Monthly Archives: September 2013

I'm sure 97% of the people who'd come to this blog completely understand String Theory. But the 3% of you who don't know a fermion from a boson might still enjoy this video from McGill University graduate Tim Blais and his Einstein puppet. At this very moment, Stephen Hawking is probably rocking out to it…

I've never met Jeff Hoover but I occasionally delight in his performances as part of the WGN Morning News in Chicago. He's the guy who did the great Jerry Lewis impression and the great Christopher Walken impression and he's done other very funny spots for them.

A few days ago, as I'm sure you all know, we had National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Jeff appeared on the morning show to talk like a pirate and learned it ain't so easy when your TelePrompter isn't working…

[EDIT, later: This video insists on autoplaying and we don't like that here. So here's a link to go watch it, if you want to, on the station's website.]

I'm a big fan of Neil Patrick Harris as an award show host. I guess he had to disappoint me, sooner or later. I thought tonight's Emmy Show was tedious, self-important and lacking in substance. Okay, so that's most award shows and some of that at the Emmys simply comes from the fact that because people like to get awards, the Academy keeps adding categories. They now have to present thousands of those statuettes a year, broken up over a few hundred different telecasts or ceremonies. Or at least, that's the way it feels.

A certain percentage of every award show is simply going to be boring and overflowing in the egos of successful people. That's a given. But Mr. Harris has usually come up with a few great moments, usually in song, that made the tune-in worth it. This time, no. The opening with the former hosts was especially grim.

What did I like? Well, Neil mentioned a few times that a lot of the winners were unexpected. The most interesting one of those to me was that The Colbert Report got the awards that always seem to go to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

And I feel a bit uneasy thinking like this but I'm really glad that Phil Spector movie didn't win anything. I'm really surprised it was even nominated, what with Al Pacino playing a part he could have Skyped in on his lunch hour, and the whole "indict-the-victim" theme. Next, I suppose, David Mamet will remake The Boston Strangler and try to open up the possibility that every woman he supposedly killed was a worthless slut who offed herself.

But getting back to what was wrong with the telecast: I was speed-TiVoing through some of the non-essential moments but often when I watched, what I saw made me imagine a game show where really rich people win large sums of cash. Would you watch such a program? Obviously, a lot of Americans wouldn't…which is why a lot of Americans don't watch the Oscars or the Emmys. I need to remember to try that.

Okay, so the Emmy Awards are tonight and the ceremony will include the traditional "In Memoriam" reel of prominent TV folks who've passed since the airing of the last "In Memoriam" reel. There will also be special, separate tributes to five folks: James Gandolfini, Jonathan Winters, Jean Stapleton, Gary David Goldberg and Cory Monteith. They selected those five over others who might have merited such recognition including Larry Hagman and Jack Klugman. Some, like Jack Klugman's son, are irate that Mr. Monteith — a younger performer with no Emmy nominations who died of a drug overdose — is getting that standalone moment in lieu of, say, Jack Klugman's son's father.

There is, of course, no way these selections are ever going to be free of controversy and the hurt feelings of those whose loved and departed ones didn't make the cut. There are probably at least a hundred folks around who would say to Adam Klugman, "Yeah, maybe your father deserved more mention…but at least he's getting a mention. My father, who worked his whole life in the TV industry and then died this past year isn't being mentioned at all!" Every time an award show does one of these, someone has a job I don't envy: They have to decide that these people get named in the montage and those people don't. There are always many who could be included but there just isn't time so there are always friends and relatives who are hurt by some exclusion.

Did Jack Klugman contribute more to television than Cory Monteith? Sure. But I'm not sure anyone is saying otherwise.

But remember how these montages started. They weren't about who'd contributed the most. They were about who were the best-known. It's only fairly recently that they've included people like costume designers and studio execs and composers and cinematographers at all. The Emmy reels still ignore a lot of past winners of multiple Emmy awards because they aren't deemed by someone as well-enough known. A fellow like Jack Klugman, who starred in The Odd Couple and Quincy to name but two shows, was always a lock for inclusion. The writers, producers, directors, art directors, composers, sound technicians, etc., who also made those two programs successful never, in life or death, receive quite the same kind of recognition.  Where would Jack Klugman have been without them?  To say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of artisans who crafted and applied his toupées?

I suspect that if the producers of this year's Emmys had been ordered to also do a special tribute to Klugman — and while they're at it, Larry Hagman — it would not have been Cory Monteith who got bumped. It would have been Gary David Goldberg, the producer-writer of Family Ties, Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge.

A lot of folks are irate about the Klugman "snub." He's not being snubbed. He's in the montage. He's just not being mentioned as prominently as someone else. But for most of his career, Jack Klugman was mentioned more prominently — and probably paid better — than 98% of the people who worked on his shows. Even if they left him out of the Emmy Awards completely, he'd still continue to be better known than every one of them except, arguably, Tony Randall.

Thanks to the invention of the rerun, the man is in zero danger of being forgotten, and viewers still unborn will get to see how good he was. I'm not saying it's right to single out Cory Monteith to the exclusion of others. But when you're a star of the magnitude and longevity of Jack Klugman, you spent most of your career being singled out to the exclusion of others. Tonight, a lot of people who were as good at their jobs as Klugman was at his won't get mentioned at all.

Hey, you know those anti-Obamacare commercials that are running? The ones that show a creepy version of Uncle Sam administering government-run health care by preparing to rape a young women who has that kind of coverage? Yeah, those. Jonathan Bernstein has the same theory I have, which is that they're basically being made for the same reason Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom produced Springtime for Hitler.

Hey, how about a good, rousing song about sexually-transmitted disease? Here's Tom Lehrer…

So why are Republicans pursuing this "defund Obamacare, which you're not going to do, or we'll shut down the government and destroy the economy" threat? I'm not afraid they're going to succeed. I am eager to understand just where they think this game of Stratego is heading and are we giving them too much credit by presuming they know?

Jonathan Bernstein comes up with what seems like the simplest answer to it all, which is that they don't know…or care. It's all just a phallus-measuring competition. Here are two paragraphs that sum it up…

Remember, Republicans have mostly just given up on developing real, conservative public policy. We saw that in the 2012 campaign, in which Mitt Romney couldn't be bothered to come up with a tax plan that came close to adding up. We've seen it in the failure to come up with a "replace" bill on healthcare reform as part of their promised "repeal and replace" plan. Unlike in Ronald Reagan's era, or even Newt Gingrich's era (or perhaps more to the point, unlike in Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton's presidency), there's no conservative policy agenda beyond just rejecting everything Democrats want.

Simply put: When you've reduced your entire movement to saying "no" to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, is it any surprise that whoever shouts "NO" the loudest will wind up defining what counts as "conservative"?

Between 1969 and 1993, a man named Alan Cranston was a senator from California, and just after he was elected, he came and spoke at my high school. We had an "in" to get him since his son Kim was in my class. Overall, I thought Cranston was a good man but the speech he gave that day, though officially about issues like The War and The Economy and The Infrastructure was really all about The Senator. It was about him. It was like he was paying his speechwriter by the ovation. I thought he said little of substance; just lines that would get us to cheer him.

I think we often underestimate how much of what our leaders say and do is primarily about trying to remain our leaders; trying to amp up personal support for them and, of course, donations and volunteerism. I do not hear them often discussing The Issues. It's more like them discussing how vital it is for them to win re-election so they can continue to fight for what's right on The Issues. I wonder if before he agreed to address his son's high school, Senator Cranston remembered, "Those kids are going to be voters by the time I run for another term." And with the lowering of the voting age to 18 then seeming likely, we were probably going to be voters well before that.

What's driving the Republican "defund Obamacare" drive right now may simply be politicians who think their stance will give them dominance in their party…and they can worry later about what the extreme stance is doing to that party's chances for winning elections. Clearly, after all those predictions of a Romney landslide, they habitually underestimate how the average voter outside "the bubble" will respond. Heck, some of them even think or thought they could sell their constituents on the possibility of Obama signing, as opposing to vetoing, a bill that is never going to reach him anyway to destroy Obamacare.

NBC is developing a mini-series based on the life of Johnny Carson. There's a limit to how much I believe in prejudging a project but I'm skeptical, first of all, that they can make Johnny's life interesting enough to be a mini-series; not unless they delve into scandal, marital dirt and affairs, Johnny's ruthless side, etc. Otherwise, it's not a story of struggles so much as of ongoing success. Yeah, Johnny had some career setbacks before The Tonight Show — actually, before Who Do You Trust? — but not many. Will people want to watch a mini-series about a guy who managed his career really, really well and had pretty much nothing but varying degrees of success for most of his life? Will the production treat as great drama those moments when he was fighting with NBC execs for another million a year in salary or worrying because his ratings were dipping slightly?

But the big problem for me is: Who the heck do you get to play Carson? The man is so well known and bio-pics rarely work if the viewers can close their eyes and see the real guy, then open them and see that how much the fellow on the screen doesn't look like him, sound like him, act like him, etc. Since the most interesting part of Carson's life would be his early days when he did struggle (a little), they'll probably want to hire a young actor. Then they could age him as the story progressed, which is easier than hiring an older actor and trying to "young" him up. And are they also going to hire acts to play Doc and Ed and Don Rickles and Charles Nelson Reilly and folks like that? Sounds to me like a casting nightmare…

I'm eager to read the Bill Zehme book on which it's to be based but a dramatization…? I dunno about this…

Fred Kaplan on the hard-to-believe possibility of some sane diplomatic gains with Iran. Hard to believe…but if Fred's right, we have nothing to lose by trying.

From 1967, we have a few minutes of Merv Griffin interviewing Neil Simon. Simon then had four plays running on Broadway — a stunning achievement — though his latest, Star-Spangled Girl, was not one of his best. It was a play he later regretted writing…though on the strength of his name and previous hits, it sold enough advance tickets to run 261 performances. That's not a flop unless you measure it against his two previous plays — Barefoot in the Park (1530 performances) and The Odd Couple (964). (By the way: Merv makes it sound like Odd Couple came along after Sweet Charity. Other way around.)

Woody Allen has recorded his four books of short stories as audio books. Here's a sampler.

• All the people who are telling us America wants Obamacare defunded and destroyed are the same ones who told us America wanted Mitt Romney.

An awful lot of well-known comic actors got their start or a good boost because of their involvement with an L.A.-based workshop/show/school called The Groundlings. I was involved with a lot of these folks and a big, very fascinating book could be written about the organization and all the folks who've participated in it over the years. For now though, you'll have to settle for this article which is pretty good even though someone doesn't know how to spell Laraine Newman's first name.

• I think we should pass a law to defund 230 members of Congress.

Brian Madigan liked my piece on the first issues of X-Men and The Avengers and he has a follow-up question. It's about the extent to which X-Men resembled the new DC strip, The Doom Patrol, which came out the same year…

I've always thought X-Men looked a bit rushed (Jack could never remember if Beast had gloves or not). If DC had come out with the X-Men everyone would have seen it as a Fantastic Four copy. Let's see, Flame guy? Ice guy. Monster Hero? Beastly hero. Female hero with weak girly power? Let's do telekinesis. Thing and Johnny tease each other? Replicate that with the Beast and Bobby.

My big question is who came first? Professor X [leader of the X-Men] or Dr. Niles Caulder [leader of the Doom Patrol]? Or is this one of those coincidences?

The Doom Patrol debuted in DC's My Greatest Adventure #80 which went on sale in mid-April, 1963. The first issue of the X-Men came out the following July, probably the first week. Given the timing, it is theoretically possible that someone at Marvel saw the first Doom Patrol issue, decided to rip it off and hustled their imitation out post-haste. That's pretty unlikely, though. Neither Stan Lee nor Jack Kirby usually looked at competitors' comics. (Jack didn't even read the Marvels he didn't work on unless he had to for an assignment.)

Actually, if Stan and Jack had seen Doom Patrol before they did X-Men (or at least before they finished #1), it more likely would have had the opposite effect: They would have steered clear of any similarities so as not to look like they were copying…for legal reasons and also simple pride. Who wants to be accused of plagiarism?  After all, if you're going to steal, you steal from a proven hit, not from a new comic which, frankly, looked at first like a feeble attempt by DC to compete with Fantastic Four. Later on, Doom Patrol evolved into a pretty good feature but I don't think the first few would cause any competitor to gasp, "Damn, why didn't we think of a group of misfit super-heroes led by a guy in a wheelchair? Let's plagiarize it right away!"

But yeah, there were similarities. In Doom Patrol, the wheelchair-bound genius Dr. Caulder gathered together "freaks" to get them to use their powers for good. In X-Men, the wheel-chair bound genius Professor X gathered together mutants to get them to use their powers for good. And there were other similarities. In the March, 1964 Doom Patrol story, they battled a group known as The Brotherhood of Evil. In the March, 1964 X-Men story, those heroes battled a group known as The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. There were a few other points like that as well and personally, I think they're all a matter of coincidence.

The Doom Patrol was launched by writers Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, with Bruno Premiani handling the art. Drake actually came up with the basic premise and got the assignment, then tapped Haney to help him. Here is a link to Arnold's account of how it all happened. Later, they were all written by Arnold until he got himself fired at DC. There was a little uprising of writers demanding better rates, health insurance and payment for reprints of their work, and Drake was among the more vocal rousers of rabble so he was shown the door. He then went to work for Marvel where he wrote among other assignments, X-Men.

When asked about similarities between the two groups, Arnold for a long time said it was just a fluke and quipped, "Great minds think alike." Then in 1999, he was reunited with Haney at Comic-Con in San Diego — maybe even the same day the above photo was taken — and Haney convinced him to at least say otherwise. Bob, who was well aware of the success of X-Men, had somewhat more anger towards the comic book field than Arnold. I'm not sure if he really believed the X-Men was a swipe of Doom Patrol or if he just thought there might be recognition and/or money to be reaped from saying so…but he said so and he persuaded Arnold to at least say he was suspicious. Haney died in 2004 and Drake passed in 2007…and that's about all there is to say on this topic.

However, I do have a slight correction to make on the piece I posted about the simultaneous births of The X-Men and The Avengers. In it, I wrote the following…

[Publisher Martin] Goodman had long discussed the idea of doing a Marvel book that would ape DC's popular Justice League of America and gather together heroes from different titles. The Fantastic Four had, in fact, started with Goodman's request for a book like J.L.A. This seemed like the time for that so in a matter of very few days, Lee and Kirby whipped out the first issue of The Avengers and it went to press along with X-Men #1…

I recently discussed this whole matter with a friend and as I did, I recalled another detail that I was told by Sol Brodsky, who had been Marvel's production manager at the time these comics went to press. I would have been more accurate if I'd written that section as follows…

Goodman had long discussed the idea of doing a Marvel book that would ape DC's popular Justice League of America and gather together heroes from different titles. The Fantastic Four had, in fact, started with Goodman's request for a book like J.L.A. and a few months earlier, Lee and Kirby had briefly done some work on such a concept. It is not known how far they took it before putting it aside in favor of more pressing work. When a new comic was suddenly needed to replace Daredevil on the production schedule, they went back to that project. In a matter of very few days, Lee and Kirby whipped out the first issue of The Avengers and it went to press along with X-Men #1…

That better describes my understanding of what happened and I should have written it that way in the first place. Sorry I didn't.