Monthly Archives: December 2012

In honor of Hanukkah, here's the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof done in Lego. Well, why the hell not?

When I posted the Rolling Stone interview with John Lennon, I said it was his last interview. As millions of you have reminded me, it was his last print interview. Earlier the day he was murdered, Lennon and Yoko Ono sat for a three-hour conversation with Dave Sholin of RKO Radio. That chat is available on iTunes and YouTube and other places.

A brief in-print interview with Mel Brooks, including mention of a new HBO special he has debuting tomorrow night. I would love to see Brooks interviewed by someone familiar enough with his past interviews to not let him get away with repeating stories he's told many times before. Sid Caesar trying to pull the cab driver through the little side window in the cab has now been "performed" more times than the Soliloquy from Hamlet. Which I guess makes sense since it's funnier…but Mr. Brooks is 86 and has been in show business for more than 65 years. I'll bet he has other anecdotes.

By the way: Brooks is often referred as the creator of the TV series, Get Smart. Just for the record, the actual credits read, "Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry." Mr. Henry has stated on several occasions that they were supposed to say "and" instead of "with" and that Mel's agent pulled a fast one. Nevertheless, Brooks was not the sole creator.

But he's still a treasure. On the slim chance that this will be read by anyone involved with next year's Academy Awards ceremony, I'd like to make a suggestion: Best Director presented by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. I know they're always trying to "young" up the Oscars but there's room for one nod to Old Hollywood besides the obligatory audience shot of Mickey Rooney…and the audience would go banana-wackie to see those two guys walk out together. Come on! It's late in the show and an important award so you don't have to worry about any young viewers tuning out…and late in the show is when you need the kind of energy jolt and laughs that would provide.

Mel and Carl presenting Best Picture. Or the screenwriting awards. But something.

I'm just going to reprint the opening paragraphs of this very happy news…

Amazing Kreskin offers to fix fiscal cliff

Finally, a light at the end of the "fiscal cliff" tunnel: The Amazing Kreskin is here to help.

Kreskin, billed by his publicist as the world's most renowned mentalist, was a fixture on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1970s. Now 77, he says he can break the stalemate over taxes and spending that has gripped Washington for much of the past two years.

All it would take is an hour in a room with President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) or their proxies.

"If I can, through mental suggestion and mental conditioning, bring both to a state of mind where I've lifted all the pressure, all the threats, all the money being offered and all the fears of the next election, I can bring them together to their unconscious level, and they will start to think in terms of compromising," Kreskin said in an interview.

Kreskin made the offer via news release Thursday to fly to Washington and help with the cliff after observing what he described as a mounting crisis in government.

"I'm a little bit worried we're in a crisis psychologically, too," he said. "We've got to start thinking about each other."

Wow. He can not only get Obama and Boehner to agree but he can do it with their proxies, without either man even being present. That's sure worthy of his adjective/given name. And of course, once Boehner comes back with a compromise agreement that Obama also likes, it'll be a small matter to get the rest of Congress to sign off on it…because there's nothing Republicans like better than compromising with Barack Obama.

Well, so much for that Fiscal Cliff matter. Now, will someone see what Kreskin can do about Global Warming, war in the Middle East, and that sewer line blockage I have under my house? I'm guessing my sewer will take him the longest…but it's right up his alley.

And also go see Ken Levine (I'll be open for lunches after this week, Ken) on the topic of Hollywoodspeak. I might add in "He's dependable," which of course means, "He's not great but he is available for the minimum."

In addition to drawing really, really well, my pal Tom Richmond is one of the wisest folks I know about the business of being a freelancer. His blog today has sound advice about a not-rare-enough situation for such people: You do a job for someone and then they either can't pay you or don't want to.

To all of Tom's sage counsel, I would append this: Beware of the client who is not really in business yet, at least on the project for which he or she seeks to engage you. Too often, they're trying to assemble the pieces of a deal and for example, they're hoping to use your work to impress someone to firm up the financing via which they hope to get the funds to pay you. When they insist they have the money, that's what they mean. I call these people Unfinanced Entrepreneurs and they are to be avoided, even though it may mean turning down what would be a great, lucrative assignment if it all goes according to their plans dreams.

Anyway, beware of them and also heed Tom's caveats and collection methods.

17 Facts about McDonald's that Will Blow Your Mind.

Baby Panda. Cuter than you or I will ever be. Especially you…

Three days before he was murdered, John Lennon sat for what turned out to be his last interview. Rolling Stone has put that interview online for all to read.

I've stopped embedding Comedy Central videos because they do strange things to this page…but I wanted to recommend Jon Stewart's extended interview with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. This link will take you to the first part and I think things will roll over automatically to Parts Two and Three. The whole thing runs about 26 minutes and both men make some very good points. Christie sounds like a decent man to me about 75% of the time. The other 25%, he sounds like John McCain trying to pander to the Tea Party crowd.

Every so often, we like to feature the handiwork of a great magician. Watch Yann Frisch perform his unique, amazing version of the Cups and Balls. Thanks to Michael Hagan for telling me about this guy…

When I heard that Jim DeMint was quitting the Senate to take a cushy job with a political think tank, I figured it was just about the money. But Matt Taibbi has me thinking it's something more than that…

So the Supreme Court has decided to take up the issue of Gay Marriage. I'm a bit surprised, I guess. There seems to be an inevitability, even accepted by some who've fervently opposed it, that Gay Marriage will continue to be legalized in state after state with no going-back. As I understand it, the worst thing that can happen to Gay Marriage here in California is that the Supreme Court will rule that Proposition 8 is valid, whereupon we'll have another vote and expunge it. California voters have voted twice on this issue. The first time, Gay Marriage lost by 22 points. The second time, Prop 8 went down by a little less than 5 points…and now every single poll says that Gay Marriage would win by a comfy margin today. I'm not even sure anyone would throw a lot of money at trying to stop it.

So it seems like a waste of time for the High Court to take that up…or even to argue it insofar as 7-8 justices are concerned. Seven or eight of those minds are made-up and nothing said by lawyers is going to change them. Maybe Justices Kennedy and Roberts could just have dinner with David Boies, Ted Olson and the attorneys for the other side and kick things around.

The most intriguing scenario here is if one of the Justices has to be replaced before the case gets there next spring. I've long thought it's an odd thing that issues as important as some of what gets to the Supreme Court get decided, in essence, by whether an 82-year-old jurist feels up to doing another year or how his or her heart holds out. One of these days, we're going to have a period where several Justices need to be replaced around the same time and whoever's in the Oval Office will have the opening to completely reshape the High Court for decades to come. Our world could change a lot and it wouldn't be because the Will of the People had decreed it. It would be because someone's cholesterol was too high or a driver ran a red light.