Our pal TV reporter (and late night authority) Aaron Barnhart addresses the question of who's the current King of Late Night. His answer is my answer: No one.
I suspect there's very little chance, as Aaron speculates, of Letterman retiring soon. I also suspect that Craig Ferguson would only get a shot at the time slot if an awful lot of other folks turned it down or proved to be unavailable. But I also can't tell you who the front-runner would be.
There is broad support in this country for a public option in Health Care Reform. There is support from the public…even, according to some reports, from a majority of Republicans. There is support from doctors. There is support from hospitals. As Timothy Noah notes, the way some opponents of the public option have chosen to deal with being in minority on this issue is by simply lying and saying the opposite.
I wrote most of what I have to say about Soupy in this article but I want to underline a few points. One is the incredible rapport he had with his viewers. I can't think of a TV star today who had the ability to "connect" with folks at home the way Soupy did on the kids' show he had here in Los Angeles in '61. My friends and I didn't just want to watch him. We wanted to hang out with him and have him as a brother. Some of us even wanted to be him…even if everyone he met did smack him in the puss with a shaving cream pie. He was just the coolest, funniest guy we ever saw, and lines of his still come out of my mouth now and then.
Also impressive was that he built his little show out of practically nothing. The budget was pocket change and they blew it all on shaving cream, anyway. He had one co-star, a couple of puppets and (usually) no writers. Sometimes, for long stretches of his show, he had no script…just energy and sheer ingenuity. There have been TV shows that had a thousand times the money and were a thousandth as entertaining.
At conventions the last few years, Soupy was surrounded by guys my age. It was sad that he was in no shape to really be the old Soupy and respond to our praise and fawning in that spirit. But you could tell that he "got it" and knew how much he meant to so many. May he rest in peace and may there not be too many political cartoons showing St. Peter getting hit with a pie.
This recent article lamented the decline of delis in New Jersey. But as David Sax reminds us, the fine art of delicatessening is thriving in Los Angeles. If one ignores former New Yorkers who are too stubbornly biased to admit that it's possible to get good deli (or good pizza) more than twenty miles from the Empire State Building, you can find perfectly fine deli chow in L.A. (You also have to avoid any establishment with "Jerry's" in its name.)
Canter's is great…and Sax's article makes note of the superb pea soup you can get there on Wednesdays. If you make a lunch date for me on a Wednesday and it isn't one of those rare weeks when Souplantation has its Creamy Tomato Soup, we're going to Canter's. Nate 'n Al's is good, especially during the hours that Larry King is on CNN because then he isn't in the booth next to you, talking so loud that everyone around is forced to watch Larry King Live live.
Mel Brooks, as noted in the article, favors Factor's and Junior's. They're not my first choices but they're good places for when you're in the area. I've been dining at Junior's since I was a junior. My family ate at Junior's when it first opened in another building, two blocks away, in 1959. I do like their mini-latkes which in the article, Mr. Brooks describes thusly: "I don't know what they are but they're deep-fried and you got twenty minutes to live after you eat one. You might as well give it a name. You might as well call it Murray, because it'll be with you for days after you eat it."
Greenblatt's is fine. Art's is fine. The article doesn't mention it but there's a deli called Brent's out in Northridge that's surprisingly good. For sandwiches only, Label's Table over on Pico is great…and better than Factor's, a couple blocks away. I like Langer's down near MacArthur Park but differ with those who swear their pastrami is the best on the planet. Then again, I prefer corned beef to pastrami so maybe my opinion doesn't count for much. (I think the best corned beef sandwich in town is not, oddly enough, served at a deli. It's at Magee's in the Farmers Market at Fairfax and 3rd.)
Don't write me and tell me that New York delis rule, all others suck and I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I've eaten in New York delis, including the Stage, the Carnegie and Katz's. They're terrific places…but Canter's is just as good, plus it has the added advantage that you're not likely to run into Jackie Mason.
When I go to delis in Manhattan, I have the unfortunate tendency to run into Mr. Mason and once in the Carnegie, though he was several tables away, I had to suffer through an extended monologue about how it was a foregone conclusion that Bill and Hillary Clinton were heading for prison. There was so much evidence, in fact, that they were already secretly plea-bargaining for reduced sentences. Shortly after that, Hillary became the junior senator from New York, which I guess was part of the plea bargain. On that same trip, a "friend" took me to see Mason's then-current Broadway offering…and I put "friend" in quotes because real friends just don't do things like that to you. I once loved seeing Jackie Mason on stage but that night, his humor was about as sharp as his political reporting.
Mason is going to be in Los Angeles in January for a couple of live shows. I'm thinking of going to Nate 'n Al's during that week, just to see if he's there. It's not that I want to eat with him. What I want to do is to get a booth right between him and Larry King. I'll say, "Hey, guys! Tell me what kind of person Frank Sinatra was," and then I'll get the hell outta there, quick. Because an entire delicatessen will explode.
Greg Ehrbar, who knows absolutely everything about this kind of stuff, tells us about Jimmy Johnson, the unsung hero of Disneyland Records.
Two pundits who specialize in statistics and the analysis of them are engaging in a public wager over whether or not Sarah Palin will run for president in '12. One says she will, one says she won't. I dunno from the stats but my suspicion is that Ms. Palin will run for the presidency the way Pat Buchanan has run for the presidency — as a way of pocketing cash and promoting his name to advance his real, other career.
This runs four minutes. If you care one way or the other about equality for gays in this country, you oughta see it. And keep in mind how difficult it was for this gentleman to get up in front of a crowd and how much he must have cared about this issue to prompt him to do it…
Interview with John Cleese. That's all you have to know.
You've gotta love an article entitled, "Life is too short to be unhappy." So says Garrison Keillor and he's right.
My partner Sergio mailed me something today…and couldn't resist enhancing the stamp.
Fred Kaplan — whose writings are promoted more on this website than mine, and rightfully so — tells us all about John Kerry's diplomacy with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Regular readers of this site have learned…in some cases, the hard way. When we suggest you do something without delay and it's something you want to do, do it without delay. In that spirit, we are suggesting you hurry up and order your signed copy of Did You Grow Up With Me, Too?, the autobiography of June Foray.
June, seen above with the extremely improbable John Cleese, is the inarguable queen of cartoon voiceovers. You already know that, just as you know how much you've loved her as Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Tweety Bird owner Granny and so many more. She's had an amazing career and with a little help from Earl Kress and myself, she put it all down on paper. You're going to want a copy of this book and you'll feel like a foole (spelled with an "e" on the end, even) if you pass up this chance to get one that she has signed with her very own hand. She comes by my house every week or so to autograph more copies but at some point, she's going to stop doing this.
So don't come whining to me then. Don't write to me and go, "Uh, is there any way I can one signed by June?" You can get one signed by June right now by ordering at this website. If you miss this opportunity, you'll rue it 'til the day you croak.
Back in the forties, producer George Pal gave us a series of shorts featuring stop-motion animation under the umbrella title of Puppetoons. Here's one of my favorites, in part because it features the non-animated but equally unreal Duke Ellington…
If the Washington Post poll is to be believed, 56% of Americans support a law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, either getting it from work, buying it on their own, or through eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid. 41% opposes it…but even that number drops by a third when folks who are against it are told that low-income families will receive government subsidies that will help them to afford this insurance that they'd be required to purchase. That's a pretty solid majority of this country that's behind individual mandates.
In other news, Newt Gingrich makes what he calls a "straightforward promise;" that if any of this stuff passes, Republicans will make repealing Health Care Reform a major campaign issue in 2010 and 2012. I can't wait.