Monthly Archives: August 2015

The sub-head on this article said "McDonald's is doing something it hasn't done in 45 years" and when I saw it, I thought, "They're going to buy another cow to make hamburgers out of?" But it turns out the thing they hadn't done in 45 years was to close more stores than they opened.

Why is McDonald's crashing so? I can think of many reasons, including the fact that many people want to eat healthier…or if they do want fast food, they've found a place they like better. But I think a big factor is that it's gotten kind of embarrassing to walk into a McDonald's if you're over the age of nine.

Alan Brady Carl Reiner has written a new book — his eleventh, this month I believe. This one's about the making of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It's not out yet so I haven't read it but I can't imagine not wanting to read it so I just ordered a copy here. You might want to order a copy here because Mr. Reiner is autographing all copies that you order here. Considering that his signature alone would go for at least $40 at a collector show, it's a bargain to get it and the book for that price and he will even personalize the autograph.

While you're at that site, browse about. You can also order other Carl Reiner books as well as Dick Van Dyke's and get signed copies. I will report on the new book once I have my copy which I gather will be in a week or three.

Jon Stewart, for some reason, got on a kick of slamming Arby's on his show. I gather he had no huge beef (pun slightly intended) with them. He just did a joke once, it got a laugh so he did more of them. I like that the Arby's chain decided — I guess — that looking like a good sport was the way to play it and they started responding in kind. When Stewart announced his retirement from The Daily Show, they reminded him that they were hiring.

Here's a little spot they prepared which ran on his next-to-last telecast, presumably assembled with the help of The Daily Show. It's funny and I sure don't think less of the chain (which as you'll recall, I like better than many fast food outlets) because of Stewart's needling. There are probably politicians and pundits out there who could learn a thing from Arby's…

Here we have an article about one of the funniest people I've ever known, Jeff Altman. I'm not sure where he's performing these days but if it's near you, go see him. There are comedians who need to be seen live in order to fully appreciate how good they are. He's one of 'em.

Here's another article on why it's way too early to think that Donald Trump's current lead means he'll be the Republican nominee. About the only indicator that he might be the nominee is that no one else looks especially likely.

You know, it's still possible for someone else to get into the race and grab the nomination. Trump reminds us of that today when he says he thinks the Democratic nominee will be Joe Biden.

I apologize for not giving you more advance notice but today, Turner Classic Movies is running a Groucho Marathon — just about every movie in which he ever showed his face except Copacabana, Love Happy, A Night in Casablanca and Skidoo. Here's the timetable. These are all Eastern times so you probably need to subtract three hours for Pacific Time. I have marked what I consider the five best films with asterisks…

• 6:00 am: Sunday Night at the Trocadero (1937)
• 6:30 am: Double Dynamite (1951)
• 8:00 am: A Girl in Every Port (1952)
• 9:30 am: Room Service (1938)
• 11:00 am: At the Circus (1939)
• 12:30 pm: Go West (1940)
• 2:00 pm: The Big Store (1941)
• 3:30 pm: The Dick Cavett Show (1969)
• 4:30 pm: The Cocoanuts (1929)
• 6:15 pm: Animal Crackers* (1930)
• 8:00 pm: Monkey Business* (1931)
• 9:30 pm: Horse Feathers* (1932)
• 10:45 pm: Duck Soup* (1933)
• Midnight: A Night at the Opera* (1935)
• 2:00 am: A Day at the Races (1937)
• 4:00 am: The Story of Mankind (1957)

Sunday Night at the Trocadero is a short in which Groucho is seen briefly. Double Dynamite and A Girl in Every Port are pretty weak features with Groucho added to the cast for comedy relief…which he occasionally provides. The episode of The Dick Cavett Show needs no explanation (you can probably figure out that Groucho is on it) and The Story of Mankind is a bloated episodic spectacle in which Groucho, Harpo and Chico all play cameo roles in separate scenes. The few moments they're in there do not justify sitting through the rest of the film.  It really feels you are watching The Story of Mankind…in real time.

The rest all have Groucho, Harpo and Chico, and some have Zeppo along to do very little. For what it's worth, if you have kids and you want to introduce them to the Marx Brothers with one of these films, I'd try Horse Feathers on them or maybe Go West.

Sorry I didn't post this sooner and I'll end this so you can go turn on TCM or maybe set your DVR. Because at this very moment, you may be missing something you'd like to see or record.

The next Republican debate is on CNN September 16th. Debating (if you can call it that) will be any candidate who has reached an average of 1 percent or more in three national polls: Rasmussen, Fox News and Bloomberg/BusinessWeek. For some reason, CNN is not considering the CNN/ORC poll. Make of that what you will.

At the moment, former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore has not reached that mark and most reports are presuming he won't make it. In other words, it's unlikely he's going to improve from 0% support to 1% support in a month. If that's his pace — if he's going to grow at less than 1% a month — why, he might just make it all the way to 5% by the time the Republican primaries roll around.

I'm always curious as to the ways in which a person benefits if he or she spends months running for president and winds up, as they should have known they would, at the bottom of the heap. I'm sure they are many which is why we have all these candidates who don't have a prayer of becoming Commander in Chief. Some of them undoubtedly are following Max Bialystock's business model of trying to make money off a flop but there other rewards besides that or a job at Fox News.

It looks like Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and George Pataki will all be included in the CNN event. They're each polling at about 1%, though Fiorina is expected to rise a bit as the polls taken after the G.O.P. debate mount up. Isn't there something a little bizarre about the concept that Gilmore is out because he hasn't proven yet that he's a serious candidate but those four others are in because 1% support proves it?

Keep in mind, that's 1% support according to polls that have margins of error greater than 1%. The margin of error on the Rasmussen Poll is +/- 4 percentage points. The margin of error in the Fox News poll is +/- 4 percentage points. And the margin of error on the Bloomberg/Business Week poll is +/- 4.4 percentage points. So is the difference between 0% and 1% really significant? Theoretically, Gilmore could have more support than the four one-percenters combined.

In the 2012 presidential election, Obama beat Romney 51.1 to 47.2. Rasmussen predicted Romney would win by 1 point. Fox News predicted a tie. Bloomberg predicted Obama would beat Romney by 6 points. They were all correct but only if you applied a four point margin of error. If you took the numbers literally, they were all wrong.

A reader who shall at his own request remain anonymous writes…

I was delighted to read that classic episodes of The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson will soon be airing on Antenna TV but I was upset to read that some of them may not be airable in full due to music clearance problems. I watched a few old episodes on YouTube and it was infuriating when they cut a guest's walk-on because they couldn't afford the music or when a whole musical number was cut. I know Antenna TV says they think they can clear it all but they're hedging their pledge and I'm sure there will be some music owner who will try to hold them up for big money and then they will not be able to air that episode or they will cut things from it.

This bothered me a lot with WKRP in Cincinnati. The complete set Shout Factory put out managed to clear most of the music but not all and that seriously mars the shows for me. What is it with these greedy music owners? Don't they realize that getting paid something is better than getting paid nothing?

I think you're making the mistake of presuming that the fault in these cases is always with the music owners. There are instances when the company trying to license the music goes to them, makes a real insulting offer and says, "We're not paying another cent. Take it or leave it!" If you're in the business of licensing the rights to something you control, there are cases when you just don't want to empower those who use those tactics or you just don't want to lower your price too often.

If you're routinely charging $500 for the rights to something and you start getting offers of $100 ("Take it or leave it!") and you give in to enough of those offers, eventually the folks who were paying you $500 are going to start offering $100 ("Take it or leave it!"). In fact, sometimes you've assured the guy paying $500 that that's your absolute bottom line so a bit of your honor and ethics are at stake.

Very often, it works like this: Harry the Business Affairs Guy comes to you representing a company that wants to license a piece of music or a story or something you own. You tell him the price is $1000 and that's firm. He goes to his boss and says, "If we want this, it's going to be $1000. They won't sell us the rights for a cent less." The boss okays it and the fee is paid. Later, the boss hears that someone else got the same thing from you for $300…so you've made Harry look bad to his boss. That's not nice, it's not really ethical and it may cost you money the next time you have to deal with Harry.

All that said, there certainly are rights holders who are greedy or who think that in the long run, holding firm on a high price will yield more revenue even if it sometimes means losing out on some small amounts. Also, it has been known to happen that the rights holders are warring partners who can't agree on a lower price…or any price. I just wouldn't leap to assume that when a deal can't be made, the fault is always with the seller. Sometimes, not always.

Someone assembled this video of Famous Comedians Dealing With Hecklers. I have seen many comics do this and the all-time world class champ was Sam Kinison one night in the big room at the Comedy Store.

A guy in the audience was there with a group of friends, all somewhat tipsy. The guy briefly declared himself a participant in Sam's act and for a few minutes, Sam bantered back and forth with him. Then Sam started a long set piece — the kind which one should not interrupt — and when the guy kept yelling things out, Mr. Kinison decided it was time to shut him up.

In fact, I think a little light went off in Sam's brain and he decided the time had come to not only shut the guy up but to drive him from the room in tears. Sam started with the exact same line you'll hear him use in this not-safe-for-workplace video but he did not stop where the clip stops. He continued on the same topic for some time, discussing various sex acts — some I'd never heard of — performed on or by the heckler's mother.

The guy in the audience realized he was outgunned and shut up. Sam kept at him. The guy in the audience apologized. Sam yelled, "You're sorry? Like your mother was sorry when…" and he listed various anatomically-impossible feats the mother had supposedly attempted.

The heckler finally had had enough of it and he got up and started to walk out. Sam jumped down from the stage and started to follow him out, yelling more and more about what an inept whore the guy's mother was. When Sam reached the limit of his microphone cord, he threw down the mike and continued outside. His voice, as you might remember, carried. We were actually sitting there in the Comedy Store main room listening to the headliner standing outside on Sunset Boulevard screaming at a departing audience member that his mother was wasn't worth the fifty cents she charged for sex. In the meantime, the hecker's friends awkwardly gathered up their things and fled from the room, exiting via a route which they hoped would allow them to avoid Sam.

About a minute later, Sam returned from outside, pausing to pick up the microphone as he returned to the stage. He waited out a huge ovation from the audience, then he grinned at us and said, very politely, "Okay…so anyone else want to fuck with me?" Amazingly, no one did.

Fred Kaplan on Jeb Bush's major foreign policy speech in which he blamed Barack Obama for pulling forces out of Iraq even though the George W. Bush administration signed an agreement to do just that. I'm surprised he isn't blaming Obama for shooting Dick Cheney's friend in the face, too.

To those of you who hate all the political stuff here: Sorry but I post what's on my mind and this is on my mind. Coming up in the next few days should be plenty of stuff about other topics.

Matt Taibbi goes Inside the G.O.P. Clown Car. I not only think I'm going to get the exact same number of electoral votes as Lindsey Graham but if I just write my own name in my final ballot, I may get more votes than he does, period. Sure, let's send the troops back into Iraq. It worked so well the first time…

Daniel Larison points out that Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have foreign policy positions that pretty much come down to: The U.S. should invade everywhere. Bush, Larison says, wants the U.S. to go back into Iraq and double-down (maybe even triple-down) on his brother's policies there.

Meanwhile: Rubio, Larison says, insists we can contain Iran's nuclear program by rescinding the agreement to stop it and then…and then…well, he doesn't seem to have a plan what to do at that point. But once we get rid of that deal to stop their nuclear program, it will be stopped…somehow.

The other day, I mentioned here that Kevin Drum was trying to figure out what Scott Walker meant when he claimed that an abortion is never necessary to protect the life of a mother. It turns out that what he and others are doing is redefining the word "abortion" to dance their way around that inconvenient situation.

Walker, by the way, seems to be a clear "loser" (to use Mr. Trump's favorite word) in the Republican Debate. I suppose one could argue that those who are polling under 3% and whose numbers didn't change were losers because they needed desperately to do something to raise that number. Carly Fiorina had the greatest "win" but she's not really really running for president, is she? At best, she's running for vice-president and I think even that's a longshot. If John McCain proved nothing, he proved that you can't run based on experience when your running mate has almost none — and Fiorina has even less than Palin did.

Getting back to Mr. Drum: He offers an interesting explanation of what it is that Donald Trump boosters like about Donald Trump: They like him leading them in a war against Political Correctness, especially the part where they don't get to express their fears and hatred over minorities.

Someone wrote and asked me what I think about Political Correctness. I think some Political Correctness is correct and some isn't. I had a friend years ago who used to rail on about the evils of condemning "politically incorrect" speech and to insist that as a commitment to the First Amendment, we had to shout all those things from the rooftops and laud those who refused to be intimidated by the P.C. movement.

And it all sounded very heroic and patriotic and he was right that some of it is inane. But I also realized that what this guy believed was that he should be able to say stupid, bigoted things and be praised for speaking his mind instead of being condemned as stupid or bigoted. He wanted to limit the Free Speech of others to say that. I think Trump may be tapping into a lot of votes with that mindset.

Today (Wednesday), Stu Shostak again discusses the state of the TV industry with his resident TV critics, Steve Beverly and Wesley Hyatt.  What will they be yapping about? Well, about Donald Trump and about a man of greater accuracy, Brian Williams, returning to the air; about the success of Celebrity Family Feud and whether than means another round of game shows where you win if you say some euphemism for a naughty body part; about some new cable channels and probably about the airing of old Johnny Carson shows like I just mentioned; and about scads of other topics. It's three guys ranting about what is and isn't on TV so listen in and enjoy the outrage.

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 to three or beyond.  Shortly 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. Your rent payment can wait until some other month. Load up on old Stu's Shows!

Antenna TV is going to start running complete episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on January 1, 2016. This is a good thing, especially if they really are complete and we don't have pieces omitted due to music rights. This article warns us that that may happen…

Tribune execs are determined to keep each episode as intact as possible — which means negotiating new agreements for the show's many musical performances on an episode-by-episode basis, in most cases.

It isn't just the musical performances but often the "play-on" music when a guest entered or a short tune in a sketch that could present a cost problem. And what about all those odd tunes when they played "Stump the Band"?

I'm going to be optimistic about this one. Those were great shows and I'll take what I can get. But I really hope they're intact…and I also hope they don't just run episodes with the biggest guest stars. Carson's mastery of the format was most evident when he didn't have a Jimmy Stewart or Robin Williams in the guest chair.