Monthly Archives: September 2013

Back in 1969, ABC was trying a lot of unique programming ideas. One of them — well ahead of its time — was Music Scene, which was a combination music show, talk show and sketch show, hosted by David Steinberg. It was one of the then-rare attempts to attract a young adult audience to prime-time TV…and here was another unusual thing about it. It was a 45 minute series. Not a half-hour. Not an hour. 45 minutes.

There was a lot of talent involved, including Lily Tomlin who went from Music Scene to Laugh-In. Here's the episode for 1/12/70, which turned out to be the last one, edited down to only include the scenes with guest host Groucho Marx…

• House Republicans will not fold. How do I know that? Because Dick Morris was just on CNN confidently predicting they would.

Yes, yes. I understand the Hastert Rule is not a law and that it can be ignored at any time. My point is that it should be. And House procedures should be changed so that if a bill does have the support of a majority of the total body, it gets voted on and, presumably, passed. That's what John Boehner oughta allow but a good part of his party would want to kill him for giving away an unfair advantage they shouldn't have.

If I understand it correctly — and on any given topic, there's always a good chance I don't — the problem presently before Congress is caused by a thing called the Hastert Rule. It's named for Dennis Hastert, a Republican who was the Speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007. He formalized a practice that had been informally used before him, sometimes by Democrats. Basically, the way it works is that since the majority party can more-or-less control which bills are voted upon, no bill gets the floor for a vote unless a majority of the majority party is for it. This is to prevent bills from passing that would pass if put up to an open vote.

An example. There are 435 members of Congress. To pass, a bill needs 218 votes.

Let's say there's a bill to outlaw the making and selling of cole slaw…and by the way, don't you think it's about time? Or no, better still, let's say there's a bill to outlaw the strangling of puppy dogs. Those are more or less equal in my mind but we'll go with the puppy dogs. Let's further say that there are 234 Republicans in the House and 201 Democrats…which was what we seem to have at the present time.

Let us say that 134 Republicans are in favor of puppy-strangling and 100 are opposed to it. Please understand that these are just hypothetical numbers based on no polling…kind of like the stuff most politicians put in their speeches. In truth, the number of Republicans who support puppy-strangling is probably much, much higher and don't call me and argue the point, Roger. I'm kidding. Let us say all 201 Democrats are opposed to puppy-strangulation and yes, I know that's giving at least a couple of them the benefit of the doubt.

If Congress worked the way I was taught in Fifth Grade, it would be simple: 301 Congressfolks are for the bill. 134 are opposed to it. The bill carries overwhelmingly. That's how Democracy works.

But it doesn't work that way since the Hastert Rule became a way the majority can render the minority impotent. Since the bill does not have the support of the majority of his party, the current Speaker, Mr. Boehner on whose shoulders the dread government shutdown now seems to rest, would not allow the bill to come to a vote.

Does anyone besides me think that's not what the Founding Fathers had in mind? That 134 should prevail over 301?

The numbers are not absolute but it looks like the funding bill that keeps the doors open on the United States of America without crippling Obamacare does have the support of the majority of Congresspeople. It just doesn't have the support of the majority of the majority party.

The Hastert Rule is not going to be abolished for this. It probably will not be abolished ever because whoever's in the majority is not going to want to give it up and the party in the minority can't do it. But it oughta be outlawed. A majority of Democrats and Republicans who agree with one another should trump a majority of whichever party happens to have the most seats at the moment.

Here's a simple lesson on how Obamacare will work. For some reason, they left out the part where the Death Panels get to vote to kill Grandma…

We hear a lot about Neville Chamberlain. It seems like every time someone compromises or decides some battle is not worth the fight, the person gets labelled as Neville Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler. Sometimes, the name is even invoked by people who don't have a clue what Prime Minister Chamberlain did to earn his dubious place as a historic analogy. Here's one such example.

Personally, I think it's sometimes smart to walk away from a battle you can't win or one that isn't cost effective (and not necessarily in terms of money) to win. I have worked with self-destructive people who think otherwise.

Anyway, Nick Baumann has done some research on the subject and the story of Neville Chamberlain, he says, is not exactly what people think it is when they're trying to lambaste someone for not going all-in on a war.

Kurt Eichenwald on the Affordable Care Act. In a strange way, the hysterical, fact-free attacks on Obamacare are making me feel more confident it will work.

• My advice to both parties in Washington: Leave the government up and running and shut down the folks who make Miley Cyrus videos.

David Frum on why the now-almost-certain shutdown will hurt Republicans.

One does get the feeling that this whole battle has very little to do with Obamacare and everything to do with the G.O.P. saying, "Damn it! Even if we don't control the White House and the Senate, we can still run this country as if we did!"

So…what if The Beatles back in their Ed Sullivan days had recorded "Stairway to Heaven?" (Thanks to Shelly Goldstein…)

I have these two great friends of 3+ decades, Cheri and Bill Steinkellner. Actually, I've known them since a few years before they got married. Back then, Cheri was an actress and Billy was (and still is) a writer and the best director and teacher of improv comedy I've ever known. They wrote some things together and then they wrote some more things together and some more…and pretty soon, they were so successful as a writing team that Cheri pretty much gave up performing. Among the TV shows they wrote for (and sometimes produced) were The Jeffersons, Who's the Boss?, Bob (the series where Bob Newhart played a comic book artist), Hope & Gloria, Teacher's Pet and Cheers. They won Emmy Awards for Cheers and Teacher's Pet. They also wrote the book for the Broadway musical, Sister Act, and they have a lot more impressive credits.

Cheri teaches a once-a-week class at U.C. Santa Barbara in which she introduces show business wanna-bes to the realities of the industry in which they hope to work, and she kept asking me to come up and speak to this class. That's what I was about to do earlier this year the day my knee went kablooey on me and instead of driving up to S.B., I headed for local medical attention. Yesterday was the first day of the new semester so I went north to be her opening guest.

I can get around okay on the knee now but being the one with which I work the gas and brake pedals, it's not great on long-range driving. So instead of trying to motor up to Santa Barbara and back, I Amtraked it. The train made for a rather pleasant ride, during which I answered e-mail, did a bit of blogging and read, via iPad Kindle, the recent autobiography of Shirley Jones. If you're a fan of Ms. Jones, as I was and to a reduced extent still am, you might want to give this one a miss. She tells you a lot more about her life, and the lives of those around her, than you might feel you have a right to know. On the other hand, if you want to read about her and Jack Cassidy having threesomes in bed, go for it.

Cheri met me at the station and drove me to her class where I addressed about 300 bright, young students, not a one of whom had ever heard of Welcome Back, Kotter. This is in no way a criticism of them or anyone their age because I think I understand the reasons for it…but when I was in college, I was aware of TV shows and movie stars more than twenty years earlier and I think all my contemporaries were, too. Still, as I ticked off at Cheri's request a list of my influences, it didn't seem like a lot of those present had heard of Stan Freberg, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Groucho Marx or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Interestingly, a fair number of them knew exactly who Jack Kirby was.

The questions, from both Cheri and the students, were bright and challenging…and I had a pretty good time. I don't think I scared anybody away from the profession, nor was that my goal. I think…I hope I gave them sound advice on attitude and how to frame their dreams. I tried to emphasize (a) never becoming or even appearing desperate and (b) not taking setbacks and rejections too seriously. One needs, I believe, to learn to roll with all punches and to understand that the business is not and never will be "fair" the way you want it to be.

After class, I stayed around for about an hour to answer individuals' questions and then Cheri, Bill, their son Teddy and I went to dinner. Since there were no trains back to L.A. that late, I stayed over in the Steinkellner guest house, then Bill and Cheri drove me back home today. They were coming into town anyway since Billy teaches an amazing Improv Master Class on most Saturdays. On the way, we stopped off for brunch in Ventura and this cartoonist I know named Sergio Aragonés joined us.

I'm probably doing what Shirley Jones did — telling you more about myself than you care to know — but I sometimes treat this blog as a diary, jotting down things I want to remember for myself. I had a real good 24 hours. There were friends. There was great scenery. There was good food. There were fresh, inquisitive young people. Everything was wonderful except that I really didn't need to learn how at age 79, the woman who played Marian the Librarian and Mrs. Partridge still enjoys frequent masturbation.

The Governor of Kentucky, Steve Beshear, explains why his state desperately needs Obamacare…and how it'll be good for any state where the leadership doesn't place politics above the welfare of its people and try to sabotage the program.  I agree with what Kevin Drum said this morning when he attempted to summarize the entire battle in one sentence:

The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to make sure that the working poor don't have access to affordable health care.

Sent from a train nearing Carpinteria…

A classic Bob Newhart routine performed by a classic Bob Newhart…

Hey, I seem to be able to blog from the train.  I'm on the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner, just passing the Chatsworth station, heading for Santa Barbara.  Very easy, very comfy…and I even have free Wi-Fi.  Pretty nice.  Let's see if I can post a video link…

Not this weekend but next, the second San Diego Comic Fest takes place in…well, you can figure out where it takes place. This is a small, less crowded, mostly-about-comics convention run by some of the folks who started that other annual comic book convention in San Diego. There are no movie and TV stars, there's a small dealer room, there are fewer professional guests…and at last year's, where I had a pretty good time, it mostly consisted of a lot of guys in my age bracket sitting around and talking about how comics and fandom used to be.

If this sounds appealing to you, tickets are still available and you can get all the info here. I am not part of the programming and may not even be able to make it in person but I'll be there in spirit.

My knee, which is generally healing, is still not to the point where I feel I can drive that far. Today, I'm speaking to a class at U.C. Santa Barbara and I'm taking the train there. Amtrak has wi-fi and since I've never blogged from a train, I'll see if I can blog from a train.