Well, this is interesting. The rape case against French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn is collapsing, in large part (assuming stories like this are true) because the victim has severe credibility problems. From the outset, it looked the lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn were going to argue that and it's looking like they found what they were hoping to find.
So the question is becoming: Will Strauss-Kahn walk (or get a light punishment) because he really and truly did not rape the lady in question? Or will he walk (or get a light punishment) because no court will or would believe enough of what she says to find the accused guilty? All I know is that whatever happens, what Ben Stein wrote right after the incident is still really, really stupid.
There are certain Broadway shows that weren't exactly hits but they had too much going for them to be written off as flops. More to the point, people who love their better aspects keep feeling that the show can be "fixed" to bring the weak elements (usually, the book) up to the level of the good elements (usually, the songs). A few of Mr. Sondheim's faster closures — especially Merrily We Roll Along — particularly entice those who think they'll find the magic alteration or interpretation that will unflaw a flawed masterpiece. And I don't know how many times I've heard that someone is reshaping or wants to reshape Mack and Mabel or Minnie's Boys or They're Playing Our Song or several others.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever opened in New York on October 17, 1965 for the first of 280 performances there. That's not a terrible number but there seems to be a consensus that audiences weren't wild about it and that it only lasted as long as it did because of a big advance sale…and the big advance sale was because its book and lyrics were by Alan Jay Lerner. Lerner's two previous shows were Camelot and My Fair Lady and in between them, he'd done the movie, Gigi. So a lot of folks raced to grab tickets for his next musical before it even opened. Once it did, mixed reviews and word of mouth slowed down the stampede to the box office.
It did manage a movie sale, plus you have that wonderful title song that people love a lot…so it's remembered and it gets revived often…and revised officially and unofficially. The feeling seems to be that the songs are great but the book is lacking. Lerner himself presided over several different stage versions, plus he changed things around a lot for the 1970 film. In 1980, his last (I assume) version of the script ran a few weeks down at the Music Center in Los Angeles with an eye towards going to New York if it clicked. It didn't. It had Robert Goulet and Joanna Gleason and they were very good and the songs were very good…but the story just seemed to not excite anyone, at least the night I saw it. Yet another new version is reportedly heading for Broadway later this year with substantial revisions to the book, this time not by Mr. Lerner, who died in '86. Let's hope it works this time.
The following is a 14 minute sampler from the original production with Barbara Harris and John Cullum. The man doing the introducing is Cyril Ritchard, who's probably best known for playing Cap'n Hook to Mary Martin's You-Know-Who. This is from an episode of the Bell Telephone Hour TV show broadcast February 27, 1966. That would have been around the time the advance Broadway sale was petering out and the show was starting to have a lot of empty seats so I offer the following theory…
Lerner's previous show, Camelot, received very mixed (and a few hostile) reviews when it opened but it too coasted along on an advance sale. Writing My Fair Lady can buy you an awful lot of good will for a time. During the first few months, a lot of folks reportedly walked out on Camelot or didn't even use the tickets they'd purchased…but those who went and stayed saw an increasingly improving production. Most shows don't change much after they open. If it's a hit, no one wants to tamper. If it's not, it usually closes before major renovations can be done. Because of the advance though, Camelot had the rare opportunity to stay open while it was reworked.
Then came what Lerner later called "The Miracle of Camelot." He and his then-collaborator Frederick Loewe were to be honored with an entire hour of The Ed Sullivan Show devoted to their work. At the time, it was not customary to show much of a current Broadway production on TV for fear that people would think, "Well, I've seen the best moments…no need to buy a ticket." With the box office staff at Camelot getting awfully lonely, Lerner and Loewe decided they had nothing to lose so they offered Ed a large chunk of Camelot, as performed by Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and the aforementioned Mr. Goulet. The next day, the box office employees weren't the least bit lonely and those who saw the improved version spread the word that the show was pretty darn good. It wound up running 873 performances and there were big tours and the cast album was a smash. Lerner credited Camelot becoming a hit to the gamble of doing so much of it on the Sullivan program.
So anyway, my theory is that this was his attempt to do the same trick with On A Clear Day. It didn't work as well and the show closed June 11 but maybe this bought them four more months. I'll bet if the whole thing had been as good as these fourteen minutes, it would have run a long, long time…
I said here the other day that the Marina Hotel in Las Vegas was torn down to make way for the MGM Grand. A few correspondents have politely accused me of being a bit loose with history (or just plain being wrong) so here's a clarification: The MGM Grand was erected on the site of the old Marina Hotel. Where the MGM is now situated is where the Marina used to be. But the builders of the new inhabitant of that real estate only tore down portions of the Marina and they left some of it standing and incorporated those parts into the MGM Grand.
There. Happy now?
A more serious error may be this: I said this year's Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy would be on Labor Day. I'm told it's actually on September 4, which is the day before Labor Day — in most cities from 6 PM until Midnight. Does that mean it's live to the East Coast and tape-delayed everywhere else? If so, that would mean that the big total at the end would not reflect results from most of the country seeing up to half of the telethon, wouldn't it? We need to look into this.
I'm also told this year's hosts have been selected: Jann Carl, Alison Sweeney, Nancy O'Dell and Simon Lithgoe. These are probably all fine, devoted personalities but if the producers want to turn around their loss of audience share and key stations, they need to conscript a superstar or two. Perhaps they're planning to do that in 2012 when the host(s) wouldn't seem so blatantly a replacement for Jerry.
Lastly: A couple of folks wrote me that they thought I was misrepresenting the case against Gay Marriage to make it seem more feeble than it is. No, I was writing about the case people make to me in e-mail, which is pretty damn feeble. So was the courtroom defense of California's Proposition 8, about which I believe I wrote (I can't find it at the moment) that I could have made a better case than that…and I'm a guy who thinks it's moronic and bigoted to not allow consenting adults of any stripe to wed.
Some folks have the unfortunate tendency to believe that any stupid thing said on behalf of their cause is valid and brilliant and inarguable. It's a sad part of our public discourse, this rush to deny everything the "other" side says and embrace everyone on your side as a fellow soldier. If deep in my soul I thought Same-Sex Wedlock was wrong, I'd hope I'd be embarrassed, if not by that then certainly by some of the people out there saying that. Few of the elected officials who oppose Gay Marriage even strike me as caring that much about it. They all seem more interested in how the issue can be manipulated to rouse a certain segment of the population to vote for and donate to candidates who'll reduce taxes on the wealthy. And they seem to be in a panic that the issue is of decreasing effectiveness to accomplish that.
Not long ago, I had an unpleasant time trying to park in the lot for a Whole Foods Market. They kind of presume there that everyone has a Compact and that we can somehow park 300 of them in 250 spaces. Anyway, when I got home from that ordeal, I found that my pal Dawna Kaufmann had coincidentally sent me a link to this…
Comic-Con International is 22 days away so some of you are thinking about how you're going to get there. If you're driving down via the 5 Freeway or the 405 (which links up with the 5), there are two things that might conceivably cause you some problem.
On July 16 and 17, the 405 is going to be closed down around the Sepulveda Pass so that a bridge can be demolished. This is going to be an utter mess that will snarl traffic and inconvenience many, many people. I'm not saying it doesn't need to be done; just that L.A. transit is going to be impossible for a while there. Now granted, this is the weekend before the con we're talking about but a lot of folks are fretting that the situation won't be back to normal for a while after. In any case, if you're driving anywhere near the 405 during the work period or soon after, you need to know what they're doing and where (this site will tell you) and stay up to date on what's closed and when.
If you're driving down the 5 on Wednesday, July 20, which is the date of Preview Night for the con, know this: It's the opening day of racing at Del Mar Race Track, which is located along the 5 about 20 miles North of San Diego. Opening day always draws a huge crowd as does the first weekend, which is that Saturday. I have gotten stuck in opening day traffic there. It ain't a lot of fun and there aren't really any good alternate routes as far as I can tell.
Anyway, the gates at Del Mar open at 11:30 AM, First Post is at 2 PM and at 3:00 on opening day, they're having a parade of hats with a big cash prize for the most interesting one.
Our pal Neil Gaiman is at this moment flying from Seattle to Los Angeles — no thanks to Delta Airlines, which cancelled his original flight — to tape tonight's Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He goes from there to the Saban Theater just outside Beverly Hills for a lecture/reading. I was going to hike over to at least one of these (I'm close enough to walk to either) to annoy him but I'm trapped in Deadline Hell and will be fortunate if I can find time to belch before dawn. But like you, I can at least watch (more likely, TiVo) his appearance with CraigyFerg. The other guest is Paris Hilton and I'd be fascinated to know what, if anything, she and Neil say to one another backstage. Perhaps an exchange of grooming tips?
Number fifty-eight in a series. I've decided, by the way, this is going to be a series of one hundred and then I'll switch to Fatty Arbuckle or someone else…
As William Saletan notes, public opinion has largely turned around the last few years on Gay Marriage. In many states, a majority is now in favor of its legalization and in others, it's just a matter of time. But in many of those states, it's going to take a while (and a lot of ballot initiatives and such) to bring the law in line with what the people want.
Bruce Bartlett discusses the many Americans who pay no Federal Income Taxes whatsoever. As we all know, a lot of poor folks don't, though they pay a disproportionate portion of their income in sales taxes, payroll taxes and other ways. There's just something wrong though when someone whose income is over a million dollars a year can get away without paying anything in income taxes.
This was an issue that greatly bothered my father who spent most of his adult years working for the Internal Revenue Service and hating every minute of it. There was zero doubt in his mind that during the Nixon Administration, the I.R.S. went real, real easy on rich people (especially rich people who'd donated to Nixon) who paid little or no taxes, sometimes via legal loopholes — of which there were many — but sometimes just by lying and cheating. This was offset by wringing more dollars out of the poor and middle class. Many lower-class people paid more so one rich guy didn't have to pay at all. Looks like not a lot has changed.
Here's an interesting article about cookie design, especially that of the noble Oreo. I don't eat that kind of thing anymore but I find the history and artistry rather fascinating. I was especially amused by their comparison of the Oreo design to that of the lowly Hydrox cookie, and I was unaware that they apparently don't make Hydrox cookies anymore.
Vaguely relevant anecdote: Twenty some-odd years ago, there was a great little place over on Santa Monica Boulevard near Sepulveda that sold ice cream they made on the premises. Most of the flavors were their own creations and about half — and they had them nicely segregated and labelled — contained liqueurs or other spirits. I avoided that side and usually had something they called Cashew Crunch, which contained bits of cashew and smashed Oreo cookies in a vanilla ice cream with a fudge swirl. In fact, a lot of their flavors involved crushed Oreos at a time when that wasn't too common in the ice cream business.
My friends and I loved this store to the point where when we went out for dinner, we'd sometimes go to a somewhat mediocre restaurant in the same block just so we could go to the great ice cream place for dessert. One evening, I took my friend Tracy there for ice cream…and you need to know this about Tracy: Don't ever lie to her because she'll nail you on it. She usually knows and if she isn't sure, she'll interrogate you within an inch of your life. Five minutes with Tracy and O.J. would have confessed to the double-killing and probably other crimes we don't know about.
So she wants some flavor involving crushed Oreos but she demands of the guy behind the counter, "How do I know these have Oreo crumbs and not Hydrox crumbs?" He says she can take her word for it. She says that's not good enough and he makes the guy go into the back of the store and bring out this huge crate of Oreos. This proved at the very least that the business received huge crates of Oreos. From that, she grudgingly made the leap to the assumption that they actually did use Oreos, not Hydroxes, in their ice cream. (That was one of the drawbacks of the Hydrox. It was tough to speak of them in the plural…and who would ever eat only one?)
Know, by the way, that Tracy didn't necessarily prefer Oreo to Hydrox. She just felt that if it said Oreos — and it did — then it had damned better be Oreos.
A week or so later, I'm in there with someone else and the guy behind the counter recognizes me. He says, "You're the one with the friend who demanded proof that we don't use Hydrox." I 'fessed up that I was. He lowered his voice so no one else in the store could hear and said, "The owner gets a deal on Hydrox and we sometimes use them and tell people they're Oreos. We just happened to be out of Hydrox the week your friend was in and so we went out and got a crate of Oreos and were using them." He pointed to the ice creams currently in the display that said "Crushed Oreos" in their ingredients lists. "All of these have Hydrox crumbs in them," he said.
Two weeks later, the store was out of business. I think we all know why.
Just for you: Five minutes of one of my favorite standup comedians…the late Jackie Vernon. This is a shortened version of a great routine he used to do showing "slides" from his vacation.
Not long before he passed away, which was in 1987, I saw him live for the first and only time. It was at the old Marina Hotel in Las Vegas — the one they tore down to build the current MGM Grand. Mr. Vernon was the lead comic in a burlesque revue called "Babes Ahoy!" because it had a bit of a navy theme, as did the hotel-casino. Mostly, he did old Minsky's-type routines with women whose shirts mysteriously disappeared…but at one point, he came out and did about fifteen minutes of pure standup with no topless ladies on the stage with him. It was his "vacation slides" routine with all new (to me) lines and I probably laughed as hard at that fifteen minutes as I ever have at anything in my life.
I wish I could show you more of Jackie Vernon but you'll have to settle for these five minutes…
This article asks the musical question,Why is it so hard to get a good bagel outside New York City?
I'll add another possible reason to the list: When I go to a place that serves bagels in New York, I always seem to be able to get one that emerged from the baking process within about the last fifteen minutes, whereas in other cities or here in Los Angeles, I'm lucky if it's been made the same day. I suspect that explanation trumps all others.
David Frum, who was once an outspoken opponent of Gay Marriage, explains why he was wrong. This is the kind of piece an awful lot of people should come to write…but won't.
