Monthly Archives: May 2011

The Book of Mormon is a big Broadway smash that will, they say, be running there for years. I have been informed by Alan Burnett, Gordon Bressack and nine other folks that you can hear the cast album in its entirely over at this page of the NPR site. Apparently, putting this kind of thing online is in accord with Sharia Law.

One day last week, I had to drive by the Westfield Mall in Culver City so I stopped and had me a Five Guys burger. Very good. My other missions at that shopping center took me past the mall's recently-refurbished Food Court and I noticed that (a) they'd really improved the selection up there, (b) a couple of those places look darned good and (c) it didn't matter insofar as my own dining is concerned. If I'm eating there, I'm eating at the Five Guys downstairs. They're about to open a Lucille's Smokehouse Barbecue there too…and while I like those too, it won't matter either. Because if I'm dining at the Westfield Culver City Mall, I'm dining at the Five Guys. I know me.

I also know where I definitely won't be dining there: Sbarro. The Food Court was full of all these really nice little eateries but for some reason, the Italian stall was a Sbarro. In your whole life, have you ever heard anyone say, "Hey, you know where they have great food? Sbarro!"? One of the first rules of marketing is not to name your product something that's difficult to pronounce. I think Sbarro has gotten away with breaking that rule for a long time because they know no one is ever going to recommend their food to anyone…so it's okay if they can't say the name.

I used to wonder if "Sbarro" was Italian for "only option." They always seem like places that get business only because they're situated in a mall or airport where it's either that or something worse. In New York City, they have a lot of them where it's like, "I could eat at Sbarro's or I could walk two blocks to decent pizza…and I don't feel like walking the two blocks." The cuisine usually looks impressive enough and it's all ready to serve so it'll be fast. So I sometimes have to remind myself, "You've never liked the food at Sbarro."

Nobody I know ever has. This article about their recent bankruptcy filing makes that point. In fact, on my drive home from Culver City, I started mentally writing a long blog post about Sbarro and that article says most of the things I was going to write. So I'll just add that I suspect the company is trapped in a vicious circle: The worse their sales get, the more likely that the food on display in a Sbarro's steam table has been sitting there quite a while. And the more likely it is that the food's been sitting there quite a while, the worse it'll be for the hapless passer-by who does order the ziti and that will lead to their sales getting even worse.

And don't you just know that at this very minute, the Sbarro executives are in a meeting somewhere, discussing how to save their company and considering things like a new advertising campaign and how to stuff more cheese into the product?

That's a picture of can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup and you know what that means. It means Mark's so busy with work that he may not be posting much here for the next day or two. He may also be even worse than he usually is at responding to e-mails. This is fair warning to those of you who check in hourly here. Back soon.

Albert Brooks has a novel coming out this week so he's going to be everywhere, signing and plugging, signing and plugging. Here he is plugging in the L.A. Times.

An interview with "Trader" Joe Coulombe, the man who founded the Trader Joe's market chain. I have very mixed feelings about their stores. Every so often, I find something wonderful in one and think, "Oh, I want to always have some of this around." But when I go back to purchase more, they don't make it anymore. Whatever it is. It's like if I like it, they discontinue it.

Woody Allen does not think any of his films will be remembered or even that many of them are very good. So my question is: Does he really feel that way? Or is it something he says so folks will say, "He's so modest and unspoiled?" Or is it that plus he says it so people will assure him it's not so?

I think if I were around him when he said that, I'd say, "No, you're wrong, Woody. That's probably true of the others but Casino Royale will live forever."

Every day or three, someone writes to ask, "Hey, are you still feeding all those stray cats in your backyard?" Yep…all four of them. There's Max, Lydia, The Stranger Cat and Sylvia. Sylvia was formerly known as The Stranger Stranger Cat but now she's just Sylvia. At almost any hour of the day or night, I can go to my back porch and find one or more of them waiting to be fed, looking accusingly at me and demanding to know why they have not been fed sooner. When it's hot in L.A., as it has been lately, they also stare at me as if this is my fault, too. It probably is.

Max is the hungriest of the four and is now getting so plump that I'm thinking of getting him the Lap Band. Or maybe it isn't that he's always hungry as it is that something in his feral past has programmed him to live a life of constant food seeking. You can stuff him with Friskies Mixed Grill at 4:00 and by 4:20, he's back to pound on the glass with his paw and make sounds like he hasn't been fed since Johnny Carson retired. Sometimes, he hides around the corner and waits until I feed Lydia. Then he trots over, scares Lydia off and eats the food I put out for her.

Lydia is a nervous cat. She's the one I trapped and took in for a feline abortion and hysterectomy — or whatever it is they do to control the pet population. Somewhere out there, there's probably a Christian Vet who just teaches them abstinence education. Lydia was skittish before that, which is why it was so blamed difficult to trap her and haul her in, and she's just as skittish now. Of the four cats, she's the only one who does much climbing. She'll climb up to a little roof that sticks out from my garage to cover the pool heater and she'll sleep there because, I'm sure, it feels safer. Occasionally, I'll put her food up there for her since Max can't climb.

Sylvia is not afraid of other cats or animals…just humans. No matter how many times I feed her, she won't come near me…except that every few months, she briefly becomes so friendly that I have to check and make sure it isn't The Stranger Cat. (They look very much alike and are probably related.) She's the only one of the four cats who favors the dry cat food I put out along with the wet.

Max and The Stranger Cat both have too many dental problems to handle it…though when there's none of the moist handy, Max sometimes tries a little of the dry food and since he can't chew it, winds up regurgitating it in large chunks. Lydia will eat dry food even though it's not her first choice — but with Max around, it's often her only choice.

And finally, there's The Stranger Cat, seen in the photo above. He's very old, way past the typical life span of a feral feline…at least doubling that expectancy. He's also very sweet and very friendly and largely deaf and lately he's been having trouble walking.

Unless the gardener or pool guy is out there, The Stranger Cat rarely leaves my yard since that would involve either a small amount of climbing or venturing over to the crack in the fence. That crack is situated in the portion of the yard that seems to belong to Max…ironic since he can just barely squeeze through it and only if he sucks in his tummy. Max rarely goes into The Stranger Cat's area and vice-versa. The porch where the food is placed is, of course, neutral territory. Max will not deny food to The Stranger Cat but does insist on eating first.

A Wednesday or two ago, one of my gardener's assistants was using the hose in my yard. I'd told them not to do that but he was new…and when I saw him hosing down around the pool, I leaned out the door and told him that wasn't necessary. It didn't need it out there and I didn't want him to disrupt The Stranger Cat, who was napping. The assistant said, "I just do a little more" and kept on watering. I told him to stop. He said, "Okay, I stop as soon as I finish this part." I told him to stop right now — and he didn't stop and thoughtlessly sprayed The Stranger Cat, sending the poor ol' guy fleeing. I yelled at the gardener to get out of my yard that second and never come back. Spraying the cat was bad enough but that was a clumsy mistake due to inattention. Not listening to the owner of the house was just plain insubordination.

I was in my robe when this happened so I quickly got dressed, went out and found the main gardener, the guy I pay. His assistant had already told him what had happened and had been told in Spanish, "If you did that, getting one of my best customers angry, I'll have to let you go." The assistant came up to me and in tears, begged for a second chance. Given what they charge for their services, I'm guessing those helpers get less than ten bucks an hour — probably more like five — and they work pretty hard for it.

Anyway, the sight of a grown man sobbing because he stood to lose that kind of job rattled me. I forgave and even apologized for yelling at him. The main gardener said that he wouldn't fire him but just to make sure, one of his other assistants would henceforth be doing whatever had to be done in my backyard.

By the time I got back into my house, The Stranger Cat was back in one of his favorite napping places — an old lounge chair, completely encrusted in cat hair. He was relatively dry and totally serene. And since he seemed to have put the incident behind himself, I decided I should, as well. I think that may be why he's still around at his age. He doesn't hold grudges.

In 1971, the boys of Monty Python were persuaded to make two TV specials for German TV. Why did they do such a thing? And what happened there? Our pal Greg Ehrbar tells me about a BBC Radio feature on this odd venture…and you can listen to it here.

Here we have another one of those online tests that determines whether you're a Liberal or a Conservative or whatever you are. Whenever I take one of these tests, I find myself thinking that most of the answers I have to pick from do not reflect my viewpoint. But I pick and the end result lumps me in with (probably) the proper group but without the allowance that I may not be that on every issue. Still, they're fun to take.

A couple of folks have written to say they want to order the Mickey Mouse book I just plugged but they want to wait until later in the year when Volume Two is released and both will be sold as a boxed set. That's not a bad idea. Here's an Amazon link that will allow you to do this.

See that book up there? That's Volume One of the new reprinting of the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip by Floyd Gottfredson and a few other people. The folks at Fantagraphics Books, its publisher, were nice enough to send me an advance copy…and they were shrewd. Because they knew there was no way I could get one and not rush here to give it my highest possible rave and recommendation.

This is, first of all, superb material. If you've seen it elsewhere — some of this has been reprinted before but not like this — you know. If you haven't and you hear the name of M. Mouse and think of lightweight committee-produced froth — or if you knew this strip based on its last few decades of gag-a-day funnies — you don't know and need to. Way back when, it had a continuity and some darn good stories, illustrated with dynamic and expressive art. It was everything you could have wanted a newspaper strip to be, including being quite funny at times…and even suspenseful.

The book itself is perfect and by that I mean I can't think of a single way it could have been improved. The reproduction is sharp. The editorial material fills you in nicely about the history of the strip, plus there are articles that discuss its merits and significance. The volume itself is handsome and will look good on your shelf.

But it really was a great strip, way back when. In the eighties when Disney was first getting into TV animation, I was involved in a meeting to discuss which of their classic characters might make the leap to that marketplace. I suggested that they oughta do a show with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge adapting or writing new episodes in the vein of the classic tales by Carl Barks. As it turned out, I was about the three hundredth person to suggest that. Custodians before me had proposed such a show and sure enough, a year or two later they did Duck Tales. But I may have been the first person to tell a Disney exec there — a man who had never heard the name, "Floyd Gottfredson" — that they oughta consider putting Mickey and Goofy into an adventure format based on the first decade or two of the newspaper strip. I also suggested taking a look at the Mickey Mouse serials that ran in the back of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, the ones drawn mainly by Paul Murry.

Everyone was enthused at the idea and for a few weeks there, it looked like it was going to happen. But then it fell apart and when I asked wha' happened?, I was told that there were simply too many people involved in any decision involving The Mouse. He was such a symbol of the company (and I guess, of Walt) that everybody in the Disney payroll had strident opinions about how Mickey should be depicted…and I don't mean just the folks in the entertainment division. Involved in every Mickey discussion were the merchandising divisions, the theme park operations, the folks who ran the Disney Stores, at least five of the Seven Dwarfs, the robot of Abe Lincoln at the park, past employees who'd been dead less than 25 years, etc. The people I was talking to had soured on the whole idea because of that. They'd realized how complicated it was going to be to do anything with Mickey…and I sure couldn't disagree.

Looking at the early newspaper strips, I sense a vital reason they were so good. Mickey wasn't the corporate icon he is today. I mean, there was lot of commerce centered on him but the folks there didn't play power games and office politics about who'd get to handle the firm's most valuable asset or worry that much about bespoiling his image. The comic strip guys (mainly Floyd) could just do the strip and if there was any disagreement over what was "right" for Mickey, someone could ask Walt and he'd rule and that would be the end of it. The heads of eighty-four different divisions did not get a vote.

I think that shows in the product. If you'd like to pre-order a copy of this splendid book and see how much fun Mickey can be, here's an Amazon link.

So after finally realizing that the country ain't with them on this idea of revamping Medicare, Republicans in Congress are now saying they won't be pushing for that. Trouble is that without that, the Paul Ryan plan (which they all voted for or support) isn't worth very much.

I don't get this. I mean, they do polling and they're supposed to have a reasonable idea of what will and won't fly with the electorate. You and I have long known that a plan which pays a lot less towards Medicare isn't going to fly with most of this country, especially if at the same time you're cutting the taxes of the Koch Brothers. How come the leaders of the G.O.P. didn't know this? Didn't anyone tell them they don't control the Senate and the White House? And that even if they did, passing this would be a good way to lose both?