Monthly Archives: October 2013

Stephen Colbert is a master at not breaking character but every so often, even he is overcome by the absurdity of some of his own material. I don't embed Comedy Central videos on this site because their coding is a thing of evil. But if you go here, you can see five times when Dr. Colbert couldn't keep a straight face…and I defy you to keep a straight face watching them.

• House Repubs began a caucus this AM singing "Amazing Grace." Isn't that song about admitting your past wrongs and vowing to change?

Zack Snyder and Bruce Timm spearheaded this brief but powerful animated history of The Man of Steel, interlaced with nice winks to various artists' interpretations of the character. I'm sure every Superman fan who watches it can point to the one moment in that history where the hero was "done right"…

I used to refer to Barney Frank as the smartest man in our government. Now, alas, he's the smartest man who was recently in our government but is no longer. Here's an interview with the guy.

• My greatest fear is not that my country may default but that the "solution" will be to go through this whole battle again in a few months.

A good, long article by R.C. Harvey on this person I seem to work with often…Sergio Aragonés.

The one thing I would add is that our division of labor is sometimes a bit blurrier than any rational explanation. He sometimes contributes things that folks assume are from me and vice-versa. Also, on alternate weeks now, I get to wear the mustache.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday), most PBS channels are running a three-hour documentary called Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle. It was originally three one-hour documentaries but they've decided to gang 'em up. Liev Schreiber narrates.

I have not seen this yet. I'm supposed to be in it somewhere but I have no memory of when I was interviewed or what I said. In the last few years, I've done a whole bunch of these, some of which even came out, and they kinda blur together. Anyway, I'm probably in the section where they talk about Jack Kirby. (I'm assuming any documentary that purports to tell about superheroes is going to have at least one section about Jack Kirby.)

I may not get around to watching it for a while because I hate seeing myself on camera. My hair always looks much worse than I like to think it is. Lately, I feel I've gone from looking like what Larry Fine looked like when he hadn't stuck his finger in a light socket to what Larry Fine looked like after he had stuck his finger in a light socket. I also think I come off way too serious. I've been thinking of having a Muppet made of myself and when people ask me to sit for interviews, I'll see if they'll accept that in lieu of the actual Mark Evanier. And then at the end, I'll devour a whole plate of cookies.

I'm also, I'm told, in this. It's a documentary by and about folks about whom people say, "I Know That Voice" — actors who make their living off-camera using their voices, primarily in animated cartoons. What I've seen of it looks real good but I haven't seen my part yet…and dread that moment since as I recall, the day I was interviewed, my hair looked like Larry Fine's probably does today. But it's coming out on DVD and iTunes and elsewhere in a few months and I hear there's a premiere-type screening at Grauman's Chinese The Egyptian in Hollywood on November 6. It's safe to watch this trailer. I'm not in it…

Reading a lot of articles on the ongoing negotiations in Washington to reopen the government, raise the debt ceiling and cripple the opposition party…

Apparently, when our leaders leave meetings and don't say anything, it's highly significant. And when they leave meetings and say a lot, that too is highly significant. And when one participant in those meetings says they're 80% of the way to a deal, that means they're almost there but when another particpant says they're 80% of the way there, they're still miles apart. And we will absolutely, in no uncertain terms, not breach our debts…unless we do, in which case it will be the end of the United States or nothing bad will happen. In the meantime, these people who refuse to negotiate are still bargaining.

Seems like a good time to quote, as I often do, Jack Germond's great line about the big problem with being a political reporter: "We're not paid to say 'I don't know!'"

Some commentary on the current U.S. political situation from Eric Idle.

Here's a great show you can't go see. Last evening, Carolyn and I went with our friends Gordon and Donna to see the final performance of Smokey Joe's Cafe at the Pasadena Playhouse. Smokey Joe's is a plotless revue cobbled up from the works of songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who between the years of 1952 and around '72 had way more than their share of hits. It's the kind of show where you sit there and say over and over, "I didn't know they wrote that!"

I'd heard this was a good production but I wasn't prepared for how good. The performances were electric…and if you don't want to take my word for it, try this: At the end, an older gentleman in the audience was brought up on stage and he said it was the best production of this show he'd ever seen. And he's seen a few because he was Mike Stoller.

Here's the cast list: LaVance Colley, Kyra Little DaCosta, Thomas Hobson, Stu James, Adrianna Rose Lyons, Monique L. Midgette, Robert Neary, Michael A. Shepperd and Carly Thomas Smith. I'm putting all their names here because (a) every one of them was terrific and (b) I'm hoping when they Google their names some day, they'll find their way to this review. The same for director/choreographer Jeffrey Polk and Musical Director Abdul Hamid Royal.

What's great about this show and this music is the way it connects with its target audience. I'd guess 90% of those present were between 50 and 70. Some of the songs were new to most of us — not everything Leiber and Stoller wrote made the Top Ten — but it all blended into a seamless whole, creating 2+ hours of one rousing tune after another. The non-famous tunes did not sound like oldies…and the oldies only sounded like oldies because they reminded you of who and where you were when you first heard them. I can't single out any of the performers — everyone had at least one killer solo and some had several — but these tunes couldn't have been in better hands. Or throats or wherever.

I'm sorry we didn't go see this earlier in the run so I could send some of you scurrying for tickets. Like I said, it was the last performance. Maybe someone will have the good sense to bring it back…to the Pasadena or elsewhere. Then if you're anywhere near where it's playing, you can go see why my friends and I had such a good time.

Penn & Teller have shown the world how a number of magic tricks are done. Let's show you how they do one of theirs. Here's a video shot from the audience of a trick they do in their stage show. As you'll see, they select someone from the audience who has an iPhone and they vanish that person's iPhone with the video running so that the volunteer gets a video of the trick from the iPhone's POV, which will show how it's done. So watch this first…

And then here's a video that was recorded during a different time when they did the trick…

On one of the Sunday A.M. news talkers, Senator Lindsay Graham said delaying or defunding Obamacare was "not a realistic possibility now." I would like to suggest that it was never a realistic possibility and that almost all the folks crusading for that knew darn well it wasn't. Remember that all their promises in that area were predicated on either getting a veto-proof vote for it (i.e., an awful lot of Democrats) or President Obama deciding to sign a bill that wiped out his signature achievement and a plan he thought would be very, very good for America. Did anyone on this planet really think either of those two things would happen?

Well, maybe. I know a 58-year-old guy who wrote a letter to Kerry Washington, whom he's never met, asking her to marry him. There's something to be said for pursuing someone's wildest fantasy, no matter how impossible it may seem. There's also something to be said for living in reality.

This whole thing about defunding Obamacare was a scam from the start…a trick Republicans played on their constituents to get them fired-up to donate to the G.O.P. and hate Democrats and keep the Tea Partiers aboard an otherwise-sinking ship. It hasn't worked out the way they want and now they're scrambling to convince their base that they fought the good fight but those dratted Democrats didn't do what Good Americans would have done. The other day at the place where I take Physical Therapy for my knee, I overheard the following exchange…

Guy on Lifecycle: The White House hasn't been reasonable. In a vital matter like this Debt Ceiling thing, everything should be on the table including Obamacare.

Guy on Stairmaster: Everything should be on the table? How about raising taxes? Or placing limits on guns?

Guy on Lifecycle: Well, it goes without saying that some things shouldn't be on the table. But everything that should be on the table should be on the table.

Senator Graham also went on a bit about Obamacare being a disaster. He seems to have confused an overwhelmed website with the complete failure of an economic plan. Right now if eBay crashed, he'd probably say that proves auctions are impractical.

Last night, I noticed Fred Stoller's book sitting on a table downstairs and I realized I'd forgotten to recommend it here. This is entirely appropriate as Fred has had a very fine acting career while not being noticed sufficiently for his work. He's been a frequent guest star (and occasionally, a recurring one) on most of the top situation comedies of the last decade or two, including Seinfeld, Everyone Loves Raymond, Murphy Brown, Caroline in the City, King of Queens and many more. I have a special, inexplicable fondness for character actors who are in the "oh, it's that guy again" category, just popping up when you don't expect them.

Fred serves much the same role in my life. I just keep running into him different places and we talk and he tells me what show he just did and is now hoping they'll ask him back. The last time I encountered him, he told me he'd written a book about this odd niche he inhabits in show business and he wanted to send me a copy. He did, I read and enjoyed it…and then I forgot to tell you about it. Like I said, entirely appropriate.

It's a pretty good book in two ways. It's entertaining and you could read it just for that. But if you're interested in a TV acting career, or wondering how that works, it's a fine guide to that world because Fred is pretty honest and not afraid to admit when he made a mistake. He hasn't made many and from what I can tell, his reputation really is as good as it appears to be in this book. Somehow though, he just hasn't achieved the steadiness of gigs you'd expect from a guy who so many people keep wanting to hire…but just for an episode or three, not for all season.

It's called, Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star. Order a copy here. And if you run into Fred before I do, tell him to drop me an e-mail so I can invite him to lunch.

Busy with deadlines…but I'm stopping in to ask this: A friend of mine is desperate to score two tix to see Beyoncé when she performs in December here in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. He'd like to get good seats without it costing him roughly what it cost to build the Staples Center. Does anyone here have an "in" or a suggestion beyond thrashing through the scalpers at places like StubHub or robbing a liquor store? I'm telling him he might be safer going the liquor store route. If you can help him out, please lemme know.

• My solution to the shutdown/debt limit: Flip a coin. One side gets everything it wants. Other side gets to say it got everything it wanted.