Monthly Archives: October 2013

My mother died a year ago last Friday. Today, the doctor who took such wonderful care of her for more than the last third of her life phoned to see how I was doing. He was never my doctor. He was my mother's. But that's how strongly he felt a connection to her…and thus, to me.

The answer is that I am fine with it. Do I miss her? Sure…but I miss the woman she was when she could walk and see and do things without me or a caregiver assisting her. But by the time her heart stopped beating on 10/4/12, that person was long ago and far away. So for me the mourning period hasn't been one year; more like ten.

I felt so sorry for her the last decade of her life. It was all about surviving — taking pills, going to doctors' appointments, etc. — and not much else. She couldn't eat the foods she wanted to eat. Couldn't read a book. Couldn't walk without a walker…and then, not very far. She couldn't even get down the front steps of her home without someone to help and couldn't get down the rear steps to go out in her backyard even with assistance.

She hated it. She hated being so reliant on others. And when I had to run over there or haul her into the hospital at 4 AM, she hated what she felt she was doing to my life. Over and over, she talked about how there should be some simple, painless way she could choose to just be done with it. (My mother is not the best example in my life of the sheer humanity that would be involved in allowing the elderly and ill to make that decision. Before long here, I'll post the tale of some neighbors we had whose story makes the case even better.)

So yeah, I miss her. But the elation at seeing her out of pain drowns a lot of that out and so does this: Had she lived another few months, she would have been totally blind, as opposed to legally blind, and she would have lost the last crumbs of the independence she so dearly loved. And to be honest, I would have had to make some hard decisions about where and how it was best for her to live. Nothing I would have decided would have been to her liking…and I'm glad for me I didn't have to pick the least painful alternative.

Every so often, it hits me that she's gone. Most days around 5:30 or 6 in the afternoon, I get the odd sensation that I've forgotten to do something I was supposed to do. And then I remember: Any day I didn't see her earlier, I'd phone her around then to check in, say hello (and usually, something very silly) and just connect. That's what I'm remembering I haven't done yet.

The other day, I was talking about her with my dermatologist. I had an "atypical mole" removed and I was there so he could yank out a few stitches. He said, "It looks like you've been doing a good job cleaning the sutures." I said yes, "I've been washing the area off with Bactine."

He looked surprised. He said, "Bactine? Do they still make Bactine?"

Yes, they do. It's not always easy to find in the First Aid section but it's usually there, just to the left of the Neosporin. Bactine is what my mother used to spray or daub on any cut, scrape, abrasion or place on my body that hurt. It usually stopped hurting within moments and I'm not sure if it was the magic healing/cleansing powers of Bactine Pain Relieving Cleaning Spray or just the fact that my mother was fixing the boo-boo. It may well have been a combination.

My mother could heal anything with a bottle of Bactine. Anything! If I'd needed a heart transplant, she would have just sprayed on about a tenth of a bottle and — poof! — new heart! I'm sure of it.

I always keep a bottle of it in my medicine cabinet. It doesn't work quite as well when I spray it on. I just don't quite have her touch. But it does help, maybe because it reminds me of her. I hope something always does.

It's actually been thirty years since Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Not long ago, the five surviving members of the troupe sat down — one via Skype or a similar hookup — and discussed the film for a special feature that appears on the new Blu-ray edition. This is one of those bonus features that's intended to get you to buy another copy of a movie you already have and most of us, of course, will fall for it. Here's a brief excerpt from that discussion…

I think every cable news channel should have a little clock in one corner of the screen showing us how long the Shutdown has been going on. Then they should have another clock in another part of the screen showing us how long it will be until America defaults on its debts. Then they should have another clock that shows long we have until the time after that when we have to raise the debt ceiling. Then they should add in a clock to the next time we'll need to pass a new funding bill. Then five more clocks counting down the times to the five subsequent needs to raise the debt ceiling, plus a clock telling us how long we have until the 2014 and 2016 elections.

If they can get all these clocks and timers on the screen, there'll be no room to show Senators and Representatives in Washington arguing over whose fault it is that all this has taken the place of actual governing. And that, of course, is the whole point of the clocks.

Ezra Klein has The 13 Reasons Washington is Failing. Sounds like a pretty accurate list to me.

Ten years ago, California voters ousted Governor Gray Davis and replaced him in office with Arnold Schwarzenegger. This article by Mark Z. Barabak strikes me as a brief but fair overview of how that all worked out, which was nothing like anyone expected. I wonder if there's anyone today, including Arnold, who thinks that recall was a good idea.

Those rumors nobody's heard are true: I've just gotten the job as Marty Allen's new straight man and we'll be playing the Desert Inn in Las Vegas as soon as they rebuild it.

Don't scoff. Leave me out of it and you might have a pretty good act. At age 91, Marty's still pretty healthy and pretty funny. He and his much-younger wife often play cruise ships and yesterday, he was signing autographs and selling photos (including a great one of him and his then-partner Steve Rossi with The Beatles on the stage of The Ed Sullivan Show) at the Hollywood Show. This is the convention formerly known as the Hollywood Collectors Show — the one that was out at the Beverly Garland and then at that constantly-renamed hotel in Burbank across from the airport. The gathering has a new name, new management and a new location but the premise is still the same: Stars, past and present, sit behind tables and you can wander about, meet them and purchase signatures and memorabilia.

The longest line yesterday was for David Hasselhoff, who was there with a bevy of Baywatch co-stars. Next longest-lines seemed to be for Joan Collins and Bo Derek…and you could also see the kids from The Sound of Music, a batch of Bond Girls, plus George Lazenby and Richard Kiel; Bill Mumy and Angela Cartwright, some of the stars of Knots Landing (including Michele Lee, Joan Van Ark and Kevin Dobson), John Ratzenberger, Jaye P. Morgan, a whole bunch of other folks…

…and as you can see, Julie Newmar. Anyone who thinks there's no glamour left in Show Business oughta hang around Julie Newmar for five minutes. She's still stunning, still every inch a star…but, and this is the tricky part, an approachable star. She was so delightful to everyone who stopped by to buy a photo and/or ask her about the Batman TV show, Li'l Abner, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, My Living Doll or any of a hundred other things she's done. We talked mostly about Abner and the articles I did about the Broadway show and movie, and also about our mutual friend, the late Stanley Ralph Ross. I haven't forgotten that I promised you more stories about Stanley here.

And speaking of great ladies of the stage, I got to meet and talk with Cathy Rigby. If you search this site, you'll find umpteen instances of me gushing about her portrayal of Peter Pan, which I number among the great performances I've seen. Sorry to say, it doesn't sound like she'll ever do it again so do yourself a favor and hunt down the DVD of that show…and beware. Amazon seems to have several other versions of Peter Pan confused with Ms. Rigby's and she's not in some of the ones that list her in the credits. I think this link takes you to the actual Peter Pan with her even though at the moment, it doesn't list her in the credits. The DVD was outta-print for a time and costly to purchase but now the DVD is just seven bucks and an online download/rental is even cheaper. If you have young kids who don't know what musical theater is about, this would be a very good thing to show them.

Finally, I should emphasize what fun it was to meet and talk with Marty Allen. I told him I'd stolen a third of my jokes from him and at least half my hairdo, and we talked about Vegas in the old days, back when he and Steve Rossi were packin' 'em in. I saw one of their last engagements together at the Sands and was surprised, not in a bad way, that they didn't do many of their old "interview" routines. Most of it was Allen doing stand-up while Rossi held the one microphone in front of his partner's mouth and cracked-up at every single thing his partner said as if he'd never heard it before. It would have been a pretty awkward act if not for the fact that the audience was laughing just as hard as Rossi.

A fellow who didn't say I could use his name wrote to say…

I respect you, that's why I find this latest post disturbing. As I understand it this man's only 'crime' is: Saying while he has no problem with gays he does not and would not use them in advertisements for his product. For this he and his company should be ostracized? If so then Big Brother and 1984 are really here. No way can a person speak their mind from now on they must be 'correct'. Shame on you for being a party to it.

That's a silly analogy. Big Brother and 1984 were all about government control of speech. Me deciding I don't want to purchase a certain company's product is in no way comparable to that.

You know, the "free speech" part of the First Amendment of this country makes clear that the government cannot stop anyone from saying whatever they want. Okay, whatever they want as long as it isn't "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater. It doesn't say you have the right to say what you want without fear of consequence. If an entertainer gets up on stage and utters racial slurs, we have the right to not go see him. Or if a used car salesman gets up and says the Holocaust never happened, we have the right to not spend our money on his lot. Isn't there something a businessperson might say that would offend you and cause you to take your business elsewhere?

Mr. Barilla is, as I understand it, an Italian citizen…but the principle is the same. He can say what he wants — and what he said was a little worse than your laundered paraphrase. Then once he's said what he wants to say, my Free Speech allows me to say, "Gee, I don't think I want to buy Barilla pasta anymore." It's just like how if a candidate for public office says things you don't like, you have the right to not vote for that person. An exercise of small-D democracy.

If the government were banning the import and sale of Barilla Rigatoni, yeah, that might raise to an Orwellian level. But there is no way on this planet that I can stop Guido Barilla from saying whatever he wants to say. The most damage I can do to him is to deny his company some microscopic fragment of a penny of profit they might make from me. And he might not even suffer that because there are probably people out there who right this minute are buying Barilla products, the way they've lined up for photo ops at Chick-Fil-A, to show their support for anti-gay sentiments.

A few months ago, I prepped the above graphic because I wanted to write a little piece here about a product I like — Barilla's microwave quickie pasta meals. They have several varieties, each of which yields a plate of hot pasta in sauce that heats in one minute. You peel open a corner of the film and pop the whole container in the microwave for 60 seconds. Then — very carefully because it's hot — you peel the entire film off. What you find inside is hot pasta and a little dish of sauce. You empty the sauce over the pasta, mix a bit with your fork, then use that fork to eat the pasta.

This does not yield an Italian feast comparable to what you'd get in a fine restaurant but it compares favorably to anything else you can whip up that quickly on sudden notice. I buy their plain Marinara version in bulk and always have a bunch at the ready in my pantry.

That's all I was going to write when I made up the illo…but since then, the head of the Barilla company has come under fire for some anti-gay remarks and calls have arised to boycott his firm's products. He quickly issued several apologies including this one…

Even giving the gent the benefit of the doubt, since English is not apparently his native tongue, he doesn't sound all that candid to me. It sounds like the kind of committee-drafted statement anyone would make if they feared a massive drop in sales. Then again, maybe that's just faulting the guy for a bad performance in front of a video camera. There are more skilled actors who could have sounded convincing with precisely the same sentiment in their hearts. There are also folks who were honestly repentant who could well come across as that insincere, especially as they swear to an overnight conversion. No one sees the light of day that fast. I think I'd have been more impressed if he'd said something like this…

People with whom my company does business urged me to quickly issue a statement saying I'd misspoken or been misunderstood and that I actually meant no disrespect to anyone in the gay community. It would be easy to say that but it would be a lie. The truth is that when I said it, I did mean it. I am not sure I still do. Many from whom I have heard have said and written things that cause me to reconsider, and not just because my remarks might lower my firm's profits. I have much to learn and while I do, I retract and apologize for my remarks. If you feel uncomfortable purchasing Barilla products, I understand.

If he'd said something like that, I might not have the dilemma of what I'm going to do when my current supply of his instant pasta meals runs out. Will I buy more? I dunno. I just dunno.

I posted a partial version this before. Here's the whole thing.

It's a 1951 promotional film for Capitol Records and it includes some great footage of how records were made then. It stars Mel Blanc and Billy May and I assume you all know who Mel was. Billy May was one of the great conductors and arrangers of the music business, and he was responsible for an awful lot of hits. The film also "stars" Hollywood of that era, especially Wallich's Music City, which once upon a time was the place to buy records in this city. That's back when people bought records in this city…

Ezra Klein nails, I think, the reason we're in this ridiculous Shutdown: The Republicans in Congress are engaged in a civil war for the control of the party. Most of 'em want to make a deal but enough don't that they can't. One suspects the thing that's putting the Tea Party wing in control is wealthy donors making threats as to where they'll devote their bucks.

Neil Gaiman just sent me this. It's a radio programme on which Brit comedian Bob Monkhouse discusses his love for (and encounters with) Mr. Stan Laurel and Mr. Oliver Hardy. But hurry. This link expires as soon as it's tomorrow…in the U.K.

Some guys at the National Weather Service put a hidden (or maybe subliminal) message in the forecast: PLEASE PAY US. Go take a look.

The N.W.S. is a valuable, highly-competent department that does things that save lives and make life much more livable. If they're not getting paid during the shutdown, that's just as bad as not paying U.S. troops that are off in some foreign hotspots protecting our interests.

David Letterman has renewed his contract with CBS through 2015. As I hear it, he didn't know what else to do with his life at this stage and CBS didn't know who else to put in his place. Everyone's kind of waiting to see where the "late night wars" will stand after Fallon replaces Leno, Arsenio settles in to some ongoing level, and we see if Jay will remain a player in this arena somewhere. We are not yet to the contractual point where Leno could entertain serious offers to go to another network or into syndication and the rumor from "sources" close to him is that he's playing it close to the vest — not saying he wants to go elsewhere, not saying he doesn't — until he sees what kind of interest he gets and where the numbers stand at that point.

I'm sorry to say I don't watch Dave much anymore…sorry because there was a time he did my favorite show in all of television. He just seems to me now like a man who doesn't want to be there but since he has nowhere else to go, he'll drop by and do the same show he does every night, avoiding something new for something he can do with minimal effort. I did watch the episode last week with Bill Clinton and while that combo of host and guest made for some sparkling, interesting shows in the past, this time it was a dull thud. Clinton got bogged down in policy minutiae, as he often does, and Dave didn't seem engaged enough to leap in and guide his guest to more interesting topics. When he's good, Letterman is awfully good…but when I tune in lately, he isn't.

My late night viewing is down to almost nothing. I TiVo Leno and Ferguson regularly but unless one of them has a great guest on, I rarely stick with them much past their monologues. I TiVo Fallon and Letterman when they do have someone on I want to see. (This page is a handy way to know who's on what and when.) I've given up on Arsenio, Kimmel and Conan.

Actually, I keep forgetting Conan even has a show but when I have watched it, I've enjoyed it more than I enjoyed his Tonight Show. He's calmed down now, doing a show where he doesn't feel he personally has to get a laugh every three seconds. A comedy writer friend of mine says that the secret of Mr. Leno's success is that he hasn't succumbed to a disease that hits most people who are on television for a long time and aren't Johnny Carson. It's a condition in which you believe with each passing year that your show ought to be more and more about you and less and less about anyone or anything else. I call it The Bob Barker Syndrome.

I probably shouldn't be amused by this but it's just on the right side of laughing with people as opposed to laughing at them. It's fifteen minutes of really, really stupid things people said on game shows…

Ted Cruz appears to be concerned that he hasn't managed to piss off every single person in America who isn't a Tea Party looney.  The latest…

"The House of Representatives has repeatedly compromised already," said Cruz, who already spoke against funding the law on the Senate floor for 21 hours earlier this month. "The House began — it is the view of every Republican in this body, and indeed every Republican in the House, that Obamacare should be entirely and completely repealed. Nonetheless, the House started with a compromise of saying not repealing Obamacare but simply that it should be defunded."

It's statements like this that make me wish we had an actual Democrat in Congress besides Bernie Sanders (who isn't even a Democrat) to veer as far left as many Republicans veer right. The Dems oughta send Sanders out to demand that Obamacare be "repealed and replaced" with Single Payer, then have all the putative Democrats in both Houses endorse this for a few days. Then they can drop it, agree to be satisfied with the Affordable Care Act "as is," and say, "Okay, we compromised!"

And by the way, I don't for a minute believe every Republican in the house thinks that it would be a good thing for America if Obamacare was completely repealed. Most of them might well think that it would be a good thing for the Republican party.