Monthly Archives: September 2011

Yesterday, I drove my mother to a couple of doctor appointments at the hospital that has become her home-away-from-home. She's 89 and is there so often, we've discussed switching her voter registration to that address. Her caregiver drives her to the kind of appointments where she just goes in and someone draws blood or clips her toenails. I take her when there are doctors to talk with and possible decisions to be made.

When she's hospitalized, as she intermittently is, I spend a lot of time at this place…so much so that one afternoon, when I got a hamburger there in just about the most awful cafeteria you could imagine, the cashier gave me the employee discount. I told her, "I don't work here," and she said, "Oh. I guess I'm just so used to seeing you…"

Spending time there means waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more. And then there's the waiting. Like anyone who's busy, I resent waiting and try to find ways to put that time to use. For a long time, the best I could do was to take along a notebook (the kind with paper) so I could jot down ideas for scripts.

I couldn't even make phone calls and handle business-type matters. I get pretty decent cell coverage everywhere but not in this particular hospital. My iPhone, as with my BlackBerry before it, cannot get a signal inside.

One of the reasons I bought an iPad was so I can do something resembling work in situations where I have to sit and wait. At the very least, I can play Sudoku. When I'm sitting with my mother waiting, I sometimes call up a Video Poker game on the iPad and let her play. Her eyes couldn't see the one on my iPhone but the iPad screen is large enough for her. It would be so helpful if I could get on the web while at that hospital so I could surf, blog and answer e-mail…but since I can't get a 3G phone connection, I sure can't get on the Internet.

But wait…

So yesterday I'm waiting 45 minutes for a prescription for her. I have never understood why it takes 45 minutes for a pharmacist to take a tube off a shelf and slap a label on it but I guess it does. Anyway, I'm playing Sudoku and figuring out where my sixes go, which is always the toughest part. Suddenly, a little window pops up that says in effect, "Click here to connect with public wi-fi." I clicked and I suddenly had a pretty strong public wi-fi connection. My e-mail downloaded as fast as it does at home. My webpage loaded instantly. All was right with the world.

When they called me to the window to pick up my mother's ointment, the pharmacy assistant saw my iPad and asked, "Did you notice? The public wi-fi just went online here. It's a new service for our patients."

Behind me in line, a woman shrieked (happily), "Public wi-fi?" She hauled out her smartphone, did some fast configuring and then began announcing proudly to all, "I'm on the web! I'm on the web!" And all over the pharmacy, people hauled out their cell phones to see if they too could get on the web. Most of them apparently could.

I don't know what a public wi-fi connection like that costs but I'll bet it's cost-effective in terms of good will. We were all darned happy there yesterday. We've all spent a lot of time at that place waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more.

What has Albert Brooks been up to lately?

Lately, I find myself working 'round the clock, staying up 'til all hours. I used to have the virus checker on this computer set to run a scan each night at 5 AM, a time selected because I'd always be asleep then. The last few weeks, I've sometimes been at this keyboard at 5 AM so I moved the scan time to 7. Once or twice, I've still been up working when it started.

My "day" has become more vaguely defined. Much of my effort lately is on The Garfield Show for which I am soon to wrap my responsibilities for the third season. The production company is in Paris so I start receiving the morning e-mails from them around 11 AM their time, which is 2 AM my time. Meanwhile, we both consult with Garfield's creator Jim Davis, who's usually in Indiana and who gets up and goes to work indecently early. He'll start writing me at 6 AM his time, which is 3 AM where I am. So at an hour when my body is suggesting it's time for bed, I'm answering correspondence from France and Indiana, and I've even had the occasional phone conversation at that hour.

This is not a complaint. I'm just writing about something that I'm all too aware has happened in my life…and it isn't the first time. When I was "on staff" on sitcoms or variety specials, I often found it necessary to work until the wee small hours. On Welcome Back, Kotter (my first real staff job in television), I often got to sleep at 4 AM or 5 AM…and would have to be up, showered, dressed, breakfasted and back at the studio for a 10 AM read-through.

That has always been for me one of the key differences between writing for TV and writing things like comic books or magazine articles. For the latter, I'm usually able to write when I want to write. There are deadlines to be sure but to meet them, I can usually finish the material tomorrow. It doesn't have to be done tonight. In television, especially when working on something currently in production, I keep finding myself in the position of having to write a certain script tonight.

Writing to a tight, drop-dead deadline can be exciting at times…and also empowering when you're in one of those situations when you're aware of the following situation: Things are so time-sensitive that what you write will probably wind up reaching the audience in pretty much the way you write it because there won't be much time to change it. It becomes a trade-off in my mind. I may resent how the exigencies of some show force me to stay up tonight until I finish a script…but hey, my script is going to get produced and there's no time for them to bring in another writer to rewrite me. There probably isn't even time for them to ask me for much of a rewrite.

In the best of all possible work situations, there wouldn't ever have to be such a trade-off. I could go to bed tonight when my body told me to, not as dictated by some deadline and I could retain the kind of control that I get when the schedule precludes rewrites. Sometimes you can get both. But when I'm sitting here at 5 AM struggling to retain some perspective on whether what I'm writing is as good as it would be with a clearer, well-rested head, it helps to remember two things. One is that what I'm writing will be produced. And the other is how good it will feel when I finish it and can go to bed.

The MDA folks are saying they raised $61.5 million yesterday with a six-hour telethon sans Jerry Lewis. Years ago when I worked on a different telethon, I learned that the "take" is not necessarily a real number; that the organizers can find a way to put almost any number within reason up there on the final tote board. They can, for example, throw in money that has been pledged to the charity, not necessarily via the telethon. I'm not saying any particular telethon's announced gross is bogus. Just that there is a certain amount of wiggle room.

Last year with a telethon with Jerry that ran more than twenty hours in some markets, they raised $2.6 million less. Assuming both numbers are equally accurate and/or measured by the same rules, that would make this year's quite a success. I wonder if in light of that, any charity anywhere will even consider a telethon longer than six hours in the future. The Chabad Telethon, which is on Sunday, September 25, will be three hours. Those used to be six but when they cut it to three a year or two ago, the same thing happened. They collected a little more money in a lot less airtime.

I was a bit amazed to hear that MDA had raised that much moola this year. I heard so many people lament how dreadful it was that Jerry was ousted, how there was no point in watching the telethon if Jerry wasn't there, etc. But then I realized: Most of those folks probably wouldn't have donated or even watched if he was there. If there'd been no controversy and if Jerry Lewis had just hosted as he always does, the tune-in probably would have been about the same…maybe less.

For a week or two now, Jerry and his spokespersons have been saying that he'd hold a big press conference the day after the telethon because he had "a lot to say." I don't know if that was ever going to actually happen but one suspects it's a bit less likely because the telethon didn't flop, at least in a monetary sense, without him. Then again, a lot of what makes Jerry Jerry is that he doesn't always do what you'd imagine a person would do. Or should do.

Commencing yesterday, I'm going to post a photo of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy every day I post on this blog for as long as I can. I have the first 200 already selected and formatted but if you have one, by all means send it in. For the time being, I'm only doing horizontal compositions so some photographs may not be suitable.

I'm getting a lot of messages from folks suggesting other stars worthy of the honor…and most of them are. But I just like the way my blog looks when I can look at it and see Stan and Ollie so that's who it's going to be. There's nothing stopping you from posting pictures of your favorite star on your blog…or if necessary, starting a blog. And I'm amazed how many people didn't get that the Bud Collyer thing was a joke.

There are a lot of great comedians that I love but there's a special place in my heart — and whatever part of the body laughter comes from — for Laurel and Hardy. I'm not even that big a fan of slapstick and they're still my favorite performers. Even in their weakest films, I just like watching them. I am hardly alone in this feeling.

A ten-DVD set will be released next month in America of most (not all) of the talkies they made for the Hal Roach Studio between 1929 and 1940. In the past, we've told you about a 21-DVD set that was available and playable in Europe. This is not the same set. The European set contained all the Roach material. This one omits some films. It also contained the silent films as well as many "colorized" versions of later films. They're not in this one, either.

I'm not complaining. What is included is a ton of really, really wonderful comedy…and I'm told the prints have been fully restored and are outstanding. The U.S. set also contains several examples of the "foreign" versions Stan and Ollie made of their films where they spoke lines in Spanish or French. There's also a longer-than-you've-probably-seen-before version of the feature Pardon Us and two versions of A Chump at Oxford.

The latter was originally made as a four-reel comedy. Roach briefly experimented with that length (he called them "streamliners") but the marketplace didn't want films of that duration so Laurel and Hardy were called back to shoot two more reels for A Chump at Oxford, expanding the film to six. Both versions are included in this set. There's also a DVD of oddments and extra features, and I believe both Chuck McCann and Dick Van Dyke told me they'd been interviewed for this. Here is a link to order this set from Amazon. I have the European set (and an all-regions DVD player) and I'm buying this one, too.

Laurel and Hardy have not done well on DVD in this country, a fact I attribute to poor, half-assed marketing of their work. We're very happy someone finally seems to be doing it the right way.

We're currently in production of Season 3 of The Garfield Show and no, I have no idea when these new episodes will air in your country. It probably won't be for a while.

I don't have a list of all the episodes yet. Matter of fact, I haven't even decided on the title of the one I'm writing this evening. Anyway, there seems to be a new Internet sport. People go on the Wikipedia episode page for the show and enter phony titles for Season 3 episodes. They'll probably be removed shortly but right now, there are three up there that are bogus.

Attention, Lord High Masters of Wikipedia: Any episode info that gets posted for Season 3 is not to be believed until I verify it here. When it's time, I'll post a list. Thank you.

Jerry Lewis Stuff.