Monthly Archives: November 2008

Every week, I get a couple of e-mails just because of an article I wrote about Soupy Sales. This is the piece Soupy reprinted in his autobiography, even though I got the name of his director wrong…and therefore, it's wrong in his autobiography, too. (It's corrected in my online version.)

Soupy was and is much-loved and a lot of folks ask me how to get in touch with him so they can send fan letters, and I have to tell them I can't help. Though I've met the man a few times, I don't really know Soupy and don't want to hand out the only contact info I have for him, which is apparently his home address. However, the other day on his radio show, Howard Stern said Soupy was in poor health. He gave out an address (the address of the publisher of the National Enquirer and the Globe) and said Soupy would welcome fan mail sent to him at that address.

A friend of Soupy's sent me that info and suggested I post it…and earlier today, I did. Soon after, another friend of Soupy's — apparently, a closer friend — wrote to say that Howard was outta line, that Soupy's health is not as bad as Stern suggested. In fact, just the other day, he made an appearance to receive an award at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Here's a link to an article about the event.

It's true that Soupy, who's usually seen in a wheelchair, is not as well as we'd all like…but there's poor health and then there's Poor Health, and I'm happy to see he's still out and around and especially that he's getting awards. Talk about a guy who inspired an entire generation…

Comic Book Resources has posted this article about the War Comics panel I moderated last Saturday at The National in New York. As happens about 90% of the time with these, a line is misattributed. The line about Lee and Kirby bickering over the content of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos was said by me, not Dick Ayers. But other than that, it's a good report.

A while ago here, I posted a message about Soupy Sales, specifically about an address to which Howard Stern is telling people to send fan mail. I'm now hearing from friends of Soupy that one should not listen to Howard Stern. I'll take that message down and will post better info later.

If you're interested in the Minnesota Senate recount — or just in what kind of ballot markings become arguable in such a situation — here are some examples of challenged ballots. Only one or two struck me as really controversial but I guess if my candidate's election were at stake, I might be seizing on every possible explanation as to why a given ballot should be viewed to his advantage.

The 2008 Presidential Election seems to be over. Missouri's electoral votes have gone to John McCain and that means that Barack Obama's final total is 365 votes, a number that no one guessed in our Guess Obama's Electoral Total contest. Around fifty of you guessed 364 and Richard Bensam was the first of these. One person — Ellen Bischoff — guessed 366. So I hereby declare a tie. Richard and Ellen will share the total lack of any prize in this competition and may divide up the bragging rights as they see fit.

Turning to the Senate: Ted Stevens of Alaska has conceded and today, the entire Senate gave him a standing ovation in honor of his years of service. One wonders how many felony convictions you have to have not to get a standing ovation from your colleagues in the Senate. I'm guessing if your crime is money, there's no limit and if your crime involves sex, it's one.

I don't think it would be that big a Magic Number for the Democrats to reach 60 seats in the Senate, except maybe as a symbolic point. True, 60 Democratic votes means the Republicans can't easily filibuster but if the Dems have anything worthwhile to offer, they oughta be able to get one or two G.O.P. defections…so 58 or 59 oughta do it. Still, we watch the two remaining Senate races for the sheer "story" of it all. It would be nice to see Saxby Chambliss defeated in the Georgia runoff, not because he's a Republican but because he won in the first place with that shameful ad attacking Max Cleland. You know that ad…the one John McCain condemned as morally indefensible before he started campaigning for the guy who put it out.

I always look at these situations, at least in part, from the standpoint of "If this were a movie, what would make the climax most exciting?" In this case, it would be for Martin to beat Chambliss in Georgia so the "60" number would hinge on the recount in Minnesota. They're saying they might declare a victor there by the end of the year (!) and with a race this close, I'm guessing it'll come down to whenever that last vote is recounted and the election is certified.

(And by the way, isn't it just bizarre that Bill O'Reilly is telling his viewers that the election is over and that Norm Coleman has been certified as the winner? I know O'Reilly hates Al Franken — he's not alone — but doesn't everyone understand that they're doing this recount because Coleman hasn't been certified? Isn't that just, you know, a demonstrable lie on O'Reilly's part? I thought the guy was smarter than that.)

If you're interested in following the Coleman/Franken recount, this is the page to do that on. My guess is it's going to be up and down there for weeks, with a lot of court battles over whether Mrs. Harriet Turkeybaster's ballot, which she marked with lipstick, should be counted or if it should be discarded like Mr. Niles Hooperman's ballot, which he marked in pork gravy. It is significant that the recount is already showing that a hand recount yields inarguable differences from when the same ballots were counted by machine. If your bank found that a human audit changed the results of the counting of money even by a nickel, they'd instantly junk those machines. But in this country, we tolerate a little approximation in our elections. I mean, it's not like anyone's vote is that important…

I've wondered here occasionally if anyone ever actually falls for those Nigerian Inheritance e-mail scams we all get. The answer, it would seem, is yes.

Thanks to reader Charles Apple, I have some more for you on Stan Lee's medal at the White House.  You can see it on this page.

The relevant speechifying of the day found a Military Aide (that's what he's called in the transcript) announcing, "The 2008 National Medal of Arts to Stan Lee, for his groundbreaking work as one of America's most prolific storytellers, recreating the American comic book. His complex plots and humane super heroes celebrate courage, honesty, and the importance of helping the less fortunate, reflecting America's inherent goodness." Not a bad way to put it…but I'll bet Stan would still have rather received this next January 21.

I've been away and not reading comic book sites so maybe this is old news…but Stan Lee was among those honored the other day at the White House as recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal. Good for you, Stan, but I think it's a few months early. Barack Obama is the one who's said to be a big Spider-Man fan.

Legendary comedy writer Irving Brecher has died at the age of 94. Mr. Brecher created the radio and TV series, The Life of Riley, and wrote several notable movies, including Bye Bye Birdie and two with the Marx Brothers. (Brecher performed another service for the Marx Brothers, by the way. He looked a lot like Groucho and at least once, when that particular Marx Brother was unavailable for a publicity photo shoot, they painted the eyebrows and mustache on Brecher and had him fill in.)

Here's a link to an obit. I'll just add that I met Mr. Brecher on a couple of Writers Guild picket lines and he was funny and feisty and loyal to his union and he had great stories about working with the Marx Brothers, Milton Berle and others. I hope some of them are in that book he has coming out.

I never hesitate to complain about airlines here so, in fairness, let me tell you about our flight home from New York. Carolyn and I flew back on American Airlines flight 21 this evening. It was supposed to take off at 7:15 PM. It did. Actually, it took off a few minutes early.

It was supposed to arrive at 10:50 PM. When we touched down, the pilot announced that our gate was not available to us so we had to wait. The plane sat on the tarmac for a good ten minutes, then finally rolled into a gate and we got off. I tell time by my BlackBerry/cell phone, which was off until I got into the terminal, but when I finally did look, it was 10:12. I phoned the limo driver who was coming to pick us up and he was still twenty minutes away. Here's the flight status which I just grabbed off the American Airlines website…

As you can see, it shows us landing at 9:58. I'm not sure if we actually landed at 9:48 and then we had the ten minute wait or if we landed at 9:58 and it took us until 10:08 to get to the gate. But we got in either 52 or 62 minutes early. I tend to believe the 52 just because…well, come on. Over an hour early on a New York-Los Angeles flight? But the 52 is pretty impressive, too.

I often cruise restaurant review boards, not so much for the food info as the sheer drama of the arguments. It's fun to see people debate something as inconsequential as where to get the best veal marsala…and it can give you insight into the illogical ways in which some people bicker. You can observe the same silly tricks of evasion and myopia that they then apply on other forums to mud-wrestle over important stuff like abortion, guns, Iraq or Best Episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

People really like to argue food. Someone once told me, and I think it's true, that the best way to get information on a restaurant chat board is not to ask a question but to start a brawl. Let us say you'll be travelling to Jerkwater, Alabama and you want to know where to get great ribs. You will learn little if you just post a query that says, "Hey, could someone suggest some good places to get ribs in Jerkwater?" Instead, you should do the following. Google "Jerkwater AND ribs" and get the name of any rib joint in the area. Let's say it's Murray's BBQ. Then under some anonymous handle, you post, "Had dinner the other night at Murray's. Boy, that's the best 'Q within a hundred miles of Jerkwater and anyone who'd eat ribs anywhere else is an idiot with no taste."

That will get you plenty of insults but it'll also get you plenty of recommendations.

Another thing that amuses me is that there is little recognition that restaurants can vary from day to day, meal to meal, even hamburger to hamburger. If you write from the heart, "Rosie's Cafe is great. I had the best hamburger of my life there," someone will feel the need to debate this. It will be like, "That's ridiculous. I had a hot turkey sandwich three years ago at Rosie's that was terrible." People like to believe that their favorites are consistently good and that once a restaurant has done wrong, it cannot possibly do right.

A subset of that is something I call The Latke Rule. It flows from the widespread belief among us Jews that the way your mother made potato pancakes is the only correct way to make potato pancakes, and that all future potato pancakes you encounter are to be judged not on their own merits but as to how much or how little they deviate from The Way Mom Made Them. In truth, you can apply this to any kind of food, even when your mother was a lousy cook. But her goal was always correct…so if she put American Cheese atop your tuna noodle casserole, then a tuna noodle casserole with, say, Cheddar is just wrong.

Lastly, one thing that has always fascinated me about restaurant discussions is that while people can debate anything edible, there are seven categories that seem to draw blood. Those seven are…

1. Hamburgers
2. Pizza
3. Chinese Food
4. Barbecue (ribs, especially)
5. Philly Steak Sandwiches
6. Hot Dogs
7. Clam Chowder

People do quarrel over where to get the best Prime Rib or Tostadas but they do so in a civil and calm manner. These seven seem to bring out the shrill and vituperative disagreements.

Sometimes, pronouncements are geographic — the only decent pizza is in New York, you can't get a good hot dog outside Chicago, etc. Debates about Philly Steak Sandwiches usually start with the understanding that the best are in Philadelphia and then they diverge into sub-topics (Where in Philly? Anywhere outside of Philly worth a mention? And what about Cheez Whiz?) Just outside Los Angeles, there's a community called Monterey Park that is famous for a cluster of superior and authentic Chinese Restaurants. There are Angelenos who will karate-chop you if you suggest that any Chinese Food from anywhere in California but Monterey Park is fit for human consumption.

The Great Clam Chowder Controversy is probably the most interesting one. I have seen death threats hurled over the question of white versus red, let alone where one might procure the finest of either. Years after we finally bury the issue of race in this country, foodies will still be wrestling with that color question.

I was going to end this by posting my list of places I like in L.A. for the above seven but I got enough hate mail during the recent election. So let us all live in peace. Let us link hands, respect our divergences of opinion and recognize that just as people are different, tastes are different and there is no right or wrong answer to any of this. And then let's go beat the crap out of anyone who thinks Vito's on La Cienega doesn't make the best pizza in Los Angeles. Thank you.

Revivals of Gypsy are like cab drivers who don't speak English: You can almost always find one coming or going in Times Square. The latest, starring Patti LuPone as the maniacal Momma Rose, will close soon but Carolyn and I got to see it Saturday night and had a very good time, indeed. It really is an expertly crafted work with many a show-stopping tune and an overall unity of purpose that tells a strong, emotion-laden tale. This version reportedly recreates most of the original Jerome Robbins staging as well as the original orchestrations (which, I somehow only recently learned, were done in part by John Kander). The cast is generally solid so it pretty much comes down to a matter of Momma. A production of Gypsy is only as good as its Rose.

So how's Patti? Pretty wonderful, I'd say but with one quibble. Her Momma Rose is ruthless, unsentimental and all too human in an inhuman way. I saw a semi-professional production once in which the actress playing Rose — the woman who practically tortures her daughters in becoming stars so she can live vicariously through them — wanted us to love her. She kept winking (not literally) at the audience, as if to say, "You know I'm only doing this for their own good" and softening every rotten thing she could soften about Momma. To her credit, Patti LuPone does none of that. I am not discounting the possibility that the play's author, Arthur Laurents, who staged this production is largely responsible…but the point is that Momma Rose, as played by LuPone, is every bit the monster her makers intended her to be. Which is the only way the story really works.

She also succeeds in something that I always thought was the Catch-22 of Momma Rose: The role calls for a big, huge musical comedy star who can come out and belt out the best Broadway tunes and send shivers up our spines…but still convince us that she's a woman who could never have been a star herself. I never saw Ethel Merman play the role but she always seemed to me like perfect casting. Merman was a big, huge Broadway star who looked nothing like a big, huge Broadway star. One of several reasons the movie version never worked for me is that you look at Rosalind Russell and you see this tall, glamorous woman of accomplishment and breeding, and it's like Warren Beatty trying to play a guy who can't get laid. Ms. Russell just can't convince me she's an uneducated broad who's fighting her way out of poverty and failure, desperate for her first taste of success.

Patti LuPone obviously is a star with all the equipment to be a star…but she pulls off that sleight-of-hand. For 2 hours and 45 minutes of misdirection, she fulfills the demands of a star while making you believe she herself could never be one. Amazing.

So what's my quibble? You may think this is silly but even though we had great seats (fifth row, center aisle), I couldn't understand an awful lot of what she said.

Impressionists do Patti LuPone mumbling her way through numbers, slurring dialogue and being generally unintelligible. It's not true all the time but if I didn't know this show fairly well, I wouldn't have been able to make out about a fourth of what came out of her mouth. That's not fatal because not only do I know it, but I think most of the audience could recite much of the dialogue and all of the lyrics by heart…and I guess if you didn't know the material, there's still more than enough there to savor. But you'd also be frustrated because what you could comprehend seemed so perfect and you'd wonder what you were missing. It's a shame they can't have the whole stage closed-captioned or something.

As I said, that's a quibble. If you're thinking of going before it closes, don't let that stop you, even if you don't have the play memorized. And if you do miss it, don't worry. Another revival of Gypsy will be along before you know it. I'm guessing either Rosie O'Donnell, Liza Minnelli or everyone's favorite…Harvey Fierstein in drag. Hey, ya gotta get a gimmick.