Monthly Archives: December 2013

Joe Brancatelli, the man who knows more about airlines than anyone alive, doesn't think much will come of this proposal to allow passengers on flights to use their cell phones. At least, there won't be a lot of voice calls, sez Joe.

My pal Jerry Beck, whose animation website you should visit every day, writes…

I agreed with every word of your most recent cole slaw post — but only if you changed the words "Cole slaw" to "Mayonnaise." I have nothing against cole slaw. I don't eat it but I'm not against it. It's mayo that I've had the same problems with. And yes, I am allergic to mayo.

When I first got to L.A. in the 1980's every burger or sandwich I ordered anywhere was slathered with the white stuff. When I ordered my burger without mayo, it arrived 9 times out 10 with it.

One time I asked the waiter about the mayo on my burger. He said it wasn't mayo, it was a "spread." So after that it was "no mayo or spreads."

Next time, a few weeks later, I ordered my burger with no mayo or spreads, it came back with something on the bun. I again asked the waiter and he said it wasn't mayo or a "spread" — it was a "dressing."

So now I order my sandwiches with "no mayo, dressings, spreads or anything you can put on the burger or bun." The waiters or waitresses usually respond, "Oh, you want it "dry." Yes. That's exactly what I want!

I don't share your aversion to mayonnaise but I prefer it in salads like tuna or potato. I don't want it slathered on anything. I also don't want cheese on my burger, lettuce and tomato on my burger, spreads or dressing on my burger, chili, guacamole or cole slaw on my burger, etc. I've learned the best way to get what I want is to order "I'd like a hamburger, medium rare. And what I'd like is meat, bun, onions and nothing else on the plate except the french fries [or potato salad or chips or whatever the side dish is]."

I add my own ketchup when it gets to me because if the chef adds it, I get too much or too little. Since I learned to do all this, I almost always get what I want. And when I don't, they realize it's their fault and hurry to correct it.

Oddly enough, I've observed that servers appreciate that kind of specificity. They get so many customers who are vague or don't specify and then complain at what they find on their plate. A few weeks ago, I was with someone at a restaurant who ordered the fish sandwich and was upset with the server when it came with tartar sauce on it. Yeah, well, but the menu said "tartar sauce." The restaurant had to remake the sandwich so they lost some money on that meal.

Some restaurants are now experimenting with giving diners a tablet computer — an iPad or its equivalent and you place your own order on its screen. They're saying they will not be reducing the number of employees if this catches on but I can't believe that. And I sure wouldn't like not having a server who's easy to flag down and who's responsible for answering my questions and seeing that I get what I want.

But that aside, I can see some good in these tablets if they work like this: I click on "wor won ton soup" and I get a list of all the mandatory ingredients and all the optional ones. In most restaurants, you can omit some things you don't want in a menu item and some things that are already mixed-in and inseparable. It would be great for someone like me with food allergies to know exactly what I'm getting and whether I have to specify "no almonds" — or not order the beef stew at all because it's only available with broccoli already in it.

I hope the tablets will not just give us all the same information we already get on the menu.  I've been on some online ordering sites for delivery or take-outs that are like that.  I find myself with all sorts of questions and no one to answer them.  Either way, I'm going to need a server just as much as I ever do. I'd trust ordering from a person more than I'd trust that I clicked in the right place on the tablet. One wrong click and I could get something with live maggots on it. Or worse, cole slaw.

• Would someone please ask Sarah Palin if she can name one immoral or unethical thing a rich person might do to make money?

That great vocalist Cookie Monster performs a tune that will remind one of Carly Rae Jepsen's hit, "Call Me Maybe." If you're not familiar with Ms. Jepsen's tune, you might want to watch it before you watch the parody…

Ezra Klein explains why Obamacare is a good thing. Quick summary: Under the old system, it was too possible that you'd lose your health plan for a myriad of reasons outside your control (including rising prices) or might not be able to get one in the first place. If and when the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented across the country, you'll always be able to get a new, affordable plan. They may still have to tweak a few parts of it to make that happen but at the moment, that's where we'll wind up. The alternative is the old system and millions more who can't get or afford decent health insurance.

What does it look like inside an Amazon.com warehouse? Looks a lot like my house.

Luke O'Neill says it's not uncommon in restaurants for a server's salary to be docked when dishes are broken or when a customer walks out on a check. This really bothers me. I can think of a dozen ways those things can happen and it wouldn't be the server's fault. It might even be management's fault but they're going to reclaim the cost from the underpaid server? Maybe it's me but I don't recall from past decades this relentless drive from some businesses to keep their employees as poor as possible.

Here's a review of the Beyoncé show I attended. I pretty much agree with everything in it.

And here, for my own record if not your info, is the set list she performed: Run the World, End of Time, If I Were a Boy, Get Me Bodied, Baby Boy, Diva, Naughty Girl, Party, Freakum Dress, Why Don't You Love Me, 1+1, Irreplaceable, Love On Top, Survivor, Countdown, Crazy In Love, Grown Woman, I Was Here, I Will Always Love You, Halo. In that order.

I received an e-mail from someone who wrote "How could you stand that crap?" and a couple others from folks who said essentially the same thing, only nicer. Obviously, given the lady's popularity, I am hardly the only person on the planet who likes "that crap." I thought she was terrific…and I also took the POV that I was something of an alien presence there, enjoying the chance to observe native customs. I mean nothing racial in that. It's just that her show is not geared to 61-year-old guys who are not heavy into what she does or to R&B played at that volume.

So I guess I could have gone into Old Man mode and barked at these kids today and their music and how it's not like the old days and while you're at it, get the hell off my lawn! But I always feel a certain arrogance welling up within me when I go anywhere near there. It's like, "How dare there be entertainment not geared for my tastes?" And on some level, "How dare something I don't like be so successful?" I just found much there to admire and enjoy, including the sheer professionalism of the performance and the sense of audience connection and participation. Most of all, I thought this: How often do you get to be in a room with 18,000 people all having the best time of their lives and showing it?

There are people in this world who somehow feel threatened by the happiness of others. I'm thinking of one guy I occasionally encounter at conventions when I can't avoid him. He's got to be one of the unhappiest people on this planet. Whenever he runs into someone who's happy (or at least, seems happy to him) you can see it make him madder. It's like they've got something he can't seem to get. And those grins on their faces? That's them flaunting it just to make him feel worse.

I think the happiness of others is the best drug in the world. Well, not always. When your knee is hurting, as my left knee (the one I didn't have surgery on earlier this year) is now, a shot of cortisone is the best drug in the world and I got one today so I can do something over the weekend besides wince. But when your knee is not hurting, the happiness of others is the best drug and I got a good shot of that on Tuesday evening. I'd go again if she was here, I got another free ticket and I didn't have to stand for the whole show.

I am told that neither Barry Humphries (aka "Dame Edna") nor Tim Conway (aka "Dorf") are retiring from anything except touring. Humphries apparently has a bit more farewell touring to go, including a probable limited engagement on Broadway here. Conway was on The Talk today to plug his autobiography and deny the rumors that he was giving up show biz. I didn't see it but I'm told he said something like, "I don't know how these stories get started." Well, Tim, they got started because the press release you put out to announce you were retiring from live performing and canceling all your future dates didn't make clear you weren't giving up all performing.

Anyway, it's good we'll have Dame Edna and Tim around. We need all the silly people we can get.

Boomerang UK, over in Great Britain, is running a marathon this week of The Garfield Show — dozens of episodes, including the best of Season Four and all the extra-long episodes therein. I believe Season Four has now run in every country on this planet where it will ever run…except the United States.

When will it run in the United States? I don't know. Why would anyone tell me? I'm only the Supervising Producer, Head Writer and Voice Director! How could I possibly have any interest in this?

There's an HBO special debuting Monday called either Six by Sondheim (on my TiVo) or Six by Six by Sondheim (everywhere else) and it looks like it'll be well worth watching. In the meantime, here from the recent PBS production of Company, we have Anika Noni Rose singing "Another Hundred People." Enjoy…

Jonathan Zimmerman on the "War on Christmas." Says he, it's all about the money.

Y'know, I can remember when the big debate over that holiday was about its over-commercialization. My friend/idol Stan Freberg produced a record called "Green Christmas" all about how advertising agencies were exploiting the hell out of a day which was supposed to mean more than a sponsor's chance to sell more tires. Now, the big complaint from those who profess to hold Christmas dear to their hearts is that it's not commercialized enough.

A recent tweet of mine is probably what prompted Will Partridge to send the following…

I've seen several references to how much you hate cole slaw. I wondered if you wrote a kid's comic book I read when I was about seven years old that always stuck with me. I think it was a Hanna-Barbera book. The characters were a trio of bears. One of them really hated cole slaw and kept encountering it everywhere he went. At one point he goes to a bubble gum machine, puts in a coin, and gets a cup of cole slaw. It's the final straw and he goes into a rage which fuels the climax of the story. Can't remember anything else about the plot, but the cole slaw gag struck me as really funny. Was that one of yours?

You are remembering a story of some characters called the C.B. Bears, who then had a cartoon show on Saturday morning. The comic book was Hanna-Barbera TV Stars #2 (October, 1978). The story was "The Great Cole Slaw Conspiracy," written by me and drawn by Jack Manning. The editor of the comic wholeheartedly agreed with me on the evils of cole slaw and the necessity of educating children to avoid it at all costs. (The editor was, obviously, wise and socially responsible and me.)

So you see, this cole slaw thing is not a new crusade of mine. I've been planting propaganda about it for some time now.

I'm amazed at the number of folks who feel threatened or insulted that I don't like cole slaw. Come on, folks. It's not like I might someday have the power to ban it and deprive you of something you love. It's also not like there aren't some foods you think are repulsive. When I gave the script for this comic book story to Jack Manning, he read it over and said to me, "Hey, I like cole slaw. Could we make it cottage cheese instead?" Since I outranked him, it stayed cole slaw.

Years later, writing the Garfield cartoon show, I tried to do an episode on much the same premise. Jim Davis read over an outline I wrote, called up and said, "Hey, that's a funny idea but I love cole slaw. Could we make it raisins instead?" Since he outranked me, I never wrote the episode and I stopped writing outlines.

A year or two ago at Comic-Con, some reader of this blog cornered me and began arguing the case for cole slaw as if its greatness was a factual matter and he could talk me into loving the stuff. I told him, "Hey, I happen to prefer potato salad," and he reacted like I'd said, "I'd rather eat raw dead puppies," and he began making vomiting sounds and saying all the things about potato salad that I say about cole slaw.

Let me tell you my real problem with cole slaw. It isn't just that I don't like it. It isn't even that I'm allergic to cabbage and other, less frequent components of cole slaw.

It's that restaurants give it to you without warning you it comes on the plate — or in some horrid cases, on the sandwich. It's that in some places, it's so damn unavoidable. One of my favorite restaurants in Downtown L.A. is a very old diner called The Original Pantry. When you sit down at your table, the bus boy comes by and automatically brings you a place setting, a glass of water and a rather large dish of cole slaw. I can kinda tolerate it there because it's in its own dish and they serve it to you before you've even ordered. So you can have them take it away and there's no chance of cross-contamination with actual food. Other places, it's more of an unwanted intrusion.

That's why it wouldn't have been funny to have the C.B. Bears story be about cottage cheese or for the Garfield one to be about raisins. Very rarely do people force cottage cheese or raisins on you. There is no noticeable conspiracy to push those foods on people.  When was the last time you ordered a hamburger and it came with either of those two things on it?

I finally learned how to (usually) prevent cole slaw from occurring but before I did, I don't know how many times I'd politely ask them to hold the slaw and when my plate came, there it would be: A heaping mound of cole slaw with its dressing oozing into all the items there I wanted to eat.

I'd say, "I asked for no cole slaw" and as often as not, the server would say, "Oh, they didn't charge you for it. Just don't eat it." Half the time, they'd deny I ever said it…and believe me, I always said it. If I made them correct the error, they'd do one of two things, neither of them satisfactory. One is that they'd take the plate away, scrape off 90% of the cole slaw and about half of the watery dressing which was bleeding into my fries, and bring the dish back to me. The other is that they'd completely remake the plate but that usually took forever. They'd make me wait and suffer as punishment for not wanting their friggin' cole slaw on or around my dinner.

So what I've learned to do when ordering is to make a big joke out of it. I say, "I would like no cole slaw on my plate. In fact, I would like no cole slaw on anyone's plate, today or at any time. Have the chef throw out all the cole slaw in the kitchen, have the manager take cole slaw off the menu and if this is a chain, call the home office and tell them to never serve cole slaw ever again in any of their restaurants. Thank you."

This accomplishes two things. One is that it always makes the server laugh, and that's a nice thing. Secondly, after that they wouldn't dare bring me a plate with cole slaw on it. It makes them remember. They can't say, "Oh, I didn't hear you." And if the chef out of habit scoops slaw onto my plate, they usually catch it and have it corrected before the meal ever gets near me.

The only venues where I have the problem now are the ones where one person takes your order and a different person brings the orders to your table when they're ready. Even in those situations, when I flag down the order-taker and point at the offending slaw on my plate, they shriek, "I told that chef no cole slaw!" and they move like gangbusters to correct the affront. They can't deny I didn't want it. Once in a while, I've even had the server quickly replace the entire order sans you-know-what, then offer me a free dessert in apology. I don't eat desserts so I just thank them, tell them I know it wasn't their fault and add, "I'm so impressed with your anti-slaw diligence, I may even tip."

Please, please…don't write and tell me how you know a place that serves great cole slaw. That's an oxymoron around these parts and I get real sick if I eat cabbage anyway. I promise I will never interfere with your constitutional right to eat cole slaw (it's one of the few we haven't scaled back since 9/11). Don't interfere with my constitutional right to say that it's evil and that anyone who makes it should be put to death. Or worse, forced to eat the stuff.

As we've discussed here before, comic actor Barry Humphries is retiring…well, I'm not clear on whether he's retiring from show business or he's just retiring his famous 'n' infamous Dame Edna character. Either way though, the Grande Dame is on her farewell tour which, alas, does not seem likely to include the United States. We'll have to settle for clips from TV shows where he/she is appearing to promote it. Here we see Dame Edna on Loose Women, a British programme not unlike The View in this country…

Go see the incredible work of Michael Paul Smith. Just go see it.