Monthly Archives: January 2014

Again, for the folks in the Los Angeles area: Lewis Black is doing one night at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills. It's Saturday night, March 15. Scalpers are already offering tickets for huge prices but I just bought a good pair through Ticketmaster. I think he's the best monologist working today and he always seems to have fresh material. If you haven't seen him live, you're missing a great experience.

I am here to again recommend a show to folks in the Los Angeles area. No more than once a month, and sometimes less often, some friends of mine do an improvisational exercise called Instaplay. It is, pure and simple, the best improv comedy I've ever seen…and I've seen a lot of improv comedy. It's directed by a gentleman named Bill Steinkellner, who's hailed by many as the best teacher of improv comedy around, and each performance stars Jonathan Stark, Deanna Oliver, George McGrath, Cheri Steinkellner and one guest performer. The audience suggests different titles for an original musical comedy, then we all vote on which one we want to see…and then Bill and the cast favor us with the winner. Every show is totally unscripted. Every show is totally hilarious.

They do these in a real crummy little theater in Culver City and they're doing the next one on the evening of Saturday, February 1. Tickets are available here and they're pretty cheap. At the last one of these, at least six people told me they'd attended on my recommendation and were eager to return for another and bring friends. Need I say more?

NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt is saying that he hopes Jay Leno will stay with NBC in some capacity after he departs The Tonight Show on February 6. Word from inside Leno's camp is that while Jay ain't talking about what he might do, no one thinks being on the NBC payroll after September is an option. Further word from within is that Jay going to CNN has never been a possibility; that Jay would certainly not go there as long as Jeff Zucker was in charge and probably not if Zucker wasn't. We here at newsfromme are still curious as to what Jay's going to do and are open to the possibility that at this moment, even he doesn't know.

In the meantime, NBC has announced which musical they'll do live this Christmas, hoping to repeat the success of The Sound of Music. It'll be Peter Pan. That strikes me as a disappointing selection if only because it breaks so little new ground…but I suppose that won't matter to millions of families who'll watch it together. But there already is at least one very good video version of that show — the one starring Cathy Rigby. You can buy it for five dollars right this minute. There's more than one if you love the Mary Martin version…which I did as a kid but didn't as I got older. I suppose getting older is kind of a betrayal of what the show stands for.

Interesting stuff about candy…

Last week when former defense secretary Robert Gates appeared on Jon Stewart's program, I was intrigued enough by the conversation that I ordered the Kindle of his new book. I'm still wading through it but I've gotten far enough to agree with the claim that a lot of people are trying to yank quotes out of it to score political points that don't reflect the totality of Mr. Gates's views. Fred Kaplan didn't do that. His review strikes me as a very fair summary of what I'm reading. He's especially right when he notes how Gates, in several places, says something like, "I was offended that the president thought I would write about this," and Gates says this right after he writes about that thing. Anyway, this is definitely not a book that makes the case that George W. Bush was a terrible president or that Barack Obama is a terrible president, despite the efforts of some to portray it as one or the other. A lot of folks are buying it and I wonder how many are being disappointed to find that out.

The writer Dorothy Parker famously said, "I hate writing. I love having written." I've never felt that way, nor do I understand why anyone who did would become a writer and stay a writer. Well, okay, maybe for the money…but I never got that as Ms. Parker's sole driving motivation. I've never felt it was true of any of my favorite authors and I've told aspiring scribes that if they don't love the sheer act of writing that they're aspiring to the wrong profession.

But now here I see that a writer whose work I like a lot, Merrill Markoe, sides with Dorothy Parker. Fortunately, Ms. Markoe seems to have found a way not to hate it.

In the wee small hours of Sunday morning, Turner Classic Movies is airing the legendary and infamous movie, Skidoo. If you're familiar with the film, that news is enough to send you racing to make sure your DVR does or does not record it. It's possible to see this movie several times and still not know if you like it or hate it. All you'll be sure of is that director Otto Preminger made a really, really strange movie full of famous people (Jackie Gleason and Groucho Marx, among them) and that it captures someone's really strange idea of what the sixties were like. If you've never seen it, give it a try…and if you don't quite understand what's going on, congratulations. That means you understand exactly what's going on…or isn't. Or something.

As I've written here before, my father hated his job. He hated what it involved doing and he hated the way he was treated in his office — the arguing, the yelling, the jockeying for position, the whole bureaucracy.  He did not respect his superiors; didn't believe that they had gotten to higher positions by being good at what they did so much as by being skilled politicians. They knew, he said, which butts to kiss and when. More importantly, they knew how to make certain that when things went wrong, it was always someone else's fault. Often, it was his, even though he'd followed their orders to the proverbial "T."

He came home each day, frustrated and depressed, gulping Maalox and other unpleasant substances to soothe a savage ulcer that hospitalized him more than once. He loved his home. He loved his wife and son. He loved his chair in the living room and his TV and our cat. The best thing about his job, I'm sure, was that it made all those things he loved possible.

He especially loved his TV when it had a Lakers game on it. I'm sure I disappointed him greatly by being unable to summon the slightest interest in basketball. For a year or two there when I was around eleven, I was sorta/kinda interested in following the Dodgers…but that soon went away. I will follow the Dodgers again when the starting roster once more includes Maury Wills, John Roseboro, Frank Howard, Willie Davis, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax…but not before. Actually, even before those men left the team, I did — and that was the end of any interest in team sports. Every now and then, I'll catch an inning or two of play-by-play described by Vin Scully, not because I care which team wins but because I admire great broadcasting.

My father would have liked sports to be something he could share with his son. He would make futile, doomed-to-fail attempts from time to time to see if an interest in basketball, and especially in the Lakers, could be kickstarted within me. It could not. And to my dying day, I will live with the knowledge that I let him down, at least in that one area. We only had one shared basketball experience. For a time, we bet on the Lakers games.

They were never large bets. My father wouldn't have bet more than five dollars that the Earth revolved around the Sun. But we did bet actual cash-money — a buck or two — on some games.

The Lakers games were broadcast intermittently on KTLA, Channel 5. I guess they were only allowed to show one or two a week and only "away" games. An "away" game played on the East Coast started at 5 PM Los Angeles time but someone at KTLA decided that was too damn early. Too many men weren't home from work by then so they began telecasting the games on a delay, starting them at 6 PM. My father got home from work about 5:45 each day so that was perfect.

Once home, he'd hurry out of his office duds and by six, he'd be in front of the TV and my mother would be setting out his dinner on a TV tray. I would hear him in the living room yelling, "Let's go, Lakers," because for my father, basketball was a participatory experience. He spent the whole game shouting at the TV. Often, he had the family cat on his lap while he did this and you could kinda hear her thinking, "What the heck is he yelling about?"

I'd occasionally wander into the living room and say things like, "Why are you hollering? They're in Boston and your voice only carries as far as St. Louis!" If the game was in commercial, he'd tell me how it was going, knowing full well I didn't know a jump shot from a huddle. (Oh, wait. I don't think they have huddles in basketball, do they? This shows you how much I know about the sport.)

Anyway, there was a simple rule, violations of which would warrant the Death Penalty, when I ventured into the living room during a game: "Don't tell me the current score." I had a TV in my room and if I was watching the news, I could know the score an hour before he did. He was watching a tape delay, remember.

So he'd tell me how the game was going and I'd say, "Would you care to put some money on the outcome?" And this is exactly how it went every time. He'd look at me and say, "I'm not going to bet you. You know what the current score is." I'd say, "Two bucks and you can pick either team."

If we were having this conversation between 6:00 and around 6:45, he might show a bit of interest because he'd figure as follows: The game's not over yet. Mark might know that one team is way ahead but he doesn't yet know for sure who'll win. This would probably not have worked with baseball because baseball games are sometimes so lopsided that by the fourth or fifth inning, you'd never bet on one team, no matter what odds you get. But basketball games are unlikely to be truly "over" by the mid-point…or so he told me.

Still, he'd feel like I was setting him up but would weaken when I would make him this amazing proposition: Three-to-one odds, the team of his choice…and he could switch teams until the last three minutes of the game on his TV. It was one of those offers you can't refuse — he couldn't, at least — and he'd finally say, "Okay, it's a bet. Two dollars and I'll take the Lakers." I'd say fine and extend my hand so we could shake on the wager.

Noting my smirk and instant agreement, he'd say, "No, I want the Celtics. You take the Lakers." I'd again say fine.

Studying my face, he'd say, "No, you want me to pick the Celtics. I'm staying with the Lakers." I'd say fine and we might go around another time or two…or I might repair to my room.

From time to time, I'd pop back out to ask him if he wanted to switch teams and/or raise the stakes. He never did before around 8:00 but after that, he might consider it. After 8:00, he'd figure the game back in Boston was probably over and I'd gotten the final score, either on TV or by tuning it in on the radio. So when I walked in then and said, "You want to change teams?" he'd instantly say no. That would make him think he had the winning team. In fact, he'd grin and say, "Outsmarted yourself this time, didn't you?" I'd say, "No…I just want to make sure you think the bet is fair."

And then I'd ask, "Would you be interested in raising the bet?" That would make him think he had the losing team. Sometimes, at that point, he'd switch. And sometimes when he switched, he'd raise the bet a buck or two…and we might go back and forth a few times before the final buzzer, at which point one of us would pay the other. We did this for most of one season and I'm guessing that by the play-offs — or the World Series or Super Bowl or whatever they have in basketball and yes, I really don't know anything about the sport — we came close to breaking even. At the end, I owed him two dollars which I never got around to paying him. This all probably happened in 1970 or 1971.

In 1991, he was hospitalized by what turned out to be his next-to-last heart attack. The last one, which came a week or so later, took him from me. Between the next-to-last and the last though, we had some very nice visits, all of which I recall verbatim.

I believe he knew, or at least thought likely, that he wasn't leaving that hospital alive. I also believe he was genuinely at peace with that idea. We had no differences between us — it had been at least fifteen years since our last argument of any sort — and he knew that his wife could get by without him. He had left her a solid if unspectacular government pension, full ownership of their home, about ten grand in the bank and very good health insurance. He had also left her me, and he knew I could and would take care of her. So when I went by to see him, we spoke of only good things….because apart from the fact that he was dying, that's all there were.

On one visit, I walked in and he was watching a Lakers game. I immediately asked him if he wanted to make a bet on its outcome: Three-to-one odds, the team of his choice…and he could switch teams until the last three minutes. He laughed and said, "This is not on a tape delay."

I said, "It doesn't matter. All those games where you thought I knew the outcome before you did…I never did."

He asked, with a note of amazement in his voice, "You didn't check the score before you made those bets? You let me go back and forth, trying to guess what you knew that I didn't…and you didn't know anything I didn't?"

"Nothing," I said.

He laughed a little. Then he thought about it and laughed some more. Then he thought about it some more and laughed a lot more. Then he said, "You're going to do just fine, son. By the way, you still owe me two bucks."

This morning, President Obama on Friday outlined changes he was recommending for the National Security Agency regarding its phone records collection program and its surveillance practices with regard to foreign leaders. Will these changes be sufficient? Two of my favorite political writers disagree. Kevin Drum says no, they're weak tea. Fred Kaplan thinks the tea is somewhat stronger. I'd give my opinion but, you know, we are being monitored…

Great covers of the sixties on the National Enquirer.

Johnny Carson performs a monologue on an old Steve Allen Show. His opening joke is one that he used often when he was on The Tonight Show…

Our pal Robert Elisberg visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and wrote a long report on what he saw there. I want a couple of those things.

A few folks have written me to suggest a reason why those two local L.A. stations might want to broadcast the exact same coverage of what they're now calling the Colby Fire. TV stations are required to air a certain number of hours per year of non-commercial, community service programming. This news coverage qualifies for it. So it's kind of a way of slaying two fowls with one rock…

The fire, which they're saying was caused by an illegal campfire is 30-40% contained as I write this and three folks who made that campfire are in custody. Watching the news reminds you how horrible it is that human beings have to have these tragedies in their lives…but how heroic and brave the responders are. We need to appreciate those people more.

I'm afraid I have no decent anecdotes about Dave Madden or Russell Johnson, both of whom have just died. Madden was out of the cast of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In by the time I started poaching on the set of that show. In fact, he was co-starring on The Partridge Family, a show of which I was never too fond. The few times I did watch, I thought he was the best thing about it but the kids got all the screen time.

But I always thought he was funny…just naturally funny. In 1985, I cast him to do a voice on a CBS Storybreak and he sure made my words sound better than they were. He was funny. He was professional. And he was Dave Madden. Nobody was ever better at that kind of dry delivery. I wish I had more to tell you about him but that's about it.

I'm not sure whether we should feel sorry, career-wise, for Russell Johnson. I read this in one of his obits today…

He admitted he had trouble finding work after Gilligan's Island, having become typecast as the egg-headed professor. But he harbored no resentment for the show, and in later years he and other cast members, including Bob Denver, who had played the bumbling first mate Gilligan, often appeared together at fan conventions.

You can look at this two ways. One is that the three-season sitcom — which has rerun indefinitely, probably paying close-to-bupkis to its stars — lessened his opportunities for other work. Or you can say that it gave him a signature role, one that made him famous. Today as folks are saying, "The Professor from Gilligan's Island died," everyone knows who that is. The kind of roles he got before and after that series didn't do that for him. When I've seen him at conventions and autograph shows, he usually has a long line of folks who want to buy his pic and signature. They're not there because he was on a couple episodes of Death Valley Days.

I only met him once briefly at one of those. He was an awfully nice, friendly guy not just to me but to everyone. He sat patiently next to Mary Ann and answered all the same questions for eighty-millionth time. Elsewhere in the room, there were actors with no customers for their signed photos. Some of them were fine actors who'd played hundreds of roles on TV shows…but they never managed to snag that regular part on a popular series. I hope Russell Johnson looked around that room and decided he was a successful man.

There's an awful fire raging up in the Glendora area…homes being lost, homeowners being evacuated, etc. That's far from me and I don't think I know anyone who's threatened but I'm still watching the news coverage with great concern. Almost all the local channels have news crews up there…and this is the kind of thing they're usually quite good at covering. I'm flipping from station to station and I see them giving out useful information and I haven't seen any instances of two things I always hate when this kind of thing happens. One is reporters trying to drag firefighters and officials away from their duties to talk on television. Yeah, like these people don't have anything better to do. My other gripe is when they shove a camera in the face of someone who just lost their home, or is scurrying to evacuate, and ask, "How do you feel?"

This may be a trivial matter but I'm curious. Channel 2 (KCBS) and Channel 9 (KCAL) in Los Angeles have the same owners and long ago consolidated their news organizations. The news broadcasts on both stations come from the same newsroom and the same reporters. Right now, those two channels are running the exact same feed. Channel 2 is preempting The Price is Right to bring us their coverage and Channel 9 is preempting America's Court with Judge Ross to bring us the exact same coverage. I'm wondering if anyone there said, "Hey, let's put The Price is Right on for people who want to watch that, and we'll super a little message on the screen that says 'Fire in Glendora, Details on KCAL 9.'"

No one would be deprived of news coverage they need/want to see. I mean, even if you weren't satisfied with pretty much the same reporting on Channel 4, Channel 5, Channel 7 and Channel 11, if you had to watch the fire as covered by the KCBS/KCAL news team, why do you need it on two channels? There's got to be someone who'd rather watch The Price is Right…