Monthly Archives: January 2015

Here we have a posting that originally ran on this site on 2/20/07. I wrote it then and I repost it now to answer a question that I often get. In the comic books that Dell published in the forties through the seventies, we saw all these characters who were famous from Disney cartoons, Warner Brothers cartoons, MGM cartoons (etc.) and they sometimes weren't the same in the comics as they were in the cartoons. As you'll see, when I was a lad I made the erroneous assumption it was because the folks doing the comics weren't very familiar with the cartoons. Wrong. They not only were very familiar with the cartoons, they were often among the people who'd made those cartoons. Here's what I wrote then…

We all love Wile E. Coyote, the long-suffering Road Runner chaser. But, uh, what does the "E" stand for?

I guess I don't know. I mean, none of the cartoons directed by Charles "Chuck" Jones and written by Michael Maltese ever said. Only a couple of them ever even said his name was Wile E. Coyote.

But it has just (this morning) been brought to my attention — thank you, Devlin Thompson — that more than a thousand websites say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert. The source for this is a 1973 story that appeared in the comic book, Beep Beep the Road Runner, published by Western Publishing Company under its Gold Key imprint. This is noted by Jon Cooke over on this page and as he also reveals, it was the question/answer to the Final Jeopardy question on the 1/18/07 episode of the game show, Jeopardy!

In the story, which was called "The Greatest of E's," Wile E. Coyote realizes he doesn't know and gathers together some of his relatives to answer the question. One is an uncle named Kraft E. Coyote who informs him and the world that the "E" stands for Ethelbert. That is, as far as I know, the only piece of fiction licensed or otherwise blessed by the Warner Brothers company that ever said such a thing.

This raises one of those moral issues that has no firm answer. What makes something like this an "official" fact in the world of animated cartoons? I mean, we know Bugs Bunny is named Bugs Bunny because…well, we just know. But what is the name of the frog that sings and dances in the Jones-Maltese masterpiece, One Froggy Evening? It's Michigan J. Frog, right? Apparently…but that name appears nowhere in the cartoon. As I understand it, the moniker was coined years later when there was some merchandising interest in the character…or maybe when W.B. decided to try and generate some merchandising interest. Chuck or Mike may have come up with it then or someone at WB may have and then Chuck and Mike endorsed and used it…but anyway, that's the frog's name. I suppose. I mean, if the guys who made One Froggy Evening didn't argue the point, who are we to say it isn't?

For that matter, even if some "fact" appears in a cartoon that doesn't make it inviolable. There were WB cartoons where Sylvester the Cat could talk and was owned by Granny. There were others where he couldn't talk and was Porky Pig's cat. Quick: If I asked you, "Who owns Sylvester?," you'd probably forget about all cartoons to the contrary and say it was Granny, who also owned Tweety. There were Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons where for no apparent reason, those characters lived in other eras. Elmer Fudd had a couple of different middle initials in different shorts and characters' appearances were often changing and we could list hundreds of other inconsistencies. The films weren't intended to have an airtight continuity from one to another. Some "facts" were meant to be forgotten.

It was the same with the comic books. Western Publishing licensed the right to do comics of those characters for around thirty years, and the editors at Western thought of the comics as separate entities from the cartoons. The Donald Duck that Carl Barks and others wrote and drew for Western's Disney comics was not exactly the same Donald Duck that appeared in the Disney cartoons. They adapted the character, rethinking and redesigning him for a different medium. (It's a funny thing: When I was a kid and read Bugs Bunny comic books, I always "heard" the wabbit's dialogue in Mel Blanc's voice from the shorts. But when I read a Donald Duck comic book, I never thought that duck spoke with the voice Clarence Nash supplied for Donald in his cartoon appearances…maybe because I understood so little of what the animated duck said and I could read every syllable of the comic book Donald's word balloons.) In some ways, the Donald of the comics was the same character but in others, he was a different but similar creature. And I never quite related the Mickey Mouse of the comic books or strips to any of his animated appearances.

While Western was doing the Warner Brothers-based comics, they changed a lot of the characters to make them — they thought — more workable for print media. They didn't think matching the cartoons closely mattered because, for one thing, those films weren't on TV every week then. During the forties and early fifties, they weren't on TV at all. Many of the kids who bought the comics rarely, if ever, saw the animated shorts and certainly didn't see them over and over and over, like they would in later years. So it didn't matter a whole heap if the comics matched the cartoons; only that they worked as comic book reading experiences. Back then in the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip, which was read by millions, Elmer Fudd rarely appeared and I don't think Yosemite Sam ever did…but Sylvester was a regular. He was a hobo who wasn't owned by Granny, didn't chase Tweety Birds and who had a British accent. Someone thought it made for a better strip that way.

This is why, for instance, the Road Runner in comic books differed so much from the Road Runner in cartoons. When I was a kid enjoying both, I was puzzled. I'd seen Road Runner cartoons. They were tough to come by then but I'd caught one or two and in them, there was one Road Runner and one Coyote and neither spoke. In the comics, the Road Runner not only spoke, he spoke in rhyme. He had a name — Beep Beep — and in some stories, he had a wife and a family of either three or four youthful road-running kids. The Coyote spoke too, though not in rhyme, though that didn't bother me as much. The Coyote had spoken in a couple of non-Road Runner cartoons.

I wondered aloud back then if the folks who made the comic books had ever viewed one of those hard-to-see cartoons — but of course, they had. As I learned much later, Michael Maltese wrote many of those comics and the early ones were drawn by Pete Alvarado. Pete handpainted all the backgrounds for the first Road Runner cartoon, Fast and Furry-ous. Almost all the other writers and artists who did the comics (Phil DeLara, Don R. Christensen, Warren Foster, et al) had worked for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio, if not in Jones's unit then right down the hall. They knew that in the cartoons, the Road Runner didn't talk — in rhyme or at all and it had been a conscious decision to change it for the comics. The editors and creators had also decided to not worry about consistency from comic book to comic book. In some, there was a Mrs. Road Runner and four kids. But there were several years there where the wife and one of the kids disappeared…except that every now and then, they'd inexplicably turn up for a story or two or in a reprint sandwiched in among new adventures.

So as far as I'm concerned, it's no more a "fact" that the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert than it is that the Road Runner is named Beep Beep, has a wife and kids and speaks in doggerel. It said the "E" stood for Ethelbert in one comic book story but that's just one obscure comic book story…and even the guy who wrote it didn't intend it as anything more than one joke on one page of one story in one issue.

How do I know this? Because, as some of you may have guessed by now, I was that guy. I wrote that story. I think I was around twenty years old at the time. I'm pretty sure, by the way, that that one was conceived in a lecture hall at U.C.L.A. while I was simultaneously jotting down script ideas and feigning attention to what a tedious Anthropology professor was teaching. Mike Maltese had been occasionally writing the comics in semi-retirement before me…but when he dropped the "semi" part, I got the job and that was one of the plots I came up with. For the record, the story was drawn by a terrific artist named Jack Manning, and Mr. Maltese complimented me on it.

Still, I wouldn't take that as any official endorsement of the Coyote's middle name. If you want to say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert, fine. I mean, it's not like someone's going to suddenly whip out Wile E.'s actual birth certificate and yell, "Aha! Here's incontrovertible proof!" But like I said, I never imagined anyone would take it as part of the official "canon" of the character. If I had, I'd have said the "E" stood for Evanier.

Any day now, the Clarion Hotel in Las Vegas will be imploded. The specific date seems to be in flux but it's coming, it's coming. The latest in an endless series of owners, developer Lorenzo Doumani, plans to erect a luxury resort in the $500 million to $1 billion price range.

You probably never stayed at the Clarion, which is located on Convention Center Drive as a mid-point between The Strip and the big Vegas convention center. It started life as the Royal Inn in 1970 and thereafter always seemed to be changing names, owners or formats. It became the Royal Americana at one point owned by Horn and Hardart, the folks who used to operate cafeterias and Automats in New York, then it closed in 1982.

A few years later, it was remodeled so it looked like a riverboat and it reopened as the Paddlewheel. That didn't last long and in '92, Debbie Reynolds bought it and it morphed into the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel, a combination movie museum and casino. The big paddlewheel on the side of the building was repainted to look like a reel of movie film and inside, you could see Ms. Reynolds perform, get a glimpse of Clark Gable's shirt and lose yours. The effort, though intriguing, did not catch on. In '97, Ms. Reynolds filed for bankruptcy and later sold the property…to the World Wrestling Federation.

We're not done yet. The W.W.F. tried to convert it into a wrestling-themed hotel — make up your own joke — but they weren't able to pull that together and it was briefly called the Convention Center Drive Hotel. After a year or so, they sold it to a company that rebranded it Greek Isles. I'm not sure why. Maybe some marketing survey told them there were a lot of folks of Greek extraction wandering around Vegas with money protruding from their pockets, looking for a place to stay. By 2009, those owners were gone, the Clarion people were in…and now it's over, it's all over. The place closed last Labor Day and is expected to be a parcel of dirt by the close of this month as the developers try to pull together financing for their luxury resort.

My experiences with the building were all when it was the Paddlewheel. In the late eighties, I was commuting often to Las Vegas for about eleven varying reasons, one of which was that I liked the town. I liked the pace and the energy and the friendliness and all the show businessy type things and whole 24-hour lifestyle.

Another, which I've written about, was that I was fascinated by Blackjack and the not-quite-cheating practice known as Card Counting. Less to make money and more as a personal challenge, I wanted to see if I could master the skill to my own satisfaction. I did, I gave it up…but I still went to Vegas every few weeks. It was a fun place to be then.

Not that it isn't now but, well, it's different.

I have here a Vegas magazine I picked up at the peak of my semi-residency there. The date is March of 1988 and let's see what's going on at the major hotels there, in alphabetical order. You'll note that not one of the shows is or even vaguely resembles Cirque du Soleil. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but it is a thing…

• At the Aladdin, you could see a magical review called "Abracadabra" (I did; it was pretty good) or see Johnny Cash perform (I didn't; it was pretty expensive). That Aladdin has since been torn down and replaced by a totally new hotel which had that name but later changed to Planet Hollywood.
• At Bally's, which is still there, you could see at various times throughout the month, the following headliners: Tom Jones, Jackie Mason, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Frank Sinatra and Smokey Robinson. There was also their big production show, "Jubilee," which just closed for renovations. At the time, it was one of several shows in town featuring classic showgirls. When it recently went on hiatus, it was the only one of its kind remaining.
• Caesars Palace was then about half its current size but still plenty big. In their showroom that month, they had Rodney Dangerfield, Reba McIntire, The Pointer Sisters, Jay Leno, The Beach Boys and a parlay of Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach. Reba still plays there a few weeks a year and her top ticket price is $205 a seat, which is less than half of the top price Elton John gets when he plays there.
• Circus Circus was the same place it is now, the same place it will always be.
• The Desert Inn had as its headliners, Suzanne Somers (with Louie Anderson as her opening act), Rich Little (with Anthony Newley), Charley Pride, Ray Stevens, Roseanne Barr and Larry Gatlin. The Desert Inn was torn down so they could build Wynn. Suzanne Somers is now appearing in commercials on MeTV selling the Three-Way Poncho.
• The Dunes had a Comedy Store outlet with (that month) Jimmie Walker, Damon Wayans, George Miller, Steve Oedekerk, Felicia Michaels (Hi, Felicia!) and others. They tore the Dunes down so they could build the Bellagio.
• The Flamingo Hilton had a revue called "City Lites." The hotel's still there with different shows, one starring Osmonds.
• The Frontier had a show called "Beyond Belief" starring Siegfried and Roy before they were *SIEGFRIED AND ROY!!!* Developers tore the Frontier down in 2007 to build, so far, nothing. About once a year, they announce a new mega-resort of some sort but it's still a mega-empty lot.
• At the Golden Nugget, you could see Paul Anka, Don Rickles, Lou Rawls, Diahann Carroll, Vic Damone, David Brenner or Yakov Smirnoff. The Nugget is still there and Rickles still plays Vegas (though not the Golden Nugget) once or twice a year for a few days, calling people hockey pucks, pointing out black men in the front row and, of course, dropping his pants and firing a rocket.
• At the Hacienda, you could see a "Minsky's Burlesque Show" starring the last two surviving comedians from Minsky's Burlesque, Irv Benson and Dexter Maitland. Minsky's Burlesque is gone…and pretty much was then. The Hacienda is gone and replaced by Mandalay Bay. Dexter Maitland is gone and replaced by no one. And as far as I know, Irv Benson is still alive and if so, he'll be 101 at the end of this month.
• The Las Vegas Hilton is no longer the Las Vegas Hilton. Its latest in a series of names is the Westgate and it's slated for a major renovation. In March of '88, you could see Barry Manilow or Wayne Newton there. I suspect if you see Wayne on the premises again, he'll have a belt sander and be part of the crew doing that major renovation.
• The Holiday Inn in '88 was featuring the "Roarin' 20's Revue." Before the Paddlewheel looked like a riverboat, the Holiday Inn did. Now, the building's been redesigned so it no longer looks like a riverboat and it's Harrah's.
• The Imperial Palace in '88 was featuring "Legends in Concert" and it did for a long, long time. Now, "Legends in Concert" is over at the Flamingo Hilton while the Imperial Palace has been completely remade into The Linq.
• The Landmark was featuring "Melinda, the First Lady of Magic." Both are gone.
• The Marina was featuring "Beatle Magic." Where the Marina once stood is now the MGM Grand.
• The Riviera was pretty much the same place then that it is now and last time I was in it, it didn't look like it had been cleaned since then and I recognized some of the food in the buffet from '88. Incidentally, in March of 1988, their comedy club there was featuring a kid named David Spade.
• The Sahara Hotel housed Redd Foxx, as did about half the hotels on this list at one time or another. The Sahara has been completely remodeled to become a resort called SLS Las Vegas. Redd Foxx has been completely remodeled to become Tyler Perry.
• The Sands was featuring Gallagher, Paul Revere & The Raiders and Sha Na Na, which was quite a change from the days when it featured Frank, Dino and Sammy, though perhaps more in dress than in content. The Sands was torn down and The Venetian now occupies that plot of desert.
• The Stardust was offering "Lido de Paris" featuring Bobby Berosini and his Orangutans. Someday here, I have to tell you a story about that odd, controversial act. Anyway, the Stardust was imploded in 2007 to make way for a grand resort called Echelon Place which, last I heard, was a set of blueprints and a lot of press releases.
• The Tropicana had the "Folies Bergere." The show's no longer there but amazingly, the Tropicana is. For years, it kept being announced that the Trop was going to be nuked and replaced by a new, zillion-dollar resort. Somehow, the place has survived and even undergone renovation. Looks like it'll be around for a while.
• The Union Plaza downtown was featuring "Nudes on Ice," which I didn't see but which one reviewer then said should have been retitled, "One Semi-Nude on an Ice Cube." It's now just The Plaza and in its showroom, you can see Louie Anderson who I presume is neither nude nor on ice.
• Vegas World was offering "The Robert Allen Show." I don't know who he was either but the hotel he played has been revamped into the Stratosphere.

And the Paddlewheel had two shows. One was "Hot Lips," which featured comedian Pete Barbutti, a jazz quartet, six great-looking mostly-naked women and a magician. The other was "The Heat is On," which starred six great-looking mostly-naked men. I spent a couple of interesting nights at the Paddlewheel and no, it wasn't because of the latter show. I'll tell you about those nights one of these days.

A year or two ago, we heard that Hugh Jackman would soon star on Broadway in Houdini, a new musical based on the life of…well, you can probably figure out who. Now, the project is off. Here's an article about what went wrong and why it may still.

What we have here is an episode of You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx and it aired May 26, 1960. Obviously, it's of interest because of Groucho but it also features another wonderful, talented person…and one of the nicest men I ever had the honor of knowing.

In the course of the half-hour, two teams of contestants play the game. The second team — which enters at 8:50 if you want to fast-forward to them — includes a gentleman I loved very much…Daws Butler. Daws was, of course, one of the great cartoon voice actors of all time and this video shows him performing just a few of his many characters. He was also a very wise, very compassionate man who cared passionately about creativity and good acting and young talent.

His encouragement and approval meant the world, not only to me but to other writers and to the dozens and dozens of young actors who passed through his workshop. How many people do you ever meet in this world who are unanimously loved and respected by those who know him? Daws was.

The producers of You Bet Your Life paired him with a woman he'd never met before because, I guess, they figured she'd be a funny guest but since she wouldn't know any of the answers, had to play alongside someone who would. Also, I'm sure someone thought there was a joke in teaming the tall lady with the short guy. Daws was very short, making it all the more remarkable when those big, big voices came out of him.

I miss that guy. There are hundreds and hundreds of cartoons on which you can hear him be someone else but it makes me smile to see Daws being Daws. You might enjoy watching his segment…and then he and the lady come back at the end to play for the Big Money…

I feel a little guilt at not writing much especially for this blog today so here's another reprise of an old posting. This one originally ran here on January 22, 2005…

Maybe it's because my parents were so good at it, but I have lately found myself around a number of really inept mommies and daddies. At least four or five times in as many months, I have been in a public place and seen some small child either injure him or herself or come close to injury because his/her parents had the I.Q. of a drill press and no concern for keeping an eye on their offspring. The latest occurred this afternoon when I was in a Costco, not shopping for an original Picasso.

I had loaded my cart full of mass quantities and I'd dined on Costco Dim Sum, which is what I call all the free samples of food you can get if you shop before around 3:00 in the afternoon. I assume they do this because the store sells such large packages of most items and you can't purchase a "small" to try something new that intrigues you. So all over the warehouse, they have these women in shower caps and aprons cooking up things in microwaves and on hot plates…and for some reason, a lot of frozen and canned food items prepared that way taste really good, at least for a bite or two. (The tricky part of Costco Dim Sum is planning your route. Like today, the first free sample giver-outter I came upon had little creme puffs and I didn't want to start my dining experience that way. So I skipped her, went on to the lady with the chunky potato soup and the one with the microwave lasagna and the one with the chicken strips…then I circled back to the Creme Puff Lady and had dessert.)

I finally made it to the check-out line where, in the line next to the one I was in, a kid of about six years of age (I'm guessing) was acting like he'd just ingested the entirety of a Costco-sized sack of sugar. He was standing up in the cart and waving his arms and dancing about…and I just knew he was about to topple out of that cart and land on his head. Somehow, his parents didn't know or care. They were arguing over whether the caseload of Planter's Dry Roasted Peanuts they were purchasing could be completely consumed by the expiration date, which was some time in '08. I interrupted them, pointed to their young'un and said, "Better watch out for the kid."

They looked at me like I'd just spoken Swahili, then went back to discussing goober consumption. Sure enough, about a minute later, the kid lost his balance and fell out of the cart, landing head-first on slab concrete. Looked to me like he was hurt bad…and the parents still didn't have a clue. Too bad Costco doesn't sell them because these folks were in dire need.

Store employees had to come over and administer first aid to the child as Mom and Dad did zero to help. Instead, they announced to everyone around that it wasn't their fault — "You can't watch them every minute" — then resumed the Great Peanut Debate. When I left, the boy was sitting up, crying in pain and starting to grow a bump the size of the Costco 24-pack of Bounty Paper Towels.

I don't know why I told you this story except to wonder aloud if parents in this world are getting more irresponsible or if I'm just running into the bottom end of the species. I don't know what's going to happen to that kid of theirs but I have a hunch it won't be pretty.

Mushroom Soup Tuesday is followed by Mushroom Soup Wednesday because I still have more pressing things to deal with. I just posted an encore piece and later today, I'll try and post a Video Link of some sort, then I hope actual writing will resume here tomorrow. Sorry but, hey, remember what you paid to get in.

In addition to being way behind on answering e-mail, I seem to be way behind on receiving it. Remember that problem I had with Time-Warner taking a day or two to get messages to me? Well, it was never fixed but I found a workaround. Now, the problem's back so I have to figure out a workaround to the workaround.

Much of the 'net is talking this A.M. about the horrendous attack on a Paris-based satirical magazine. At least twelve people are dead for the serious crime of cartooning and I have nothing to add to the discussion apart from one more horrified reaction.

My buddy Paul Harris recently said on his most excellent blog, "Anyone who claims they can tell you today who the two presidential candidates will be in November, 2016, is either a liar or a fool." He's right. In fact, I think everyone agrees with that, though they still seem to think their predictions have some value.

Check in later for more content. Check in tomorrow for more current me.

What you're about to read (I assume) appeared on this here blog on November 17, 2004. At the time I wrote it, I don't think I'd met a gent who is now a good friend, Steve Stoliar. Steve has done many things as a writer and performer but the main thing most folks want to know about are the years when he worked as a personal assistant to Groucho Marx. And the reason I may have met him before I wrote what follows is that I paid a brief visit to the home of Groucho Marx during the period when Steve worked there. I don't recall meeting him there then and he doesn't recall meeting me…but I met a bunch of people that afternoon before I had a brief, sad conversation with Groucho, and Steve may have been among them. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to anyone besides The One, The Only…

By the way: If you want to know what it was like in Groucho's house then, in Mr. Marx's declining years and the period when the infamous Erin Fleming became infamous, I highly recommended Steve's book, Raised Eyebrows. It will raise, among other things, your eyebrows.

And the reason I mention Steve is that he's the guy who led the campaign that got Animal Crackers released to the general public. This article is how I managed to see it even before he did that wonderful thing…

Animal Crackers, which was the Marx Brothers' second real feature, is included in The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection, a new boxed set of five films on DVD. These are wonderful movies, though I'm going to hold off on giving an enthusiastic recommendation of this release until I actually receive my copy and run some of them. More than one Marx aficionado has informed me that Universal did no restoration work on the films; that we get the same mediocre transfers we've endured for years on home video. I have not verified that for myself but you may want to hold off ordering this one. If you don't, here's a link to purchase it from Amazon. I'm sure the copies are watchable but they're apparently not, as some of us were hoping, upgrades from what we already have.

I single out Animal Crackers not because it's the best of the five in this set but because I can recall a time, not so long ago,when you couldn't see this movie, let alone own a legal copy of it to show in our very own little living room.

In the seventies, there was a craze locally (and I imagine, in many cities) for Marx Brothers movies in theaters. They were on TV often but it was better to see them in a theater with a big screen and an audience, and many local movie houses made that possible. While in college, I dragged most of my dates, at one time or other, to see A Night at the Opera or Duck Soup or A Day at the Races or even — testing one young lady's endurance — A Night in Casablanca. We saw all of them…except Animal Crackers.

Animal Crackers was unavailable due to some contractual problem that stemmed from its having started life as a Broadway play.Apparently, the Paramount lawyers had acquired the rights for a finite period of time — forty years, someone told me — and could no longer exhibit the film. Despite the fact that the other Marx movies were big rental items again, someone at Universal (which had acquired the Paramount Marx Brothers films) didn't feel it was cost-efficient to go back to whoever controlled the rights and reacquire them.

By around 1972, some friends of mine and I had all the major, available Marx Brothers movies pretty well committed to memory so we were dying to see the one, elusive specimen. That was when an acquaintance tipped me that a small theater in Westwood was going to flout the law, risk it all for moviedom, and run a 16mm print of Animal Crackers the following Saturday night. The name of the movie, he told me, would not be advertised. It would just say "Marx Brothers Film Festival." In fact, the title of the movie was not to be mentioned anywhere since the theater owner was super-paranoid about Universal lawyers suing him into oblivion. The acquaintance said, "If you were to call him up and ask him if he's showing Animal Crackers, he'd probably cancel the whole thing." Naturally, my buddies and I had to go.

I have never purchased illegal drugs but I'm guessing the experience is not unlike what we went through that evening. We arrived early, knocked on the box office window and the first thing the man who answered asked us was, "Who sent you?" He was eventually satisfied with my answer but all through it, his eyes darted about, checking the street, looking to see if any police were spying. His theater turned out to be a small screening room in the back of a travel agency. There were less than 50 seats and the movie projector — which was one of those clunky jobs they used to show us hygiene films in high school — was in the same room with us. The same guy who took our money threaded the projector and as he did,someone asked which movie he was about to run. Even though everyone present knew, and even though we'd be seeing the main title in about three minutes, he still replied, "Oh, one of their best. You'll see."

As it turned out, we didn't think it was one of the Marx Brothers' best but we were still glad we saw it, if only so we could lord it over friends who hadn't. Chatting with other Groucho-Harpo-Chico fans (we knew no Zeppo fans), we'd make a point of saying things like, "Yes, that was very much like that scene in Animal Crackers…oh, sorry. I forgot you haven't seen it!" A few years later, when Universal finally cleared the rights and re-released the movie, some of us lost an important point of status. And of course, nowadays, it's easy not just to see the film but to own it.

I enjoy having all of them in my little library where I can watch one whenever I want to…but I must admit I don't enjoy them as much on a home TV screen. Most comedy movies need an audience, of course, but some need it more than others. What the Marx Brothers movies need is not just a crowd but the kind of crowds we had at a lot of those early-seventies screenings. They were full of people who loved the brothers, knew something about their films…and were, in general, a hipper and happier crowd than most. It was great to sit there and laugh among such people. I wouldn't mind if Universal Home Video didn't improve the image quality of their DVDs if they could just find a way to package one of those audiences with the set.

Barring late-breaking news of a vital nature, there will be little or no more posting on this site today. I have some matters to tend to, unrelated to any werewolfing activities of last night. I am also absurdly behind in answering e-mails.

I just have time to mention that my pal Kliph Nesteroff is hosting an event at RiotLA on January 17. RiotLA is an annual comedy festival in this town that features unusual shows with some wonderful performers and you might want to check out their entire schedule…but circle what Kliph is doing that afternoon at 3 PM. He's conducting his own talk show and interviewing, as his sole guest, one of the great talk show guests and comedy performers of all time…Fred Willard. They'll be discussing the many triumphs of Fred's career as a comic actor, a stand-up, a member of improv troupes, his work on Fernwood 2Night, etc. Who knows? They may even talk about that one time — there's got to be one — when Fred wasn't brilliantly funny. Here are the particulars of attending.

That's all I have time for now. I have too much to do today…and I think there's another full moon tonight. Growl.

Hey, let's spend 15 minutes touring 1949 New York…

Back from my werewolfing and I just watched The Late Late Show with Drew Carey. The "with Drew Carey" is not in italics because his name isn't part of the title. He's just one of those filling in 'til James Corden takes over in March. There was something oddly charming about how little Carey was trying. Well, why should he? The permanent position isn't open and even if it was, he already has a pretty good day job. Next week, the CBS series The Talk is supposed to inhabit the time slot for five days.

At least, that's what the TV listings say. My info says that Carey is taping shows on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday next week. Are they for the future? I dunno…because the following week, Jim Gaffigan is taping three shows as host, followed by two hosted by Judd Apatow. The following week, Billy Gardell does two, then Kunal Nayyar does three. Then the week after, Sean Hayes tapes two and John Mayer tapes three. This brings us up to the week of February 9 when Wayne Brady tapes all five days. The week of February 16, Tom Lennon tapes three and then Will Arnett does two…and that's as far as I know.

So where are those three shows with Drew Carey airing? I'm guessing CBS is cutting The Talk down from five days to two and running those three Carey shows next week on the dates when they're taped. If this is true, it's an interesting last minute decision and I'm curious what prompted it.

There's a full moon in the sky so I have to go out and be a werewolf. Growl.

This is video of an entire fireworks factory exploding. I wish that someone would add in some extra footage of the firemen standing there, watching it and going, "Oooooh! Ahhhhh! Oooooooh!"

Leonard Maltin reviews Into the Woods. As often happens, I feel like I know what I'm talking about when my view of a movie is similar to his.

Leonard asks, "Can the movie adaptation of a Broadway show actually improve on the original?" Well, I'm sure some will disagree but I think a few come close but I think we need to clarify the question. Broadway shows change, especially when they're not on Broadway. There have been some terrible productions of My Fair Lady and obviously, the movie is better than some, worse than others.

But what I assume Leonard is asking is whether the filmmakers can fix things that were wrong or improvable in the script and staging of what is usually mounted for the stage…and yes, I think they can. I think Ernie Lehman's script for Hello, Dolly! makes a lot more sense than the script that's performed for the stage and in many ways, his script for West Side Story does, too. Those two adaptations aren't as good in some other ways, mostly relating to casting and in trying to cover too much scenery. (It always struck me that the "teenagers" in the movie version of West Side Story are all about 35 years old.)

A friend of mine who saw both used to say that the movie version of The Music Man was a cinematic twin of the original Broadway production (which he saw) but with better actors as Marcellus and Mayor Shin. So I guess he thought that was an improvement.

Then you have something like 1776, which I didn't see in its original Broadway incarnation. The book was largely unchanged when it became a screenplay. The "opening up" of the show (taking it off the stage into a more expansive setting) doesn't harm anything as far as I'm concerned…and we have the performances of arguably the best cast ever preserved on film. There's something lost in terms of immediacy in any stage-to-film transfer because you lose the "live" presence of the actors. But I could make the case the movie is as good as or better than the stage version and I could maybe even make it for Damn Yankees, which was improved just by being trimmed a bit.

If I had more time now, I'd think of other examples. Maybe Grease or The Sound of Music…but then I never cared much for either of them on stage.

Bruce Schneier writes that we still don't know for sure if the Sony computer hack was the work of North Korea, South Korea or Howie Mandel…and that's pretty much how these attacks will be in the future. Why, as hard as it may be to believe, America could even go to war against the wrong country based on faulty assumptions and…

Oh, wait. We've done that.

In the last twenty years of my mother's life, I spent a lot of time in hospital emergency rooms. A lot. One year, I was in them eight times because of her, I believe…and it wasn't always the same one. When I took her in, we went to Kaiser, which is where she had her health insurance. When paramedics took her in, they took her to whichever hospital was closest and "open." When one isn't, that doesn't mean the emergency room has closed down and everyone has gone home. It means they're so busy that they're not accepting emergency patients brought in by paramedics at that time.

When my mother felt ill enough to push her little "I need help" button, I'd be notified and I'd race over there. From my home to hers was fifteen minutes with traffic, a little under ten without. Since her attacks usually came around 4 AM, it was usually without but the paramedics still usually got there before I did. If they weren't already taking her to Kaiser, I'd press them nicely to take her there.

Kaiser had all her records. A lot of the staff there knew her…and knew me. And if they took her somewhere other than Kaiser, she was just going to get moved to Kaiser as soon as she was well enough to be moved. Her primary care physician was at Kaiser and he was a V.I.D. there (Very Important Doctor) so I could drop his name, or the names of other doctors there I knew, to make sure she got the best possible treatment. So that's why I always tried to get her in there.

Sometimes, they could get her in there. Once or twice, I called over and talked to Kaiser folks I knew there and they arranged for her to be admitted even though they were at that moment "closed." Incidentally, the paramedics — actually, they were always firemen from a nearby station — were uniformly efficient and helpful and everything you'd want emergency personnel to be. So were all but a tiny handful of those we dealt with at Kaiser.

This story, which I told here on 1/29/07 occurred at Kaiser. I spent a lot of time at that hospital and of course, being a writer, spent a lot of time watching and studying everything that went on around me. I don't think we ever had a visit to the emergency room that, along from helping my mother, didn't leave me with a couple of "slice of life" anecdotes like this one…

There was a woman, right across from where my mother was being treated, who'd been severely injured. Her name was Lily and I overheard her doctor say something about lacerations and contusions and he also used much more complicated medical nouns that sounded even more painful. Then I heard him mutter something about, "…her husband beating the crap out of her." That kind of thing happens, of course, and we know it happens. Still, it's jarring to see the results of it right in front of you, as done to an actual human being. They weren't attractive.

It was perhaps an hour later that I was sitting on a couch in the hallway outside the emergency room making a cellphone call. A tall, well-dressed man walked up to me, sat down and — completely ignoring the fact that I was in the middle of a conversation — he began asking me if I was ready to accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviour or if I was instead prepared to burn in Hell…those apparently being the only two possible options.

You may know the pitch. It's one of those stories that makes God and Jesus sound like egomaniacal dictators who'll condemn you to torture, no matter how else you've lived your life, if you don't pay proper fealty to their names. Helped the poor? Saved innocent lives? That's nice…but if you haven't taken your loyalty oath, you spend All Eternity in the firepit next to Hitler, Saddam Hussein and the guy who green-lights all those Rob Schneider movies.

I gave him my standard reply when confronted by such people. I tell them that whatever they want to believe is their right, and I'll fight to the death, blah blah blah. But I'm suspicious of a religious sales shpiel that's delivered like someone selling magazine subscriptions. I don't buy cookies from total strangers who approach me with a five-minute prepared speech so I'm certainly not going to change my faith that way. I also threw in, as I sometimes do, that I think it cheapens their message to sell their beliefs almost the exact same way kids in college used to try to sell me marijuana. (There were also people at U.C.L.A. then pushing Jesus. I'll bet the marijuana vendors got a lot more takers.)

The man realized he was not about to make a sale so he apologized, told me he'd pray for me to someday see the light and departed. You may have already guessed where this story is going.

An hour later, I was back in the E.R., waiting outside my mother's cubicle while a nurse inside tended to one of those matters that is best done with the son out of the room. Suddenly, I saw the well-dressed man wandering about in the ward and he wasn't wearing one of the Security Badges that we all had to wear in there. One of the nurses spotted him, too. She pointed and yelled with great alarm, "He shouldn't be in here!" A security guard hurried over and after a brief quarrel, the religious pitchman was escorted out.

I assumed it was because he'd been going around asking the sick and injured if they're ready to accept Jesus Christ, which would be annoying enough. But then someone explained to me that he was the husband who beat the crap out of Lily. I don't know if there is an Afterlife but if there is, I'm betting I fare better in it than he does.