In my long post on Letterman, I mentioned my buddy Vinnie Favale, who's currently a high muck-a-muck at CBS — V.P. of late night, I think. He's held a number of jobs in entertainment and once upon a time, he was not an exec on the Letterman show but a guest.
The photo above is from October of 1982 — Dave's first year on NBC at 12:30, having replaced Tom Snyder. He was on Monday through Thursday back then but they gave him a 90 minute special on Friday night. Snyder had done an annual talent show for NBC so Dave did a goofier version and Vinnie, who was then working in the building on Howard Stern's radio show, was recruited. Vinnie also has a background as a comedian (and more recently, a playwright) but back then he went on with Dave as part of that broadcast.
Flash forward to today, 33 years later. Dave's going off, Vinnie is his liaison with CBS…and Vinnie exec-produced the special that's on tonight, recapping Dave's amazing TV career. Here's a little banner to remind you to watch. I'm sure it'll be one of those things I retain on my TiVo to watch over and over.
I've been watching David Letterman's final shows. Some of them, like when Michael Keaton was on, make it sound like Dave has some terminal illness and we have to tell him now how much we love him because we'll never see him again. I've been waiting for some guest to say, "You know, Dave, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next."
He's been running clips of memorable moments from the past. They're funny but they also remind you of the kind of thing he used to do and hasn't even attempted for way too long. An awful lot of the tributes to Dave — like this one by Conan O'Brien — seem like they're trying to ignore everything since around the year 2001. I saw one that mentioned the suit of Velcro (that was 1984) and dropping stuff off a building.
He started dropping things off buildings (or as a witty variation, crushing them with a steamroller) in 1985. It wasn't the cleverest idea — Hey, remember when ABC tried a prime-time game show based on that premise? — but it was funny a few times. Well, Dave's still doing it except he long ago started having someone else do it for him. Talk about minimal effort.
Want to remember Dave at his best? Tomorrow night, Ray Romano is hosting a 90-minute special of clips, including some from the NBC days. My pal Vinnie Favale put it together, probably without ample time, and at least one person I know who's seen it says it's excellent. I have my TiVo primed to grab it and you should do as I do. Here's a preview…
On his recent shows, Dave has made a few remarks about how announcing his retirement was a colossal mistake…as if he really had the option of staying much longer. As I see it, he has several problems now in terms of doing something else, performing-wise, once the show is out of his life. The biggie, of course, is what to do.
If you're in Letterman's position, you don't want to do just anything. It would be pretty embarrassing to follow a 30+ year run on broadcast television with a low-budget cable series…especially a low-budget cable series that didn't do well. Having been in a position where the top box office stars and political figures fought to get in your guest chair, you don't want to sully the memory of your old show by doing a version of it which has a fraction of the budget and the biggest guest you can get is Abe Vigoda.
So you want to do something that won't be a direct comparison to the old show…and the problem with that is that Dave has never really shown any aptitude (or interest) for anything but that old show and that format. He doesn't act. He doesn't host game shows or reality shows or shows that are not basically about David Letterman.
Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno have come up with successful Internet/cable programs but Jerry and Jay are guys who've been out doing stand-up and other things all these years. Their current shows are their secondary gigs — the things they do on the side when they aren't making towering piles of money doing stand-up dates. They have active, successful careers without their car shows.
Dave hasn't done real stand-up since it was an ordeal he suffered through to become a talk show host. The closest he's come is those short monologues he does, often without apparent joy, to an audience that loves him so much, they laugh when all he does is to repeat jokes from the previous night's monologue. I think he could do what Seinfeld and Leno do but it would involve traveling and strange audiences and unfamiliar surroundings…and a lot more effort than he's shown doing his own program for a long time. I doubt he even wants to do that.
Further complicating the problem of Letterman finding a new vehicle is that for many decades now, he's operated in an environment of almost total control. He's had a staff he's comfortable with, a staff that's 100% loyal. He's had darn near absolute say on everything. His show settled into its routine because that's the way Dave wanted it.
Could he function in a new environment? You need a new environment if you want to do a new show. Even if you bring a lot of your old crew along, you need new people for a new show (some of whom might suggest things you don't want to do) and new challenges and new decisions and new locations and new problems. I'll bet that's the biggest obstacle of all to a new David Letterman show somewhere. That doesn't mean there can't be one…but if there can't, that's probably why. It would probably even involve new employers since he and CBS don't seem to have come up with anything.
If I were at HBO or one of those channels, I'd go to Dave and offer him a weekly, well-funded and promoted hour on one condition: That the show be full of things he hasn't been doing on CBS since 1993. It couldn't be the same show unbleeped…and if he's as out of ideas as he jokes he is, then they bring in clever writers and producers and Dave has to do some of the things they want him to do. Steve Allen was willing to let his staff stick him in unplanned situations with guests he didn't okay in advance, and force him to ad-lib. Steve Allen wasn't more talented a talk show host than David Letterman, even Dave at his current age.
The odds of Letterman doing something like this? I'm guessing about the same as the odds of us seeing President Carly Fiorina.
The one thing I do like about the last shows I'm watching is that since it's a procession of Dave's Favorite Guests, we're getting a slightly more interested host who doesn't look totally bored with those he has to interview. A few weeks ago, CBS released this list of stars who'd be guesting with D.L. before he left the air on May 20…
Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Howard Stern, Martin Short, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Rudd, Ray Romano, Julia Roberts, Don Rickles, Steve Martin, Michael Keaton, Scarlett Johansson, Jack Hanna, Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Robert Downey Jr, George Clooney, and Bill Murray.
Since that list was released, he's had visits from Travolta, Willis, Seinfeld, Rudd, Martin, Keaton, Johannson, Hanna and Downey. We can also cross off Ferrell, Short, Fey and Romano because they're on next week's schedule…
Mo 5/4: President Barack Obama, Will Ferrell, the Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile
Tu 5/5: Reese Witherspoon, Nathan Lane, Mumford & Sons
We 5/6: Martin Short, Norah Jones
Th 5/7: Tina Fey
Fr 5/8: Ray Romano, Brian Regan, Dave Matthews Band
Another name on the list could appear on Thursday but there will more likely be a musical guest in that slot. So that leaves Oprah, Stern, Roberts, Rickles, Hanks, Clooney and Murray — seven guests…and Dave has eight more shows. It's hard to believe that Regis Philbin won't put in an appearance so that would be eight guests, plus Dave has reportedly invited Jay Leno and Brian Williams to drop by. I'm curious to see how they schedule them and who else they bring on in the "secondary" guest category like Marv Albert or Jeff Altman. They could "double-up" a few of those "special" guests and have two a night, though I believe some of them wouldn't appear with Howard Stern. (We have one bit of info: Don Rickles' website says he's appearing with Dave on May 11.)
I really hope Dave's last show is wonderful. And I really hope he says or does something to indicate that he's not going to spend the rest of his life in Montana, far from a television camera. He's too talented and he has too many years left when he could be doing something. I'd settle for almost anything but the show he's been doing over and over again for this entire century.
I see all these people online complaining that the Mayweather-Pacquiao "Fight of the Century" wasn't anywhere near as good as Ali vs. Frazier or Hagler vs. Hearns or Basinger vs. Baldwin or Joe Louis vs. Anyone. Uh, one of those may have been the Fight of the Last Century but this is a new century.
Hey, I haven't updated anyone on my little physical problems lately. The "machetes" (the agonizing shoulder/neck pains) have mysteriously disappeared. We don't know what made them disappear but they did. The knee problems come and go but aren't too bad most of the time. So all in all, I'm doing okay.
As soon as I finish it any day now, there will be a rave review here of Bill Schelly's new book about Harvey Kurtzman. It's really, really good. You can order your copy here now or wait for my longer recommendation. If I were you, I wouldn't wait for me.
So how do I feel about the Muscular Dystrophy Association discontinuing their annual televised fund-raiser? Well, there are two ways to look at that. If you think it was all about campy entertainment and putting on a show for us, it's disappointing…though frankly, it had almost stopped fulfilling that goal in the latter days of Lewis. If you think of it as a means of raising money for a worthwhile cause…well, when they say it's no longer cost-effective, I see no reason to assume that's not so. I think the second perspective trumps the first.
A little over two months from today, Comic-Con International 2015 convenes in San Diego. I am actually planning out my panels at the moment. My desk is still strewn with notes about last year that I haven't gotten around to throwing away yet. So much is wrong about the passage of time these days.
Hey, it's been at least three hours since I posted a video clip with John Cleese in it. He was on Seth Meyers' show the other night for a brief, unremarkable interview — but before he left, they had him sit in for some promos that Seth had to do…
Despite my many tweets on the topic, I didn't watch a second of the big fight last night. To the extent I cared who won, it was to kinda wish the guy with the history of battering women had gone down to defeat…not that the second-place purse would have been much of a punishment.
We had a 3.9 earthquake not far from me last night. It woke me up but I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or not so I went back to sleep.
People keep writing to ask me what I think of the whole thing with Bruce Jenner. I don't think I care much about the whole thing with Bruce Jenner, at least enough to cope with the Pronoun Troubles I would encounter in writing about the matter. Rational adults have the right to decide what's best for themselves in cases like this. He (or she) can transition to anything he (or she) wants to be as far as I'm concerned and I wish he (or she) didn't feel they have to convince the public to accept it.
We're flashing back to June 1, 2002 for this rerun. Shortly after I wrote about this game show, someone sent me VHS tapes of the one or two episodes of Video Village that are known to exist. It was about as I remembered except that, as so many old shows do when you see them again, it looked a lot cheaper than I recalled and I wondered if they'd been refilmed on a lower budget. I call this the Man From U.N.C.L.E. effect…
Game shows of the MTV generation usually look for physical player involvement, so I'm surprised no one has thought to revive Video Village, a silly but fun series that ran from 1960 to 1962 on CBS. Format-wise, it was pretty simple: Two players competed as life-size "pieces" on a studio-sized game board. Each would bring a friend or relative along to roll the dice for them and, based on that roll, contestants would move one to six spaces along the "street." Some spaces paid little prizes — merchandise or money — some spaces cost you a turn or took your prizes away. On the last of the three "streets," the prizes became considerable…and, of course, the object of the game was to reach the finish line before your opponent.
There was also a kid's version of the show briefly on Saturday morning. As I recall, it was called Video Village Jr. in the TV Guide and it was called Kideo Village on the show itself — or perhaps it was the other way around. I was ten at the time and bothered more than anyone should have been by this discrepancy. Years later, when I met its host, Monty Hall, I saw my chance to finally get this age-old riddle answered and off my widdle mind. I asked him why the show had one name in TV Guide and another on the air. His reply was, "It did?" Thank you, Monty Hall. (In 1964, the same production company — Heatter-Quigley — did another kids' version of Video Village. This one was called Shenanigans and was hosted by Stubby Kaye.)
Monty Hall was actually the third host of Video Village, following Jack Narz and Red Rowe. As was the custom in the board game versions of TV quiz programs, no real host is depicted on the box cover of the Milton Bradley version above. I had always assumed that this practice was because the owners of the show didn't want to share the loot with the host, and that may have been the reason in some cases. But an expert at such things — a collector of board games based on TV shows — once told me that wasn't the main reason. The main reason was so that the board game could be sold overseas (where game shows were often produced with local hosts) and so that the toy company didn't get stuck with an out-of-date box on already-manufactured items if the show changed hosts. Changing stars in mid-stream was more common then than it is now…although, at some point, every one of us is going to get to be the host of Family Feud.
Back when I was twelve, I loved to play the home version of Video Village, often with a friend of mine named Alan. Oddly, Alan didn't want to play against me. The only way he enjoyed the game was if we found a third person to compete, whereupon Alan could function as Monty Hall. Though the board game was designed to be played one-on-one with no emcee, Alan loved to preside and to do all the unnecessary game show host patter that Monty did on the air, even asking the announcer (whose voice he'd also do) to tell us what we'd all won. Unfortunately, when I went over to Alan's house, the only third party available was usually his younger sister who was thoroughly uninterested in his silly games. I'd say to Alan, "Let's play Stadium Checkers, instead." But Alan wanted to play Game Show Host, so he'd start bribing Sis the way an older brother can bribe a sibling: "If you'll play two games with us, I promise not to yell at you for a week and to let you ride up front next time Mom takes us to the market." His sister would counter, "Throw in that you'll take the trash out and tell Mom that you were the one who broke her vase." It all foreshadowed Monty's subsequent TV program, Let's Make A Deal, except that it was more mature since no one had to dress up like a giant hubbard squash.
It also never worked. Once we got into the game, Alan, being the gracious host, would ask her, "So, where are you from and what do you for a living?" He'd expect her to say, "Well, Alan, I'm a stenographer from Lansing, Michigan and I have three wonderful children," but she'd say. "I'm from the same place as you, doo-doo head, and I'm ten years old. I don't have a job." He'd scream at her for not playing along and she'd scream at him for using her toys in the swimming pool and that would be the end of today's episode of Video Village. Come to think of it…though we didn't know it at the time, we were actually playing the home version of The Jerry Springer Show. You know, I bet that would sell.
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS raises money for its good causes in many ways, including benefit shows in which the Broadway community performs. Frequently in these productions, the cast of one current Broadway show will parody another…and frequently, the company of The Lion King wins. So at the 2015 Easter Bonnet Competition, the cast of the new off-Broadway revival of Avenue Q spoofed The Lion King…
In 2001 on this site — and rerun just a week or so ago here — I told you about something I had witnessed on TV in January of 1970 and remembered ever after. It was the night David Steinberg was guest-hosting Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and a few comedy legends (including Johnny!) suddenly walked out to the surprise and delight of the audience and Mr. Steinberg.
So I reran that story here and it was read by my buddy Paul Harris, who is heard across this land on many stations but mainly on KTRS in St. Louis. Yesterday, David Steinberg was on with Paul to promote Steinberg's program, Inside Comedy, which starts its new season this week, and Paul asked him about the incident. You can hear that entire interview here and the first question is about that 1970 Tonight Show incident. Given how long ago it was, I was afraid either Steinberg's or my memory might be faulty but…well, give a listen.
Steinberg also talks about his friendship with Groucho Marx and his days at Second City, as well as about his guests on Tuesday's episode of Inside Comedy, who are Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. The man has known a few funny people in his lifetime and is one himself.
Back to May 9, 2002 for this post about the animals I was then feeding in my backyard. I'm currently down to two cats and the occasional possum. Raccoons come around but I decided it was in the best interest of all not to feed them so when they grab a bite, it's in spite of my best efforts. Currently, I give the cats Friskies canned cat food and a Friskies dry cat food called Seafood Sensations that probably has about as much to do with seafood as a package of Goldfish crackers.
Since I wrote this, the main thing that has changed apart from the identities of the animals is that there's no more Alpo brand cat food. It disappeared shortly after this post as the Nestlé company, which had acquired the Alpo company a few years earlier, shut down that brand and folded it into the Ralston Purina company, which they'd also acquired…and now they make all their pet food under the Friskies label. So that's what the Nestlé corporation does when it's not bottling all the remaining water in California so they can sell it to us. Soon, thirsty neighbors will be begging for H2O at my back door like the animals who demand their Friskies.
And yes, I actually did take the photo below of a family of raccoons on my back porch one night and I don't live in the hills or in the countryside. I live in the middle of the city — and there were more of them out there than you can see in this picture…
I feed a menagerie on my back porch. It includes several cats, possums and raccoons who amble by on a nightly basis to stuff their furry faces. For a time, I paid scant attention to what I put in the bowls. One brand, I figured, is just like another and I always mocked the blurbs where they tout "better taste." A lot of pet food advertising, I believe, is based on the premise that we purchase it as if we're going to be the ones dining on it. We look at the label for Alpo Sliced Beef in Gravy and we say, "Mmm…sliced beef in gravy. That sounds yummy." As if what sounds good to our palates has anything to do with what our animals will like. So, in that spirit, I purchased whatever was on sale.
For a while, that's been Friskies Chef's Blend and it seemed to be acceptable to all, disappearing like chopped liver at a Bar Mitzvah reception. I had no reason to change until one evening, I was out of food and in my friendly neighborhood Sav-On Pharmacy. They didn't have any Chef's Blend so I bought the cheapest thing on their shelves, which was the store brand of Albertson's, a supermarket chain owned by the same corporation. I took it home and filled the dish…and they wouldn't eat the stuff.
The cats wouldn't eat it. The raccoons wouldn't eat it. Even the possums, which supposedly will eat just about anything, wouldn't eat Albertson's "Original Formula" cat food. There was a bit of nibbling around the edges but, for the most part, the vittles went untouched.
At first, I thought, well, maybe no animals came by but, the next day, after a trip to the market, I put a dish of Friskies out next to the Albertsons food. The following morning, the Albertson's food was all there — every morsel of it — but the other bowl had been licked clean.
So what was I to do with the whole bag of the Albertson's food? I didn't want to waste it so, the next evening, I tried filling both dishes with a mixture of the two brands. I thought this was very resourceful but later, when I walked through the kitchen, I noticed a raccoon out there, carefully picking the Friskies food out…and with much the same precision I use to take the peas I can't eat out of Campbell's Vegetable Soup. As he did this, he glared at me with a look that seemed to say, "You're making this very difficult, you know."
I finally wound up putting the Albertson's food out during the day, when starlings and crows sometimes swoop down on the cat dishes. I'm not sure if the birds actually eat it or if they just "bathe" in the bowls and scatter the food all over so the gardener will sweep it up and throw it out. Either way, I finally got rid of the food the animals won't eat and I now serve only Friskies Chef's Blend out there. Earlier this evening, I noticed a raccoon nosing around the dishes, which were empty. I went out to fill them, scaring him away. Then, once I came back in and closed the door, I waited to see if he'd come back. He did. He snuck up, sniffed the Friskies, tasted a few bites. Then he looked at me with an expression that could only have meant, "I'm glad to see you've learned something."
