Monthly Archives: May 2012

…that is, assuming tomorrow is the day you go see the production of Follies currently playing in L.A. at the Ahmanson Theater. It's the recent Broadway revival minus Bernadette Peters…and though we sure love us some Bernadette Peters, Victoria Clark is so good in that part, I can't imagine Bernadette being any better.

I've seen Follies several times including the previous Broadway revival. They run through Times Square about as often as the Q Train and they're usually as crowded. This is easily the best Follies I've seen and oddly enough at Intermission, Carolyn turned to me and voiced the same reason I'd been thinking: It's the clearest. We could hear and understand every line and not just because the sound system was pretty darn good. It was the performances. The actors had such clarity of who they were and what was going on around them that I found myself understanding much that I'd missed in previous productions. (We were sitting, by the way, in the fourth row of the Mezzanine and we didn't miss a line, a facial expression, a nuance, anything.)

The actors? Jan Maxell, Danny Burstein, Ron Raines and Ms. Clark played the two couples who discuss roads they didn't take and might still. The other ladies of the Weismann Line included Elaine Paige, Jayne Houdyshell, Terri White and Susan Watson, most of whom managed to stop the proceedings with solo turns. The "Mirror, Mirror" number led by Ms. White and featuring all the one-time showgirls intermingling with ghosts of themselves was one of the best things I've ever seen on a stage.

I wish I had time to rave more but I have things to do and probably, before the night is out, a soup can to post. I am incredibly busy at the moment but I am so glad Carolyn and I went to see Follies last night. This has been a frantic week of problems and headaches, but for around two and a half hours at the Ahmanson, everything went right and I sure needed that. It's there through June 9. If you're local, get tix. If I can find the time, I may go back.

It's possible to get a Global Positioning System for your car with voices from Sesame Street. This has got to be irresistible to drivers under the age of twelve…

Joe Conason has a suggestion for guys like Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes: If you really are concerned about "saving marriage" as you claim, you should start by getting rid of those quick and easy divorce laws you guys use all the time.

We continue to be amazed at how DNA testing and other techniques keep proving that our justice system ain't nearly as good as we used to think it was at convicting the guilty. The National Registry of Exonerations is swelling with examples; of people who were convicted and perhaps even had their convictions upheld…but were later proven innocent. And we're amazed there isn't more outrage at procedures and a process that is this bad at determining guilt.

Ben Brantley over at the N.Y. Times, thinks audiences have gotten too carried away with awarding standing ovations to shows. I agree and I'd suggest the major reason, which Mr. Brantley mentions briefly, is that when shows feel overpriced, you want to believe they were that good and a standing o' is the audience's way of telling themselves it was.

Ken Levine (who either owes me a lunch or I owe him one) recalls local Los Angeles television — in particular The Lloyd Thaxton Show and its many clones. Thaxton's program was an example of how a little ingenuity — and a healthy lack of inhibition — could overcome a budget that wouldn't cover three expired cans of corned beef hash at the 99-Cents-Only Store. His afternoon dance party show on Channel 13 here was kinda like what American Bandstand would have been like if Dick Clark had been willing or able to get into the fun instead of introducing it from afar. Dick was not a performer. Neither was Lloyd but he didn't let that stop him.

Ken went on one of the local shows. I can think of few things I'm less likely to do in public besides dance. Given the choice of dangling from a helicopter by my earlobes or dancing with a girl on TV, I would have told you to fire up the chopper. And yet I did dance once on a TV variety show and I don't think I've ever told that story here. I'll tell it before the week is out. Stay tuned and go read Ken.

Have you seen the Anti-J.F.K. Coloring Book? A coloring book is just about the right demographic for the folks who'd believe this kind of stuff.

Our pal Neil Gaiman, who didn't graduate from college, speaks to a bunch of people who are about to. Hey, I went to college but didn't graduate. Maybe if I'd never gone at all, I'd write as well as Neil…

So yesterday I'm in an El Pollo Loco waiting to order and there's a couple behind me in line. She's a cute teenager who is obviously very sweet on her guy even if he has taken her to El Pollo Loco. He's a tad older than she is and he's wearing the proud garb of someone who works at McDonald's. There's a McDonald's in the same shopping center as this El Pollo Loco. The fellow's name (I learn) is Rob.

I'm just about to order when a man of about forty bursts into the El Pollo Loco. He does not walk in through the door. He bursts. He too is wearing the colors of the Golden Arches but he appears to be a manager there. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demands of Rob.

Rob is startled. "I'm on my break, Mr. Whatever-the-Guy's-Name-Was," he says. He didn't say "Whatever-the-Guy's-Name-Was." He said his name but I don't remember it so I'm calling him Mr. Whatever-the-Guy's-Name-Was. "I'm just getting some lunch with Whatever-the-Girl's-Name-Was."

Mr. W-t-G-N-W shrieks, "At our competitor? In your uniform?" He actually calls it a uniform then he ticks off whatever section of the McDonald's Penal Code has been violated. O.J. Simpson hacked two people to death and I don't think he's ever been dressed down like this.

The McDonald's employee, who may not be that for long, stammers that he forgot about the rule or didn't know about the rule or something. His main defense is that he promised his lady friend that if she came over while he was on his break, they'd grab a fast lunch.

"We have fast lunches at our restaurant," Mr. W-t-G-N-W responds and yes, he actually calls it a restaurant. Then he adds, "…in case you didn't know."

Rob says, "Well, she didn't want to eat at McDonald's." Another patron of El Pollo Loco calls out, "None of us do!" and everyone in the place laughs. The El Pollo Loco manager leans over and tells his opposite number at Mickey D's, "Hey, I don't come over to your place…" The McDonald's manager has said what he had to say so he mutters a smidgen of an apology for the intrusion and gets the hell outta there.

I go ahead and order some chicken and then Rob orders some chicken. And all anyone in the building can think is, "Boy, that manager sure did a fine job of protecting the reputation of McDonald's."

Yair Solan assures me that Charley Chase (seen in the above pic with Our Gang's Spanky McFarland) was born Charles Joseph Parrott and that Charley Chase was a stage name. Several books say otherwise but I'm going to believe Yair because he's the proprietor of the Charley Chase website — a fine place to remember a largely-forgotten comedian. Most of the guys of that era who are forgotten were forgettable at the time but not Charley. I'll see if I can feature one of his films here in the next few days so you can see why I like him so.

I am here to rectify the appalling lack of Snub Pollard in your life. Mr. Pollard was a pretty important player in comedy films from about 1913 to 1924, commencing with sidekick roles in Harold Lloyd's earliest films. Snub — and how come no one these days names their kids "Snub?" — was fortunate to have had good co-stars and directors and gag men in a lot of them…but I've never seen any particular comic talent on his part. He always seemed to me like just a guy who was willing to work hard and who'd found a distinctive mustache that made him look interesting. In the silent days, when the director could yell to you during the scene and tell you what to do at every moment, that was often enough.

"What a Whopper!" was made in 1921…and you'll see the titles, which alas are not original, say it was directed by Charles Parrott. That was the alter-ego of Charles Chase, who was also an on-camera performer and a much better one than Mr. Pollard. Since "Charley Chase," as he was billed, is the perfect name for a silent comedian, one might assume the man's real name was Parrott and he made up the "Chase." And one might be right but some film history books will tell you no, even though his brother Paul later worked in the film biz as Paul Parrott, "Chase" was the family name and "Parrott" was an invention. I really don't know which to believe and am losing sleep over this. Snub Pollard's real name, by the way, was Harry Fraser.

Pollard actually had a pretty long career in movies. After his stardom as a comic abated, he ditched the Kaiser Wilhelm mustache and became a journeyman player at whatever studio would have him, sometimes playing very small parts but working pretty steadily until his death in 1962. At the end of the title tune in Singin' in the Rain, Gene Kelly hands his umbrella to a passer-by. That passer-by was Snub Pollard…and Snub was also visible as a courtroom extra in Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy. He also seems to have been in every crowd scene, often with a line or two, in every TV western show of the fifties. Here he is back when he was the star…

You can't see most of them but over the last day or two, I've made a batch o' changes on this website, reconfiguring this and that. What you might notice is that for tech-type reasons, I have removed the Category and Tag assignments on each post. They may or may not be back at a later date.

I am slowly but surely importing old posts (from before the first of this year) so that eventually, every blog post I've written since I started in December of 2000 will be on this site. They will not be added here in chronological order but they'll all wind up here…I hope before this year is out. Please keep in mind that the older a post is, the more likely it is that any links you find in it will not work. The ones that link to other parts of this website will eventually all work but not at first.

Also for tech reasons, it is necessary for me to replace some of the photos and other images that adorn some posts. Apart from fixing typos and deleting a few old posts that link to parts of my websites that no longer exist, I'm not changing any of the copy, even when I read over an old message and think, "I couldn't possibly have written something that dumb!"

Fred Kaplan on yet another dumb move by the House Armed Services Committee. Just read about it and wince.