Monthly Archives: December 2012

The cast of the Australian and New Zealand touring company of Mary Poppins recently completed their eight hundredth performance. They decided to celebrate by making a little video…

Jeff Jordan notes a serious problem in the U.S. economy: We keep building new malls even as (a) more and more buying in this country shifts from brick-and-mortar stores to online and (b) malls that we already have are failing. I don't know why they do this, either.

We are not happy to hear that Junior's Delicatessen will be closing its doors over on Westwood Boulevard in a week or so. They say it may reopen elsewhere but restaurants always say that when they close down involuntarily and few ever return.

I hope Junior's turns out to be an exception…but even then, its main appeal wasn't the cuisine, which was pretty standard deli fare. It was the location. If you needed to meet someone for lunch near the intersection of Westwood and Pico Boulevards, Junior's wasn't just the easy, obvious choice. It was darn near the only choice. Plus, I had a long-standing history with the place. As I wrote last year here when its proprietor died…

When I was but a wee lad, my mother sometimes took me into a wonderful but tiny delicatessen on Pico Boulevard, just east of Westwood. The building, considerably expanded in square footage, is now a Maria's Italian Kitchen. But back then, it was mainly a deli counter with about five tables for dining. The two brothers would cut and sell meat and cheese to go or they'd build you a sandwich and personally serve it to you at one of their tables.

We became regulars at the Saul Brothers' little deli, which was called Junior's. They always recognized us and one or the other of them would give me a free shtickel…or maybe it was spelled "shtickle." I have never seen these anywhere else but they were like little salamis, each good for about four bites. It took longer to get the cellophane wrapper off the shtickel than it did to eat it. They were displayed in a little bin atop the deli counter with a handmade sign that said, "It used to be a nickel a shtickel. Now it's a dime. Ain't it a crime?" I have never seen them anywhere else and I wonder if anyone even makes them anymore. Once in a while, my lunch would consist of a shtickel and a pickle. If you want to grow up to write poems, try eating a lot of foods that rhyme.

Business was good at Junior's. It must have been because one day they moved into a much bigger building around the corner on Westwood…and then they began expanding that building, buying up the shops on either side and knocking out walls. Soon it was and still is a rather huge deli and Marvin Saul rarely cut the meat anymore. Instead, he ran the place with unceasing energy. If you walked in there at any hour, you'd see this man scurrying about and you'd know that was the owner. It had to be. (Marvin Saul's brother soon moved out to the valley and opened his own deli.)

Junior's is still a thriving business and I go there often. So does Mel Brooks, who is quoted in the L.A. Times obit for Marvin Saul, who just left us at the age of 82. I often saw Mr. Saul there — and Mr. Brooks too, for that matter. A lot of show biz folks considered Junior's a great place to "do lunch." Saul claimed to vaguely remember me, especially after I recited the little shtickel jingle for him. He said he didn't know where to get them or he'd still be selling them, though he laughed and said, "Well, if I did sell them today, the poem wouldn't work. We'd have to price them at a buck or so." I said, "You can say, 'It used to be a nickel a shtickel. Now it's a dollar. Don't scream and holler!' Or 'Now it's a buck. You're outta luck!'"

Junior's is closing, the L.A. Times says, because its landlord has raised the rent. I'm guessing that means they have another restaurant that wants the building and will pay big for it. Like I said, it's a great location. They'd still be open if they'd received a tiny cut on all the movie and TV deals made there.

I think I read that it was at Junior's that Conan O'Brien met and hired Andy Richter. If I were Conan, I'd grab Andy and run over there this week with a camera crew and a wrecking crew, the latter to physically extract the booth in which they first got together. Someone's got to do something to mark the end of that era because it was more than just a place to get a decent corned beef sandwich. It was Junior's. Whatever goes in there next won't be able to say that…

Take a look at all these. At least one will come in handy in your life.

And now, Cookie Monster favors us with a powerful statement of personal identity…

So they're saying today that the solution to the "Fiscal Cliff" brouhaha will have to come from Mitch McConnell over in the Senate. Isn't this like expecting Larry Flynt to clean up the porn business? First off, the Senate isn't the problem. Democrats control the Senate and they won't have much problem coming up with a bill President Obama would sign. Secondly, McConnell is up for re-election in two years and if he winds up being responsible for any deal that Obama likes, the Tea Party folks will savage him and run someone against him for the Republican nomination. He's the last guy with a vested interest in compromise. The problem is over in the House where even John Boehner can't pass a bill Obama would sign.

Then Republican pollster Frank Luntz is out there saying…

I don't think the N.R.A. is listening [to the American people]. I don't think they understand most Americans would protect the Second Amendment rights and yet agree with the idea that not every human being should own a gun, not every gun should be available at any time, anywhere, for anyone. At gun shows, you should not be able to buy something there without any kind of check whatsoever.

Okay but since when does the N.R.A. even pretend to listen to the American people? It seems to me the N.R.A. prides itself on listening only to its interpretation of the Constitution and in blocking any legislation that infringes on that view. If 98% of America felt otherwise, then Wayne LaPierre would just say, "Well, 98% of America is wrong" and redouble (or retriple or requadruple…) their efforts to convince them and to stop any legislation to the contrary.

Methinks Mr. Luntz is angling for a highly-paid consulting deal to tell the N.R.A. catch-phrases they can use to seem more reasonable. I've never gotten that that organization cares a whole lot about appearing reasonable.

And in still other news: Police in Washington, D.C. are investigating Meet the Press host David Gregory for displaying what appeared to be a high-capacity ammunition magazine during last Sunday's program. Yeah, that figures. There's thousands of people around, many of them with criminal records and/or mental instability, who have those. Sure!  Let's investigate the one guy who's got one but doesn't have a gun to put it in.

The 54 Best Animated GIFs Of 2012. Or at least, someone thinks they are.

If and when you have the post-holiday stomach to begin thinking about that Fiscal Cliff again, read Ezra Klein. According to him, the problem is that Republicans aren't interested in deficits. They're interested in shrinking the government down to the size of Grover Norquist's bathtub.

Two indecently funny men: Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese…

Bruce Bartlett presents an argument that will fall on deaf ears: Why Conservatives should support the concept of welfare. He means "for the poor."

I didn't have a great story about Jack Klugman but Joshua Green has a great one…and it even features a cameo appearance by my Congressman. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for the tip.

I'm postponing the Tale of My Mother I was going to bring you next in favor of one more appropriate to the day.

So here I was in this family where my father was Jewish and my mother was not. But she learned. Of course, all she really learned was how to cook a few Jewish staples like brisket and latkes but that was enough. More than enough.  Remind me to tell you in one of these what it was that caused both families to drop their opposition to my parents' mixed marriage. (Hint: It was the birth of me…or actually, the impending birth of me.)

In our home, we celebrated Hanukkah. I always thought that since I was half-Jewish, I should only light four candles. We also celebrated Christmas and got a big tree. The acquisition of the tree — going to the lot, picking one out, haggling with the salesguy — was a big part of the holidays. My mother, being the least Jewish of the three of us, was more or less in charge of the tree. All my father contributed was to pay for the tree and drive it and us home.

My mother was a purist: No artificial colors on the tree. No flocking. Just a plain, simple green one. We'd position it in one corner of the living room in front of the fireplace that never had a fire in it, and we'd decorate. She and I.

We had two kinds of decorations. My Uncle Aaron was in the window display business. He sold low-cost, pre-fab ones that were made in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the Orient. He'd design them and sell them to stores that needed something simple and cheap to pop into the front window. He also sometimes bid on and would win contracts to supply street decorations to cities.

Uncle Aaron had crates of Christmas ornaments. They cost him almost nothing and he'd give us boxes and boxes of them. We gave a lot of them to neighbors and sometimes, my friend Rick and I would invent a game that involved smashing a box of sixteen. I eventually outgrew thinking it was fun to break things but I enjoyed it at the time.

The hard part of decorating our tree each year was in not cluttering it with too many decorations…because we sure had too many. I'd usually put the balls in place, step back to look at my handiwork, then remove about half of them.

We also had to leave room for my mother's decorations. She had a small box of ornaments from her childhood, including a lovely star to place atop the tree. I don't think they were valuable in a monetary sense but they were priceless to her. I'd put on Uncle Aaron's ornaments and it didn't matter if I broke one or two or twenty. Like I said, we had crates. But my mother's half-dozen ornaments were handled by her and placed on the tree with great care. Then when Christmas was over and it was time for the tree to go away, the first step would be for her to carefully remove her decorations and pack them away for another year.

We did this until I was twelve. In 1964, Uncle Aaron died and we decided not to have a tree that year. It would have been festooned with his ornaments and would just have reminded us that he wasn't around. We didn't have one in '65 or '66 and a few months prior to Christmas of '68, we gave the garage-full of Uncle Aaron's ornaments — I almost just typed "Uncle Aaron's balls" — to a local charity that came and carried them away. My mother made certain that her memento ornaments were not included and I saved the lights and one box of Uncle Aaron's just in case Rick and I ever wanted to play one of our ornament-smashing games again.

As we approached Christmas of that year, my mother admitted she was a little depressed. '68 was a rough year in this country and it had finally "sunk in" for her that we were never going to have a Christmas tree again. When she'd suggested giving away the ornaments in the garage, she hadn't realized the emotional impact of that decision.

So I went out and got her a tree.

Not a big tree. A small tree. It was the symbolism that counted, not the actual tree. And besides, I didn't drive back then so I had to carry it home from the lot up on Pico Boulevard. I selected one that was under three feet, took it home when my parents were out and decorated it with the ornaments I'd saved to smash with Rick and the lights I'd kept. My mother was very happy to come home and find it…and to add her childhood ornaments to the display.

They'd been out buying the ingredients for our Christmas dinner. I think it was pot roast and latkes that year and the meal was a big hit.

So was the tree. Enough time had passed that it didn't bother Aunt Dot (Uncle Aaron's widow) to see a display that contained a reminder of him. It was, in fact, rather pleasant. And we never had another tree again. It didn't seem necessary and I didn't think we could top the short one. Maybe one of these days, I will…and I'll add in my mother's ornaments. That's assuming I can find them.

I don't have any good stories about him, either. But he was another superb actor…