I really like the freshly-cooked Rotisserie Chickens I buy at Ralphs Markets and at Costco. At Ralphs, you sometimes have to do a bit of planning (or call up and ask) in order to get them when they're fresh but it's worth the effort. At Costco, they always seem to be fresh but maybe that's because I rarely go to Costco in the evening.
Years ago, I purchased a home rotisserie and spent some time trying to learn to prepare poultry in it. I came to the conclusion that I would never make a better chicken than I could buy at those two places, nor would mine require less of my money or less of my time. Cooked chickens at both Ralphs and Costco are actually cheaper than the same bird purchased raw. Unless I had the yearning to eat a fresh chicken late in the evening or at 4 AM, there was no reason aside from Pride of Authorship to ever cook my own. (I also sometimes get a Rotisserie Chicken from a local chain called Zankou. They're not really cheaper but they're really, really good.)
So why are the cooked chickens cheaper than the raw chickens? This article explains and it does not discourage me from buying rotisseried fowl.
David Weigel tells us how the Cuban version of the C.I.A. apparently planted a phony story with Tucker Carlson's website smearing a Democratic senator. The story has been discredited but the website is still (apparently) standing by it…and as has become way too common in our world today, no one involved in reporting the bogus item is suffering any career consequences for having done it.
A little over two years ago in this message, I extolled the virtues of True Lemon Original Lemonade mix and said I hoped they'd someday come out with an orange drink. They have. Actually, it's orange mango but that's close enough.
This company called True Lemon started out to just market crystallized lemon which one could add to one's tea or drinking water but when it succeeded, they began to diversify with True Lime, then True Orange and True Grapefruit and they now have such an extensive line of fruity products that they seem to be slowly changing the name of the firm to True Citrus. I am most interested in their drink mixes, which are a bit different from their crystal flavoring powders.
Simple rule: If it doesn't say "DRINK MIX" on the box, it's not a drink mix. It's crystallized fruit extract that you can add to water or anything else. If you want a glass of water with a hint of lemon, you add the crystallized version they call True Lemon. If you want something that tastes like a glass of lemonade, you want their drink mix. In it simplest application, you buy these little envelopes of powder and you add one to a chilled 500ml bottle of water and turn it into a refreshing drink.
They now have five drink mixes, all of which are sweetened with a tiny bit of sugar but mainly with Stevia. They are Lemonade, Raspberry Lemonade, Peach Lemonade, Mango Orange Drink and Black Cherry Limeade. The two I'm stocking in my cupboard are the plain Lemonade and the Mango Orange.
The latter is a tad sweeter than I would like but since I have no sweet tooth, it's probably just right for most people. The oddest thing about it is that they stress this natural flavoring — Crystallized Orange (Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Orange Oil, Orange Juice, Ascorbic Acid), Natural Mango Flavor, etc. — and then they add Beta-Carotene for color and it makes it a very unnatural shade of orange.
I wish they sold a sampler pack so you could just get one or two of each flavor but what this link offers is a box of each of the five flavors, ten little envelopes to a box, for $20.00. There are other packages of True Lemon/Citrus products that do include a sampler pack of one of each drink and you might want to browse Amazon to find one of them. Worth checking out, I say.
We're again declaring it Mushroom Soup Monday. I'm not sure why I picked a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup to post as the symbol of me being really, really busy but I did and I have all these neat graphics I made to use up…so Mushroom Soup Monday it is. Posting here will be light today unless, as happens too often, I have to race back to put up an obit. Gee, I hope I don't have to do that.
Before I submerge, a few brief announcements, the main one being that I spoke too soon. The Time-Warner e-mail problem which looked so fixed the other day now looks so unfixed.
Also: Several folks who won't be at Comic-Con this year have written to me about the Stan Sakai benefit book I mentioned. They all had the same idea, which is that people who are there should buy multiple copies of it, get them signed by the artists in attendance, then put the books up on eBay and donate the proceeds to the Sakais. Yeah, I think that would be a great idea.
Lastly for now: I keep getting e-mail asking me when, oh when, will there be a big reprint project that will reissue all the Groo stories to date in big, fancy hardcover volumes? Here's how I'm answering the messages I answer: We've agreed to do it, the publisher has agreed to do it and we're trying to get the details ironed out. We may or may not be able to announce them at Comic-Con but I'm reasonably sure the first books in such a series will be out before the 2015 Comic-Con. And that's really all there is to say about it at the moment.
And here in its entirety is another press conference the gents of Monty Python gave to promote their current farewell performances. This was the first announcement, I believe…
Joey Helleny identified the mystery woman in the photo with Allen and Rossi as Karon Kate Blackwell, otherwise known as Mrs. Marty Allen. I have changed the caption accordingly. Thanks, Joey.
The Comic Art Professional Society is still running one of the greatest auctions ever of comic art…and it's all to benefit cartoonist Stan Sakai and his wonderful wife, Sharon. For those who came in late: Sharon is suffering from a horrendous medical condition that has to do with a brain tumor. Though the Sakais have health insurance, the costs of the necessary 24/7 care Sharon requires far exceed what the insurance covers. Stan is a great guy who has always been there to help others. Now, others are rallying to help him and Sharon.
The list of artists who've donated is amazing: Adam Hughes, Alex Maleev, Arthur Adams, Batton Lash, Eric Powell, Jan Duursema, Jerry Ordway, Jordi Bernet, Matt Groening, Michael Allred, Mike Mignola, Paul Gulacy, Sanjuliàn, Scott Shaw!, Jim Steranko, Tim Sale, William Stout, Bill Sienkiewicz, Cameron Stewart, Dan Brereton, Daniel Parsons, Dave Gibbons, Dean Yeagle, Doug Sneyd, Dustin Nguyen, Bill Morrison, Tone Rodriguez, Sergio Aragonés, Fabio Moon, Francisco Francavilla, Gene Ha, Geof Darrow, Gilbert Hernandez, Jack Davis, James O'Barr, Kevin Eastman, Jeff Lemire, Jeff Smith, Kazu Kibuishi, Liam Sharp, Tom Richmond, Michael Jantze, Olivia, Oscar Martin, Paul Chadwick, Richard Corben, Tom Mandrake, Walter Simonson, Charles Vess, Dan Spiegle, J. Scott Campbell and many more.
Wonderful items by many of these folks are closing today or in the coming week. Here's a link to go bid. Do it before you read the rest of this message…
Now then. There's one more thing you should do and, like buying something in the auction, it will benefit you while it helps the Sakais. At Comic-Con, there will be a new book available — a deluxe, hardcover volume called The Sakai Project: Artists Celebrate Thirty Years of Usagi Yojimbo. It will feature many of the drawings done for the auction and some other goodies, plus there's also a foreword in there by me. Dark Horse is publishing it but all proceeds will go to Stan and Sharon Sakai.
Of course, you'll be able to purchase a copy if you're not at Comic-Con but if you are, here's what you might want to consider. An awful lot of the fine artists who contributed to it will be there in San Diego. I may just carry mine around and get it signed by as many of the contributors as I can find. When you get to the con, you might want to head for the Dark Horse booth, purchase a copy and do this. The book's a treasure without that but a whole mess of signatures will make it even more of one. Just a suggestion.
This blog was offline — in fact, all my websites were offline yesterday due to tech problems. The tech problems stemmed from an incredible increase in traffic…which I guess is what you should expect when you write about Steve Rossi and huge breasts. I coughed up some extra dough for more room on the server and all is now well. I have received offers to help me "monetize" (an awful verb) this site by accepting paid advertising and/or charging for access but have decided I will never do either of those things. We'll just pay for it via donations, Amazon commissions and me taking cash from my wallet.
Friday night, I wrote that my problems with Time-Warner e-mail had not lessened and had actually gotten worse. Miraculously, yesterday morning they seemed to have disappeared…or at least, I'm guardedly optimistic that they have. I shall continue to monitor the situation for at least a week before I declare everything fixed. But it sure looks like someone finally repaired or replaced the one or more malfuctioning servers that were delaying my e-mails for hours and, at times, even a day or two.
I will be hosting eleven panels at Comic-Con International and appearing as a panelist on two others. The Programming Schedule will be announced on the convention website shortly and it would be a fabulous idea if you studied it — I'm talking to those of you who are attending the con, of course — and made a list of what you want to see. It would also be wise to note some second choices if you can't get into your first choices. Yes, I know it's almost impossible to get into anything in Hall H. This is why I have never even attempted to set foot in Hall H. I'll let you know when the Programming Schedule is posted and I'll itemize the "must-see" panels (i.e., those I moderate or am on).
It would also be a good idea to not write me with last-minute programming suggestions or pleas to help you get your panel scheduled. That ship sails a good 4-6 weeks before the convention. Also, I don't do the programming. I'm just on a lot of it.
I have to stop reading lists of great barbecue restaurants around the country. I love great barbecue. Heck, I'd even pick mediocre barbecue over a lot of good non-barbecue restaurants. So when I see one of the million lists on the 'net of places with great barbecue, I click and read…and I keep wondering why I do this to myself.
Take this one, for instance. I've only been to one of the ten places listed. It was Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City and frankly, I was not impressed. I've had better, less famous barbecue. In fact, I had better barbecue (I thought) the next night at Jack Stack in the same city.
But look at the other nine. Lockhart, Texas? Chapel Hill, North Carolina? Owensboro, Kentucky? When in the name of Tony Roma am I ever going to find myself in Owensboro, Kentucky? I can't imagine any scenario that takes me within 100 miles of Owensboro. Maybe a comic book convention…but I turn down most invites to comic conventions these days and when I do go to one, I usually don't see much more of the city it's in than the airport, the convention center, the freeway between them and either a Marriott, a Hyatt or a Hilton.
While in Phoenix a few weeks ago, I did get away from the con for one barbecue expedition. My friend Phil Geiger had a car so we grabbed up Len Wein and drove to a Famous Dave's about twelve miles away. But that was twelve miles and Phil had a car and anyway, I'm not going to Owensboro, Kentucky. So what does it matter to me that the Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn there serves "hickory-smoked, pit-cooked mutton?"
And I'm not going to have them ship me an order, either. Barbecue was meant to be eaten hot off the grill. Even the best of it doesn't make it as leftovers the next day. (By the way, Famous Dave's ain't bad for a chain but the best barbecue is eaten in restaurants that don't have a lot of locations.)
When our friend Dave Stevens passed, his fellow artist Bill Stout and I drove up to Modesto for a day to attend the funeral. Before the service, we went to a barbecue place that may well be the best I've ever tried. I had brisket and chicken and they were both about as good as could be. I didn't try the ribs because I am incapable of eating ribs neatly and I didn't want to speak at the memorial with barbecue sauce all over my face and clothes.
My enjoyment of the meal was tempered by the knowledge that I would probably never return to the area. Modesto is 300 miles from Los Angeles and about a hundred miles from San Francisco or San Jose or any other city in which I might someday find myself.
So I'm going to stop reading lists of and articles about great barbecue restaurants in some distant corner of South Carolina. It's for the same reason that my friend Ricky back in high school decided to stop reading Playboy magazine. He used to say, "Why torture myself with visions of places I'm never going to visit?"
You may have already seen this. Videographer Jos Stiglingh slapped a GoPro Hero 3 Silver onto a DJI Phantom 2 and sent it flying up into the nucleus of a fireworks show the other night. The drone apparently escaped unharmed and the video it got was well worth the risk. Take this full screen and sit there watching, going "Oooh" and "Ahhh" a lot…
When entertainer Steve Rossi died recently, I was too busy to write this post. Now, I'm not.
There were a few years in this country when the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was the hottest act the business had ever seen. They made movies, they appeared on TV, they worked clubs, they had their own DC comic book and they spawned hundreds upon hundreds of imitators. It was like every comedian who couldn't get a job teamed up with a singer who couldn't get a job and they were promoted as "The new Martin and Lewis." Some guys went from partner to partner to partner to partner, searching for that magic combination. There were "hot new teams" that lasted a year or two and others that endured for two consecutive nights at a supper club off the turnpike in New Jersey.
With no statistics or data whatsoever, I'm going to guess that less than 10% of these Dean-and-Jerry wanna-bes lasted long enough to pay either's rent for six months. The two combos that you could say really made it were (1) Dan Rowan and Dick Martin and (2) Marty Allen and Steve Rossi. Rowan and Martin broke the format slightly because Rowan didn't sing but they were still sold as "The new Martin and Lewis." Hey, one of them was even named Martin!
(Before anyone asks, "What about Wayne and Shuster?": They teamed up in the forties, not as a response to the grosses of Martin and Lewis, and they were popular in Canada before anyone there had ever heard of Dino and Jer. But even they came to be referred to as "The Canadian Martin and Lewis" for a while there.)
A very early pic of Allen and Rossi.
When Dan and Dick or Marty and Steve had decent material and — probably more important — decent management, both teams did okay. In both pairings, you could sense the same dynamic: The straight man (Rowan, Rossi) would never have been in the comedy business at all if not for the funny one. And the funny one (Martin, Allen) was appealing but maybe not a strong enough performer to go it alone. He was funny responding and reacting to the other guy and the match-up gave form to his comedy. Together though, either pair could easily supply laughs for seven minutes on The Ed Sullivan Show or The Mike Douglas Show or any program on which they could build their reputations. And then those reps got them booked into Vegas, booked into Miami Beach, signed for a movie, etc. Rowan and Martin largely built their careers on plugs in Walter Winchell's newspaper column; Allen and Rossi on Sullivan's heralding of them as the hottest comedy team in the business. If Ed said it, it often became so.
I was never a huge fan of either duo but when they were on, I'd watch. I felt no sense of loss though around '68 when Allen and Rossi broke up for the first of many, many times. I don't know what it was but thereafter, each would work solo or with different partners for a time. Then they'd reteam for some engagement and it would be ballyhooed as a world-shattering event that Marty Allen and Steve Rossi had reunited. Then a few months later each would again be working solo or with different partners for a time. Then they'd reteam for some engagement and it would be ballyhooed as a world-shattering event that Marty Allen and Steve Rossi had reunited.
And so on and so on and so on…
One major reteaming occurred around 1991. There was then a gent named Bob Stupak who owned and operated a hotel-casino in Las Vegas called Bob Stupak's Vegas World. Stupak was the last of a breed of colorful entrepreneurs in that town who seemed to fly by the seat of their trousers, getting in the press all the time for outrageous stunts and ideas. A lot of Stupak's sounded as if they were done on mad impulse; like he'd suddenly decide to bet a million dollars on some sports team or randomly give away thousands of free vacations to his resort. I followed his exploits, all the time suspecting that he was more clever and calculating than he appeared.
But maybe not. Vegas World isn't there anymore. It was sold and reconfigured as a hotel called the Stratosphere and that's too bad. I wish you could have seen its interior design. The place looked like what you'd get if you gave a few million dollars to a 12-year-old Star Trek fan and let him spend it redecorating his bedroom.
In its final years, Stupak gave Allen and Rossi what was announced as a "lifetime contract" to play Bob Stupak's Vegas World. It was reportedly something he offered on a whim during a dinner meeting, scribbling its terms out on a napkin. I believe this occurred in 1991 and Bob Stupak's Vegas World closed in February of 1995. But that didn't affect that "lifetime contract" because by '93, Allen and Rossi had split — from Stupak and, once more, from each other.
Before that happened, I saw one of them at Vegas World. Late in '91 or maybe early in '92, I was in town and hanging out with a bunch of stand-up comedians I knew who were playing the comedy club at the Riviera. That night, their second show was canceled due to some special function that needed the room so we all went to a comped dinner at the Riviera buffet — an okay place to eat as long as it was free. Then, once we were all sufficiently buffeted, one of the comics announced that we were all going over to Mr. Stupak's World to see Steve Rossi. I asked, "Allen and Rossi?" He said no, just Steve Rossi. Actually, it was a show called "So Big Burlesque" fronted by and apparently produced in part by Mr. Rossi.
Allen and Rossi did the early show together at Vegas World. The late show was "So Big Burlesque" which starred Rossi, a bunch of odd variety acts and no Marty Allen but several strippers with…well, I believe the medical term would be "huge gazongas." The featured stripper was a lady who was then appearing in several different venues at the same time. How could she do that? Well, it helps if you have 77" breasts.
Or maybe they were larger than that. Her name was Platinum Peaks and she was a very attractive blonde lady who'd had implants the size of Buick Skylarks. People would ask, "What does she do?" and there were many snide answers to that but the two most-heard were, "She stands up" and "She doesn't have to do anything." As it turned out, both described her act to a "t."
Leafing through one of those free Vegas magazines, I saw her listed as appearing in "So Big Burlesque" and at several local strip clubs, all on the same night at staggered times. One could imagine her and her breasts staggering from job to job every evening, presumably in the same vehicle. One ad touted her top measurement as 77". Another said 80". A poster outside the Vegas World showroom said 88". My friends and I decided that once you passed 70", it didn't matter and anyway, it could vary that much depending on the pollen count.
Anyway, we all went to see "So Big Burlesque." I think tickets were like $9.95 but one of the comedians insisted that we not pay. Instead, he found the showroom manager and identified all of us, including me, as fellow performers on The Strip. Through a thick cloud of chutzpah, he asked, "Isn't it customary that as a matter of professional courtesy, we get in free?" The manager gave us a look of ennui and waved us in. It was easy to find seats because, at least that night, about 70% of them were and would remain unoccupied. (The show later played at least one other Vegas hotel, I believe without Rossi, so it apparently had some drawing power other evenings.)
A recorded orchestra played an overture and we heard an off-stage announcer welcome us and then give the most flowery, praise-filled introduction of the star of the show, the greatest and most popular entertainer in the history of show business. The voice urged us to give him the kind of applause that a true superstar deserves — and now, here he is, the one and only, legendary Mr. Steve Rossi!
We all did as the off-stage announcer urged…and it wasn't until after his opening song when Rossi began speaking that we realized he had been the off-stage announcer.
His singing was fine. His connection with the audience was very polished and professional. His monologue wasn't bad if you didn't mind leftovers from Morey Amsterdam's act intermingled with talk of how spectacularly popular STEVE ROSSI and Marty Allen were. One of the comics I was with muttered, just loud enough so we could hear and no one else could, "Steve…you're starring in 'So Big Burlesque' at Bob Stupak's Vegas World for $9.95 to a house that's a third full and half of us were comped." Another comic added, "And the straight ones are only here to see the tits," which was not quite true. Some of us were actually there to see Steve Rossi.
For about seventy minutes, he introduced acts that are now largely a blur. A few of them were while they were still performing. There were two or three strippers with breasts smaller than the Louisiana Purchase, though not by much. There was a comedy magician. There were a few old burlesque sketches…I guess. I have a great memory but some things, the brain cannot get rid itself of fast enough. What remains unblurred is, first of all, Platinum Peaks. I hope that lady made a lot of money from those breasts, invested it wisely, had her chest downsized to normal and has lived happily ever after in a house she owns outright.
I have never been all that enlivened by breast size. I kinda figure that if you like the rest of the woman, the bustline is automatically perfect, whatever size it might be. Still, like the Grand Canyon which I still haven't seen, 77"-88" breasts are something every man must experience once in his life if only to discover how unsexy they can be. My friends and I learned a valuable lesson that evening.
She went next-to-last, then Rossi closed the show. He sang another song or two, then launched into singing impressions of the usual lineup — Frank, Dino, Sammy, Tony Bennett, etc. They weren't bad but I would have preferred he'd stuck with Steve Rossi since he did him better. Then he got to Robert Goulet.
I am not making this up, I promise you.
He began talking about Robert Goulet and about what a wonderful, generous humanitarian he was. He ticked off a list of benefits Robert Goulet had done, charitable work Robert Goulet had done, contributions to the world that Robert Goulet had made. If I were telling you about Dr. Jonas Salk, the man who invented the polio vaccine that has saved millions from that disease, I would not praise his greatness and contribution to society as much as Steve Rossi extolled the awesome wonderfulness of Robert Goulet.
Then Rossi launched into a story that we didn't believe for a minute. He was at some sort of charity event and Robert Goulet was performing…and as he told this story, he got visibly angry. He was angry at the audience at that event because they hadn't given Robert Goulet a standing ovation. Can you believe that? There was that grand man, that selfless entertainer who gave unsparingly of his time and gifts to help out the less fortunate…and that uncaring, unfeeling audience hadn't given the great Robert Goulet a standing ovation!
Rossi calmed down and apologized for getting upset. He said, "You didn't need to hear that, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure you're not the kind of audience that would fail to give Robert Goulet a standing ovation. And now, if I may, I'd like to honor him in my own way with my impression of the great Robert Goulet."
And then he sang a version of Goulet's biggest hit — and this is verbatim, including the lines which don't rhyme and didn't fit the meter of the song…
If ever I would leave you
You'll give me a standing ovation
Because a standing ovation is what I deserve
Oh no, you won't sit there
You will jump to your feet
And give a standing ovation…to Robert Goulet!
Well, needless to say, we all vaulted from our chairs and gave "Robert Goulet" a thunderous standing ovation via proxy. And Steve Rossi, dropping the impression, bowed and accepted the standing ovation on his own behalf, saying over and over, "You're too kind…too kind…"
After the show, Rossi made himself available for audience autographs. My group waited around while he signed and posed for photos and we heard several audience members ask if Platinum Peaks was available for meeting…or perhaps climbing. Alas, she and the co-stars in her brassiere had been wheelbarrowed off to another gig. We heard she was downtown at the Union Plaza where, thanks to them, she was able to play the main room and the lounge at the same time.
We met Steve, who brightened up when he heard that he was meeting fellow Strip performers or, in my case, a TV writer. That meant I had the exchange that I endured way too often when I was doing a lot of variety shows. I'd meet a singer or comedian and say something like, "I always admired your work" and then they'd ask —
Well then, how come you've never hired me on any of your shows?
There's no comfortable answer to that. Never has been, never will be. I said I didn't do the casting and that the folks who did had never found the perfect spot for him and that when they do, they'll be in touch and, hey, let's change the subject. We sat with him for about fifteen minutes and apart from The Question, he was very nice and very real and surprisingly humble. To tell you the truth, I liked him better offstage than on. About the show he was doing he said, "Marty only wants to do one performance a night here and so this showroom was just sitting empty at 11:00." Then he added, "And I love to work." That seemed to explain everything.
I managed to make him laugh, though. We asked him about his interim partners — Bernie Allen, Slappy White and a few others. He said nice things about all of them. One of the comedians in our group then said, "A lot of us enjoyed your two new partners." Rossi didn't understand so I explained, "Breasts, each twice the size of Marty Allen." He laughed and said, "Hey, I've got to use that." I'll bet he did.
The lady is Karon Kate Blackwell (aka Mrs. Marty Allen).
Allen and Rossi split again for a time before Vegas World came to an end, and Allen moved on to an act he did with his wife at another casino, the Westward Ho. Rossi popped up here and there at other hotels. Then in 1995, Marty and Steve reteamed for what may have been the last time and they played the Sands for what I'm pretty sure was the last time. I went, figuring I had to see them together at least once…and I did, sort of but not really. They were both on the stage at the same time but…well, let me explain.
Steve Rossi was introduced by an offstage announcer who was not him. He came out. He sang songs and talked for, I guess, about a half hour. He would occasionally allude to his partner who would be out shortly but it was a solo Steve Rossi performance. I started wondering if maybe Marty hadn't shown up for work yet and Steve was filling until the guy with the frizzy hair arrived. But no…that was how they structured the act now.
Finally, employing so many superlatives you'd have thought he was describing himself, Rossi introduced his partner who he loved so, so much…and out came Marty Allen. And then what happened was that Allen did his solo act with Rossi next to him on stage.
They did not do any of those funny interviews I'd seen on the Sullivan program. They barely talked to each other. Marty favored us with what I'm sure was the same stand-up routine he'd been doing at the Westward Ho, and during it, Steve stood there next to him, holding the hand mike in front of Marty's mouth and laughing uproariously at every single thing Marty said. Steve was not in the act as a partner but as a microphone stand and a "fake laugher" like Milton Berle used to always plant in his audiences.
Allen was pretty humorous but I thought he was upstaged by Rossi, standing there in faux hysterics, trying desperately to not fall over from way too much laughter. I was at a front table and I could see that every so often, Marty gave Steve a little look as if to say, "Hey, tone it down a notch. This isn't that funny." At the end, I think they did a song together, took mutual bows, hugged a bit for our benefit and then exited. I sure got the feeling they weren't driving home from the Sands together. And less than a year later, there was no more Sands Hotel.
I think that engagement was the last time they played Las Vegas and maybe anywhere as a team. Allen went back to the Westward Ho for a while (it's not there anymore, either) and I understand he's semi-retired now, occasionally playing cruise ships. I finally got to meet him at an autograph show last year and he was funny and delightful and really, really happy for non-monetary reasons that so many people wanted to greet him, hear him say "Hello Dere" and get his autograph.
I can't pretend to explain the chemistry or whatever it was that catapulted Allen and Rossi to a certain amount of stardom that eluded almost all of the other teams that used Dean and Jerry for role models. It had something to do with Marty's exuberant good humor, something to do with the fact that Steve was a good singer and straight man, and a lot to do with good breaks and good management. I suspect it was more because of Steve Rossi than seemed obvious when you saw them performing back then. The guy really understood a certain end of show business and how to make it work for himself when he appeared solo and for the both of them when he appeared with Marty.
I'm sorry I never got to see them work together live back when they actually worked together. I'll bet they were a lot better than those six minute spots on The Merv Griffin Show. I'm sure they were a lot better than what I saw at the Sands.
Still, Martin and Lewis — like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello — were before my time and I only saw Rowan and Martin in a TV studio in Burbank taping short bits for Laugh-In. So Allen and Rossi were the biggest show business "duo" I ever got to see in person. Unless, I guess, you count Platinum Peaks. I hear one of her breasts quit the act for a time and teamed up with Joe E. Ross.
As you know, the Monty Python guys are doing a series of farewell performances in the U.K. at the moment. These should not be confused with their next series of farewell performances — the ones they will now deny they'll ever do but will schedule as soon as a few of them need money again. Anyway, to promote the current series, they did a number of press conferences and I believe I posted excerpts from this one earlier. This is the entire press event, running almost an hour…
My problems with Time-Warner e-mail not only continue but they have worsened. As you may remember, e-mail that is sent to my domains is automatically forwarded to my Time-Warner account where, in theory, it should be immediately available for reading and downloading by me. I became aware that some of it was not getting there for several hours.
No one at Time-Warner could do much more than keep me on hold for hours so I decided to do a workaround. I opened a Yahoo! account and configured things so my messages were simultaneously forwarded to the Time-Warner account and to my Yahoo! account. The result? They all show up promptly in my Yahoo! account but about a third of them show up much, much later in the Time-Warner account.
Last Monday, we sent the first issue of the Groo Vs. Conan mini-series off to press. That morning, its editor at Dark Horse Comics sent me an e-mail that he desperately needed one thing from me and he needed it by 11 AM. He sent this message at about 10:15 AM, I got it via Yahoo! at 10:16 AM and promptly sent off the needed material. I received his message via my Time-Warner account at 8:50 PM that evening. See the problem?
Several folks who work for Time-Warner around the country have unofficially told me the problem has to be that they have a server somewhere that is malfunctioning. I asked them all if I could possibly be the only person with this problem and they all, independent of one another, answered no. One wrote, "You're probably just one of the few who's noticed. They'll need an avalanche of complaints before they take it seriously."
Okay. Well, I've spent too many hours on the phone talking to Time-Warner employees who either weren't the person who might fix this snafu or weren't especially interested. Since I have a workaround and it doesn't cost me anything extra, I'm going to just live with the situation and get my messages via Yahoo! But I'll continued monitoring the Time-Warner account and see if the problem is ever fixed. If you get your mail via Time-Warner, you might want to take a close look at those time stamps.
Hey, folks. Do me a favor. Don't post my Sergio headers on other blogs and on Facebook and Twitter and other places. They belong on this page and I'd like people to see them for the first time here in the intended context. Thanks.
Paul Waldman writes about the lack of great Conservative novelists and humorists and I think he's on to something. I don't necessarily buy the explanations of why artists are more prone to Liberalism but I do think it's true. And I can't get near this topic without hauling out my old line about how doing comedy from a right-wing viewpoint would be like trying to write a Marx Brothers movie and make Margaret Dumont the funny one.
But yeah…there's a big difference between trying to create comedy from a Conservative perch and having folks who already have a Conservative worldview try to create comedy. I also don't think a right-wing comic these days would please his target audience if he slammed his own side as often as guys like Maher and Stewart skewer theirs.
