Monthly Archives: August 2006

If you want to read the smartest commentaries on the Katrina reconstruction debacle, as written by someone who really knows the area, go read Harry Shearer. Start with the most recent column and just read back 'til you can't take any more.

I am told by several correspondents that Orange Life Savers have made a reappearance in the basic Life Savers assortment roll…or so they think. A number of people wrote to say they'd heard that the Life Savers people had bowed to popular demand and reinstated our beloved orange…but not one of these people had actually seen one.

So in the next day or so, if I'm anywhere that sells them, I'm actually going to purchase a roll of Life Savers and report. Check back here for this hard-hitting investigative report.

Hey, don't laugh. It's more legwork than Bob Woodward has done in twenty years.

Another clip from the 1985 TV special, Night of 100 Stars. This one spotlights "vaudeville," though I don't guarantee the definition of what they think falls under that heading. At least though, the featured stars in this one do a little more than just walk out on stage to applause. Among those who actually perform, you'll see Roby Gasser and His Sea Lions, an act from Switzerland that used to be featured in Splash!, the big show at the Riviera in Las Vegas. The way Mr. Gasser and his marine mammal leave the stage, which is the way they exit in this clip, always got one of the biggest ovations I ever heard in Vegas.

Another Vegas crowd pleaser is my pal Ronn Lucas, who you'll see in there with his pal, Buffalo Billy.. And I'll let the other ones surprise you. This runs a little under six and a half minutes and I guarantee you William Shatner is nowhere to be seen.

Curtains, a new musical from the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, recently debuted despite the fact that Mr. Ebb passed away two years ago. This article in The New York Times discusses what Mr. Kander has been going through since the loss of his collaborator, and what it took to get this musical up and running without him.

Jonathan Alter says that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush dropped the ball with regard to helping the poor.

This is one of those areas where I'm honestly baffled as to what to think. Is it that he wanted to make good on all those promises and then incompetence (his or someone else's) or some other obstacle prevented it? Or was there a deliberate attempt to pledge one thing and deliver another? I don't know which is the case…or even which would be worse.

In this message a few days ago, we discussed the dilemma of whoever had to decide who to include and exclude for this year's Emmy Award "In Memoriam" montage. I posted fifty names and said they'd probably feature 20 or 25. The montage aired this evening had 29 people in it, seven of whom were not on my list. Here's who they had in it…

Dennis Weaver, Barnard Hughes, Mrs. Philo T. Farnsworth, Don Adams, Dan Curtis, Lew Anderson, Ralph Edwards, Curt Gowdy, Robert Sterling, Michael Piller, Red Buttons, Mike Douglas, Scott Brazil, Tony Franciosa, Phyllis Huffman, Darren McGavin, Gloria Monty, Jan Murray, Pat Morita, Al Lewis, Maureen Stapleton, Buck Owens, Jack Warden, Don Knotts, Robert Wise, John Spencer, Louis Nye, Shelley Winters and Richard Pryor.

And there was a separate tribute to Aaron Spelling. To save you comparing lists, here's the roster of those who didn't make the cut…

June Allyson, Lloyd Bochner, Harvey Bullock, Jean Byron, Hamilton Camp, Franklin Cover, Robert Donner, Marty Farrell, Bud Freeman, Skitch Henderson, Douglas Hines, Bruce Johnson, Jerry Juhl, Pat McCormick, Sheree North, Lou Rawls, Charles Rocket, Rick Rhodes, Nipsey Russell, Vincent Schiavelli, Richard Snell, Wendie Jo Sperber, Mickey Spillane, Harold J. Stone, Amzie Strickland, Lennie Weinrib and Jack Wild.

I had Bob Denver in the list of possibles but I think he was covered last year. Beyond that, a couple of omissions surprised me. Nipsey Russell, Pat McCormick and Skitch Henderson did an awful lot of television. Jerry Juhl was a mainstay of The Muppets. Rick Rhodes had an awful lot of Emmys. But I suppose they had to draw the line somewhere and wherever they draw it, you could say, "Hey, what about So-and-So?" I was also surprised that they closed with Richard Pryor instead of Don Knotts.

This may all sound morbid, and I suppose it is. But I've lately known a few folks who were terribly hurt that their loved one, recently departed, was not deemed of sufficient import to make the "In Memoriam" montage. The suggestion has been made that the Emmys and Oscars should do away with such segments completely, and there's a good argument for that. Trouble is, when a Johnny Carson or a Bob Hope dies, you have to say something…and then the door is wide open. If you can mention Carson, why can't you mention this other guy who was almost as important? Or someone will argue that someone else was as important as Carson…and so on.

I haven't watched the whole show yet. I may or may not be back later with more comments on the telecast.

Speaking of William Shatner, as we must: I took time out the other day to watch Comedy Central's William Shatner Roast. Why did I do this when it would have been much simpler to shove a sharpened, #2 Dixon-Ticonderoga pencil up my nose…and the result would have been approximately the same? Beats the heck outta me.

I don't even fault the show. I fault me for not knowing better. The appeal of a roast when done properly is that (a) it's entertaining and (b) there's some genuine affection and camaraderie displayed towards the roastee. Neither occurs much on these roasts because — taking the latter first — the roasters rarely seem to have that much to do with the roastee. Jeffrey Ross, who probably knows Shatner about as well as my gardener does, is becoming the groundhog of Comedy Central. He puts in these annual appearances. showing up to insult total strangers and casting a shadow that signals we're going to have six more weeks of Bea Arthur penis jokes.

Yeah, they had a few folks present who'd worked with Shatner, like George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. But neither turned into a comedian at the rostrum and neither convinced me they had any particular affection for the honoree. Takei's presence seemed like it was because one of the producers said, "Hey, gay jokes are easy and we can't make any about Shatner. Has anyone who was on that show become a flaming spectacle? Sulu? Great. Book him at once!"

As for the humor content, it's tough for a show to make you laugh when the average punch line goes something like this…

No, but people all over Hollywood know William Shatner is a great actor. Of course, these are the same people who [BLEEP] that [BLEEP] put his [BLEEP]ing sh[BLEEP] in a bowl of Sugar Frosted [BLEEP]s."

I made that one up but you get the point. Half the time, you know what they said because of context and maybe even because they deliberately bleeped the "f" word in a way that made sure you heard a fraction of the "f" at the beginning and a strong "k" sound at the end. It's kind of a fake bleep designed to pretend they complied with rules. ("What do you mean you heard it? I definitely had them bleep that word. It's not my fault if the engineer was a thousandth of a second late.")

But then the other half the time, you don't know what was said and it's like some sick Sudoku game where you sit there, mentally plugging each of Mr. Carlin's Seven Dirty Words into the blanks to see if the sentence makes any sense. If it doesn't and you still care, you can either go to the Comedy Central website where there are online, unbleeped clips…or you can pay good money for the DVD. I'm guessing they hope for the second option.

There are, of course, some very funny, pithy lines here and there — how many hours did they tape to get the hour they aired? Three? Five? — but there are an awful lot where the joke, such as it is, is just crude and the laugh, if any, is over the fact that someone had the gall to dive that deep in search of a line. A friend who almost worked on the Shatner Roast was told that the only "taboo" subject was Mr. Shatner finding his wife dead in their swimming pool…and you know, it's almost a shame to close off such a fertile topic for humor. It's especially sad because the really, really painful insult that's "edgy" without being funny is what it's all about on these programs. It's when you get to see the acting abilities of target, dais and audience put to their fullest test as, knowing full well cameras are on them, they pretend to laugh. (Anyone remember the Chevy Chase Roast when most of those in the room couldn't even pretend?)

I like roasts when they're full of funny people who have a genuine respect or warmth for one another. Those usually flow from pre-existing relationships with speakers performing for each other, as opposed to playing to a mass TV audience. Televised roasts are generally packaged affairs based on who's available and who's willing to appear for scale. When Dean Martin did them, they were just as bogus but at least most of those performers knew one another before Tape Day and the lines weren't as nasty…which made it seem less phony when the speaker did the usual switch at the conclusion of their speech, abruptly going from calling the person an anal sphincter to saying, "I've always loved you and it's an honor to appear here to honor you."

With Dino's roasts, you weren't sitting there wondering why the "honoree" subjected himself to them, and almost wishing he'd leap up and tell everyone off for real, then storm from the set. Why did Shatner agree? He must have known it would mean sitting there for hours of taping, grinning like a demented ventriloquist as people he barely knew read quips based on the (arguable) premise that everyone agrees he's a terrible actor with no humility, no hair, no respect for his co-workers and not enough intregrity to decline any offer that gets him in front of a camera and pays…

…and maybe I just answered my own question. Okay, fine. Now I can work on the question of why I watched the thing. I suspect it has something to do with being stupid…

National Public Radio has a feature up on the life of Samuel Joel Mostel, AKA "Zero." It spotlights Jim Brochu and his one-man show…which have now actually been mentioned on this site more times than George W. Bush, Jack Kirby, orange snack food, and me combined. In fact, one more mention of Mostel on this page and I'm renaming the whole damn weblog, jews from me. But it's a good piece of about eight minutes so go listen to it over here.

I should warn you: This will run twelve minutes and there's a strong possibility that William Shatner is in it. I'm not saying he is and I'm not saying he isn't…just that you should be ever vigilant and on the alert.

Some weeks ago, I linked to a batch of clips (here and here) from an installment of Night of 100 Stars. These were specials that ran on ABC in the eighties, each of which featured well more than a hundred stars, even if you adopted a more realistic definition of the word "star" than the producers did. Most of the celebs didn't do much more than show up and walk out on stage but if you just wanted to look at familiar faces, you were probably in ecstasy.

Here, from one of those specials, is a salute to whatever was then on television (1985). It has Hal Linden, Michele Lee and Nancy Dussault singing a song that must have taken a month to pre-record, thanks to rhymes that probably gave the lyricist a hernia. I'll caution you one more time it's long…so long that it exceeded You Tube's ten minute time limit and had to be split into two pieces. And of course, I already told you that Shatner might be in it. If you're comfortable with all that, proceed at your own risk and click away.

And then, here's part two of the presentation…

Molly Ivins on "activist judges." Roughly speaking these days, an Activist Judge is anyone who for any reason doesn't decide a case the way you want to see it decided.

What is it with doing away with orange-flavored things? When I posted the previous item about Hostess Orange Cupcakes disappearing from shelves, I was unaware that another orangey (and sugary-good) treat from my childhood has gone bye-bye: Orange Life Savers. According to this article, the Life Savers people changed their standard roll three years ago, dropping orange, lemon and lime in favor of raspberry, watermelon and blackberry.

Interesting. As a kid, I had an Uncle Nathan who never knew what to give me at Christmas or on my birthday so he usually gave me money plus a "Life Savers Gift Set." I guess these were sold at some store he frequented, probably the place he bought pipe tobacco. They were little books that you'd open and there'd be twelve rolls inside — one each of what then comprised the Life Savers line. Here — I'll show you a picture of one of them…

A nice little gift but I really wasn't a huge fan of most flavors. Actually, I wasn't big on hard candies or gum at all but the only ones that interested me at all were the orange and occasionally the peppermint, lemon or lime. Every birthday or Christmas, I thanked Uncle Nate for the Life Savers Gift Set, pulled out the roll that was all orange and maybe one or two others, then gave the rest away. In fact, I think I usually gave him the Butterscotch ones.

I'm pretty sure I read an article back then saying that the Orange Life Savers were the third best-selling variety, right behind the "Five Flavors" assortment and the Pep-o-Mint. Orange was one of the flavors in the assortment so I always thought my fave should have been regarded as the most popular.

I also read that the orange roll was introduced due to consumer demand. Apparently, the way Life Savers were then distributed, they were limited to twelve varieties at a time. I'm guessing this had something to do with the size of the racks of them you often found by the checkout counter in markets and drugstores. The article said — I'm remembering back close to a half-century here so cut me some slack — so many people had written in and said they wanted a whole roll of the orange that Life Savers complied, dropping its lowest-selling roll, which I recall as watermelon. If I'm remembering this correctly, it would seem like Watermelon Life Savers got the last laugh.

All of this raises one of those questions that I doubt anyone can answer. What happened to Orange Life Savers? Why were they so popular for such a long time and now, they've even been booted out of the basic Life Savers assortment. Did the recipe change? I doubt that. Does the current generation have less taste for orange? I doubt that, too. (Life Savers has a new flavor called Orange Mints and their Creme Savers line has an orange version.) What doomed the basic orange Life Saver? Did Billy Crystal sabotage its career?

Boy, am I behind in my snack cake knowledge. It's been many years since I gave them up…maybe a decade since I even cruised that section of the supermarket. But the other night in a Pavilions, I had one of those carts with the one wheel that insists on dragging the other three (and therefore, you) towards stuff you have a hard time not purchasing. Quite against my will and intent, I found myself at the Cupcake and Twinkie display and I couldn't help but notice: No Hostess Orange Cupcakes. And no designated space on the shelf where they'd be if there were any in stock.

When did this happen? Probably shortly after I gave 'em up. The total number of units sold — at least around Los Angeles — must have plunged when I abandoned that favored way of getting stoked up on sugar. The Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes (which fortunately, are still produced en masse) were good but the orange ones…

Ah, the orange ones…

I not only used to eat Hostess Orange Cupcakes at home but if I was in a strange city and spotted them, I indulged…just to see what interesting and subtle variations the local Hostess baker might have introduced into the mix. The best ones I ever had, I had in Reno, Nevada. In a little market just up the block from Harrah's.

A quick bit of Internetting revealed that Hostess still makes them but just as an occasional specialty item sold in a few select stores. Most markets do not carry them and probably could not get them…but you can find ways of ordering them online if you're desperate. I'm not, but it's a relief to know that if I ever am, there are ways of obtaining them.

I also experienced a bit of a shock to learn that Dolly Madison Bakers — once the arch-rival to Hostess — is now part of the same company, the Interstate Bakeries Corporation. Zingers, the most popular of the Dolly Madison offerings, are now Hostess Zingers. I understand we live in a world of corporate takeovers and acquisitions but some of these still surprise you.

I thought I'd treat you to one more excerpt from Zero Hour, a play which stars Jim Brochu as the late 'n' looney Zero Mostel. This is the scene in which Jim re-creates Zero's 1955 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It runs a little under six minutes.

Jim Hightower provides a long, exasperating list of the failings and arrogances of the Bush administration.

ATTENTION, MIKE PETERS: Remember how yesterday over lunch, I told you that every now and then, you'd find a link on my weblog that would take you to an article that would make you very angry? This is just such a link.

ATTENTION, EVERYONE WHO IS NOT MIKE PETERS: The Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoons of Mr. Peters may be viewed at this site, along with his very funny newspaper strip, Mother Goose and Grimm. Both are also Recommended Reading, every doggone day.

Actor Bruno Kirby died on August 14 from leukemia. I didn't post anything about him at the time because I never met Mr. Kirby and had nothing to add to all the obits and words of regret. Unfortunately, I do now.

Ricocheting around the farthest crannies of the Internet at the moment is a "controversy" that strikes me as being based on absolutely nothing. People who never met Bruno Kirby or his occasional co-star Billy Crystal have taken an unsourced rumor that they had some sort of falling-out and have added a lot of speculation and a great many leaps of logic. The end-product is a theory that Crystal, apparently out of some sort of anger, "destroyed" Bruno Kirby's career. Even if the two men did have some sort of quarrel, that does not lead to the conclusion in articles like this one. (Note if you will that its source is a weblog by someone who has had no contact with Crystal and no inside info, and admits to an "animus" towards him.)

I would first argue with the premise that Bruno Kirby's career was destroyed. You can look over his Internet Movie Database listing and see that he worked at pretty much the same volume from when he broke into the field in 1971 until his death this year. He was in hits now and then, flops now and then. It looks like a pretty typical career arc to me. One successful film does not automatically earn you another, especially when you're working in supporting roles, playing the best friend. Sometimes, a good showcase role will get you offers, sometimes it doesn't. Even when it does, the offers may be for films that don't get made or released or which turn out so poorly that they're regarded as embarrassing credits.

There's always an enormous crapshoot involved and sometimes, it doesn't go the way you want, or the way you'd wish the system would work. One of the people arguing that Crystal sabotaged Kirby's career noted that "Kirby also won acclaim on Broadway, replacing Kevin Spacey as the male lead…in Neil Simon's memory play, Lost in Yonkers, which had won four Tony awards. At that point, Kirby's career was on a trajectory that was leading inexorably to Oscar nominations, and perhaps even a golden statuette."

That's a completely illogical conclusion. First off, even starring Broadway roles often do not lead to anything beyond Broadway…and rarely does a replacement get any notice at all. (I'm not sure why the guy mentioned the show's four Tony awards since they were won long before Kirby was even in the show. By the way, more than a dozen other actors were replacements in that show over its Broadway run and none of them got important movie offers as a result. Lucie Arnaz, who was one of them, won even more acclaim than Kirby. See any good Lucie Arnaz movies lately?) In any case, no one's career leads "inexorably" to Oscar nominations. Which is why the vast majority of talented, working actors go their entire careers without getting one.

For the sake of argument, let's assume Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby had some huge fight…and let's really stretch logic and say Crystal had some reason then to want to nuke Kirby's career. Yeah, I know. It doesn't make sense. Crystal's a huge star whose every live appearance sells out and who's begged each year to host the Oscars. In no way is he ever in competition with Bruno Kirby but just play along. Let's pretend Billy decides that Bruno Kirby's career must be terminated.

What could he possibly do? I mean, how might that be accomplished?

A successful career is based on a lot of different producers and directors wanting to hire you. You need a lot because there are always some who don't like you. Perhaps Billy Crystal blocked Bruno Kirby being cast in City Slickers II and subsequent Billy Crystal movies. It was probably within his power to do so…but how could he stop Spielberg from hiring Bruno Kirby? How could he stop Cameron or Howard or…well, name the top fifty directors in the business these days. If one of them decided Bruno Kirby was the best actor for a given role, would that director say, "Let's go with our second choice. I want to help Billy Crystal destroy Bruno's career."?

What I'm closing in on here is that it's an enormous slam to the memory of Bruno Kirby to suggest that his entire career hinged on getting cast again as Billy Crystal's buddy. Never mind the insult to Crystal, suggesting he'd be that vindictive. It's just plain insulting to the deceased.

And it's all based on speculation about some things we know nothing about. Maybe Kirby wasn't in City Slickers II because the writers, producers and/or director didn't want him or his character back. Maybe he had a schedule conflict or he held out for an outrageous sum of money. Who knows? Certainly not the folks spreading the Crystal Conspiracy Theory.

Bruno Kirby was a good actor. He was in some good movies…in roles which, somehow, did not lead "inexorably" to Oscars. He was in some bad ones. I doubt anyone thinks he saved the good ones or ruined the bad ones, but he certainly was good on the screen in most of them. Let's bury this rumor and instead put the blame for his career ending on what was really responsible: leukemia. That's a real and effective career-ender…and unfortunately, it makes even less sense than show business.