Monthly Archives: March 2010

Speaking of talented people I know…

You're probably sick of me telling you about Frank Ferrante, who miraculously turns himself into everyone's favorite comedian and stars in An Evening with Groucho at theaters around the country. He was in San Bernardino last Friday and in this post, I told all my fellow Angelenos that that was about as close to our city as he ever performed.

Well, I lied. He will be slightly closer to us the evening of Friday, May 7 when he performs at the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside, California. That's about a one hour drive from the heart of Los Angeles if there's no traffic. On a Friday late afternoon/early evening, there will be traffic so I don't know how long it'll take…but I think a band of my friends and I are going to go and find out. This is, I've heard, a wonderful old theater that has just undergone a full restoration to become a wonderful new old theater. What's more, Frank's performance will be preceded by a screening of Duck Soup.

Consider the courage of this man. We're going to sit there and watch the real Groucho in (arguably) his best movie and then this Ferrante upstart is going to come out after that and do his whole show, impersonating Groucho Marx, right after we've seen the genuine article. The nerve! The chutzpah! With plenty of chutz! Well, if anybody can go head-to-head with Rufus T. Firefly, it's Frank.

Details and tix can be obtained at this site. At the moment, the page there only says they're running Duck Soup and doesn't say anything about Frank performing after. This (I believe) is because for contractual reasons, Frank couldn't be advertised until after his San Bernardino engagement…so Riverside put up the announcement without him and someone hasn't gotten around yet to updating the page. If you'd like to make a dinner/show evening of it, there's an Old Spaghetti Factory about a half-mile away from the theater and I suspect that's where many of us will be converging beforehand to converse and eat old spaghetti. Then we'll go get a double dose of Groucho.

You have often seen me mention my friend Shelly Goldstein on this site. Shelly is a writer, lyricist, producer, performer…there's no end to what this lady can do. When she performs, it is often to sing wonderful songs, some of which are rock classics, others of which are her own (humorous) creations. She is very, very good and my big complaint about her act is that she doesn't do it often enough.

If you live around Southern California, take note: She's doing it Sunday, April 18 at 8:00 PM in the Cabaret room of the world famous Magic Castle, a private club in Hollywood. She calls this particular show, One Fine Day: The Groovy Girls of the 60's and in it, she warbles tunes made famous by the likes of Dusty Springfield, Laura Nyro, Mama Cass, Carole King and Petula Clark, as well as some Broadway faves of the period. I have seen her do this and it is remarkably entertaining.

But that's, as they say in infomercials, not all! If you attend her show, this will gain you admission for the evening to the hallowed Magic Castle. You can (and should) dine in its exquisite, recently-revamped dining room. You can wander about and see the rare exhibits and architecture. You can pop into the many showrooms and see great magicians perform. One that night will be Johnny Ace Palmer, who's about as fine a close-up magician as I've ever seen…and I've seen all the greats of my lifetime.

Info on how to attend is here. And make sure you learn about the Castle's dress code, and also read this page which contains other thing you need to know. Yeah, I know. Putting on a tie is a drag. But I always find it's worth it, and it certainly will be with Shelly there.

Boy, that seemed like a funny bit this morning as I was leaving the house…confusing Henry Miller and Arthur Miller. And so far, about twenty of you who've written figured out that I knew the difference. But since 144 of you (so far) have thought I actually made the mistake, I took another look at it and decided the majority was right and I phrased the joke wrong. Yes, I know the difference. Henry Miller is the guy who wrote Sweeney Todd and was married to Marilyn Monroe.

Frank Buxton writes to tell me something I hadn't realized; that Henry Miller's Theater in New York — the one about to be renamed for S. Sondheim — was not named for Henry Miller the playwright. Sez Frank, it was named for an obscure actor-producer from the early part of the last century. I guess that should have occurred to me since the place was built and named in 1918. Apparently, the guy who wrote Death of a Salesman has gotten a lot of props and recognition just because he had the same name.

Craig Ferguson apparently does not envision spending the rest of his life as a late-night host. I've been saying here for some time that he was not a slam-dunk to someday replace Letterman and this would seem to endorse that view.

I haven't written much here about the late night situation because I find late night TV doesn't interest me as much as it once did. That will change but maybe not before the folks doing it change or change their acts. Years ago, I wrote what a fan I was of both Leno and Letterman. Lately, their shows rest unwatched for long periods on my TiVo and when I do watch one, I often bail long before Guest #2. Both programs have gotten way too predictable for me and I find myself not liking them as much as I once did. I think they both came through the recent skirmish looking like small men.

Based on the ratings, I may not be the only one who broke the habit. I'd much rather watch Molly the Owl. Her act is a lot fresher.

The Henry Miller's Theatre (that's its name) on West 43rd Street in the Broadway district of New York will soon become The Stephen Sondheim Theatre. That's a great and fitting honor but why that one? Apart from one revue that lasted ten performances, no Sondheim show has ever played in that building. It didn't even house a single musical until 1998, some eighty years after it opened.

I may take this embed out if it slows down the loading of this page. This is a live (usually) streaming feed from UStream of Molly the Owl, a wild owl inhabiting a barn in San Marcos, California. My friend Carolyn chanced upon this on the 'net and we've both been fascinated. Molly laid six eggs and every so often, if you watch long enough, you may get to see one hatch. You may also get to see a male owl come by for a visit. At the very least, you might get a glimpse of the only baby hatched so far. More hatching is, they say, imminent.

There are actually two cameras that track Molly. The one below usually captures her daytime activities and you can also see its feed at this link. At night, she can more often be viewed on the camera at this link. Whichever site doesn't have her may be running recorded video of interesting past moments.

UStream feeds offer a lot of nonsense but there's also a lot of must-see TV there. They do require some patience because feeds don't always work or they sometimes take forever to load. You may see nothing from either webcam or you may luck onto a show that you'll be hard-pressed to turn away from. Often though, it's worth being patient with the tech drawbacks. Molly certainly is…

If you watch this morn's video link here — Kevin Pollak and Maurice LaMarche doing Dueling Shatners — you will see three people talking in the background behind them. The guy with his back to the camera is Billy West, voice star of Futurama and eight thousand other things. The couple he's chatting up consists of two of my best pals, writer Paul Dini and his beloved, magician-actress Misty Lee. Billy, Paul and Misty are all too talented to be performing unpaid extra work in Maurice's online videos.

Superstar statistician Nate Silver figured out why certain Democrats voted for Health Care Reform and certain ones didn't.

David Frum on what it all means for the Republican party. He thinks they've lost big; that they tried for all the marbles and ended up with none.

Frum is kind of an interesting voice in the Conservative movement because he talks about what it will take for the G.O.P. to win elections and pass its agenda…but is often found in opposition to the Hannity/Limbaugh crowd. He gets slammed a lot for that but he seems to have a better track record for accurate predictions than any of them, at least in electoral areas. He's less prescient regarding things like the economy and foreign relations.

In '08, I attended a panel discussion where he crossed a few swords with Hugh Hewitt, who was also on the dais. Hewitt went on at some length explaining how the Democrats were doomed if they nominated Barack Obama because there was no way he could win. Frum felt otherwise. Who was right? I suspect that once again, he's saying something that the talk radio crowd doesn't want to acknowledge…but he's right.

I'm taking time out from the deadline avalanche to watch a little of the Health Care debating and voting. Naturally, I'm pleased with the (at the moment) probable outcome but no, I don't find a lot of glee in watching the bill's opponents rant and scream and cry. I think it's very sad that in this country, disagreements at policy have ramped up to the point where they're never about what they're about. The other side, no matter what they're out to do, is always Hitler and/or the Anti-Christ and whatever they're proposing will doom mankind. That's bad for Democracy because, well, Democracy works best when there's a little realism about what we're debating. It's also much worse for whichever side loses a battle because they've psyched themselves up to believe that every loss is a victory for Satan and the Apocalypse.

One thing I do enjoy: I'm flipping between news channels and there's a nice unintentional commentary over on MSNBC. Their live coverage is displacing their usual Sunday lineup, which is a lot of documentaries about prisons and crime and mass murder, and the titles of those preempted shows keep popping up on my screen to tell me what show my TiVo thinks I'm watching. So there's Mitch McConnell explaining how this bill will make abortion mandatory (or whatever he's saying…I'm not even sure he knows) and on my screen, it says I'm watching Conviction: I Put Fear in Your Life. And then there's David Shuster talking with some Democratic Congressman and my screen tells me I'm watching Witness to Jonestown. And then there's John Boehner talking and the info bar says I'm watching The Mind of Manson. The final vote may come during a time slot that's supposed to be showing something called The Squeeze.

…but we are bobbing to the surface for one moment to remind you of the following. Up at UCLA, they have a lovely theater called the Freud Playhouse (which is supposed to be pronounced "frood" but even the folks who work there don't pronounce it that way) and it's currently housing a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum which is getting rave reviews. It's only there 'til March 28 so if you're gonna go, go.

Each time Reprise stages a show, its 2 PM Saturday matinees are preceded at Noon by a one-hour free lecture by a noted scholar on the history of the beloved musical in question. You don't even have to attend the show to sit in on the lecture. Heck, the noted scholar doesn't even have to be a noted scholar. Tomorrow and next Saturday, the speaker is me. Something for everyone indeed.

Mark is way behind on things that purport to pay him money. He is putting up the soup can to let you know that there won't be a lot of posts on this blog for the next few days, nor will he be responding to e-mails at his usual pace…which lately has been none too efficient anyway. He will return to you soon. See if you can find something else on the Internet to amuse you while he's busy. It's a big, world-wide web out there. There must be something.