Monthly Archives: May 2013

I wrote an article some time ago about Rod Hull, a very brave and funny man with a very odd act. Here he and his Emu are on The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, which aired on CBS in 1974…

Over at Dateline Hollywood, they're saying that Last Call with Carson Daly was recently renewed for another year. I dunno what's up with this alleged new interview show with Alec Baldwin.

There's also this over there…

Looks like Jay Leno is going out on top. In his final May as host of The Tonight Show, Leno is No. 1 on the late-night heap for the first full week of the sweep and drawing some of his best ratings in months. That's a success story that could prove awkward for NBC at next week's upfront presentation as it sets the stage for Jimmy Fallon to take over The Tonight Show next year. It's a situation made all the more uncomfortable because NBC has been boasting about Leno's results, and the struggling network's only other heavyweights right now besides Leno are The Voice and Sunday Night Football. Then there's the fact that Fallon is in a far tighter race in his current 12:35 AM time slot than Leno is at 11:35 PM. With 3.4 million viewers on average for the week of April 29-May 3, The Tonight Show easily bested CBS' The Late Show With David Letterman (2.8 million viewers) and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2.5 million viewers). ABC ran a Kimmel encore show on May 3 as it usually does on Fridays. Over the frame, Leno matched his ratings result of the comparable week last year with a 0.8/3 among adults 18-49. That translated into 1.039 million viewers in the demo last week compared with Letterman's 0.6/3 (766,000 viewers) and Kimmel's 0.6/3 (820,000).

Leno's "farewell" months are likely to be studded with big guests and attention-getting stunts so he probably will go out on top. This was something that wasn't anticipated with the Leno/O'Brien handoff. They figured that while his last month or three might get big ratings because he was leaving, the year or two before that would be down so much that Conan would bring an uptick in the numbers. The network lost confidence in Conan pretty swiftly when that didn't happen even though a lot of that was due to their own bad prediction. I'm just rather fascinated to see what Jay does once he's a free agent. I can't think of another performer who ever left a show against his own wishes who ever had this kind of track record.

So can someone suggest a good piece o' software that will let you write blog posts offline and upload them to your site? I've been using w.bloggar for a decade now and it seems to be going the way of the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon and Alan Thicke's career. It was never that wonderful and I'm thinking there's gotta be another. My computer doesn't like Windows Live Writer.

It's been announced that Seth Meyers will be the new host of Late Night. A friend of mine over at NBC tells me that despite many submissions, no one else was seriously considered for the position. What was considered was not installing anyone in there at all and instead putting The Tonight Show back to 90 minutes and moving up what follows. "It came down as it always seems to these days to a matter of money," he writes. NBC is looking for the parlay of Fallon and Meyers to cost a lot less to produce than the combo of Leno and Fallon. My friend also speculates that in an effort to make things different from the hour before, Late Night with Seth Meyers may wind up looking a bit more like The Daily Show (or SNL's Weekend Update) than the shows formerly headed in that time slot by Letterman, O'Brien and Fallon. My guess is they don't know what the show is yet…but they do need to find a way to make it different.

Here's the New York Times piece on the announcement. There's no mention of earlier reports that NBC was signing Alec Baldwin to do a late night interview show. There's also no mention of Last Call with Carson Daly, which under different names has been there now since January of 2002. But then there's never any mention anywhere of Last Call with Carson Daly.

Several weeks ago here, I asked folks to send me their explanations for what it was that Jay Leno did during the whole Jay/Conan do-si-do that was so treacherous and unethical. I only got a few entries, most of them prefaced by, "Well, I don't believe this but some people say…" I'll be running a few along with my responses shortly but if anyone would like to get on this, we're still accepting indictments.

Not that anyone cares much but lately, I'm more bored by the late night shows than I've ever been. I can't get into either Jimmy or Conan at all. I like Jay's monologues and when he has a guest on that excites him. I like the latter with Dave but don't see that often. My fave is still Craig Ferguson but I wish he'd cut down the dancing and mugging. He also has nights when he seems to think the job description involves not letting guests finish paragraphs. I just got but have not had time to install a new TiVo for my office. It can record four stations at the same time so I may record more of the late night shows…but I bet I wind up watching them for less total time, especially when Jay goes off.

Michael Tomasky, who is far from a loon, believes the Republicans will try to impeach Barack Obama for…well, anything they think they can. I mean, it's not like there are any problems in this country that need real attention…

Folks are writing me to note it's Mother's Day and to ask if that makes me miss my mother who left at least this planet last October. No more than yesterday did or tomorrow will. We were never big on holidays in our family. We kinda went through life as if every day was a holiday. I was just as likely to give my mother a gift on any day as I was on Mother's Day. I was less likely to take her out to dinner on Mother's Day because she hated going to restaurants when they were crowded.

I felt so bad for her the last decade or so as she suffered with endless hospitalizations and diminishing vision that I have trouble missing her from that period. And it was during that period that I got through missing the woman she was before that. I do have one lingering void. Most days between 5 PM and 6 PM, I get that feeling that there was something I was supposed to do and I've forgotten to do it. Then I realize: If I didn't see her that day, I always phoned her between 5 and 6. That's what I keep forgetting to do, now that I can't.

I learned a lot about my mother while cleaning out her house before I sold it. I also learned a few things about me. One of the things she had stashed away in a drawer was a Woody Woodpecker comic book story I wrote and drew with crayola at age 7 — or, as we might put it, 12 years before I was writing the real Woody Woodpecker comic book. I also found my first typewriter — the one she got for me with many books of Blue Chip Stamps. I was about 15 when we picked it up and I pounded away on it until I was about 22. It was a manual with keys so unresponsive that I couldn't touch-type on it. I had to type with my index fingers and space with my thumbs. The ribbon on it still seems to be good but my index fingers aren't.

Neither of my parents ever understood my career but they trusted that I did. That was one of the best things they did for me. Another was that they pretty much let me find my own way in the world. I never got a lecture about "the birds and the bees" — or much of anything else for that matter. My father was too inhibited (I guess you'd say) to deliver a father-son lesson about sex so one day, long after another male parent might have seen his duty and done it, my mother sat me down. She said, "Dad and I were talking about whether you two need to have a discussion about sex and things like that."

I said, "I think I've figured it all out."

She said, "We figured you would." Then she added, "Dad will be very happy when I tell him he doesn't have to do it."

She was a great organizer. Several years there, we volunteered our home as a polling place and my mother supervised the voting and, before voting machines came in, the actual counting-by-hand of the ballots. She also ran programs for my school and did volunteer work for charities, and some election years she'd get involved at the local Democratic Headquarters. But her greatest bit of organizing may have been her management of The Tuna Fish.

We had a neighbor who had a son who worked down in San Pedro for a company that processed tuna and other fish, canning it for restaurant sales. They didn't output small cans of the stuff. They were all huge — about a foot in diameter, six to eight inches high…and unlabelled. That is, there'd be no label on the can.  Apparently, at some point on the assembly line, if a can lost its label, anyone who worked there could just take it home…and the son knew which ones were tuna and which weren't.  Whenever he went to visit his mother, he'd bring her one even though she didn't like tuna. Is that a son or not?  "Here, Mom…here's another ton of that stuff you won't eat!"

So she'd give it to us and my mother would direct the distribution of its contents to seven or eight neighbors. I mean, we liked tuna but you can only have it so often.  And there was no point freezing it since more was always on the way.

My mother would pick a date a few weeks in the future…say, August 3rd. She would then phone each of these selected neighbors and inform them that August 3 would be a Tuna Day; that on that day, Mark would be bringing them a free supply of tuna so don't, for example, serve your family a tuna-noodle casserole the night before. Everyone gratefully marked Tuna Day on their calendars.

Come Tuna Day, it would be my job to open the can. This was not easy as they were too big to fit in my mother's electric can opener so I had to use the manual kind. It took quite some time. Once I finally got the lid off, my mother would spoon tuna into eight or nine plastic containers, including a big one for us, and store them in our refrigerator, which she'd already rearranged so there'd be ample space. Then she would phone each neighbor to ask, "Are you ready for tuna?" This was to prevent me from carrying a container to a house down the block, finding no one home and then having to carry it back. We decided that between the hot sun and the volume of stray cats around, it would not be a good idea for me to leave it on the porch.

If the tuna recipients were there and primed to receive tuna, she'd dispatch me on my appointed rounds…and the neighbors would be very happy. A few insisted on tipping me a buck or two, then they'd take it in and commence making tuna sandwiches, tuna salads, tuna croquettes, tuna casseroles and such. One lady told us she made tuna chow mein…to which I say, "Hey, why not?"

Then one memorable Tuna Day, I got the lid off and the contents looked odd. I thought at first we'd gotten a bad batch and I asked my mother to inspect it. She did, and it took her a minute or two to come to the shocking realization…

It wasn't tuna. It was salmon.

She laughed and I laughed and she began calling the neighbors and telling them, "Mark will be right over but it's not tuna this time. It's salmon." They were all fine with that and they proceeded to make salmon sandwiches, salmon salads, salmon croquettes, salmon casseroles…and that one woman made salmon chow mein, to which I again say, "Hey, why not?"

The following Tuna Day, I opened the can muttering, "I wonder what it'll be this time? Tuna? Salmon? Anchovies? Tennis balls?" I think I'd have preferred tennis balls to anchovies. It turned out to be tuna and when my mother called Mrs. Hollingsworth down the street to tell her tuna was on its way, Mrs. Hollingsworth said, "Oh…don't you have any salmon?"

It's Stooge Sunday and this week, boys and girls, we get the real lowdown on the Third Reich. You know who the first actor was to ever play Hitler on film? Well, most folks think it was Moe Howard in this short comedy, You Nazty Spy, which was released on January 19, 1940. That's almost two years before the United States declared war on Germany. The Stooges were ahead of Washington…and why are we not surprised?

What else to tell you about it? Larry Fine plays Goebbels and walks with a limp. This is not because Goebbels walked with a limp. He did…but Larry had injured himself shortly before filming commenced. Nice how that worked out, isn't it? Also, one of the writers was Clyde Bruckman, who we wrote about here last Stooge Sunday.

This film was one of the Stooges' favorites and it's the one Moe most often brought up in interviews in later years. It went over so well, they made a sequel…which you'll see here next Stooge Sunday. Buckle up and get ready for take off…

Here's a site where you can waste a good half-hour of your life. Christopher Moloney goes around with a camera and movie stills and places the stills into photos he takes of the same locations. Do you understand what I'm saying? If not, don't worry. It'll all be clear once you go visit FILMography.

A few weeks ago, we linked you to Part One of a two-part piece by Dick Cavett about the late, already-missed Jonathan Winters. Here's a link to Part Two. Pay attention to what he says about how TV producers didn't know how to package Jonathan for television…and ignore Cavett's distaste for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He's just wrong about that.

I have decided that the cortisone shot is the single greatest medical discovery in the history of mankind. My doctor said it wouldn't kick in for 24-48 hours but it worked in about 18. Still a little pain but I can actually now walk to and from the bathroom without outscreaming any scream queen. I hope the part where it wears off is not equally ahead of schedule.

I'm going to spend the weekend not walking much, possibly not even going downstairs. Carolyn is here to do that for me and on some of her trips up, I expect bowls of her turkey soup, which has its own miraculous healing properties. Thanks for all the good thoughts expressed in e-mails. I don't think I've ever experienced pain like that before; not even when Bush won a second term.

I read this news item —

Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan military dictator who ruled his country during one of the bloodiest phases of its civil war, was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity Friday for the systematic massacre of more than 1,700 Maya people.

— and I thought, "Ah! Finally, someone it's okay to compare to Hitler."

Miyoko Shida Rigolo has one of the most unusual and amazing acts I've ever seen. This may seem a little tedious at first but watch it to the end — full-screen if you can — and I'll bet you find it worth the time…

Fred Kaplan has a history lesson for John McCain.

Speaking of McCain: He says he wants to have that 6,000 page report on Torture released — the one that says there's no doubt the Bush Administration ordered the torture of human beings and that it got us no useful information. Assuming it is, is McCain about to act like a "maverick" and finally start bucking his party and demand hearings and prosecution of those who committed war crimes? I'm not holding my breath…which, by the way, is of little help when you're being waterboarded.