Monthly Archives: October 2008

Mr. Blackwell, who was known for issuing his annual "Worst Dressed List" and for nothing else, has passed away at the age of 86. Born Richard Sylvan Selzer, he had a brief acting career before turning to fashion design. In 1960, he came up with the idea of his list and it proved to be a great publicity-getter…which, of course, was the whole point of it. Obits like this one tell us…

In 1992, he sued Johnny Carson for claiming that he had added Mother Teresa to his list, saying the comment exposed him to hatred and ridicule. NBC's response was that the "Tonight Show" host was obviously joking. "Did you see what he said about Mother Teresa? 'Miss Nerdy Nun is a fashion no-no,'" Carson had said. "Come on now, that's just too much."

Everyone, of course, noted the irony. Mr. Blackwell, whose only known function was to hold others up to ridicule for their wardrobe choices, was claiming outrage at being ridiculed. Around The Tonight Show, they assumed Blackwell instituted the lawsuit because he was hoping to settle for an appearance on the program…and abandoned it when it was clear that was not going to happen. He may also have been upset by one of Mr. Carson's monologue jokes: "I don't think it's fair of Mr. Blackwell to issue that list on the one day a year he looks at women."

Believe it or not, I actually have an anecdote about a personal encounter with Mr. Blackwell. He seems to have lived somewhere near me because every few months, I used to run into him in a little Italian cafeteria not far from my house. The first time it happened, we were side-by-side in the cafeteria line and I leaned over, nodded towards the ladies serving us and told him, "They'll give you an extra meatball if you don't critique their outfits." I have "recognized" many mid-level celebrities who were thrilled that someone — anyone! — knew who they were but none who were more pleased than Mr. Blackwell.

For obvious reasons, he always made me think of another public figure who was mentioned occasionally in Carson monologues and who even appeared several times with Johnny…a flamboyant gent named Jerome Criswell. Half-heartedly claiming some sort of psychic abilities (and not even convincing those eager to believe in such powers), Criswell wrote a column called "Criswell Predicts" and appeared on TV shows, including his own, to issue dramatic and usually-ridiculous predictions about the future. He had a little more than his allotted fifteen minutes of fame.

They were pretty much over by the seventies and he was rarely seen on television. Where he was seen was on the porch of a home he had on Las Palmas Avenue in Hollywood, about a block north of Sunset. It was where my friends and I often parked when we went to the comic book shops on Hollywood Boulevard and we'd see him there, unshaven and of course not in the tuxedo he wore when he appeared on TV. We'd yell, "Hey, Criswell! What do you predict?" And he'd grin and oblige us by calling back, "Gnats in New Mexico" or "Locusts in London," which were the kind of predictions he'd done on TV. One time, he told myself and my friend George, "I predict strap-on bikinis for you women and clamp-on bikinis for you men."

He seemed to enjoy putting on a little performance for us or for any who passed by and knew who he was. (To help the recognition along, there was a large brass plaque on the front of the building, not far from where he sat. It said, "CRISWELL PREDICTS.") It wasn't The Tonight Show but it was something.

Mr. Criswell passed away in '82, which was about the time I began running into Mr. Blackwell at the cafeteria. I don't know if they knew each other but it wouldn't have surprised me. I can well imagine them getting together and swapping tips on how to parlay a little gimmick into something resembling a career.

Almost no one is paying attention to it — and given what's going on in the world, I can't say I'm surprised — but jury selection commences tomorrow in the retrial of Phil Spector for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. The new trial is expected to be a near-twin of the first one, except that it's expected to go faster and everyone is hoping for a different verdict.

I just want everyone to know that I'm still planning on going on a killing spree if Spector is acquitted. I'm still white, I'm still financially well-off, I'm still in show business and I'm still in California. You can get away with murder if you qualify in just three of those four categories, as O.J. Simpson famously proved. (Recently, of course, he got cocky and thought he could beat a kidnapping rap.. He forgot he wasn't financially well-off, he was no longer in show business and, most significantly, he wasn't in California. They take their crimes of violence seriously outside my home state).

I don't have the patience to follow the Spector trial day to day. Someone let me know when a verdict is imminent so I can start watching then and also, just in case, prep my list of those I'll be murdering. I'm thinking of adding in the kid who bags groceries at the nearby Ralphs and who likes to put the case of canned cat food on top of the bag of Whole Grain Wheat Thins Crisps.

Today marks the start of the one week return of Creamy Tomato Soup to participating Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants.

Comedian Max Alexander has a new kidney and the medical bills to prove it. To help him out financially, a band of his fellow comics are getting together for a one-night-only benefit up in Hollywood on Sunday, November 9. The list so far includes Elayne Boosler, Jeff Garlin, Dom Irrera, Kevin James, Carol Leifer, Jay Leno, Larry Miller, Ray Romano and Fred Willard, with additional names to be announced or in some cases, not announced. That's a heckuva lineup and if you'd like to be there to see it, details are on this page. (Looks like a double feature night for Leno, who's also playing the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach that evening.)

I just surveyed five different sites that chart the electoral votes based on the polls. It's scary, in a way, how well Barack Obama is doing.

If John McCain won every state where he's currently ahead…and he won every state where they're tied…and he won every state where Obama is less than 5% ahead of him…John McCain would still lose the presidency. "Not to worry," some McCain boosters say. "There's still The Bradley Effect."

The Bradley Effect? What the heck is that? Oh…it's something most of us never heard of before some folks needed a way to explain why Obama didn't have a lock on the election. Put simply, it's the theory that some people, afraid of appearing racist to a pollster, will say they're going to vote for the black guy but they're really going to vote for the white guy.

I don't believe it for uno minuto. For one thing, it's just a theory. There haven't been many studies on it and probably none lately. Racial attitudes in this country may have just changed a tad since the 1982 California gubernatorial election in which L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, despite a lead in the polls, lost to a man named George Deukmejian. So even if the phenomenon was valid then — which I doubt — there's no reason to assume it's still operative 26 years later.

Maybe Bradley lost that election because some Californians couldn't bring themselves to vote for a person of color…but maybe he lost because a lot of people woke up when they got into the voting booth and realized they couldn't vote for a guy who, on balance, wasn't that good a mayor. I met Tom Bradley on a few occasions and even wrote a speech for him once when he spoke before the National Cartoonists Society. He was a very nice, genial man but in his two decades as chief exec of Los Angeles, I can't think of one thing he did to distinguish himself. That address to the cartoonists may have been it.

It's also worth noting that he ran twice for governor. The first time, in '82, the polls had him ahead but he lost on Election Night by a very narrow margin. The second time, he was never ahead in the polls and he wound up being crushed by almost a two-to-one ratio.

Point being, Bradley just wasn't that popular. It's not puzzling that he lost…only that the polls were off one time. Polls are sometimes faulty, especially on the state and local levels where there aren't that many of them. I find that explanation more credible than the concept that folks tell pollsters they're voting for a black man and then when they arrive at their polling places, they suddenly turn into Jesse Helms. I think for the most part, if race matters to you, you know it. And you can always tell the pollster that you're voting for the paler of the candidates because you like his health plan better.

Yeah, maybe someone somewhere who says they're going to vote Obama will succumb to latent racism and go the other way. It's also possible that someone who says they're going to vote McCain will have an anti-senior moment, give in to latent ageism and decide they can't vote for a 72 year old man. Or in a jolt of sexism, they'll realize they can't put a woman the proverbial heartbeat away from the Oval Office. It's all possible but not probable.

Obama may lose and he may even lose because of racism if the last weeks of the campaign fan those flames. There are other possible reasons, as well, including the fact that polls aren't dead-on accurate. Four years ago, most of the late polling had John Kerry 2-3% ahead of Bush…which should remind us that election day results can shift that much with two Caucasians competing. If they shift that much for Obama-McCain, watch everyone forget that and cite this silly Bradley Effect as the reason.

I have nothing to say about the passing of Levi Stubbs, lead vocalist of the Four Tops, other than that I sure liked everything I ever heard him sing. Even this Pepsi commercial…

The Monty Python musical Spamalot will close on Broadway on January 18, 2009 after its 1,582nd performance…a very nice run, indeed. As a point of comparison, that's more than Mame, The Sound of Music, The Music Man, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and a number of other musicals that are regarded as classic hits. The national touring company has bookings scheduled through the early months of the year and then it too will probably close down.

If you haven't seen a production of this thing on stage, you might want to hurry to one. I'm sure it'll be around forever in college and community theater…but it'll be a long time before anyone stages it with a Broadway budget and (probably) that level of talent. Like Young Frankenstein (which is scheduled to go on tour beginning in the second half of '09), the money is part of the show. It'll be interesting to see how various groups mount Spamalot without a lot of cash, and it wouldn't surprise me if ingenuity could more than make up for spartan costumes and sets. But you oughta see it in all its lavish glory while that's still an option.