Monthly Archives: May 2011

So we're all hearing that the Rapture is imminent and the world is coming to an end tomorrow. Every time I hear about this, my mind goes back to an old joke Jackie Vernon used to tell about a man named Wilbur Fradblatt…

He was a poet, a prophet, a philosopher. He prophesied that on May 1, 1951, the world would come to an end. And for him, it did. Because on that very day while eating a piece of cherry pie at the Automat restaurant in New York City, the little glass door snapped down, broke his neck. He didn't know you're supposed to take the food out.

I suppose that joke loses much of its effectiveness on folks who don't know what an Automat restaurant was…

Several of you have sent me to this website for their taste test comparison of burgers at In-N-Out, Five Guys and a new chain in New York I've yet to sample called Shake Shack. It's not exactly a fair contest since they sampled hamburgers that were many hours old and reheated…and I also think that if you're deciding which place to go, you're going to take fries into account. I happen to like Five Guys burgers better than In-N-Out but where Five Guys really takes the lead is with their french fries.

Last night, I dined with Publicist-to-the-Stars Jeff Abraham at the new Five Guys in Culver City, my second visit there. I thought it was great both times, though not quite up to the quality of my first Five Guys, which was in Arlington, Virginia.

I should point out, in case anyone gives a damn about my opinion of hamburgers, that I'm a minimalist. If I go to a place that loads its burgers with cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, chili, avocado, jalapeno peppers, onions and ketchup, I have them leave off the cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, chili, avocado, jalapeno peppers and some of the onion. My idea of a hamburger is meat, bun, ketchup and a small amount of onion, either raw or grilled. (I almost always remove two-thirds of the onion they put on.) Those of you who like your burgers loaded with stuff are playing an entirely different game than I'm playing and my views may not apply.

My cleaning lady told me we were all out of Lysol. I said I'd pick some up and I forgot when I was at the market the other day. So I stopped this morning at the closest place to get some, which was a nearby Kmart.

In the parking lot, which also serves a CVS Pharmacy, a Whole Foods and a few other businesses, I ran into a lady I knew who used to have a high position at the NBC Network. We made small talk which got smaller when I mentioned I was on my way into the Kmart. She looked at me like I'd just said I was about to go down to Skid Row and bunk with the homeless people. "Why would you ever go into a Kmart?" she asked…and "To buy Lysol" turned out to not be much of an answer.

"It's just…" and here she was having trouble finding the words to express why that was wrong. The point was so obvious to her that it went without saying. Finally, she said, "Kmart is for the kind of people who'd shop at Kmart."

Well, hard to argue with that. I said, "I need some Lysol. They sell Lysol. What's wrong with going there to buy it?"

She pointed to the other end of the mall and said, "They probably have Lysol at the CVS store."

I said, "Yes…and it's the exact same Lysol and it's probably not any cheaper down there, plus the Kmart is closer."

When I noted it was the same Lysol, I suddenly reminded myself of something. Ten or fifteen years ago, I had to buy a small household appliance. I checked out Consumer Reports and they recommended a certain brand and a certain model. Let's say it was the Acme 74W. The next day, I was passing that Kmart and I ducked in to see if they had it. They didn't but they had the Acme 74X. I thought, "Well, how different could that be?" and I bought it.

Which turned out to be a mistake. It was a terrible product. I phoned up the Customer Service folks at the Acme Company (not the same one that makes Road Runner traps) and asked if I'd gotten a defective item or I didn't understand how to use it or what. I got an uncommonly honest person on the phone who told me basically that I'd purchased their crappy version. The 74W was a fine product. The 74X was a piece of junk.

"You should have looked at the price," she said. "The 74W is $65. Places like Kmart can't or don't want to sell it to their clientele so we designed the 74X for them. You probably paid about thirty bucks for it."

I looked at my Kmart receipt which I'd pulled out for possible returning purposes. "I paid $29.98," I told her. She said, "Well, there you are. I mean, it's a good thirty dollar appliance but it's like paying less than half of what you have to spend to buy a decent meal. Some people can't afford anything better. That's why they have the Value Menu at McDonald's."

I took her point. The $30 appliance went back to Kmart for a refund and I found the 74W online for $50 and ordered it. It worked fine.

If I'd been the Acme Company — which actually has a famous name, one you'd probably know — I don't think I'd be putting my brand on cheapo merchandise. I might service that marketplace with products under another trademark but I don't think I'd devalue my reputation by applying it to intentionally low-grade products. But that's another matter. Standing there in the parking lot, talking with the lady who used to work at NBC, I thought, She's right in a way. She's just not right about this particular example. They don't make a cheaper grade of Lysol.

At least, I don't think they do. The bottle I ended up buying said on it, "Kills All Germs!" not "Kills Some Germs and Not Others!"

She didn't want to shop at Kmart because of some sort of snobbishness. I don't mind shopping there but I've learned to be cautious of the mindset that the cheapest alternative is always the one you should buy, which is sometimes the dynamic you get in a place like Kmart.

But not always. Not long ago in a men's store, I found a kind of pajama that I really like. A pair was $40 and I'd been meaning to go back there and buy a couple more next time I'm in that area. Now I don't have to. While carrying my other purchase out of Kmart, I passed through their men's clothing section and found the same pajamas — and I mean exactly the same — for $19.95.

I just told this story on the phone to a friend of mine who remarked, "Great…but what if it turns out the $19.95 pajamas are so cheap because the people who make them in some primitive country have a deadly disease and it's transmitted through the material?" I thought for a second and replied, "Well, I guess that's what the Lysol is for…"

This strikes me as odd. A high school in Danville, Illinois is renaming its auditorium in honor of Danville native Dick Van Dyke. Okay, great. But they're hoping Dick can make it there for the dedication ceremony which for some reason will take two days — May 27 and May 28.

Mr. Van Dyke has been very busy lately with his book tour which ain't over and includes that appearance we mentioned for the Writers Bloc group in Beverly Hills on May 31. Renaming an auditorium is not a vital, time-sensitive activity. You'd think they'd say, "Dear Mr. Van Dyke…We will hold the ceremony whenever it is convenient for you to get here."

Anyway, thanks to Bruce Reznick for the link. And by the way, the May 31 event — where Carl Reiner will interview Dick Van Dyke and Dick will sign his book — is sold out. If you're a local friend of mine and you still want to go, drop me a note. I may know someone with a couple of extra tickets.

From a few years back: Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart. I wonder if today Stewart would still insist that he and The Daily Show do not take up causes.

Newt Gingrich is saying that Democrats will be lying if they quote anything he said last Sunday on Meet the Press. Apparently, Newt got all confused and said the exact opposite of what he really believes.

In other news, Ben Stein thinks IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn might be innocent of rape because, hey, when has an economist ever done something like that?

This has been today's edition of You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

Today on Stu's Show, your genial host Stu Shostak welcomes your genial host Monty Hall for two hours of chat, mostly about Monty's work in game shows like Video Village, Split Second, Keep Talking and (of course) Let's Make a Deal. To make his guest feel right at home, Stu will conduct the entire interview dressed as a giant lobster.

Monty Hall endures a lot of jokes like that…and he should. It's kind of the trade-off for all the money he made hosting (and owning) one of the most successful programs in television history. I'm not sure everyone understands how successful that show was. The folks running NBC then didn't, back when it was the cornerstone of their daytime lineup. It went on the air there in 1963…and legend has it that almost no one at the network thought it had much chance to succeed. But succeed it did in a big way. So did NBC then appreciate it? Nope. Legend also has it they resented it, dismissed it as an anomaly for five years and then in '68 when it came time for contract renewal, tried to lowball Monty Hall, TV's Big Dealer, with piddling offers. Incensed, Mr. Hall took his three doors and his trading floor over to ABC and probably derived great satisfaction as not just his ratings but all of ABC's daytime numbers surged and the NBC schedule got zonked. Let's Make a Deal also performed enormously well when either network would occasionally slot it for a while in prime time.

I never cared for Let's Make a Deal. It was too repetitive for me and it hovered too close to the old Truth or Consequences concept of entertainment, which was to make the contestants look like damn idiots. But I respected its popularity and the skill with which it was done. It's been revived many times since with many hosts but only Monty and that original crew of it were ever able to make it really work. I hope Stu asks him why he thinks that magic has been so difficult to recapture.

And I really did like Monty's other game shows — some he hosted, some he owned. Video Village, which he took over (reportedly without ever having seen the show before) was a great program. So was Split Second, which his company produced after Deal went over to ABC. Before Let's Make a Deal, his outfit also produced a largely-forgotten program called Your First Impression that was quite intriguing and which inspired a lot of other game shows that dealt in free association. I trust they'll talk about them too on Stu's Show.

You can hear Stu's Show by clicking your computer over to Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is from 4 PM to 6 PM on the West Coast, 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast and other times in other zones. That's right…they do it live and while you can tune in all week for replays, you'll enjoy it more if you listen when Monty is actually in the luxurious Shokus Broadcasting Complex out in Chatsworth, California. Give a listen…and remember that you should never hold onto whatever is on the tray that Jay's bringing down the aisle. Seven times out of ten, it's Rice-a-Roni.

I keep getting e-mails asking what I think of the new Looney Tunes show on Cartoon Network. I think I haven't seen it…which you'd assume would be a perfectly valid reason for not having an opinion about it. It is but that didn't stop a lot of websites and animation fans from condemning it before they'd seen ten seconds of finished program…or even after they'd seen only about that much. I do now see a number of reviewers expressing delighted surprise and a couple even saying, "Gee, I was looking forward to trashing this thing but I kinda like it." Good for them. I hope I like it too when I get around to watching a couple.

And now I'm getting lotsa e-mails from people asking me what I think of news that Seth MacFarlane has been engaged to spearhead some kind of reboot of The Flintstones. Well, Seth MacFarlane is a funny, successful guy and that alone is encouraging. Over the years, a lot of wonderful properties have been entrusted to folks who were neither funny nor successful…and in this case, "successful" may be the more important of those two factors.

I think what's gone awry with a lot of company-owned franchises is too much company-thinking. There's usually a reluctance to let anyone get too much control of a company property. Everyone I encounter within the relevant divisions of Time-Warner seems to want to be the person in charge of Bugs Bunny and doesn't want anyone else to be. Ergo, no one is in charge of Bugs Bunny and I think it shows.

What they need over there is a super-genius who's appointed to supervise, at least in a creative sense, what's right and wrong for the property…someone who can, for example, select one voice artist to speak for Bugs in all venues, all appearances. By my count, ten different people have been the voice of Bugs Bunny on major projects since Mel Blanc passed…and every time a new need comes along, someone there wants to hold open auditions and make all the guys who've done Bugs in the past come in and audition again so he can pick. And while he's choosing the voice of Bugs for a new videogame, someone down the hall from him is auditioning to find the voice of Bugs for a new series of TV cartoons.

That to me is an example of what's wrong with the handling of many classic characters. No one is empowered to make a decision of any lasting value. If they can't all get on the same page as to what Bugs sounds like, how can they agree on what's an appropriate joke for that voice to utter? Or an appropriate new direction for the character's design or storylines?

So they need to have one person in charge and then they need to pick the right person. Handing Seth MacFarlane The Flintstones probably means they're going to do the first. He has the track record and he's very rich so I doubt he's signing onto a situation where he won't have the necessary power to impose a coherent, firm vision on Fred, Barney, Wilma and the rest. I'm also guessing he has some guarantees of proper budgets and ample opportunity to take his vision into the marketplace.

Is he the right person? I dunno. We'll have to wait and see what he does. There are probably other people around who could bring forth a great Flintstones show or movie if they had enough control…but you'd have to have the clout and track record of a Seth MacFarlane to get enough control. I'm eager to see how he puts that control to use.