Monthly Archives: October 2014

As you may have read here, I'm appearing at the Miami Book Fair International, which runs November 16-23 this year. I'll be there the last two days and I believe I'm speaking and signing books at some time they haven't told me yet on Sunday, November 23.

The book I'm there to flog is a new one which is coming out officially on November 15, though they're selling some copies (I hope) today at the New York Comic Con. It's a collection of artwork from the operation run by two great men of comics, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. You can read about it and order a copy here. You can also be amused at my listing in the Miami Book Fair's authors list and the sizzling revelation it gives away about the book…

Comics/Graphic Novel
Evanier, Mark
The Art of the Simon and Kirby Studio
A collection by the husband and wife team who created memorable characters such as Captain America and Sandman, invented romance comics, and raised the standard for the genres of western, crime, and horror comic books.

And you probably though Same-Sex Marriage was a fairly recent invention. My word, Joe and Jack were pioneers at everything!

In other news: If you're like me, you're interested in way more podcasts than you can possibly hear in eight lifetimes. Well, one that I've been enjoying lately is Man Vs. Art, hosted by artist and animator Raul Aguirre Jr. Raul speaks frankly and from experience about the problems and joys of creating the kinds of things he creates so well…the challenges that you face in this world of ours if you care about producing work of which you can be proud.

And since this posting is entitled "Stuff About me," it stands to reason that the guest on his latest edition is me. We had a nice conversation, much of it about that Kirby guy I used to work for. We also talked about Scrappy Doo and my work for Hanna-Barbera and other cartoon studios, as well as working with Sergio Aragonés on Groo the Wanderer. If you have time, you might enjoy it.

Here's a great magician from China. Her act makes me realize what I've been doing wrong with my card tricks. I don't do them in a tu-tu while dancing ballet. Have to try that some time…

Obama, they say, is planning to override Congress and close Guantanamo unilaterally.

I'm going to lunch today. Betcha by the time I'm home, there's some angry Congressperson out there saying we must keep it open and stick all the Ebola patients there instead of in the U.S.

Los Angeles is in a bit of a panic today because President Obama is in town. Neither he nor Vice-President Biden seem to be able to come here without L.A. becoming paralyzed by the fact that a few intersections may be closed or crowded for a little while. It's front page news and today, people will avoid Pico Boulevard between Century Park East and Prosser Avenue between 10 AM and 1 PM like it's being stalked by Ebola-infected ISIL soldiers.

I don't recall this kind of panic when George W. Bush came to town. I do recall being stuck in a traffic jam once near the Century Plaza Hotel when Bush was there but I don't recall announced street closures and Angelenos planning to stay home all day because a member of the Executive Branch was in the same area code.

I don't even recall my city becoming this dysfunctional when Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon visited and their visits brought out hordes of "End the War" protesters who often were deliberately trying to halt traffic. But there is drama wherever "No Drama Obama" goes. If he and Biden ever came to L.A. at the same time, some of us might just lay in supplies and stay home for a month.

So sorry to hear of the death of Jan Hooks — a tragedy at any age but especially as young as 57. I worked with Jan on her first network series, a short-run Laugh-In knock-off called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour that ran a few weeks on ABC in 1983. (There have since been at least two other unrelated shows with that name.)

Jan was discovered, as I recall, in the stock company of a cable series called Tush on the channel that is now WTBS. When we were casting, someone brought in tapes of that program and she stood out as a genuine talent, one we had to have. Later, when she was snagged for the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1986 (along with another cast member from our show, Victoria Jackson), not one person who knew her work was surprised. Jan was funny, hard-working, cooperative, devoted to her craft and able to play just about any role you wrote for her. If every performer was that talented and that easy to work with, television would be a much happier business.

One time, I wrote a sketch for her and one of the other performers. The characters were a bit complicated and neither Jan nor the other performer were quite sure on first reading how to handle the material. The other performer came to me and started suggesting (verging on demanding) a rewrite. Jan went off into a quiet corner of the rehearsal hall, thought about it for a while and came back with it all figured out. And based on what she figured out, the other performer was able to figure it out. She was that good.

The last time I saw her was up at the David Letterman Show. This was at NBC and Jan was a guest one evening when the other guest was Donald Trump. She had made a point of going to his dressing room to say hello, hoping there were no hard feelings from The Donald about some Saturday Night Live sketches in which Phil Hartman had played Trump and Jan had played whoever was Mrs. Trump at the moment.

As it turned out, there were hard feelings. Soon, Jan was back in her dressing room when I, unaware of what had just transpired, poked my head in to say howdy. She was crying…a little. Later, I saw Mr. Trump being very rude to others around him — people who, to use a phrase I used earlier today in a post, could not fight back. My low opinion of Trump dates back to that day.

Jan turned off the tears, not just to greet me but because she had to go out in fifteen minutes and be a happy, cheery presence in Dave's guest chair. She was a big star at that moment but she couldn't have been sweeter or nicer…unlike a certain other guest on that episode. Our paths never crossed again after that but I refuse to believe she ever changed. And I know everything she did on TV and in movies was real, real good.

The official name of the Stan Freberg event (which I mentioned here) is "The Genius of Stan Freberg: Celebrating 70 Years of Creative Entertainment." That pretty much says it.

If you're coming here to find out where and when you can get tickets, I'm now told there will be an online link next Tuesday. I'll post it when I have it. The tickets will not be expensive and they may go fast.

The event is Sunday evening, November 2 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. We just got our mitts on a couple of rare Freberg clips — so rare that I, an acknowledged Freberg authority, have never seen them before. We'll be showing a lot of stuff that you know and love like the Lone Ranger commercial and the Ann Miller commercial and Three Little Bops…but we'll also have some things you've never seen anywhere else.

Here's an old Kool-Aid commercial from the sixties with Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny and Hal Smith as Elmer Fudd. You may remember Hal as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. He also had a great career doing voices for cartoons, though apart from fill-ins as Elmer (and once in a rare while as Mickey Mouse or Goofy), he never did a character that most of you could recognize. He was a very funny, nice man and a real good actor…

Arthur Q. Bryan, who was the original Fudd, died in 1959. You can see a clip of Mr. Bryan over here. Even before he passed on, they occasionally had to have someone fill in for him in the role. Mel did it now and then for a few brief lines. Dave Barry seems to have been the guy who did it in a few kids' records and in the Bugs Bunny short, Pre-Hysterical Hare.

The great storyman Michael Maltese once told me that after Bryan's death, someone at the studio suggested that since the voice was so hard to mimic, the character should just be abandoned. Maltese then did an impression of some studio exec reacting in outrage, screaming it was a bad precedent: "Then are we expected to abandon all the rest when Mel dies?" They not only didn't drop Elmer, they seem to have increased his appearances. Hal Smith did most of them but eventually, Mel took it over.

Since Mel died, a number of different people have attempted to speak for Mr. Fudd. The best in my opinion has been Billy West. You heard him in this Geico commercial…

You probably already follow the blog of my pal, Ken Levine…but make sure you don't miss this post and the article to which he links about a-hole bosses in Hollywood. Ken's comments are more important than the article but read both. There are many measures of a man or woman but one key one is how they treat people who cannot fight back.

Fred Kaplan on Mission Creep. This is not about a pervert who hangs around San Juan Capistrano. It's about how sometimes we send our military to do one thing and then they wind up taking on larger battles. This is like when I walk into Costco to just get a package of paper towels and I walk out with 12 Drummers Drumming, 11 Pipers Piping, 10 Lords a'Leaping, 9 Ladies Dancing, 8 Maids a'Milking, 7 Swans a'Swimming, 6 Geese a'Laying, 5 Golden Rings, 4 Calling Birds, 3 French Hens, 2 Turtle Doves, a Partridge in a Pear Tree…

…and most of the time, no paper towels.

Readers of this website know that one of my heroes is the great Stan Freberg. Stan is a writer and director and performer who has distinguished himself in many arenas. He was (and still is) one of the great cartoon voiceover actors with a career that started in the classic Looney Tunes and which continues to this day. No one has ever logged more years in this field.

He was a puppeteer performing Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, Dishonest John and many supporting players on the original Time for Beany.

He wrote, produced and starred in some of the best-selling comedy records ever produced, including St. George and the Dragonet, Green Chri$tma$ and what I think is the greatest comedy album of all time, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America.

He starred in The Stan Freberg Show, the last real network variety series, which brought an end to the Golden Age of Radio.

He pretty much invented the funny commercial. In the fifties through the seventies, if you laughed at an ad, it was either created by Stan Freberg or by someone trying to follow in the footsteps of Stan Freberg.

And he's done so many other wonderful things. Why, this man deserved a big, splashy tribute to celebrate his seventy years of Frebergian madness…and he's getting it. It's Sunday evening, November 2nd at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and I'm pretty sure this is the first notice of this anywhere. In fact, you can't even order tickets for it yet, though that will change in a day or two.

For complex reasons, the folks staging this (I'm one of them) haven't been able to announce it 'til now and we're going to have to hustle to let everyone know about it in time. In a day or so, I'll post a link so you can order seats.

The host for the evening will be the illustrious Harry Shearer, and there will be classic and rare Freberg clips, as well as speeches and performances by a number of folks who admire Stan and his work. I can't list the names just yet but it's looking like quite an event. Stan and his wonderful wife Hunter will also be favoring us with a performance.

So if you're a Freberg fan and you can possibly get yourself to Hollywood on November 2, this is your "heads up" to save the date. And watch this space for more info.

Here's an hour of Kristin Chenoweth singing. What more do you need to know?

NBC reportedly talked to Jon Stewart recently about taking over Meet the Press.

I understand why they'd want him. I don't understand why he'd even let it get to the stage of having discussions. Stewart's got to be happy with the salary, acclaim and power he gets on The Daily Show. Some of that power comes from being able to mount political satire without being called out for not adhering to the rules and regs of being a journalist. Once he crossed that line, it would be a lot harder. If I were him, I would have shut down the possibility before even getting as far as it apparently did.

Teller (of Penn &…) just prevailed in what may well be a precedent-setting court decision. He accused a magician of copying one of his signature tricks and won a claim of copyright infringement. Big bucks involved, too. You might want to take a look.

Last night, Carolyn and I became two of the last hundred people in America to see Jersey Boys, the smash Broadway musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. A touring company is parked up at the Pantages in Hollywood for a while and while we both enjoyed it, I did get the feeling that it was, you know, the touring company — and not the first or second one. In fact, this isn't even the first touring company of Jersey Boys to play the Pantages.

In the men's room after, I overheard the sentence, "You should have seen it in New York" in two separate conversations. I noticed later that we were seeing understudies in the two biggest roles — Frankie Valli and Tommy DeVito.

But hey, it's a solid story with great songs — songs that for the most part, you love before you even buy your tickets. It's the kind of show where people walk into the theater humming the score. As long as those four guys up there can sound reasonably like the records, it oughta work…and it did, though I'll bet other casts get closer.

That's as negative as I want to get about a group of actors who worked their butts off on that stage doing what is clearly not an easy show to get through. The whole company did a fine job. So many of the actors doubled, tripled, quadrupled and I'm sure even quintupled that they seemed like a cast of thousands up there.

The audience cheered it all and I noticed among the folks who were the right age to love The Four Seasons, a surprising number of kids. It's a good entry-level musical for young teens who can handle some strong language. Am I glad I went? Absolutely. My only regret is I didn't go a few years sooner.

Carl Reiner has another book of memoirs out.  This man has more personal anecdotes than the M&M company has Ms.  Anyway, the legendary actor, director and performer is paying a return visit to Stu's Show today to talk about the new book and many aspects of his life and career that weren't covered in previous volumes.  What more do I have to tell you?  It's Carl Reiner and he'll be chatting with Stu Shostak and co-host Vince Waldron, author of that book on The Dick Van Dyke Show I plugged the other day.  And speaking of plugs, here's a link to order Mr. Reiner's new work which he calls I Just Remembered.  Wouldn't it have been embarrassing if he'd come up with that title and then it had slipped his mind?

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go longer. Not long after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. If you didn't hear Stu's first show with Carl Reiner, get it when you get this one.