Monthly Archives: September 2015

In the parts of Los Angeles where I travel, I have my choice of seven supermarket chains: Vons, Ralphs, Gelson's, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Albertsons and Jon's. I rarely go to Jon's. They carry very few of the items I routinely purchase and the ones they do carry are all available at Vons, Ralphs, Gelson's and Albertsons.

I occasionally pop into Trader Joe's and Whole Foods for items I cannot get elsewhere. I'm not wild about either. Trader Joe's, of course, has its corporate policy of discontinuing any item that I try and like. As for Whole Foods, a friend of mine once likened any of their products to a hooker you take home only to discover she's not as healthy as you thought and waaaay overpriced.

So I mainly shop Vons, Ralphs, Gelson's and Albertsons. Each has a few items I want but cannot get at the others. I shop at them in rotation and when I'm in each, I stock up on the things that only they carry.

One evening earlier this year, I decided to drive to the nearest Albertsons and get the things I can get at all four of the markets in my rotation plus the items I can only get at Albertsons. Included in the latter category are Hormel Roasted Chicken Breasts and Hormel Roasted Sliced Turkey, both in gravy, both in handy pop-it-into-the-microwave packages. I like these and the other local markets don't carry them.

I drove over to the market, snagged a shopping cart on my way in and began filling it. I had just picked up my Thomas' English Muffins (the original kind) and was looking for my favorite peanut butter when I noticed something odd. The employees were all wearing green aprons and/or shirts with a logo that did not say "Albertsons."

I went up to a gent who was neatening shelves and said, "May I ask you a question?"

He said, "Sure."

I said, "Where am I shopping?"

He said, "This is now a Haggen."

I asked what a Haggen was and the man explained to me that Haggen was a market chain that was well-represented in other states. Albertsons had closed or sold off about half their stores and Haggen seized the opportunity to buy a lot of them and instantly establish itself in Southern California.

I later did a little research and learned more. The Albertsons corporation is merging with the Safeway company, which owns Vons and another Southern California chain, Pavilions. Federal regulators said they would not approve said merger until those chains had divested themselves of many of their stores. Haggen swooped in and paid $1.4 billion for those stores.

In the Haggen store that evening, I had an immediate worry: Did they still carry the Hormel Chicken Breasts and Sliced Turkey? I asked the man in the green apron what had changed besides the name…

"Really nothing," he said. "There's a new sign outside. We have new aprons and uniforms. There's a new name on our shopping bags. That's about it. Everyone who was working here before the change is still working here." My subsequent exploration of the market would confirm that: Everything in the same place. They even still carried Albertsons brand milk and Albertsons brand potato salad and Albertsons brand rotisserie chickens. I was pushing an Albertsons shopping cart, though I would later notice some of them said Haggen on them.

"What's going to change?" I asked the man. He said, "We don't know. Haggen hasn't set up its supply chain yet. I mean, if they want other things on the shelves, they have to have warehouses and trucks and such. The same food is still coming to us on all the same trucks."

I went about my marketing, purchasing all the items I'd intended to purchase, including half-a-dozen each of the Hormel entrees. I recall fretting a bit that I might not be able to get them there or anywhere once the Haggen folks completed their makeovers of their new acquisitions. As it turns out in yesterday's news, I had more reason to fret than I imagined…

Haggen Inc. is leaving California after a dramatic expansion gone wrong forced the grocery chain to file for bankruptcy protection this month. The Bellingham, Wash., company said Thursday that it is closing all its stores in the state as part of a larger exit of its Pacific Southwest holdings, including in Arizona and Nevada. That would affect at least 100 outlets, with 67 in California. That follows the closure of 27 stores announced last month, including 16 in the Golden State.

Mark doesn't get this. The Albertsons/Safeway folks sell off a bunch of their stores. Presumably, they got rid of the least profitable locations. Haggen grabs them up, changes nothing but the name, does little or no advertising (I've certainly heard/seen none) and then something like eight months later, they're closing them all. What were they expecting?

The Haggen folks would probably say they could have made a go of their new stores but they've been sabotaged by the Albertsons/Safeway company. The two firms are suing each other — Haggen suing Albertsons, charging "systematic efforts" to eliminate Haggen as a competitor; Albertsons suing Haggen for non-payment of $41 million to cover inventory it acquired in the new stores.

Okay, maybe one or both sides' lawsuits have merit, I don't know. I just don't understand how you acquire a business, change nothing but a name (which has, insofar as I can tell, a lot of good history) and then declare the whole thing a failure.

And to be honest, I'm not spending a lot of time trying to understand that. I have more important things to think about…like where I'm going to buy my Hormel Roasted Chicken Breasts and Hormel Roasted Sliced Turkey. Sometimes, life is really tough.

This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.

Most Famous Role: Fred Flintstone.

Other Notable Roles: Dum-Dum (sidekick to Touché Turtle), Boris the Russian Wolfhound in Lady and the Tramp, not much else.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Reed was primarily a radio actor who segued into television.  He appeared on hundreds of radio programs but was best known for playing Falstaff, the poet on Fred Allen's shows and as Pasquale, the Italian immigrant on Life with Luigi.  On television, it was mostly guest star roles.  You can see him (and fellow voice actor Howard Morris) in the episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show entitled "The Masterpiece."  That's the one where Rob accidentally buys a seemingly worthless painting at an auction.  Reed played the auctioneer.

Why He's On This List: Fred Flintstone was one of the most popular animated characters ever and a lot of that had to do with the casting of Reed, who was just plain a great comic actor.

Fun Fact: Reed wasn't the first choice for Fred.  Bill Thompson, who voiced Touché Turtle, was. But after several episodes were recorded, Thompson was having trouble sustaining the chosen voice and Joe Barbera also decided they needed a more natural-sounding voice for Fred. So Reed was hired — and at the same time, Mel Blanc replaced the first choice for Barney Rubble, who was Hal Smith. The first few episodes were re-recorded and no one ever regretted the change.

Additional Fun Facts: Late in his career, Reed sometimes shared the role of Fred (especially when the character had to sing) with Henry Corden, then Corden took over entirely after Reed died in 1977. Reed was also the first voice of Fillmore Bear on Jay Ward's Hoppity Hooper cartoons but when he got a raise and/or too busy as Fred, that role switched over to Bill Scott.

When I was in high school (1967-1969), this country was beginning to be rocked by protests of increasing length and breadth, mass demonstrations intended to urge Washington to get us the hell out of that war we were fighting in Vietnam. The war was unwinnable, some said. Others said that if it was winnable, it was not worth the cost in American lives and resources to win. Both groups argued with those who insisted that fighting it was a necessity to ensure the future of Democracy and…well, I don't need to revisit those arguments here and now.

At the time, I didn't buy that the war was unwinnable or unnecessary. I didn't particularly side with the protesters or the defenders of that military action but if pressed to take sides, I unenthusiastically sided with the latter. I suppose my main opinion — as a youth approaching Draft Age — was that whatever the merits of the war, I didn't want to go off and fight it. I didn't want to go into the Army at all and a few years later, thanks to a high-enough draft lottery number, I didn't.

If you want to fault me for my unwillingness to serve, fault away. I think I would have been a terrible soldier. If I'd absolutely had to join some branch of the military, the best thing I could do for my country was to go fight for the enemy.

Back when I was still attending University High in West Los Angeles, the campus was consumed by a big protest not unlike the ones we were seeing on the news. It was about 'Nam in a way but it was really about what then seemed like a much more important issue…

Mr. Foley.

Mr. Foley was the principal of Uni. He was a serious man, not particularly liked but for a long time, not particularly disliked. Before the protest broke out, I suppose the main thing most of us heard about him was that he often uttered what we now call "gaffes" — clumsy, insensitive things. Foleyisms, some called them. He tended to talk to us like we were tiny tots and not Young Adults who were soon to be entering the workplace, starting families and maybe even going off to fight a war.

Suddenly one day — and a key point here is that it was sudden — Mr. Foley had to go. I'm just guessing at percentages but it felt to me that out of seeming nowhere, 5% of the students at Uni were demanding that Foley resign or be fired…and 95% were going, "Huh? Why?" I did not fully understand the issues until years later when some articles were written about it, long after it was over.

The last straw — the Foleyism that triggered demands for his dismissal — began with an essay in the school newspaper, The Warrior.

(Why was it called that? Like all schools, Uni had a "theme" and ours was Indians of the American variety. Our mascot at football games was a gal or guy in an Indian suit. Our drill team dressed like Indians. Our football squad was the Warriors and the school paper was called The Warrior. All this, as you might expect, has since changed and the school team is now the Wildcats. Uni, by the way, was mostly white but we had a lot of black students, Asian students and Hispanics with no apparent racial tensions…and no apparent students of American Indian heritage.)

In this one issue of The Warrior, someone wrote an editorial urging support for the Vietnam War and harshly condemning those who were against it. One reason the whole protest came as an utter surprise to most of us is that almost no one who didn't work on The Warrior read it. I sure didn't — and an unscientific poll of my friends yielded a lot of shrugs and responses of "Who ever looks at that silly thing?"

Well, a few someones must have. One or more fiery rebuttals were submitted to run in the next issue of the usually-apolitical school paper. The Warrior's faculty advisor — surprised at the emotional blowback — kicked the matter upstairs to Mr. Foley. We later heard — and I still have no idea if this was true — that it had been run in the first place at Mr. Foley's urging. At the very least, it reflected his personal views.

In any case, he decreed that no rebuttal would be run and I believe he took the position that the first opinion piece should not have run. The Warrior wasn't a place for political debates, he now believed. The Warrior was to announce bake sales and football scores and vital news like that the horticulture area would be closed next week because it was being sprayed for aphids.

Most, I suspect, agreed with that but some students took the position that since the piece had run, the fair thing to do would be to grant Equal Time to the opposing viewpoint, then drop the matter. Foley's position was that to run the rebuttal would be to compound the mistake and extend it because then someone would demand that the paper publish a rebuttal to the rebuttal and so on. And it was on that decision that his long tenure as principal of University High School would end.

I am a little fuzzy on how this argument suddenly went volcanic but it was something like this: The outraged students, then small in number, demanded that the issue be decided not by Foley but by the Student Council. We had this thing on campus called the Student Council where every homeroom sent representatives to vote on certain issues affecting the students. Mr. Foley said no, the Student Council would not rule on this, then he wrote an article to run on the front page of the next issue of The Warrior. It said, in effect, "This is what I've decided, the matter is closed, I run this school, my word is law, there will be no further discussion." Those were not his words but they were the general interpretation of them. As I said, Mr. Foley was not good at communicating with younger human beings.

Before the issue had even been printed, the (then) small group of protesters knew about this and of course, it did not satisfy them. Some responded with an act of aggression of which I am still in awe. I never found out how they pulled it off but here is what they did…

The day the issue of The Warrior came out with Foley's decree, it was generally ignored by everyone on campus. They all were. I certainly didn't bother to pick one up.

As I walked to the bus stop to head home that day, there were students a block from campus passing out what appeared to be that same issue of The Warrior. It wasn't. It was an issue of The Worrier, a one-shot parody/replica printed on almost the same paper with much the same art direction and with the same photo of Mr. Foley on the front page. Needless to say, the text was quite different with "Foley's" little editorial reading like the ravings of a demented dictator.

I did not and still do not know who did this or how they financed it or how they got it printed. I was especially amazed and impressed that they somehow got their mitts on that issue of The Warrior before it was distributed and whipped up and published The Worrier so rapidly that it could be distributed almost simultaneously. It was free, though donations were accepted. Mostly out of admiration for the effort, I kicked in a buck…or as I then viewed a dollar, the cost of 8.3 new comic books.

The Worrier was such an amazing feat that everyone paid attention…and that's how most of the student body learned of the controversy and the protest and the drive to have Mr. Foley find a new occupation. Which is not to say everyone joined the cause. Most, it seemed to me, did not.

My sense of the campus was a huge groundswell of apathy. Maybe you could have worked up a widespread lather if the idea was to protest the War in Vietnam. The War in the Principal's Office didn't seem to be of the same urgency. There's a saying you hear now — "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." We hadn't heard that phrase then but most of us said something similar.

If Foley was removed, his replacement would surely be a guy enforcing the same rules and policies — at best, with somewhat better social skills. We were also told by the protest leaders that we had to fight for the power of the Student Council, which Foley was attempting to turn into his obedient puppets. Most of us thought Student Council was a pretty useless marionette show from the get-go and that it managed to do nothing with great pomp and puffery.

I'd served on it briefly and while I was involved, its biggest accomplishment was this: We launched a fund-raising drive to earn enough to buy paint and then we got students to volunteer to come in on a Saturday to repaint all the trash cans on campus. Even that had to be okayed at every step by the principal's office. In one meeting, just to make a point, I introduced a resolution to abolish Student Council. Our Faculty Supervisor consulted Foley's office and we were informed that Student Council did not have the power to abolish itself.

So no one wanted to fight for Student Council — which, by the way, did a pretty crappy job repainting those trash cans — and no one thought anything in The Warrior could possibly have even the teensiest impact on the Vietnam War. More importantly, no one thought that any demonstration was going to lead to a redistribution of power where the principal's office had any less than all of it. And frankly, most of us weren't particularly unhappy with the way things were run in this school we would soon be leaving forever…

…so none of this amounted to the kind of hill upon which one chooses to die. There are plenty of causes in this world worth fighting for. This did not seem to be one of them.

But I will say this: The protests were kind of a fun diversion. In high school, almost anything that disrupts the normal, day-to-day routine is kind of a fun diversion. This one took the form of boycotting one period of classes each day and it lasted for much of three days. The first day, it was fourth period and it felt to me like about a third of all students played Protest Hooky as a kind of a colossal mass dare: "I'll do it if you'll do it."

The prevailing assumption was that the school couldn't possibly discipline everyone who skipped Geometry or English or Chemistry that day if enough did…and enough did. Had the administration tried to dole out mass punishment, it would have served as an example of the kind of Draconian Principaling (I just made that term up) being practiced by Mr. Foley — further proof of why he had to go bye-bye.

I went to class that period but no actual teaching or learning occurred. The protest rally was too great a distraction. Outside the main building, there was a big grassy area where 1000+ students could congregate. Many hundreds did. Uni was on a hill so the campus was built in tiers and there were staircases all around leading up and down from tier to tier. Many of the boycotting students were massed in the grassy area looking up at a landing on one staircase from which speeches were being made.

Someone up there had a crummy portable audio system. I'm not sure if a student had brought in it or if it was something the school had and which the leaders of this rebellion commandeered for their purposes. But up on the landing, various speakers were fighting for the one microphone, taking turns having their glorious moments of leading the crowd, firing up whoever could be fired up, demanding in increasingly incendiary terms that Foley submit his resignation or be fired.

The next day, the jungle drums decreed that fifth period would be the boycotted period. The principal's office countered by sending around mimeographed announcements to be read in every room. They said that there would be no classes during fifth period that afternoon.

Fine with me. My fifth period was Gym and as far as I was concerned, any reason to not take Gym for a day was a darn good reason. I thought of trying to get to the protest leaders to urge them to make every fifth period a boycotted period, this plan to continue until my graduation day even if Foley committed harakiri.

We assumed it was Mr. Foley who decreed that there would be no classes during fifth period that afternoon, though we weren't sure of his reasoning. Maybe he thought this capitulation would somehow appease the mob. Maybe he was afraid so many would boycott that it would make the news that some high percentage of UniHi students were marching against him. This way, no one could say how many students skipped classes because there were no classes to skip.

Or maybe he just thought there was no point in anyone trying to teach anything while this kind of thing was going on. Whatever, we all found ourselves roaming the campus during fifth period like it was an extended lunch break.

I tried to listen to some of the speeches but it was hard. The portable audio device had apparently been borrowed from that guy who announces the next stop on the New York Subway. Students who couldn't understand what was being said were cheering the end of each sentence just in case that was an appropriate place to cheer.

I made out enough to come to this conclusion: That not only did I not know what greater good would occur if Mr. Foley was removed but the folks giving the speeches didn't seem to know, either. It was all talk about Lack of Communication and A Total Breakdown of The System and the word "power" popped up in every single sentence I could decipher. No one said Mr. Foley had hit a student or harmed anyone or violated his oath of office. He was just kind of guilty of being an asshole who somehow thought he was in charge.

The third day was the last day of the protests. It was sixth period this time — a bad tactical choice. Sixth period was the last period of the day so everyone just went home early. As I left, the protest leaders were up on that staircase landing, shouting to departing students that they had to stay and listen. I thought, "Gee, I don't know how inept Mr. Foley's supposed to be but he wouldn't be dumb enough to schedule a protest for last period."

Still as I recall, that was almost the end of the whole matter. The next morning, it was announced that Mr. Foley was taking a "leave of absence" and the Boy's Vice-Principal would take over as Acting Principal. The protesters declared victory and there was much glee and celebration and talk of Student Power. They didn't seem sure what they'd won but you couldn't tell them they hadn't won something.

A day or six later during lunch, a mutual friend introduced me to one of the main ringleaders of the protest, one of the guys who'd been up on the staircase landing shouting into the inadequate P.A. system. He was still glowing with victory when I asked him if he could explain just what he and his brethren had won. The fellow — his name was Tony, I think — talked about how Foley was a bad man, a tool of The Establishment, a tumor which had to be removed, a symbol of everything wrong with the world today, etc.

I said, "Yeah, but what did you get out of all that? What's different because you 'won?'" I think I even managed to pronounce the quotation marks around the word, "won."

Tony thought a moment and then admitted to me, "Basically, it was all about the win." In other words, we won in order to win. We proved we had some power. It doesn't matter how it directly affects anything. It might even make things worse for us. All that matters is that we won and they lost.

I think about that a lot as I watch grand-scale politics and I often find myself thinking, "This isn't about what they say it's about. This is all about the win."

Michael Dooley (Hi, Michael!) has written a good article about the Jack Kirby art exhibition out at Cal State Northridge. The exhibit is formally titled "Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby" and it can be viewed there through October 10. If you can get there to see it, do. Here's the info.

In Monty Python's never-ending quest to get you to buy the same material over and over and over, they have a 40th anniversary Blu-Ray, DVD and "limited edition castle gift set" coming out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You can pre-order a copy of one of them here.

What this release will have that others haven't is a collection of out-takes and cut scenes. Here, co-director Terry Jones reviews the material and introduces portions of it…

James Bigwood writes to say this about the actor Alan Napier, who played Alfred the Butler on the Batman TV series…

Just a note about Steve Haynie's letter about Yvonne Craig that you quoted in your blog. Alan and Yvonne did not live in the same condo complex. Alan lived in a house (not a condo) in the Pacific Palisades which he bought in the forties. Yvonne lived in the Palisades as well, but about a mile's drive away. Far from seeing each other weekly, Alan and Yvonne did not re-connect between the time Batman was cancelled in 1968 and the cast reunions in the spring of 1988, twenty years later. She did attend his funeral later that year.

Glad to clear that up…and I should note that Mr. Napier had a pretty impressive acting career before he ever landed the part on Batman. It is quite apropos that his autobiography, which is finally being published next January, is entitled Not Just Batman's Butler. Here — lemme show you the cover along with another photo of Napier…

As I understand it, Napier wrote this book back in the seventies, well before he passed in 1988. He was unable to secure a publisher back then and it languished, unavailable to the public, read by only a few of those close to him. One of the zillion and one things the Internet has made possible is more niche publishing. You no longer have to write a book which the big retailers want to display in their front window in order to get published.

Jim Bigwood has prepped the material for publication and the book will at long last see print. There seem to be hundreds of books out now chronicling the lives of supporting actors and players who would not have warranted a book years ago, and that's a very good thing. Here's an Amazon link if you wish to pre-order the Napier book. Since it's published by McFarland, I don't think the price will come down but if it does, Amazon will give you the lower price.

William Saletan and Matt Taibbi both have interesting articles up about the current visit of Pope Francis…and it's interesting how many opinion pieces I've found online about how the Pontiff impacts this nation's political battle between Left and Right. I don't recall his predecessors having a lot to do with that kind of thing, except sometimes our eternal debate over the Death Penalty.

This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.

Most Famous Role: Scooby Doo.

Other Notable Roles: Boo Boo Bear, Ranger Smith, Papa Smurf, Astro and many supporting players on The Jetsons, Bamm-Bamm (baby version) and many supporting players on The Flintstones, Muttley, Mumbly, Dr. Benton Quest on Jonny Quest, Hamton J. Pig on Tiny Toon Adventures and dozens of others.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Not much. Messick started out as a ventriloquist and puppeteer and quickly found himself in so much demand for voiceover work that he did only that for the rest of his life. The one real exception was his on-camera role as a cartoon voice actor in the short-lived 1984 situation comedy, The Duck Factory.

Why He's On This List: Messick was the consummate professional and the guy who could do anything, including playing six roles in the same scene and doing it so well you'd never know all those voices were coming out of the same guy. He could even overlap himself. No one on this list or others to come could ever switch between voices so quickly and expertly. And no one who ever hired him ever regretted their selection.

Fun Fact: Messick believed in not doing imitations. Once in a while, Joe Barbera pressed him into mimicking a celebrity but he didn't like it and almost never based a voice on someone recognizable — an amazing fact given how many different voices he was called upon to invent throughout his career. He also usually refused to replicate another voice actor, especially if that actor was available to be hired for the job in question. He adopted this policy after an unpleasant incident. He'd agreed to imitate a Howie Morris character when Howie wasn't available to record a part in a Hanna-Barbera record based on a prime-time animated special of Alice in Wonderland. Howie didn't blame Don but was furious with Barbera, leading to a fight which led to Howie not working again for H-B for a few decades. Under pressure, Messick agreed to take over as Atom Ant and a few of Howie's other roles but turned down later requests to "do" others' characters. One exception was taking over as Scrappy Doo after Lennie Weinrib but in that case, Messick wasn't imitating Lennie.

It's been a long time since I've discussed the list of longest-running shows on Broadway. That's because it's been a long time since it changed but it just did. This is the list of the top thirteen as of last night. The ones in bold are still running.

1. The Phantom of the Opera – 11,506 performances
2. Chicago (1996 Revival) – 7830 performances
3. Cats – 7485 performances
4. The Lion King – 7412 performances
5. Les Misérables – 6680 performances
6. A Chorus Line – 6137 performances
7. Oh! Calcutta! (1976 Revival) – 5959 performances
8. Mamma Mia! – 5,773 performances
9. Beauty and the Beast – 5461 performances
10. Rent – 5123 performances
11. Wicked – 4957 performances
12. Jersey Boys – 4093 performances
13. Miss Saigon – 4092 performances

As you can see, Jersey Boys just passed Miss Saigon to take over twelfth place and it won't be long before Wicked passes Rent and The Lion King passes Cats. Since there's no expectation that any of the currently-running shows listed above will be closing soon, when Lion King takes third, the all-time top three longest-running shows will all be shows that are currently-running.

The amazing thing of course is the continuing streak of The Phantom of the Opera. It opened in January of 1988 and last week was still filling 90% of its seats. Chicago and the Lion King were playing to fuller houses than that so it's not impossible that someday when Phantom closes, one of them could still be running.

So let's say Phantom finally closes and Chicago doesn't. How much longer would Chicago have to run in order to capture the top slot? You can do the math on this, figuring eight performances a week. I did it once and I think it's something like nine years. My guess is that none of us will live to see that day.

My pal Steve Stoliar did something that many of us envy…something none of us will ever be able to do. He was Groucho Marx's secretary for the last few years of that great comedian's life. You may have heard of the controversial woman, Erin Fleming, who more or less ran Groucho's life at the time. "Controversial" is, in this case, a nice way of putting it.

Steve was right there in the middle of it all, amassing a stockpile of anecdotes, observations, Groucho quotes, tales of meeting Groucho's friends, stories of the oft-unstable Ms. Fleming, etc. A few years ago, he crammed as many of them as he could into a book I've recommended here before…a book I was even recommending before Steve Stoliar became my pal, Steve Stoliar. It's called Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House and if you haven't read it, you should. By an amazing coincidence, I happen to have an Amazon link right here.

It is, as they say, soon to be a major motion picture. Even as I type that, I find myself wondering why no book or play is ever soon to be a minor motion picture. But any film made from Steve's book will be major so we don't need to ponder that now.

In the meantime, Steve goes about giving talks about his great experience and he even has some amazing, available-nowhere-else films to accompany his presentation. Wanna go see him? Well, if there's some facility in your area that books guest lecturers, get them to watch this promotional video and then book Steve…

Frank Rich explains Donald Trump…and boy, is it a long explanation.

This amuses me more than it probably should. We were talking here earlier about photos being misidentified on the web. This happens a lot and it happens nowhere more than over on eBay.

Yesterday morn, I went net-surfing to find a decent photo of Jack Larson to post with his obit. Once in a while, I locate what I seek over on eBay so I went there, searched for "Jack Larson" and this is one of the listings I found…

That's right. It's Jerry Thomas and Jack Larson in the 1965 movie, How to Murder Your Wife. Those of you who thought that film starred Terry-Thomas and Jack Lemmon…well, you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.

How did this confusion occur? Well, like a lot of photos that turn up on eBay these days, this picture is being sold because a newspaper decided to digitize (or maybe just dump) its photo archives and sell the originals. Here is what was written on the back of this photo…

If you didn't know better, you might think that said "Jerry Thomas" and "Jack Larson." I doubt that was a scanning error…probably a human one made by someone too young to at least recognize Jack Lemmon. Mr. Lemmon was a pretty big star in his day.

My friend Steve Stoliar, who'll be featured in the next Video Link I post, is driven mad by some of the eBay identifications of who's Groucho Marx and who isn't. It's not just that sellers think someone dressed as Groucho is Groucho. Sometimes, they think Eli Wallach not dressed up like Groucho is Groucho or that George Jessel, looking just like George Jessel is Groucho or that Laurel and Hardy are the Marx Brothers.

Actually, anyone with a mustache and prominent eyebrows is likely to be identified as Groucho because a pic of Groucho will sell better than a photo labelled as "Unknown man with mustache and prominent eyebrows." I especially liked the seller a few years ago who posted a photo he said was Groucho Marx without his mustache. Apparently, many folks wrote in to inform him it was actually Bud Abbott without his mustache.

The seller changed the listing to read that it was "Bud Abbott disguised as Groucho Marx." No one bought it so he relisted it as "Groucho Marx disguised as Bud Abbott" — and he got twenty bucks for it. If you're interested in the photo of Jerry Thomas and Jack Larson, it's been marked down to $27.00. Hey, it's the only known photo of Jerry and Jack together.

Stephen Colbert had Ted Cruz on last night and the result was a perfect example of why I don't like politicians on talk shows that are focused on entertainment and short segments. Colbert strikes me as better informed than almost anyone who's had that kind of gig and, yes, he did ask a few questions of substance. But anyone who's seeking public office should be asked more than a few questions of substance…and by a questioner whose goal isn't to have the segment end with everyone happy and the guest willing to come back.

These things always seem to me like an unhealthy bargain. The Colbert show undoubtedly got some tune-in last night because of Cruz. Those who love Cruz watched to support him and to hope that he'd slap that Liberal star around. Those who loathe Cruz watched to hope Colbert would nail Cruz with the question that would end the guy's candidacy. Given the limitations of time and format, neither of those things were likely to happen.

What mainly happened is that Cruz got to show the world his human side and to seem like a reasonable guy with a sense of humor. That may or may not be who he is. He got to say he doesn't consider his political opponents "diabolical" without Colbert citing many past statements where Cruz tried to whip up support by insisting just that. He got to make some assertions about the glories of the economy under Reagan and the wrongness of how Gay Marriage was legalized in this country without Colbert having the time (or seriousness of intent) to challenge what he said.

This kind of thing almost always seems wrong to me, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican or Bernie Sanders. Once in a while, it can be interesting. The conversation Colbert had with Joe Biden recently was fascinating…but Biden wasn't running for anything — at least at that moment — and I doubt he made one factual assertion his opponents would dispute. But the conversation Colbert had with Sanders was close to an infomercial and even though I generally side with "The Bern" on most issues, I thought it was a misappropriation of airtime and talk show resources.

Tonight, Colbert has Donald Trump on. That might turn out to be one of the exceptions because it may well be more of an entertainment segment than a political one. But I still wish talk shows would stop doing this.

This is the second in a series of essays here about how professional or aspiring professional writers can and must cope with two various kinds of rejection — rejection of your work by the buyers and rejection by various folks in the audience. Part 1 can be read here.

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One important point in dealing with the latter is that you need to have realistic expectations. I don't know how often this has happened: A writer friend has called me for comfort and reassurance when his new book (or show or whatever) got a withering review. I ask him about the overall reception and learn that he's gotten twelve notices — eleven in the good-to-rave category, one that likened his work to the flinging of feces. He's so destroyed by #12 that he's forgotten #1-11.

The problem there is that he's set himself up for defoliation. It's like buying one lottery ticket and then being crushed when it turns out you didn't win. Unanimous approval happens about as often as me or you winning the $45,000,000 grand prize.

Mickey Mantle didn't step up to the plate expecting his every swing to clear the left field fence so he was not crushed when he struck out. His lifetime batting average was around .300 and that's just fine. Imagine a player feeling like an abject failure because he didn't do a lot better than that.

Someone once observed that the difference between an American playwright and a British playwright was as follows: In England, a great playwright is someone who now and then writes a great play. In America, a great playwright is someone whose last play was great. The latter approach can make for a lot of grief and anguish and it can even make a writer afraid to take chances and to not play it safe.

Even if you play it as safe as humanly possible as a writer, you will have failures. They are unavoidable — some may not even be your fault — and I've had friends do incredible damage to themselves by not accepting that as a reality. What you should hope is to have successes of sufficient quantity and magnitude that you can stay in the game. As long as you can stay in the game, you have a chance to hit a home run next time at bat.

Also, remember that it is (usually) not you they don't like but the product. As readers of this blog know, I hate cole slaw. If you are a fine chef and you make me cole slaw, I'm not going to like it. If you write certain kinds of stories, I'm not going to like them either.

I think writers get crushed a lot by rejections that are in the same category as trying to make me love your cole slaw. It's like entering a contest you can't win. I ain't gonna shine on Dancing with the Stars or in the Short Track Speed Skating event at the next Winter Olympics. Entering something like that is just begging for failure and rejection.

There are writing assignments that are like that because of your limitations but there are also those where you simply can't succeed, no matter what you do. I shall favor you with but two examples, both cases of motion picture producers I've encountered in my career. I'll call them Frick and Frack.

Mr. Frick, I met in the late seventies. He had co-produced one movie for Paramount and now had an office on the lot from which, I was told, he hoped to develop screenplays for production. A mutual friend steered me to him and we hit it off well. He was a nice guy and he laughed in all the right places — always a good sign. He gave me some broad parameters of the kinds of ideas he was looking for and invited me to go off and come up with some, then come back and pitch them to him.

It seemed like a great opportunity. The guy was indeed a producer. He had an office at Paramount. He liked me. How could that not be worth my time to pursue?

SPOILER ALERT: The guy had no ability to get a movie made or even to pay for any writing. I'll tell you why in a moment.

Cluelessly thinking all I had to do was come back to him with the right idea, I spent a week or two of pondering. Once I thought I had three good ones, I went back and clicked into performance mode. One by one, my ideas were shot down. The first one was all wrong for these reasons. The second would never work for those reasons. The third was just plain a bad idea.

I didn't think any of them were terrible but he thought they all were…so that was it for those three ideas. But he still liked me and he encouraged me and he said, "Well, maybe now you have a better idea of what I'm looking for." That seemed possible so I went home, came up with three more and returned to his office, resulting in three more strike-outs. In fact, he seemed to like these three less than the first three…and he hadn't liked the first three at all.

He urged me to try, try again and he did it so nicely and sincerely that I almost did. What stopped me is that, via that most powerful of show business forces — dumb luck — I happened to meet another writer who'd been playing the same game with Mr. Frick. The writer had given up after four pitch sessions, asked around and learned what he thought was the reason for all the turndowns…

Mr. Frick was not a producer. Though he had that office on the Paramount lot, the studio had zero interest in him producing anything for them and he knew it.

He had not really even been a producer on that one film with his name on it. A friend then in power had set him up with the job, he'd botched it and another producer had to be brought in. They shared co-producer credit but the other guy had done all the work. Mr. Frick had then reverted to his previous job, which was as a consultant on matters of foreign distribution. That's why he had that office at Paramount and though it was in the building with real producers, he was no longer one of them. I might as well have been pitching to one of the janitors.

Frick had not accepted his fate so he continued to try and be a kind of "pretend" producer, taking meetings like mine when he wasn't doing his consulting work. The writer who tipped me off had a theory: "He thinks that if he hangs in there for a while, taking meetings and acting like an in-house producer who produces movies, eventually there will be some new Paramount execs who will think he is one."

That put him in this position: If he'd said to me, "Hey, that's a great idea," he would then have had to do something with it. He'd have to have Paramount draw up a contract and pay me money…and Paramount wasn't about to do that for anything he told them he wanted to do. His enthusiasm for an idea carried zero weight with the current guys in charge. So he had to hate all ideas pitched to him while he bided his time and hoped somehow that would change.

My friend's theory made way too much sense to me so I gave up on Mr. Frick. He passed away about twelve years later and if the Internet Movie Database is to believed — and sometimes, it is — he never produced anything else again in his career.

I'd thought my ideas were being rejected because they were rotten. They may have been — I pitched a few of them elsewhere and didn't get any takers — but that wasn't why he turned them down. The whole thing was akin to one of those unwinnable carnival games where you take home the Big Prize if you can knock down all three milk bottles by throwing a baseball at them — and one of the milk bottles is weighted-down so even a hurricane couldn't topple it.

I have come to believe this happens a lot with writers: They're playing a game that cannot be won. Either they're trying to sell the right thing to the wrong guy or the wrong thing to the right guy…or, once in a while, even the wrong thing to the wrong guy. And then they think they bombed because someone thought their scripts or pitches stunk.

In the next one of these, I'll tell you about Mr. Frack — who did produce movies, many of them. And I'll tell why you'd have had just as much chance of selling him your screenplay as you would have of selling it to Mr. Frick.

William Saletan explains why all this talk about Pope Francis being a Liberal, modern pope is a lot of wishful delusion on some folks' part. Mr. Saletan thinks people are reading way too much into statements and encyclicals that are (mostly) Vatican Business As Usual.