Monthly Archives: January 2014

• Sorry…I refuse to watch any awards show that doesn't start with special material performed by Neil Patrick Harris.

Will Rubio is an outta-work actor who was working as a driver in Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. He set up a video camera in his vehicle and whenever he drove a celebrity, he asked if he could record a little mini-talkshow with them. The first one who said yes was Mandy Patinkin…

As Daniel Larison notes, we have a lot of people in this country who view diplomacy and talking to the enemy as annoying obstacles to the only solution that interests them: Going to war.

Well, here's another interview with Leno and he says pretty clearly that he's not going to do "another version" of The Tonight Show and that "I'm not going to go challenge any of my friends, or whatever they are, in late night as well. At least not in the foreseeable future."

I have to admit I'm a bit mystified. For months now, folks close to Jay have been telling me that he was going to wait until his NBC contract allowed him to entertain other offers before he made any decision about his future. He might or might not do another late night show as soon as he's a free agent but he wasn't going to decide that until he'd allowed some suitors to chase him a bit. Now, it sounds like he's taking himself off that market before that happens. Jay was quite hurt during the whole Conan mess by folks saying he'd lied; that he'd said he'd do one thing and had done another. I would think he wouldn't say the above unless he was damned sure he wouldn't be back in late night for a while.

Number three hundred and twenty-three in a series…

Another great review of the DVD/Blu-ray of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I know I'm probably writing too much about it here but, hey, it's my blog and this set makes me very, very happy.

That said, a few friends of mine who've never seen the film have said to me, "Hey, I've got to buy this and see this movie finally." I gently suggest they not; that if there's any way they can experience this movie for the first time in a big theater with a big screen and a big audience, that's the way to do it. I don't know of any upcoming showings in the Los Angeles area but one will be along before long. (In May, they're running it at the Bob Hope Theater in Stockton but that's a little far to travel.  It's roughly the distance between the Smiler Grogan crash site and Santa Rosita State Park.)

All sorts of news services and outlets are reporting on Jay Leno's interview tomorrow night on 60 Minutes, giving juicy highlights from the brief excerpts that CBS has released as a teaser. The Associated Press article, reprinted in many a newspaper, has this as the lede…

LOS ANGELES — Jay Leno says he doesn't plan to tackle another late-night show after leaving NBC's "Tonight" next month. In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" airing Sunday, Leno said he can't re-create what he had as "Tonight" host with another show.

Did Jay really say that? If he did, that would be the big story out of the 60 Minutes interview…but none of the other reporters are saying that. This leaves two possibilities. One is that AP got access to material that CBS hasn't released to others. The other is that AP just plain got the story wrong. I'm curious to see which it is.

Andrew Sullivan believes that opposition to Obamacare has almost nothing to do with health care and how to deliver it efficiently, and everything to do with opposition to Barack Obama. I think that's true in most instances.

We're past the halfway point on these…

Not much to say about Little Caesars; just that their pizza is fine for what it is. I don't see a lot of qualitative difference between Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's and Little Caesars. I also don't see a lot of value in slamming them because they don't measure up to the finest pizza from the places where the chefs are artisans as opposed to minimum-wage employees who wish they could move up to something better.

Some folks call this Convenience Pizza and that's not a bad name for it. It's easy to get and it's reliable. At times, the biggest difference between these chains seem to be which one has found a new way to promise more cheese stuffed into every cranny of the product. I'm surprised one of them doesn't start advertising that the box it comes in is covered with cheese…and so is your change.

I'll give Carl's Jr. the benefit of this doubt: It's possible they've improved their products since the last time I ate at one, which must have been ten years ago. But ten years ago, I had such an awful burger and fries in one that I swore off them forever. I think I actually took a few bites, threw the meal away, got in my car and went somewhere else. I'd stopped there because I was hungry and needed food in a hurry. I got my meal, took a bite or two, and decided I wasn't that hungry.

I wish I liked their food because there's a 24-hour Carl's Jr. drive-thru not far from where I live and I always seem to be passing it when it's 2 AM and I could use a meal…but it isn't just the (low) quality of their cuisine. It's the insane calorie counts. Go to their website some time and see what some of their burgers will cost you in that department…and the sodium content! Might as well just take the lid off the salt shaker and pour the contents into your mouth. There are lakes in Utah with less salt than the Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger. If I'm going to eat something that unhealthy, I oughta enjoy it a lot more than I've ever enjoyed anything at a Carl's Jr. besides leaving it.

And now we go from my least-favorite Fast Food Joint to probably my favorite…though I will admit my enthusiasm for Five Guys has dampened a tad. I first dined at one when they were East Coast Only. It was 2007, Carolyn and I were in Virginia, and we went to a Five Guys where her nephew was working. There, I had a hamburger and fries as fine as any burger and fries I'd ever had anywhere…and better than 95% of 'em. When I traveled thereafter, I would check to see if there was a Five Guys anywhere near where I was going and, if so, try to make plans to include a stop.

A few years later, they began to make incursions into Southern California…and I actually looked into possibly investing in that venture. I rarely invest in anything. I have this odd feeling that I was not meant to make money at anything besides writing stuff. But my enthusiasm for Five Guys was such that I pursued that possibility for a while before deciding it wasn't feasible. In any case, there's now a Five Guys sorta within walking distance of me — it's a long walk but I did it many times before my knee problems — and there are others that are easy drives.

And you know what? They're not quite as wonderful out here as the ones back east.

Don't get me wrong: Five Guys is still my favorite place to grab a burger and fries. I don't even know what the runner-up would be but it's a distant second. Still, the ones out here — I've been to six different ones in Southern California — are a fraction off, like they just don't get meat that's quite as wonderful. Or maybe they cook it a tad too long. Five Guys serves all its burgers "well done" but it feels like the ones out here are using the upper definition of "well done," whereas the ones I've been to in Indiana, Ohio and Virginia were using the low-end definition. Or something. I don't know what it is, only that it is.

I've found, by the way, that if you ask for your fries to be "well done," there's about a one-in-three chance you'll actually get them that way. But when you do, they're even better. They're terrific when you don't, too. So are the hamburgers so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Next time: Steak n' Shake, Quiznos and White Castle…

I don't think any actor has worked as much in his lifetime as William Schallert. He's probably best-known for playing the Dad on The Patty Duke Show but he seems to have been in just about everything at one time or another. Now, he's even appearing on the Internet. He launched his own website. Drop by, look at the photos of him on different shows and go, "Oh, he's that guy!"

James Poniewozik has an odd article about the Jay Leno situation. It makes a big deal of coming to the conclusion that Jay doesn't intend to give up performing and might want to do another talk show for some other network if the opportunity arises.

Uh, yeah. The piece is called "Does Anybody Believe Jay Leno Is Just Fine With Leaving the Tonight Show?" Simple answer: No. No one who has ever been around the guy thinks Jay Leno wouldn't have liked to keep going and will refuse a good offer to do something else besides play Vegas and tinker with Duesenbergs. One of the mystifying things to me about the whole Conan/Jay mess is that some people thought (a) that Jay had vowed to clear out of the way and not do another TV show and to not take back The Tonight Show if it was offered, and (b) that Jay had any ethical/moral reason to not take any good offers that came his way.

I'll be interested to see Leno's interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. It can't be easy to be in his position where people would like to see him either attack NBC for taking him off the air or see him swear not to do another talk show…and he doesn't want to do either.

I may have mentioned somewhere here that Criterion has just released a DVD/Blu-ray set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In connection with that release, they're making available this wonderful video that was assembled by Paul Scrabo and his lovely lady, George Ann Muller. It's a "then-and-now" look at many locations where the movie was shot and you'll like it a lot. Paul is one of the other folks heard on the film's commentary track, the other two being Mike Schlesinger and me…

The new Criterion DVD/Blu-ray set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World continues to amass great reviews on industry websites like this one and this one. A few negatives have popped up on Amazon, mostly from folks who either didn't know what they were purchasing or think the people at Criterion should be faulted for not including that which no longer exists.

My friends who work in home video have all told me stories that run roughly like this. They fight and fight to get something freed from the vaults for DVD release. They scour the planet for the best-available elements and spend hundreds of expensive hours restoring the material as much as it can be restored without driving the expense up to the point of making the release so unprofitable that it'll be the last of its kind the DVD company ever puts out. They get the thing to the point where it's 98% perfect —

— and then it comes out and there's some Internet forum where they get ripped to shreds over the 2% (and/or some things the critic thinks should have been done that were not humanly-possible) and accused of defacing and pissing all over this great, great film or TV show. One guy I know who puts together DVDs of old, lost TV shows calls me after each one comes out and quotes me the latest nastiness because, for example, the only print they could find of one program was missing a few seconds of its end credits. His enthusiasm for doing more of this kind of work is severely diminished.

At the moment, this release of Mad World is #1 on Amazon in the category of comedies on Blu-ray and #7 in Action/Adventure. We hear a lot of carping when something with Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell tops a list of best-selling comedies. How about a huzzah or two for the fact that the top slot is being occupied by a movie with Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Mickey Rooney?

In other news: Many folks have reminded me that the Popeyes Fast Food outlets did at one time do some promotions and branding involving Popeye the Sailor and his supporting cast. Matter of fact, I think I have a drinking glass someone gave me that was made for one of those promotions. Did they ever have spinach on their menu?

And it's another good day to not be Chris Christie. Lately, most days have been good days not to be Chris Christie.

So…do we think this is legit?

Why is Peter Pan usually played by a woman? This piece relates a number of reasons but omits what is to me, an obvious one. Back in the twenties when the play was done often around the U.S., it was not uncommercial to have a cute young lady play Peter and prance around on stage, barefoot and barelegged in an outfit that showed much leg. No one complained it was naughty because it was children's entertainment…but it brought the fathers in.

But despite my love for Cathy Rigby in the role, I've long thought the show is just…sexually confused. Ms. Rigby did a decent job of making you forget she wasn't a he. Mary Martin did not. I loved Mary Martin as a performer but in her Peter Pan, she doesn't look to me like a Lost Boy. She looks like someone's grandmother on a wire. Then there's this song called "Mysterious Lady" in which — let me see if I can phrase this correctly…

A woman plays a boy pretending to be a woman trying to entice a gay man playing a heterosexual pirate who acts rather gay.

The Rigby production cut that number and I think it was a good cut. They also butched Cap'n Hook up a bit so he actually seemed like a villain. I have no trouble with a gay person playing a straight person but I always felt that when Cyril Ritchard played Hook to Mary Martin's Peter, he didn't play it straight enough. Hook's feet touched the stage less often than Tinker Bell's.

I question whether there's a young actor out there who could play Peter Pan and project the innocence (and when necessary, toughness) that the character seems to need. But if they can find such a person, I think that's a good idea. I also think that in the scene when Tink is dying, instead of asking the audience to applaud, Peter should ask them all to Tweet.