There's apparently a fierce ongoing debate in elite circles as to who it was who first decided to put character heads on Pez dispensers. A likely candidate is the gent who recently passed away…Curtis Allina, who was the vice-president in charge of United States operations for the firm for nearly three decades. Whoever's notion it was, it was a brilliant idea.
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Whatever Happens in Vegas…
It's kind of interesting what's going on with Las Vegas. The fragile economy has sent grosses plunging and the casinos are coping with it by galloping off in all directions. Most are dropping prices on rooms to the point where you can pick up some incredible bargains, especially if you go mid-week…but they're still building new hotels with higher prices. The base prices of show tickets have never been less affordable but there are more and more "half-price" ticket booths around. Cirque du Soleil has recently begun offering deep discounts and they're like half the shows in the city. Low-minimum games are disappearing and it's costing more and more to eat in that town…but if you hunt a bit and stay out of the megaresorts, you can easily find affordable slots and grub. My last trip there, my friend Tom Galloway and I had darn good steak dinners for seven bucks each.
Due to low occupancy, some hotels are literally closing down floors or whole towers. The Mirage, which is a pretty big and usually-successful place, has closed down more than a dozen floors due to low occupancy. The Sahara and I think the Riviera have closed some of their floors, as well. Binion's has shut down all their hotel rooms and is just operating the casino part of its operation. But at the same time, Planet Hollywood just opened a new 1,200 room tower while the Hard Rock, Golden Nugget and Caesars have all added new towers and a brand-new hotel/condo complex called City Center is opening incrementally. It will soon have added nearly 6,000 rooms to the game. Other expansions and new casinos are still planned. This is at a time when airlines that fly in and out of Vegas are cutting back on the number of flights.
Several other major condo projects are under construction but quite a few have been aborted. They announced, sold some rooms, perhaps started building…and then plans collapsed, leaving buyers scrambling to reclaim their deposits. That whole market is in chaos. At one point, I somehow got on the mailing list for a new condominium complex a mile or so off The Strip and they were sending me messages, urging me to purchase a one-bedroom condo for $350,000. The same folks are now trying to get me to buy the same condo for $125,000. Less than half. That's gotta make the people who did buy at the old price feel grand.
So I don't know what's going on there and you kinda get the feeling that the companies building (or not building) all these projects don't know, either. There's a casino term for a gambler who's mindlessly throwing out — and therefore, generally losing — money in the desperate hope of getting some outlier of a lucky break. They call that "streaming" and that seems to be what's going on with the financiers in Vegas these days. They're streaming.
If you aren't insistent on staying in the newest hotel to open, you can get some decent bargains there these days. Low-to-mid-range hotels will sell you a room for $25-50 a night if the night isn't Friday or Saturday. Some of the nicer places will take you in for $75-100. You just have to shop around a bit on the Internet…and here's a little tip if you think you might want to take a trip there soon…
Get yourself a special "junk mail" e-mail address at some place like GMail or Hotmail — an address you'll use only for this. Then take twenty minutes and go to the websites of all the major hotels (this page will get you to them) and sign up for every promotional e-mail list you see. Most of 'em have such a list and when they get desperate to fill rooms, that's the first place they offer the deals they maybe don't want to advertise too blatantly. I'm on some and I've received some amazing bargains, including package deals that basically give you back your entire low room fees in promotional coupons.
It's been so long since I was much of a gambler there that I don't think these offers are to get me there in the hope that I'll be wagering serious bucks. I think they're now anxious to get anyone there. It might as well be you.
My Latest Non-Assignment
I have no idea why the "coming attractions" section of the Marvel Comics website has John Byrne and me listed as the letterers of an upcoming Hercules series. I haven't lettered a comic book in twenty years, it's probably been longer than that for John…and, well, there's gotta be an explanation for this. If you run a comic book shop and you get stuck with any unsold copies of this book, tell them that you only ordered it because you saw that John and I had lettered it and then demand that they accept returns.
Today's Video Link
I've always liked Paul Shaffer. Matter of fact, one of the things I miss about the Letterman show is when they used to let Paul be funny for more than one quick interjection every other night or so. Whoever thought of him to be Dave's sidekick and bandleader had a darn good idea, if only because of the clever play-ons he invents for guests. It's also kinda nice watching this guy, who literally wallows in show biz schmaltz and history, become a pillar of it. He's worked with everyone in music and it shows.
That said, I was a bit disappointed in his recent autobiography, We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives. It reminded in a semi-distant way of Ed McMahon's autobiography and his other books, all of which were rendered shallow by Ed's stubborn insistence that everyone he'd ever met in show business was the greatest, most talented human being alive — except, of course, for Johnny Carson and Frank Sinatra, who were much, much better than that. The difference is that with Paul Shaffer, you kinda get the idea that the guy really feels that way about everyone.
Ed's books also read like he had a dread fear of saying anything — anything! — that might by the wildest stretch of the imagination not delight his employer, Mr. Carson. You wouldn't expect him to trash the guy but it's almost as if Ed (or the person who ghosted his books for him) said, "Okay…Johnny told that story on the air once so it's okay to include it in the book." It was disconcerting that Ed McMahon, who worked side-by-side with Johnny Carson for 35 years, didn't have any anecdotes about the guy that we didn't already know from watching The Tonight Show.
Paul Shaffer doesn't have much to tell you about David Letterman that you couldn't pick up as a steady viewer. The best parts of the book are about Paul's early days working in Canada with folks like Gilda Radner, and being around for the formative years of Saturday Night Live. And you might well enjoy the sheer excitement he radiates as a guy who worships various superstars of music and comedy gets to meet and work with most of his heroes. Here's an Amazon link if you'd like to order a copy.
You can also learn a lot (and a lot more) about Mr. Shaffer if you feel like watching the three-and-a-half hour interview he did for the Archive of American Television. It's online and in the parts I've sampled, he's a bit more candid…though he still loves just about everyone he's ever met in show biz. And I still believe he's almost sincere. Here's a brief clip that was taped at the same time of him ad-libbing a little musical commercial for his book…
Recommended Reading
Esther Schor tells us the story of how Esperanto was invented. It sounds like an interesting idea on paper but in my 57.9 years on this planet, I don't think I've ever heard a single word uttered in Esperanto. The only person I ever met who I knew had studied it was Forrest J Ackerman and when I asked him who he could converse with in that language, he said, "Well, every so often I attend a conference of people who are trying to promote Esperanto and we speak a little of it there."
Zonk!
I never particularly liked the original half-hour Let's Make a Deal with Monty Hall. Too thin in "game," too condescending to its contestants and audience. Wayne Brady, who I usually find funny and entertaining, is hosting a new hour-long version and I figured I'd give it a couple tries. Maybe, I thought, they've put some meat on the format…and at least the host will be worth watching, right? Well, no.
I don't much like the Wayne Brady version and I sure get the feeling that Wayne isn't too wild about it, either. I've never met the man and have heard no buzz about his off-screen attitude. But on-screen, he sure looks like when he finishes each episode, he tells the producer, "Okay, I did another one. Gimme my check and let me outta here." Maybe the first version worked because Monty never seemed like he could do anything else…or maybe it was because he owned the show. Either way, it seemed to matter to him. He connected with the traders and also with his announcer and prize model.
The game itself is pretty much the same as it ever was. They've jazzed it up a bit with elements not unlike The Price is Right, which strikes me as exactly the wrong way to go. Price is Right follows Deal on most stations, making for a two-hour block of a format that's already gotten so stale you could fry it in butter and sell it as a giant crouton. But the odd thing about the new Deal is that they seem to have forgotten that the star of that show was always the money and big prizes. The new one has tepid prizes and a lot of zonks. At the end, they still have The Big Deal behind which is (allegedly) the most dazzling thing-someone-might-win of the day…but the prizes aren't all that grand; not in an era where giveaway shows give away millions. And instead of two players picking from the three doors, which was how it worked in the Monty days, only one gets to select. That means there's a 66.6% chance each day that the show ends on a losing note and a thud.
It's better than the last revival of Let's Make a Deal, which was a prime-time mess, and CBS is said to be satisfied with its ratings. They're down somewhat from the soap opera programming that used to inhabit that hour, but the costs are a lot lower…and that's the way that game is played these days. It's just a shame to see Wayne Brady waste his talents…and also to see that the first time in many, many years that a network decided to schedule a new game show, all they could come up with was a new low money version of an old big money program.
Pussycat Placements
Hey, do you (a) live in Los Angeles and (b) want a cat? Lately, I've had a couple of friends — all of them actors, for some reason — ask me if I know anyone who'd like to give a good home to a good cat. In each case, someone in the household is allergic and they need to put a beautiful feline up for adoption. If you're interested in finding out more, drop me a line.
Today's Video Link
If I'd been in New York the beginning of December, I would have absolutely gone to the Gypsy of the Year show, an annual event staged on behalf of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. All year long, BC/EFA holds wonderful events to raise cash for its most worthy cause but the best one is probably the Gypsy show, which runs only two performances — matinees on days when no regular shows have matinees. The timing is because that's when a regular Broadway theater is available to them and also because most of the performers and much of the audience is working in shows those evenings.
More or less all the Broadway shows (and a few off-Broadway) contribute something — a sketch, a musical number, a performance of some sort. Some shows parody others. Some parody themselves. Many of the dance productions are particularly amazing…Broadway dancers showing off for each other but in a good way. Many celebrities attend but the "stars" are the gypsies — the dancers and chorus folks who usually don't get enough of the spotlight.
I was sorry I missed this year's. Here's a quick peek at some of what I didn't get to see. My friend Christine Pedi is in there performing and I'm sure she was only one of many treasures…
Ten Year Plan
This news story is headlined "Identical Fla. twins born in 2 separate decades." A woman gave birth to one of her sons shortly before Midnight on New Year's Year and to the second shortly after Midnight. Ergo, they say, two separate decades.
So have we given up the idea that a decade begins on the first day of a year ending in "1" and ends on the last day of a year ending in a zero? That's what I always thought, based on the simple fact that "decade" denotes ten years. So the first decade ever was years 1-10, the second was 11-20, the third was 21-30 and so on. By those rules, the current decade ends at the end of this year…but no one seems to follow this distinction.
This is not a point I care a lot about. But it seems to me like one of those things that so many people have gotten wrong that it's been redefined to suit the masses. I get the feeling the parameters for a decade have changed and I wasn't notified.
Recommended Viewing
This morning, there are only about ninety thousand "top ten of 2009" lists to which I could link you. Here's one: Talking Points Memo selects ten great bits of political comedy, mostly from The Daily Show. If you didn't see #1, which is Jon Stewart's impression of Glenn Beck, make sure you watch at least that one.
Onward and Upward
This is the time o' year when everyone says things like, "Good riddance to the old year…here's hoping that the new year will be a lot better." It's always nice to think things will get better and I always think they will. It's just a matter of how long that's going to take.
At least around here, 2009 wasn't so horrible that I'm unduly thrilled to be rid of it. The worst parts of it for me were in the pain and problems (and occasional deaths) of friends, mainly due to financial distress. Some who write me in opposition to Health Care Reform do not seem to get that I'm militant on this issue not because I have some deep-seated yearning to turn this country into Sweden but because I believe that people I know, some of whom have been eulogized on this site, have died for want of affordable health care. Others have either gone into serious debt or emptied their bank accounts. I don't want to get into the argument over whether reasonably-priced insurance is a privilege or a right. I just think people shouldn't lose their lives or homes because of hospital bills.
Other friends are simply suffering from the bad economy. I don't know what to tell them except to offer some heartfelt optimism and remind them they're not alone. Others have their problem…and others are around to help in whatever way they can. This past year, I've also witnessed some heartwarming acts of generosity and compassion. And one of those can balance out a dozen acts of craven selfishness. I hope they become less necessary in 2010…but that they're still around for those who need them.