Monthly Archives: August 2007

A quick recommendation. Not long ago, comedian Jeffrey Ross visited Iraq as part of a troupe of comedians headed by Drew Carey. Ross took along a video camera and shot footage which he edited into a diary/documentary called Patriot Act. It runs incessantly this month on Showtime and it's well worth watching. The narrative nicely eschews the attitude of "Look at the wonderful thing I'm doing" which is too often present when Show Biz folks do something like this, and Ross seems to have a nice, honest perspective on the people he's entertaining and what a tour like that means to both the audiences and the performers.

And a quick non-recommendation. Mr. Ross is also part of this year's Comedy Central Roast, which this time is of rapper Flavor Flav. I'd never heard of him before and one suspects that at least a third of the roasters hadn't, either. I have to learn to stop watching these things. (If you haven't, it airs again tonight and tomorrow night.) For some reason, the dais always includes one rather clueless non-comedian who everyone decides to dump on relentlessly…to the point where it bypasses Funny and gets into the realm of picking on someone because they can't fight back. In this one, it's actress Brigitte Nielsen who's sitting there, forcing a grin as she's called an untalented whore. She appears to not understand all the insults hurled her way — that's the real embarrassing part — but she also seems to get enough of them to be very uncomfortable.

The most interesting thing about this roast — and obviously, this isn't a lot — is that someone at Comedy Central has apparently decided that the "s" word no longer has to be bleeped but the "f" word still does. No one will object. One or two of Mr. Carlin's other verboten words have already made it and the rest will soon follow. And almost no one will object.

Alan Light's photo album of the 1982 San Diego Con has been a hit on the web with tens of thousands of hits. Here's a link to another, shorter album of pics he took in 1990 at Forrest J Ackerman's Ackermansion in Los Feliz.

For those who don't know who or what this is: Forry Ackerman is a noted personality in the worlds of science-fiction and horror movies. He was a fan, an agent, a writer, an editor, a historian and a rabid collector. He edited the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and is also generally credited with coining the phrase, "sci-fi." That's him on the left in the photo above, posing with Alan.

Until a few years ago when he sold off his collection and moved into smaller digs, Ackerman housed an incredible collection of s-f and horror books and artifacts in a home he nicknamed "The Ackermansion." Actually, it was two homes. The first, which I visited first in 1968, was on Sherbourne Drive in Beverly Hills. A few years later, he moved — and what a move it must have been — into a larger home on Glendower Avenue in Los Feliz.

He often welcomed fans, tourists, celebrities, strangers, werewolves and just about anybody into his home, which was kind of a museum of its subject matter. I found the place somewhat creepy in a couple of ways above and beyond the subject matter…but then, I was never as much a fan of horror movies as some of my friends. It sure made them happy to be there.

As I said, Ackerman no longer lives in such a manner. In recent years, he's alternated between a more modest bungalow and an array of nursing homes and hospital rooms. He'll turn 91 later this year and for much of the last decade, rumors have swirled that Forry is only weeks from hanging out with Bela and Boris. The rumors will eventually be true but I long ago stopped giving them any credence.

Here, from the 1957 Emmy Awards ceremony, we have Phil Silvers presenting the Best Writing award…to the writers of his own show. So we get a fast glimpse of the legendary Nat Hiken, who created the Sgt. Bilko series, produced it and directed it.

Last November, we complained that many roads in and out of L.A. International Airport had been closed now and then so that the latest Die Hard movie could film around there. We — and of course, by "we," I mean only myself — feel those are inconvenienced by such matters are way too forgiving of them. And yes, I know it's good for the economy and local businesses if filmmaking stays in Los Angeles and doesn't migrate elsewhere…but there's also the downside of people having their lives disrupted or even of some businesses being hurt. I don't think the pros and cons always measure out in favor of the movie guys.

Well, here we go again. From this morning's Los Angeles Times…

Travelers heading to Los Angeles International Airport this weekend and next should allow extra time because a section of the 105 Freeway near the airport will be closed for filming.

All eastbound lanes between Sepulveda and La Cienega boulevards will be closed from 3 a.m. to midnight the two Saturdays and Sundays to allow shooting of the action film "John Hancock," according to LAX officials. In addition, the westbound portion of the freeway between Sepulveda and the 405 Freeway will be closed intermittently between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. both days of the weekends.

The airport will close the exit ramps from the passenger terminal areas leading to southbound Sepulveda. Departing traffic will be directed to eastbound Century Boulevard.

I assume that LAX gets some sort of use fee that makes it worth the hassle — for them, not for travellers — to allow this. But LAX doesn't own the 105 Freeway. Your tax dollars and mine paid for it and not so it could be closed to us because someone wanted to shoot a movie there.

And I'm going to assume that's a typo about closing the freeway from 3 a.m. until midnight, right? Because that's kinda like most of the day.

I should add one other note to my report on last night's Lewis Black concert. As I said, it was at the Disney Concert Hall, which is across the boulevard from the Music Center here in downtown Ell Lay. The last few years, I've refrained from attending anything at the Music Center for reasons you'd understand if you ever experienced the traffic and parking problems I endured my last few outings there. Something had to be really, really special to get me to subject myself to that again.

But getting to and from the Disney Concert Hall was rather easy. A number of downtown restaurants are now serviced by shuttle buses that will truck you to and from the Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center and other nearby venues like the Staples Center. You park for the restaurant, leave your auto there and take the shuttle. My friends and I dined at the Daily Grill and valet parking there is five bucks with a validation from the restaurant. Even adding in what I tipped the valet and the shuttle driver, that's not a bad price to pay these days to park for dinner and a show. And it was fairly simple to get to the show and back again. Just something to keep in mind if you are, as I was, reticent to brave some of those parking structures.

If you're thinking Rudy Giuliani has any credentials for dealing with international relations, read this essay that he recently wrote. And if that doesn't convince you you're wrong, read this takedown of it by Fred Kaplan.

Hey, speaking of The Nat King Cole Show, here's two minutes of Nat King Cole singing a tune on The Nat King Cole Show…

I just discovered a channel on my satellite dish that I guess has been there for a while…It's BETJ, which apparently is a sister channel to Black Entertainment Television. BETJ used to be called BET Jazz and it's a music channel.

And what I really discovered is that early Wednesday mornings, they run two episodes of The Nat King Cole Show from 1957. The show is just Mr. Cole singing, often with a guest star, backed by Nelson Riddle and his orchestra…but it's wonderfully entertaining. I don't know precisely who I'd put on a list of Great American Male Pop Vocalists but Nat King Cole would not be absent. If you get BETJ, check it out.

Two of the best evenings I've spent in comedy clubs have been spent listening to Lewis Black. The first one was at the Improv in Brea, California. The second one was at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach in the same state. Both were decent-sized venues, big enough to accommodate a top comic but small enough that the comedian didn't get overpowered by the stage he was on.

Last night, I took some friends to see Mr. Black at the new (opened in 2003) Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles. It was the wrong place to see the guy. The Disney Hall is a beautiful structure — I have to go back and just walk around and marvel at the building — and the acoustics are said to be among the finest of any auditorium in the world. Well, maybe they would have been if Lewis Black had been playing the cello. But this was apparently the first time the sound crew there had to deal with stand-up comedy and we all know how difficult it is to set up one microphone.

In fairness, the man does tend to shout a little…but he shouted at the Improv and the Comedy and Magic Club, and I had no trouble understanding him there. I only got about 85% of what he said last night, which is way too low to make for a satisfying evening, especially since a lot of the 15% rendered punch lines unintelligible. And of course, it's also frustrating because so much of what I could hear was hilarious and perceptive and memorable, which made it agony to miss any of the words. (It was also, with the exception of one short discourse on Christmas carols, all material I'd never heard before. Black probably writes more routines in a year than most stand-ups go through in their entire careers. That's another thing I like about him.)

Plus, there was the matter of the stage just being too big for him. It's a beautiful hall and a beautiful stage of unique design. (My friend Carolyn said it looks like someone turned a giant violin inside-out. If and when you'll see it, you'll see she's right.) Put a stand-up in the middle of it all and he looks small and trivial, no matter how great his personality. The building, by the way, seats 2,265 and I think whoever picked out those seats assumed that the Disney Hall would cater mostly to dwarfs.

The whole evening put me in mind of that other great screaming stand-up, Sam Kinison. I used to see Sam at the Comedy Store and other clubs of modest size and he was magnificient. Even with a few hundred folks present, he made contact of a sort with everyone in the room and there was an immediacy to his performances. Later, I saw him on the stage at Bally's in Las Vegas and he was like a magician standing on the 50-yard-line at half-time in the Super Bowl, trying to do a card trick. It wasn't so much the physical distance from Lewis Black last night — we weren't that far away from him — as the fact that he seemed lost on that huge stage.

And it wasn't just him. Another comic, John Bowman, opened for Black and suffered from all the same problems.

I still love Lewis Black as a performer but I think my only hope now is that his career hits the skids and he has to go back to playing smaller rooms. So please don't go see him if he comes to your neck of the woods. He's wonderful but he's more wonderful in a real comedy club instead of an indoor Hollywood Bowl. No matter how beautiful the building may be.

Mike Lynch has scans up on his site of a long, 1977 New York Times article on MAD Magazine. It's an odd piece. In 1977, MAD's founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman, had been gone for 22 of MAD's 25 years and yet the article is mostly about Kurtzman. His successors — editor Al Feldstein and assistant editors Nick Meglin and Jerry DeFuccio — are depicted in a photo but barely covered in the article. Publisher William M. Gaines gets mentioned only as necessary to speak of Kurtzman's contribution.

The authors note how MAD's readership has swelled to (at that point) a peak of over two million per issue but leave you with the impression that the swelling is indicative of Kurtzman's influence. Might not Feldstein, on whose watch most of those readers came aboard, have had a little something to do with that? The big color illustration depicts Spy Vs. Spy, the work of Don Martin and Paul Coker, and a movie parody drawn by Mort Drucker. Those are all aspects of MAD that came to be after Kurtzman departed. For that matter, the famous grinning countenance of Alfred E., though it had its origins in the Kurtzman years, is basically a calling card for the Feldstein era.

There are also a few historical points that conflict with my understanding. Mention is made of Kurtzman's merry, original band of artists — Will Elder, Jack Davis and Wally Wood — but the name of the fourth, John Severin, is omitted. The phrasing also suggests that Elder assisted Kurtzman with the layouts of all the early MAD stories. That's something I never heard before and do not believe is true.

The article says that Kurtzman decided to create MAD because he had jaundice and wanted a project he could do without leaving his room — again, not quite the way I heard it, not even from Kurtzman. Obviously, Harvey was interviewed for the piece and at that moment, chose to tell it that way. The way he told it to me and others was that his paycheck was lagging sadly behind that of Al Feldstein, who was writer-editor of other comics for the same company. The discrepancy was there because Feldstein was editing a book a week, whereas Kurtzman output one issue of his two war comics per month. And as an aside here: A topic for further discussion is to what extent this was because Harvey was a thorough perfectionist who researched every line down to microscopic degree, and to what extent Harvey was just one of those artists who did things right the first time, then did them over and over and over out of pure neurotic fear. Several who worked with Kurtzman, including Wally Wood, felt the latter was more often the case.

In any event, the way the story is more commonly told is that MAD was invented because Kurtzman needed to raise his income. Gaines used to claim that he suggested Harvey cobble up an additional comic — a humor title because it wouldn't require the research that the war comics did. Kurtzman said that was his own idea, and maybe it was. But the point is that the impetus to create MAD was that Kurtzman needed a project he could do in less time than he was spending on Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat.

The tale of how MAD went from a dime color comic to a slicker black-and-white magazine is also at odds with accepted history. They say the switch was made to escape the Comics Code. Everyone, including Kurtzman, said it was because Kurtzman wanted out of the comic book format and was entertaining a job offer from a slick magazine. While he and Gaines did worry that censorship of some kind might lay ahead, the accepted history is that Gaines moved MAD to magazine format to keep Kurtzman from leaving. It appears to just have been fortuitous timing that the Comics Code was instigated the same month that MAD moved out of its jurisdiction.

I'm dwelling on a 33-year-old newspaper article to make a point here. I've been studying MAD since I was a tot and even wrote a book about that institution a few years ago. I've always heard about and even witnessed a certain friction between "The Kurtzman Kult," as some have dubbed it, and the folks who've done MAD since Harvey departed. I think both versions of the publication have vast amounts of merit and none of this is intended to debate the worth or even the relative worth of any era.

But I've heard Feldstein and others on his behalf complain about the tendency to praise Kurtzman by slighting those who came after and here's a perfect example. Harvey deserves mega-applause for his brilliance. The comic book issues of MAD may be the finest sprint of creativity ever in comics, and they're probably the funniest. But when he left, another era began under that logo…the era of Mort Drucker and Don Martin and Sergio Whatzisname and Frank Jacobs and a lot of brilliant writers and artists. That was the era of Feldstein, with Meglin adding funny and DeFuccio helping keep the machine operating…to say nothing of the talents of John Putnam, Leonard Brenner and others, including Bill Gaines. The N.Y. Times piece is, of course, largely forgotten…but the sentiments expressed are still present in so much that is written about the world's most popular humor magazine. There must be a way to give Kurtzman his due without minimizing those who followed.

Here's an embed of the video of that interview I mentioned from last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Note the obvious edit right after they finish discussing the cloning of Dick Cheney…

I got a number of messages like this one from Andy Rose…

I'm not sure where Warren Stubli got his information (or if he was just trying to make a factless point about political correctness), but a draft would most certainly not include women…at least not at first. The list of potential draftees is drawn up by the Selective Service System, which still registers only men between the ages of 18 and 25. (They have a website with a pretty exhaustive explanation of deferments and what would happen in a draft lottery.)

Yeah, but no one pays any attention to those things now because we don't have a draft and they don't matter. If actual human beings were actually being plucked from their lives and sent over to risk those lives in war, there'd be a lot of discussion over whether those should be only male lives and the answer would almost certainly be "No." And I don't think this nation would be as tolerant as it once was of a selective service system that seemed to have all sorts of escape clauses for the wealthy and well-connected…especially if it seemed to be a necessity thanks to the efforts of George "absentee National Guard" Bush and Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney.

If we did reinstate the draft in this country, they'd have to deal with those issues. But it's not going to happen because no one wants a draft…not even the military, insofar as I can tell. What they want is more recruits and one way to make that come to pass is to eliminate things like soldiers having to buy their own body armor and equipment, and the shameful reports of them being denied proper medical care. As with too many past wars, we seem to spend money on all sorts of stupid things, including just plain losing zillions of it to God-knows-where…but we short-sheet the soldiers. It's sacrilege to not love the troops but okay to skimp on their equipment and medical care.

If Bush and Cheney want to build support for this war, it sure wouldn't hurt (or be that difficult) to make those outrages go away, and I don't know why this isn't done. These are smart men. They can figure out a way to improve the lot of our soldiers and drive Halliburton stock up another few points.

If I've said it once here, I've said it a thousand times. The Reprise! Theater Group is an organization that stages musical revivals for short runs on shorter budgets. Four times per subscription season, they mount some semi-lavish production up at Freud Hall at UCLA with minimal sets and even more minimal rehearsal time. But there's always a maximum of talent and it makes up for an awful lot.

Case in point: Last night was opening night of a new production that'll be up there until August 26. It's On Your Toes, the 1936 show by Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart and George Abbott. The show isn't performed much these days and it's easy to see why. The book is outdated. In fact, it was probably outdated in 1936…a silly story about a Music Professor who'd rather be a dancer. He gets involved in an attempt to convince a Bolshoi-like ballet company from Russia to stage an American jazz ballet and at some point, he becomes a performer in the company and you really don't care about it or all the other people involved in it. You're just there to hear the songs by Rodgers and Hart which, in this case, aren't the kind of ones that made their reputation. Only one — "There's a Small Hotel" — was at all familar to theatergoers last night and it isn't even that great a tune.

So it sounds like I had a lousy time and I must admit that there were a few stretches in Act One when I did. But the show picked up and through sheer talent, the cast and director drove this one across the finish line. Doing so much with so little, they made it all work.

Let me mention some of those people. Dan Mojica directed and he figured out how to get laughs on some pretty thin material. Jeffry Denman starred as the Music Teacher and was positively electric, bringing a lot of Fred Astaire to the proceedings and getting laughs where none were written. Stefanie Powers played the rich lady who manages the ballet troupe and she seems to have aged about a week since she was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. She had a nice star turn and handled her musical numbers quite well. (One joke was added to the script to reference her run as co-star of Hart to Hart.) Dan Butler played the Russian impresario and Beth Malone played the Music Teacher's love interest. Gerald Sternbach was the Musical Director, providing a lush sound, and Lee Martino devised the sensational choreography. The dancing, which was quite plentiful, went a long way to making up for the shortcomings of the storyline.

I think I'd recommend it to anyone but with the caution that you kind of need to forget about the plot and just enjoy the performances. Jason Alexander is now the Artistic Director for Reprise! because, I guess, he squandered all his Seinfeld money and needed a job. Anyway, during the post-show party, an audience member interrupted a conversation he was having with a group of us to tell him they loved the show but thought the story was boring. Jason smiled and said, "Yes, well, we couldn't do much about that." He's right. But it was fun seeing a talented crew rise above the material and entertain so much in spite of it.

You probably caught The Daily Show last evening but if you didn't, I'd like to recommend Jon Stewart's interview with Stephen F. Hayes, author of a new book on Dick Cheney. There's something very refreshing about some of Stewart's conversations, especially with people he disagrees with. Obviously, he dominates. It's his show, his studio audience. He controls the editing. (It looks to me like they sometimes let an interview run a little long, or at least until it reaches a good end point, and then go back in and chop something out to get it down to time. There was at least one big jump cut in the Hayes interview.)

But what impresses me is that Stewart tries to engage people in a real discussion. I don't think anyone can come on his show and give stock, pre-scripted answers. He doesn't ask them the obvious questions…which means they have to listen, they have to answer and they probably have to think a little before they answer. A good coach could prep you for an appearance with Larry King or Tim Russert or even Bill O'Reilly but I don't think they could rehearse what you'd be saying opposite Stewart.

His discussion with Hayes was fascinating and I'd recommend it to anyone who still supports the war and doesn't "get" one of several big reasons why people are so mad about it. Basically, Stewart referred to the video clip making the rounds — this one, of Cheney in 1994 saying that the U.S. should not invade Iraq because it would be a quagmire — and asked Hayes why the later Cheney didn't acknowledge what the '94 Cheney knew. It's a good question and Hayes had no real answer.

I'll post a link to a video of the interview if and when one is available somewhere.

Roger Ebert is writing again and his topic is one of our favorite movies, Ace in the Hole. If you haven't ordered it, here's an Amazon link.