Monthly Archives: October 2011

Speaking of those two guys in the photo below: The new DVD set of Laurel and Hardy films has been released. I haven't received mine yet but friends who have are writing raves or endorsing reviews like this one. If you want to order a copy of this set, here's an Amazon link.

A profile of my friends Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. They'll be on the Craig Ferguson show next Monday night and all over the map shortly after.

This afternoon, Stu Shostak is welcoming another great friend of mine to his show — actress Judy Strangis. I've known Judy since she did the lead voice on a 1981 cartoon series I worked on called Goldie Gold. But I feel like I knew her before that because I always tried to catch her on every TV show she was on…and she was on a lot of them including The Twilight Zone, Batman, Bewitched and her long run on Room 222. She was also, of course, Dynagirl on the 1976 ElectraWoman and DynaGirl feature for Sid and Marty Krofft.

And she was in dozens of other shows and hundreds of commercials. Here she is selling Barbie dolls that back in '76. You will notice she is cuter than the product — and she still is…

I'll sure be listening when she guests today with Stu. The show can be heard live and for free at 4 PM Pacific Time. That's 7 PM Eastern Time and other times in other climes. It runs two hours and Stu will also be talking with Sam Nelson of the Ozzie & Harriet bloodline about his campaign to save that classic show from extinction and obscurity. You can hear it all live at the Stu's Show website at the proper time. If you miss it, fear not. Shortly after the live webcast, the entire program can be downloaded from that site for a measly 99 cents. That's a bargain but try not to miss it in the first place.

For reasons I've explained here before, I don't like Halloween. But I do admire good pumpkin carvings.

It's inconceivable you won't want to read a brief but interesting oral history of the movie, The Princess Bride. And make sure while you're over there, you also check out the reunion photo.

A suggestion: If you're a fan of this movie but have never read the book, read the book. And if you can somehow get your hands on a hardcover, read it in hardcover. I'm not sure I can explain why but it's a book that is drastically diminished in paperback. I suspect it's even worse on Kindle.

The original 1973 edition was not a big success and I don't think I even heard about it at the time. A few years later, a friend of mine named Mark Hanerfeld found a pile of them in a New York bookstore for a buck apiece. He bought something like fifty copies and mailed 'em to all his friends, myself included. This was the first edition, which had certain type printed in red ink. Later editions sometimes tried to save bucks by printing in black but differentiating that text via a different font. It ain't the same. It ain't as good. (You probably won't get your hands on a first edition, by the way. They seem to go for $900 and up nowadays. That's a photo of a copy at above left.)

Anyway, it's quite a wonderful book in its original form with the two colors of type and the separate scene that you had to send away for…and I did. I believe some subsequent pressings have come close to replicating the reading experience in format but I haven't paid much attention to them. I still have that First Printing that Mark sent me, gloat gloat.

If you want to know what the Occupy movement is all about, here are some charts that explain it.

For a limited time, which means until people get sick of it again by Thanksgiving, McDonald's is bring back the McRib…the sandwich which has made more comebacks than Chevy Chase. The McRib, by the way, is funnier.

I will not be rushing or even strolling through the Golden Arches to get one. Back when I liked fast food a whole lot more than I do now, I sampled a McRib and found it — how do I put this? — pretty awful. I actually like McDonald's burgers for what they are…which is familiar, safe food you can grab in a rush even when far from home. And I've been known to breakfast in a hurry with a Sausage Biscuit with Egg…plus McDonald's fries were among my favorites until I discovered Five Guys.

But you know what my favorite thing ever at McDonald's was? Back in the late seventies or early eighties, the ones near me in L.A. all carried their version of a steak sandwich. It looked kinda like the McRib. It was longer to fit on a french roll and it had inch-long pieces of onion on it which provided most of the flavor. The meat itself was chopped ground beef like a hamburger although with what seemed like much better quality than they then put into their burgers. And I seem to recall they only offered it late in the day, after 4 PM or so, with commercials that sold it as a reason to bring your dates to dinner at Mickey D's. And there's a way to really impress a woman. ("You're taking me there? Wow! Let me get these panties off…")

I remember this vividly but after typing the above, I did a Google search and the only near-mention I could find was this from a Wikipedia list of discontinued McDonald's items…

Beefsteak Sandwich — test-marketed in New York and other East Coast markets in 1980 and as far west as Chicago were part of a McDonald's "Dinner Menu", offered only after 4:00 p.m. The Beefsteak Sandwich was essentially an elongated hamburger of a different quality served on a short French roll, similar to a sub or hero roll. Packets of steak sauce (A1 sauce in Chicago) were available for the sandwich.

I'm sure they had it in Los Angeles and I think it was called a Chopped Beefsteak Sandwich…or something that made clear you shouldn't expect a genuine piece o' steak within. In any case, it didn't last long and I remember lamenting its disappearance. It was an honest creation: Real good meat and real onions grilled simply and served on a real roll. I suspect if they'd used cheaper beef, deep-fried it and slathered cheese on the thing and called it the Mr. McSteak, it would have been a hit.

A few months ago, I spent a delightful evening chatting and spinning anecdotes with my friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee. Microphones were present and the conversation was then sliced 'n' diced into three episodes of their weekly podcast, Radio Rashy. It's a pretty good series, well worth hearing even when I'm not on.

But as it happens, I'm on again. Last week, we spent another evening telling stories, they edited it into three parts and the first installment is now online for your listening/downloading pleasure. The second and third episodes will follow in the coming weeks.

And I'm not on it but you also might want to listen to this: A gent named Bil Paterson is hosting a BBC Radio special on the history of the Classics Illustrated comic books. This is to mark the 70th anniversary of those comics that so many kids read and based book reports on instead of reading the real works…kind of the Cliff Notes of their day. It's a 30-minute special and I haven't had time yet to listen to it but I thought I'd better get the link up here now for you because these BBC Radio online links have a tendency to disappear on us. So listen or download now if you're interested. Thanks to Greg Ehrbar for telling me about this one.

An interesting confession from longtime Saturday Night Live cast member Darrell Hammond…