Monthly Archives: October 2014

I often recommend my pal Frank Ferrante's one-man show (well, one man plus pianist), An Evening With Groucho. I don't usually go for impersonator shows but this one is very special. Frank does a stunning job of making you think that's the one, the only Groucho on stage. Can't tell you the number of people who have written to tell me they've gone because of my hectoring and are grateful.

Tomorrow night, he's doing it in North Andover, Massachusetts and before the year is out, he'll be Grouchoing in Germantown, Maryland and Glenside, Pennsylvania and Clayton, North Carolina and Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Old Saybrook, Connecticut and Morristown, New Jersey and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and Owings Mills, Maryland. If you reside anywhere near one of these burgs, you can find out when he'll be there and how to get tickets on this page.

So right about now, my friends in Southern California are probably asking out loud, "Hey! When is he playing here?" Well, here's the answer: January 11, 2015. He'll be doing one show that afternoon at 4 PM at the Gindi Auditorium at the American Jewish University. That's up on Mulholland, not far from the Skirball Center. I had lunch with Frank yesterday and he thinks this will probably be his only booking in this area for all of 2015.

You can order tickets at this page…and I suggest that if you want to go, you do so now. Based on the seating chart there, it looks like they're going fast.

While you're over there: On November 9, the same organization is hosting an afternoon with Carl Reiner. It's $36 to attend or $100 if you want to attend a special reception with the man. The $100 ticket isn't as expensive as it seems when you consider it includes a signed copy of his new book, which costs $25 in stores and (at the moment) $19.40 on Amazon. I probably won't be attending this but you might want to. Mr. Reiner is one of the few people around who's called a Living Legend and actually is one.

There's a great image making the rounds of the 'net. It shows, as any fool can plainly see, how paper clips are made by a machine. Meanwhile, the website How Products Are Made describes the process thusly…

1. The process begins with a huge spool of galvanized steel wire. A worker feeds the end of the wire into the paper clip machine. A finished paper clip has three bends. The machine forms the wire into these three bends by cutting it and passing it by three small wheels. The wheels are slightly roughened, and catch the length of wire as it passes.
2. The first wheel turns the wire 180 degrees, making the first bend, the second makes the next bend, and the third wheel makes the final turn. The entire process is so quick, the machine can churn out hundreds of clips a minute.
3. The finished paper clips fall into open boxes. The boxes are shut and sealed.

That is not the only way, of course. Here's an audio file disguised as a video file. The voices you hear will be that of those wonderful experts about everything, Bob and Ray…

Hey, you might like to go through David Letterman's 1982 interview for Playboy. Some pretty funny stuff in there. Also, a lot of things that have changed since. Here it is.

Ken Levine likes this advice to writers from Mike Nichols…

Every scene is either a fight, seduction, or negotiation.

I'm not sure I agree with that. A lot of great movie scenes only have one person in them and it's hard for one person to fight, seduce or negotiate with him or herself. A lot of great movie scenes are end scenes which provide resolution and peace after a lot of fighting, seducing and negotiating.

Which of those three is Julie Andrews singing that the hills are alive with The Sound of Music? Which of those three is the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles? Laurel and Hardy pushing the piano up the stairs? Citizen Kane saying "Rosebud?"

But I'm thinking it's Mike Nichols so he must be right and I'm wrong.

Joe Conason says that some governors' efforts to help their states' economy by tax cutting, union busting and budget slashing haven't yielded the promised results. Betcha those who think that's the way to make states prosper will look at that and say, "Well, we just didn't do enough of it." And when that fails, they'll say the same thing.

Another story about a car I owned. This one is rather short but the coincidence in it is worth sharing with you.

In 1992, I bought the '93 Lexus…a very good car, by the way. It cost me twice what another new car might have cost but it also lasted twice as long as another new car might have lasted. It was not as extravagant an investment as it might have seemed. A friend of mine who bought a new Chevrolet — a Cavalier, I think — around the same time compared notes with me years later. He wound up spending a lot more money than I did once you factored in repairs and its shorter life and the pittance of resale value.

I'm thinking this story took place in '94 or '95…around there. Maybe '96. Whenever, it was before the Comic-Con in San Diego had a Preview Night on Wednesday. It opened Thursday so I decided to drive down Wednesday evening after rush hour. Wednesday afternoon before the trip, I took the Lexus in for routine servicing. My Service Consultant — his name was Andy — performed the scheduled ritual, rotating tires, checking brakes, changing oil, etc.

I got my car back at 3 PM and left L.A. for San Diego at 8, driving straight through without stopping. I pulled it into the circular driveway at the Marriott next to the convention center, let them unload my luggage and then left the Lexus for the attendants to valet park. I was checking in at the desk when one of them ran in and said, "Sir, we can't start your car."

As it turned out, neither could I. Absolutely dead. A number of attendants tried to push it to one side out of the way and they couldn't do that, either. The wheels were all locked.

Lexus then had its own proprietary version of the Auto Club. From inside the immobile car, I phoned and they told me nothing could be done that night; that I'd have to wait 'til morning and they'd dispatch a flatbed to take it to the nearest Lexus dealer. They also told me about a secret switch that had to be disengaged in order to push the car when it wasn't running. (I believe this feature did not appear on later models.)

That done, we pushed it to one side so departures and arrivals would not be impeded at the Marriott and I went up to my room and off to sleep.

Next morning, I went to the con and hosted a panel. I also arranged with a friend to host my Noon panel in case, as seemed likely, I didn't get back in time. Then I ran back to the Marriott just as the flatbed truck was arriving. Somehow — though it was parked on the curve of a circular driveway — they got my car on the truck. I rode with it as it was taken to the nearest Lexus dealership, which was in Kearny-Mesa ten miles away.

We arrived at the garage. The new head of the Service Department, there on his first day, took one look at it on the Flatbed, recognized my license plate and said, "My God! I know what I did wrong!"

It was Andy, the guy who'd been in charge of its servicing the day before in Beverly Hills. That had been his last day there before he started down here. Even while my car was still on the truck, he realized he'd forgotten to reconnect some cable under the hood. The driver unloaded my car, Andy popped the hood and reconnected the cable, it started and I drove back to the Marriott.

I got back in time to host my Noon panel. I think it was about Incredible Coincidences in comic books and how things like that never happen in the real world.

From 1969: Bing Crosby and his son Phillip introduce one of my favorite performers, George Carl. I've linked to Mr. Carl before here but this is a clip you probably haven't seen…

Is what John Oliver is doing on Last Week Tonight journalism? Sure it is. Those who think otherwise either (a) haven't realized that journalism can be funny, especially when it's risky and (b) haven't seen enough journalism lately to be able to recognize it.

Hey, remember that piece by Kevin Drum I linked to yesterday? The one about Americans being in love with war?

Well, over at the American Conservative, Daniel Larison responds to it and I think his view is closer to mine. Why are Americans supporting these new war efforts? Well, for starters, you have folks like Lindsey Graham saying that if we don't take action, we'll all be killed.

That there's a photo of my friends, Stu Shostak and Jeanine Kasun. Stu is, among his other endeavors, host of Stu's Show, a weekly Internet radio show that I plug here whenever it's on. Jeanine is the lady in his life and the host of her own show which I probably don't plug as often as I should.

Ten months ago, Jeanine suffered what doctors call a Subarachnoid Hemorrhage — in simpler language, a severe brain aneurysm. She was alone in their mountain home at the time and would surely have died but for some good luck. At the time it occurred, she was on the phone to Stu, who was at their home out in Chatsworth, which is many miles away. Stu was able to call paramedics and that's where more good luck kicked in. They were able to get to her in time…the first of many skilled medical folks who saved her life.

She was in a coma for over five weeks and totally paralyzed for weeks after. Her brain was affected, her vision and memory and motor skills and speech…everything. I was at the hospital several times and am amazed that she's gone from that to what I now see in here, which is about a 90% recovery. It will get even better than that, they say, but just how far she's come in under a year is amazing.

Stu's Show returns today (Wednesday) following a brief summer hiatus and they'll be devoting the entire program to this miraculous story. Stu and Jeanine will tell what occurred — Jeanine, of course, does not remember it all — and they'll be chatting with some of the paramedics and therapists and even a rep from the insurance company that made it all happen. You will want to hear his chilling (but ultimately, happy) tale.

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. This is one you don't want to miss.