Monthly Archives: April 2012

I awoke this morning and got myself fully awake in time to read an e-mail that the conference call has to be postponed because one of the other participants overslept.

I don't know why I am. Well, I know I'm writing a script but amazingly, it's not one due tomorrow or even this week. But I'm awake at darn near 6 AM despite the fact that I need to be up and able to form a coherent sentence or two during an important conference call four hours hence.

So why am I writing a script? More to the point, why am I writing this? This is fun, of course. Blogging is like sketching on one hand. On quite another, it's a chance to write something that's all my own, not subject to the tastes of some editor or producer or the interpretation of an artist or actor. Between the consumer and me, there's nothing but air and bytes. People ask why I blog and there's a lot of the reason right there. It's a resource for me…a way of reaching out and saying Hello Dere to a lot of friends, strangers and strangers who are slowly becoming friends. But it's also sketching and it's also, for good or ill, mine.

I've been a professional writer for 43 years, a number I mention not to impress you but to impress myself. Because to me, it sometimes feels like about 43 months. Every project, every assignment still comes down to what it has always come down to: Me sitting at a desk — or sometimes taking a long walk — asking myself the key question, "Okay, what are you going to do with this one?" I get there via a slightly different route with every single one but the point is I get there, "there" being the answer to that same key question. When people used to ask me what the difference was between writing comic books and writing TV shows, I used to say, "Tab stops."

I sometime think I write just because it feels so good to answer that question and to think, at least for a time, that I've answered it correctly. It feels good the same way it feels to solve a Sudoku puzzle or to fix a broken appliance, both of which I did today. It's so great when you reach that moment of thinking, "I know what I should do." And I just did, just this second. I should go to bed. Good night.

About 36 readers of this blog converged on the town of Rancho Cucamonga, California on Saturday evening to see Frank Ferrante perform as Guess Who in his much-touted show, An Evening with Groucho. You can probably figure out which one Frank is in this photo. The gent in the tux is his pianist-foil, Jim Furmston and now here's the hard part: Identifying everyone else after I lost the little scrap of paper on which I jotted down all the names.  From memory and friendship, I can identify (along with Frank and Jim) Carolyn Kelly, Stu Shostak, Mickey Paraskevas, Gordon and Donna Kent, Douglass Abramson, Jerry and Mary-Robinson Modene, Dave Gnerre, Steven Brattman and Kevin A. Shaw, plus I'm in there too. If the other two couples will send me their names, I'll identify them and I apologize for losing that piece o' paper. [UPDATE: The two additional couples are Alex and Vicki Jaramillo, and Richard Dean Starr and Erin Bower, who writes under the name of E.R. Bower.]

There were many others there who read here about Frank and showed up but we had to wait 'til Frank and Jim finished signing autographs to take the photo and a lot of folks didn't want to wait around that long, especially since it was raining. Still, they all told me what a great time they had. I know some of you are probably sick of hearing me rave about Frank's portrayal of The Great Groucho but it really is one of those things that you have to see — a more-than-reasonable facsimile of Groucho, around the age he was in Duck Soup, performing in the present day. Much of the show is Frank/Groucho just chatting with the audience, improvising and bantering his way through the house.

Speaking of the house: Boy, is the Lewis Family Playhouse out there a nice theater. It's in an area of Rancho Cucamonga called the Victoria Gardens — a fairly new development built by the Lewis family. Mr. Lewis and some of his family members were in the front row last night, which is a dangerous place to be when Groucho's doppelgänger is roaming the premises in search of targets. Lewis was a grand sport and he, like everyone present, laughed his head off at the show. He should be proud of that whole complex there. It's like a little city with great restaurants, stores and performance venues and everyone in my party seemed very impressed with it.

Here once again is Frank Ferrante's schedule. He's in Tryon, North Carolina on Tuesday…in Sacramento, California on Thursday…and in Kansas on April 13 and 14. If you live in Southern California and wish you'd seen him last night, you'll have one other chance this year. It's Long Beach in October and I'll give you the details when they become available. Wherever you see him, you'll understand my constant pluggery and you'll have a very good time. We sure did last night.