Monthly Archives: August 2014

Sasha Frere-Jones writes about "Weird Al" Yankovic. I too discovered the weird one on Dr. Demento's radio show long ago and always thought he was really good at what he does. I met Al (briefly) a few years ago and was genuinely impressed with how nice and humble he seemed to be. I think, listening to his music, I always knew he'd be like that.

Ed Kilgore thinks people should stop making an issue of how many days of "vacation" the President of the United States takes. I think I've said that myself on this blog and I think I even said it when Bush was in office. It's not like these guys are ever lying on the beach, miles from a phone and unreachable. The Commander-in-Chief is not necessarily neglecting his duties when he's not in the Oval Office, just as he's not necessarily working when he is there. It's what he does or doesn't do we should criticize, not where he does or doesn't do it.

Last Tuesday evening, I attended a meeting of Yarmy's Army, a local (we meet in Beverly Hills) group to which I belong. It's kind of a social club for folks in show business, mostly male, mostly comedians, mostly older. I'm one of the younger members. We meet the second Tuesday of every month and whoever shows up shows up and we sit around and tell stories, plus the club does some good in terms of benefits for worthy causes and just plain helping each other.

This week, we had a record turnout for two reasons. One was that it was the birthday of one of the club's original members, Pat Harrington, Jr. You all know Pat from One Day at a Time and his work with Steve Allen and many other gigs. The other reason is that a lot of the guys felt the need to sit around and swap anecdotes about Robin Williams. The group's president/leader (I'm not sure what his title is) Howard Storm knew Robin pretty well, having crossed many a path on the comedy circuit and also directing episodes of Mork and Mindy. Several members had appeared on that series. A lot of the stories they told Tuesday evening went roughly like this…

So we're rehearsing and I have this line. Robin is supposed to say a certain line and then I say my line. But the problem is that he never says his line. He's saying all this stuff that isn't in the script I learned so I'm waiting and waiting and he doesn't say the line that leads into mine. I finally go to the director and ask, "When do I say my line?" And the director says, "Whenever you can."

I've heard from others who worked on that series that Mr. Williams' tendency to ad-lib the script has been greatly exaggerated; that while Robin did improvise material at times, what was also happening there was this: The scripts were constantly rewritten throughout the week of rehearsals and Robin, who had a great memory, would often throw in lines from earlier drafts…or alternate lines the writers had pitched to him. At least a few writers on Mork resented the assumption, made in some articles and everyday conversation, that if a line on the show was funny, it must have been a Robin ad-lib. No…and a lot of things Robin said on stage which sounded like spontaneous thoughts were also just the output of a good memory.

One of secret skills of most stand-ups is that even when the material isn't fresh, you make it sound like it is. Make it sound like you thought of it on the spot, even. I remember the first time I saw Robert Klein perform in person. He said a lot of things I would have taken as sudden thoughts on his part had I not heard them, verbatim and with the exact same pauses and delivery, on his albums. Bill Maher will often chuckle during a monologue as if he too is surprised and amused at what just came out of his mouth. None of this is considered dishonest. Performing comedy material is an exercise in acting. It's why some stand-ups become, as Robin Williams did, very fine actors.

Something I learned when I got involved in magic was this: Sometimes, a trick is more impressive when you know how it's done. The secret to some skills is a gimmick — a box with a false bottom, a prop with a hidden spring, etc. — but sometimes, it's a move that the magician spent months learning and practicing. There's card magic you do with a trick deck that contains extra aces…and then there's card magic you do with a normal deck and a lot of dexterity and misdirection. The lay spectator doesn't know which he's seeing but someone with a basic knowledge of magic can really be dazzled. He or she knows how hard that trick is to do because they know (approximately at least) what the magician is really doing to make it look like the Queen of Hearts turned into the Three of Clubs.

It's the same with performing humor. At the Comedy Store, I saw other comics dazzled by Robin Williams. That was the setting in which he was most likely to ad-lib and just blurt out any silly concept that appeared in his head at that moment…and he did, often. But you could also see him mentally juggling — and in real time — bits and lines he'd uttered before, fitting them in wherever they fit in. In a way, it was like a great magician making you look at his right hand so you wouldn't spot what his left was doing. Robin's speed was often his misdirection and it impressed the hell out of his peers. It also pissed off a few of them when lines he was recalling and using were not being recalled from his own repertoire but from theirs.

He admitted in several interviews that he'd done that…said something on stage and then realized later (or been told) it was something he'd heard, not something he'd invented. Some in the business forgave it. An agent for comedians (not Robin's) said to me once, "So what if 2% of what he says on stage isn't his? 98% of it was the most inventive comedy being done today." Others disputed those percentages but I think even those who felt they'd been pickpocketed admired the man's skills. I always thought those who dismissed him as a knock-off of Jonathan Winters were underestimating Williams. He was of the same species and the inspiration was undeniable…but he was also the only one of its kind. And sadly now, there is no one of his kind. That's what happens when you're the only one.

Back here, we highly recommended The Marx Brothers TV Collection, a new DVD set full of clips and whole episodes from when Groucho, Harpo and/or Chico appeared on some TV program. That piece will also tell you two ways to order it.

I'm not the only one who liked this set. Here's a rave review from Leonard Maltin. Why did we both like it? Because of material like this clip…

So I've been trying to cancel my subscription to Avast Anti-Virus and also to get a refund on another product they sell which just plain won't work on my computer.

Their Customer Support phone line offers two options. You can talk to their Tech Support department 24/7. You can talk to their billing department during working hours. Either one will tell you the same thing: To submit a support ticket and ask for a refund. They will tell you there is absolutely no other way to get money refunded from the Avast company.

So you submit a support ticket. This is not easy because the website doesn't tell you that's what you have to do to request a refund. It makes it look like that's just for tech support and comments. But you submit a support ticket and you get back a form message that tells you your support ticket has been received and you will receive a response within two working days.

I submitted my first refund request support ticket on 8/4/14. I submitted my second on 8/5/14. Today is 8/13/14 and I have heard nothing. There appears to be no other way to reach the Avast company.

I'm having my credit card company block further charges to my card but they won't get involved in extracting refunds from a vendor.

I'll let you know when I hear from Avast. If I hear from Avast.

Fred Kaplan on the situation in Iraq. The most important thing to remember seems to be that not all military actions over there are the same.

Kiel Phegley covers a panel we did at Comic-Con to honor the late Bill Finger, the man who ought to be formally recognized as the co-creator of Batman. I suspect that at some point, some relative of Bob Kane will realize what it's doing to Bob's reputation that Finger is not so recognized and it will finally happen.

Kim Criswell sings "The Trolley Song" for the BBC with the John Wilson Orchestra. How come I know the words to all these songs but the chorus has to read them from books? And why is Stephen Colbert conducting an orchestra and calling himself "John Wilson?" An obvious alias…

If there's anything positive to be extracted from the death of Robin Williams, it's that people are talking about the subject of Depression. I'm no expert but I do know it's a problem that needs to be recognized, and not just every few years when someone you wouldn't think would kill themselves kills themselves. Folks who have it, mild or severe, need to know that there is help out there for them and it isn't a sign of personal failing to seek it. If someone wanted to build a lasting tribute to Mr. Williams, I would think a good way would be to see that the topic continues to be addressed long after the news of his passing scrolls off our blogs and from our minds.

I received this e-mail from someone who asked to be identified only as Mike…

I'm sure you are going to have many people write to you over the next few days about depression, about its insidious effects, the differences between sadness and depression, etc.

I'm writing since I was surprised that you used the exact word that my physician used several years ago to describe my battle with clinical depression — "compartmentalize." It was this exact thing that I could no longer do. For me depression reared its ugly head as something that prevented me from being rational. It hit me in such a way that even trivial issues consumed me.

When I finally decided to find help, I described to my (new) doctor my symptoms. The first thing he said to me was that I could not "compartmentalize" any longer and that I was describing a very common symptom of depression. I knew there was something amiss, but not in a million years would I have called it "Depression." After trials with different medications, we finally hit on one that helped. Now I have the ability to put all things into perspective — to "compartmentalize" those feelings and not have them consume me.

Just like those who have untreated mental illness may not understand that they have an illness, "normal" folks many times can not understand things like Depression. In this case, the exact thing you do to cope was the one thing I couldn't — until I received help.

I sometimes tell people that I can't begin to solve a problem unless I can scale it properly and see it as precisely the right size of problem. Thinking it's bigger than it is or even smaller than it is does not lead you to a solution.

Often too, it helps me to ask the question, "Why am I depressed about this?" The most dejected I've ever been in my life was a brief period in 1988 when a lady I loved very much died unexpectedly…and I mean unexpectedly. Did not see that one coming. No one did. So I got all sad and upset and down and I stopped writing — I have to be really bad off to not write — and I sat around my house for a few days, talking to no one, staring at bad TV and only eating what I had in my cupboard. Then two realizations, one on top of the other, lifted the whole thing off me.

One came when I was watching a rerun of some old cop show. I think it was a Hawaii Five-O. Someone was planning the funeral of a murder victim and they said, referring to some preparation, "She would have wanted it like this." That phrase hit me like a two-by-four to the kisser. When someone dies, we take it as a sign of respect for the deceased to do what they would have wanted. Well, I realized, my loved one wouldn't have wanted me sitting around all day, eating tuna sandwiches and watching Jack Lord play cop. That was one of the reasons she was a loved one…because she cared so much about my welfare.

Half of my despair went away at that moment and the other half followed soon after.

The liberation I felt over the first part got me to thinking about my general numbness and I got to asking myself, "Why do I feel like this?" The only answer I could come up with went roughly as follows: "Because you lost a loved one and this is how you're supposed to feel when that happens."

I don't often talk to myself but at that moment, I told me, "That's not a good enough reason. No law says you have to feel the way you think you're supposed to feel. And besides, you know you're going to get over this sooner or later. Why not save time and make it sooner? At the very least, you'll eat better." By that evening, I was writing again.

I'm not suggesting this will work for everyone — or even for me in other circumstances — but it's what worked then and there. To get to either solution, I had to step outside my dejection a bit, view it from that vantage point and get a realistic sense of its size. That's a lot of what compartmentalization is all about. You need to know the dimensions of something in order to file it away or begin to solve it. And often I find, when you do get a fix on its specifications, you realize that it's small enough to be ignored and that it will solve itself. Those are the good kind of solutions.

There was Too Much News yesterday so I'll be posting almost nothing today. Not unless a friend or another great comedian dies. Let's hope I don't have to post anything.

But before I go: I received a message asking — and we all know what prompted this — what advice I had for other writers about coping with depression. I'm the wrong guy to ask about this since it's not a problem that's ever seriously afflicted me. I have plenty of others but not, I'm happy to say, that particular one. When I'm feeling down, I'm usually able to figure out the what and the why and to "compartmentalize" it, putting it in its proper perspective. Almost always, that convinces me it's not as big a problem as I thought.

I do know though that one should not rule out medical advice because a depression may have more to do than you think with the kind of thing a doctor can correct. Or it may not. The point is that if it's beyond your ability to solve, get help. Do not think you've failed if you have to get help. That's what help is there for.

I really have no idea what was up with Robin Williams and I doubt any of the folks now telling us about his problems have much insight into him, either. Insight into the general topic of depression, sure…but not him in particular.

Years ago, a wonderful man I knew named Lorenzo Music would volunteer one or two nights a week to answer a suicide prevention hotline. During the days, he was the voice of Garfield and did oodles of commercials but evenings, he would "give back" that way. He told me that he would sometimes get a call that went like this. He'd answer and ask what the problem was. The caller — this was all anonymous on both ends — would say…

My life is a shambles. My wife has left me and I lost my job and I need an operation I can't pay for and my kids hate me and my car just died and I'm drinking way too much and I don't know what to do. I want to just end it. I want to just…hey, did anyone ever tell you you sound a lot like that cat on TV?

And from there, he said, it usually got better.

Not one baby panda…not two baby pandas…but three baby pandas!

There are some very nice tributes on the 'net tonight for Robin Williams, a man who sure made a lot of people laugh. His was dependable comedy, which is why when it came time for Johnny Carson to book a lead guest for his last regular Tonight Show, he said, "Get Robin." He probably could have gotten anyone to sit in that chair but he knew no one was more reliable. And it says a lot for Carson that he didn't try to top his guest or prove he could be just as funny. He let him soar.

As I said, I hope you got to see Mr. Williams live. I don't think any of his TV appearances did him justice because there was a wonderful immediacy to him in person. I honestly don't know how much of what emanated from his mouth was spontaneous and how much was planned…but almost all of it seemed to come out of nowhere. When he was on, you paid attention. There was always something coming that you didn't dare miss.

I assume someone, maybe TCM, will quickly slap together a Robin Williams Film Festival…and while I wouldn't mind seeing Good Morning, Vietnam or Awakenings or a few others again, I'd rather see HBO re-air all his stand-up specials, especially that first one where so many people discovered him. It aired and was released on home video under a couple of different names but the most frequent seems to have been Robin Williams: Live at the Roxy, even though it was taped and not broadcast live. It's the one where in the end, he brings John Ritter up on out of the audience to do some improv and one senses a wide disparity between what Mr. Williams can do on a stage and what Mr. Ritter can do. You find yourself feeling sorry for Ritter because that was Robin's crowd, Robin's room and Robin's game…and no one else had a chance up there. (There's a poor quality video of it on YouTube. I'll let you find it.)

For a lot of us, that was our intro and we saw Robin get…well, I won't say funnier because he hit a ceiling on that special. Maybe "more polished" would be a better term. I liked on some of his later shows how he'd go into levels of self-parody, parodying himself and then parodying himself parodying himself and sometimes, he'd even parody himself parodying himself parodying himself.

People likened him to Jonathan Winters and the lineage was obvious. But he was also a unique performer who on stage took nothing seriously. How sad that it all ended so seriously today.

Five minutes ago, I sent a bad taste e-mail to a comedian friend whose material occasionally came out of the mouth of the (now) late Robin Williams. It said, "Now Robin's stealing from Freddie Prinze." My friend just wrote back, "Robin's probably pissed that he's not around to steal that."

Even this friend thought that Williams was brilliant…and perfectly capable of improvising without borrowing. He was a controversial figure among other comedians, admired by many, criticized by others. The consensus was that he was capable of brilliant acting and brilliant comedy; not so capable of letting anyone else on stage get a funny word in edgewise. The times I saw him live, he left the audience exhausted, partly from laughing, partly from his sheer energy. One night at the Comedy Store, I watched him do a surprise, unannounced set that went on and on and on, eating up the scheduled comics' time and leaving them an audience that was too tired to listen to quieter — and probably cleverer — material.

They're calling it an "apparent suicide" and I will not pretend to understand the Why of that, though many others will. They'll blame chemical imbalances, drugs, career swings, general insanity, relationship problems, the works. Speaking generally, it has been my observation that when rich 'n' famous people kill themselves, it's because they're not happy and don't have the rationale that poor, non-famous people have. Poor and non-famous people can always say, "Well, of course I'm depressed. I'm poor and non-famous. If I were rich and famous, then I'd be happy." But when you're rich and famous and respected and still miserable, what possible remedy do you have to believe will change things?

That may or may not have been what happened with Robin Williams. I don't know. I don't know that we'll ever know. I hope you got to see him perform live because that was quite an experience.

I think I announced this here before I was supposed to, but here's the formal ad…

That stands for "Frank Ferrante Plug." I haven't plugged my pal Frank here for a while, mostly because he's been doing his Groucho show in Australia. But he's back in the states — in particular in Washington, where he's doing an extended run through August 24 at the ACT Theater in Seattle. Info and tickets are available here and here's a little article about the engagement. Every time he performs anywhere, I get at least one e-mail from someone who went and wants to thank me.

It has not been formally announced and tickets are not yet on sale but on January 11, 2015, Frank will be doing one performance at the Gindi Auditorium at the American Jewish University here in Los Angeles. This is a very nice place up on Mulholland, not far from the Skirball Cultural Center. I'll provide more details as we get closer to the day but Frank doesn't play L.A. very often so if you live here and have always wanted to see him, this may be your best opportunity. And if you love Groucho or if you've just always wanted to see an Italian kid play an old Jew at a Jewish University, you'll enjoy it. A lot.