up on the screen, courtesy of (I guess) a drunken closed-captioned device that went inexplicably open…and every so often, you could hear the director (I think it was) giving camera instructions, which ain't supposed to happen, either.

Good points: The opening with Billy Crystal. The funny bit with Christina Applegate (actually, a stuntwoman) falling off the stage. The charm of host Hugh Jackman. Nathan Lane and just a few other presenters. Mike Nichols's advice to the losers. The number from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee…which was the only musical number all evening that made me want to go see the show. Some say the main function of the Tony telecast is to serve as an infomercial for Broadway, and that the real winners are those whose presentations drive buyers to the box offices. I can't see how most of the selections this evening could prompt purchasing, especially the scenes from the nominated plays which were too brief to generate the slightest interest. Even Spamalot, which I just know is not a dull show, looked like a dull show.

Bad points: There were too many of them to name…and hey, what's with everyone tugging their ear to send a signal to someone? And all that lip-syncing on a show that's celebrating The Magic of the Live Theater? Why was Nathan Lane's head shaved and why were almost all the winners thanking their agents? Radio City Music Hall is way too big to properly present anything smaller than huge spectacle, and the director kept cutting to wide shots that not only distanced us from the action but showed us the empty seats of so many attendees who'd had enough and headed for the lobby.

Last year, there was a ghastly "star" musical number with Mary J. Blige singing a number from A Chorus Line. This year, it was outdone by Aretha Franklin and Hugh Jackman singing a song from West Side Story. The thought — to honor Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday — was a nice one, but why'd they have to pick a number from his first show, and one for which he wrote only the lyrics? Rumor has it the man has written one or two good songs all by himself in the years since.

Even the bleeping was weird. The idea of having a live broadcast on a seven-second delay is that someone might accidentally blurt out some naughty word…but there were two deletions in the number from Dirty Rotten Scandals — which was, of course, scripted and rehearsed, and I think it was also pre-recorded and lip-synced. For that matter, once you've made the (correct) decision that you have to leave in the shots of men and women kissing their same-sex mates, are you really going to offend anyone by allowing the word, "ass?"

Later, during Chita Rivera's tribute to deceased friends, she was censored without even being dirty. She was supposed to speak of the recent deaths of composers Fred Ebb and Cy Coleman but she accidentally mentioned Ebb and his very much alive partner, John Kander. CBS bleeped the mention of Kander on the fly, but since she caught and corrected herself, most viewers probably didn't know what she was talking about and/or thought she'd uttered some ghastly expletive.

It was a whole evening of that kind of thing…painful to those of us who want the Tony Awards to be as wonderful as we all know Good Theater can be. Recently, someone sent me DVDs of some of the earlier telecasts and it's fascinating how joyful these shows used to be. (The 1971 show, for reasons that can probably never be re-created, is especially thrilling.) I know you can't ever get Zero Mostel and Robert Preston out to re-create their great musical moments…but these things used to be about performances, and now they're about walking to the stage to thank your agent and life partner. Most of America doesn't watch the Tonys since they've never seen the shows and don't know who most of the nominees are…but there's a group out there that might tune in and perhaps be moved to purchase tickets, if only the show had a little magic.

For more than 35 years, the world of newspaper comic strips has been covered by Cartoonist PROfiles, a fine quarterly magazine produced by Jud Hurd, who is himself a practitioner of the art. (That's hm on the cover of the issue at right above.)  Cartoonist PROfiles has delved into animation and comic books, but its principal focus has been political cartoons and comic strips, and I've been a happy subscriber since its inception.

Sadly, I'm hearing that this venerable magazine may be coming to an end soon. Mr. Hurd is in poor health, and you could almost sense it from the latest issue (#145), which I received yesterday. The issue is a little slimmer than I'm used to, and has the slight feel of having been assembled without Hurd's customary editorial precision. That is not a criticism. If what I've heard is true, it was a commendable effort just to get this one to press.

I hope this is not the end of this fine publication. Perhaps when Hurd is no longer able to do it, he has someone else in mind to assume command, or someone can be found. At the very least, I'd love to see someone issue the entire run on CD-Rom because even though I have 'em all, it would be a lot easier to have the issues in that format. It's been a very important magazine and there's been a lot of history in its pages.

It's tempting to try and predict the outcome of the Michael Jackson trial. But then I remember that those jurors sat there for 14 weeks and heard something like 130 witnesses, whereas I've paid maybe an hour's worth of attention to the matter and only heard/read third-hand paraphrases of some teensy fraction of the testimony. That doesn't mean they'll come to the right decision — one O.J. jury was certainly wrong — but real jurors have a perspective and a possession of the facts that are generally unavailable to us casual, armchair jurors. Maybe we ought to trust them more than we do to judge the case that was presented in court. They're also burdened with rules of evidence and points of law that do not encumber our judgment…and of course, we have the luxury that if we're wrong, no one gets hurt.

Many of the Talking Heads on cable TV are avoiding predictions but those that have a view seem to think there's no way Michael will be found guilty; that we're looking at either an acquittal or a hung jury. The latter possibility may be just wishful thinking from folks who are making good livings covering this Jackson trial and wouldn't mind another. It doesn't hurt to keep in mind that a lot of these same experts told us that Robert Blake was a sure bet for a quick conviction.

As I understand it, the jury could boot the molestation charges and convict Jackson of one or more counts of furnishing alcohol to minors. That sounds like a nice "compromise" move if they're as conflicted as the press coverage of the trial might suggest. But maybe they're not conflicted one bit. Maybe they're sure, one way or the other. I'm not going to make the mistake again of being shocked at a verdict because I expected the jury to see things the same way I did after some casual glances at the MSNBC coverage. It's the real world in that jury room. The only prediction I can express with any confidence is that regardless of the verdict, Michael Jackson will never be Michael Jackson again.

Here's another photo from the National Cartoonists Society gathering in Scottsdale last weekend. Sunday evening, they had a roast/tribute to Sergio Aragonés and almost everyone in the room was wearing false mustaches that looked much more realistic than the phony one he's been sporting all these years. Here, we see Mr. and Mrs. Mort Walker with theirs. Mort, of course, is the man reponsible in one way or another for Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Boner's Ark, Sam's Strip, Sam and Silo, Patches and Gamin, etc. Three times during the weekend, other cartoonists had to physically restrain him from creating a new strip. (Sergio, by the way, took this photo.)