Yearly Archives: 2015

The local comedy/improv community is mourning the death of one of its well-loved players. Taylor Negron was a funny man who distinguished himself in roles large and small. He was in movies including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Stuart Little, The Last Boy Scout, Angels in the Outfield and Better Off Dead. He was in TV shows including Friends, Seinfeld, ER, Hope & Gloria and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He was one of those "money-in-the-bank" performers who was hired by folks who knew he'd always come through for them…and he always did.

I first became aware of him in local improv groups and comedy clubs. It seemed like every time someone was assembling a troupe or casting a funny play, they tried to get Taylor Negron — for the same reason he got hired so often for TV and movie roles. I didn't know him well but the few times I was around him, he seemed like the kind of person everyone wants to be around. He just died of cancer at the age of 57 and an awful lot of funny people are very, very saddened by the news.

A long interview with a man of great talent, Frank Oz…

John Ficarra, the editor of MAD, will be on CBS Sunday Morning tomorrow morning. He'll be discussing, I'm assuming, the state of political satire in magazines or something connected to the Charlie Hebdo killings. The note I got from John said, "There's always a chance I could get bumped. The producer was hoping to get footage of a squirrel on tiny water skis…"

I still have nothing to say about the Charlie Hebdo matter beyond the obvious things that everyone in the comedy and humor community is saying. I agree with just about anyone who isn't in hysterics about this and maybe even with a few who are.

Also on CBS Sunday Morning, there's to be a segment on Dean Kamen, the inventor who gave us the Segway and many other neat things. My love of synchronicity forces me to mention that he is the son of the late comic book artist Jack Kamen, who worked extensively for EC Comics and even contributed briefly to MAD, back when that firm published it.

This ran here on 6/19/02. I have a lot more examples now…

I have another theory. It's that many old TV shows have been secretly refilmed to make them cheap-looking and less entertaining. I formulated this notion a few years ago when I caught a couple of vintage reruns of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. I just know this series didn't look that chintzy and wasn't as silly when it first aired. Using doubles of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum — or perhaps employing sophisticated computer imagery — someone has managed to drain the entertainment value of them.

I started thinking the same kind of monkeying had been done to David Frost's 1977 interviews with Richard Nixon. I watched them when they first aired and I watched the first two hours again the other night on the Discovery Civilization Channel. Something, one can't help but think, has changed. Maybe it's CGI animation or maybe they found David Frye and got him to redo Nixon's role…but I don't recall our 37th president being that rotten a liar. He's really terrible. My recollection is that while Frost landed some solid punches, Nixon held his own for much of it and made some solid points on his behalf with regard to Watergate and its allied scandals.

I could then understand how his supporters could have believed him…something I cannot fathom after the other night. He seems nakedly insincere and his tactic for diverting questions is in full view and utterly ineffective. I never liked or trusted the man but I thought he was a better fibber than this.

Perhaps the tapes (Frost's tapes, that is) have indeed been altered. The shows now airing have been recut to include material that was previously unused. Still, I find it hard to believe they cut out Nixon's better moments for this version, or that they omitted his worst, the first time around. I find it more credible to believe that in the quarter-century since, we've endured so many lying, weasely politicians up-close and personal on the cable channels, the art form of political misdirection has had to advance. They've had to improve on what Nixon did, and his skills of misdirection are no longer State of the Art. I wonder if people who once supported him watched these shows this week and said, "I can't believe I voted for this guy."

Around the world, 2015 will probably be best remembered as the year of a twelve-issue Groo series, the first installment of which goes on sale January 21. It's called Groo: Friends and Foes and each issue, Groo and his faithful canine companion run into a different character (or two) from Groo's past. Here's a sneak preview of #1.

It will probably not do any good but I would like to (again!) try to correct a recurring error that people make about this comic. Often on promotional materials, they say "Story by Mark Evanier, Art by Sergio Aragonés." That's not really accurate. For one thing, Sergio made up the story in that issue, as he does in most issues. He's mainly responsible for the plots, I'm mainly responsible for the dialogue. Sometimes, we overlap or I suggest a plot idea or a visual gag or he suggests a line. Mainly though, he does the stories and I do the words…but not totally.

There have been instances in past comics where the guy who did what I do would take the entire writer credit. Those instances often have led to blatant misattribution of who contributed what and often to resentment and ill feelings. To avoid that, Sergio and I decided years ago on Groo to avoid credits that said one guy wrote it and one guy drew it. Once in a while, I contribute so much to a story that Sergio insists I be credited as Writer but usually, the official credits we designate say "by Sergio Aragonés" and then the credit for me is either a joke or something vague. Lately, it's been "Wordsmith."

You'd be amazed how infrequently it is that people get this. Not long ago, I found myself explaining this to a longtime comic book writer who kept asking me, "Which of you is in charge of the writing?" and was not satisfied with my explanation that we both are.

"No, no," he kept saying. "Suppose you want Groo to do one thing in a story and Sergio wants him to do something else. Who has the final say on that?"

I said we both do.

"No, no, no," he said. "Two people can't both be in charge. If you don't agree, one person has to have the deciding vote."

I said no, if we don't agree, we talk it over until we do agree. "Human beings can do that," I explained. "Not everything in life has to be a power struggle."

"No, no, no, no," he said, escalating yet another no. "There must come a time when Sergio insists Groo slay the green dragon and you insist Groo slay the red dragon and neither of you will budge."

I said, "We've been doing Groo since 1982 and that's never happened. The longest argument we've had lasted about three minutes before it was settled to our mutual satisfaction. And by the way, in that situation, we would probably have Groo slay both dragons and the maidens they were menacing."

The guy never got it. A lot of people don't get it…or else when they write articles or promotional materials for this comic, they see a blank space that says "Story by" and another that says "Art by" and they figure Sergio draws it so they'll give him the latter credit and stick my name in the first slot. When you see that, don't believe what you see. Usually.

This may sound trivial but I really feel uncomfy when I get a credit that rightly belongs to someone else…or sole credit when it should be shared. I don't really have a lot of respect for anyone who doesn't.

How Yogi Bear's collar revolutionized television. This account is basically correct…

It finally happened. As you may know, I get pestered all the time with phone calls from contractors and folks they hire to make "cold calls" to a list of homeowners. Often, they start these calls by lying. "Mr. Evanier," they say, "we spoke last August about some work you wanted to have done on your house and you asked me to call you back around now so we could discuss coming out to give you an estimate."

I got one of these the other day and I did what I usually do. I told him he was lying and if I did need work done on my home — I don't — I wouldn't hire someone who started off by lying to me.

Usually, that ends the call but this time, the fellow on the phone said to me, "Uh, now that I'm done with the sales pitch, could I ask you something?" Curious what it might be, I said yes.

He said, "Are you the Mark Evanier who writes comic books and cartoons?"

For a second, I thought a sly salesguy had Googled my name…but no. When I told him I was, he told me enough things to convince me he really knew who I was and liked my work. That never doesn't not surprise me. I finally told him, "Well, I'm flattered and now I wish I had some work to do on my house."

But of course, neither of those things is true. The guy is, after all, a liar.

This coming Sunday afternoon, our pal Frank Ferrante is doing his Groucho show in Los Angeles — at the American Jewish University. Why haven't I mentioned this here lately? Because it's sold out. Zero seats are available. I'll be occupying one so if you're a follower of this blog and you see a guy who looks like all the Sergio Aragonés caricatures that head up this page, say howdy. I predict a 40% chance of light rain and a 100% chance of loving Frank's performance.

Hey, it just dawned on me that Frank is the opposite of Chico Marx. Chico was a Jewish comedian playing an Italian guy. Frank is an Italian guy playing a Jewish comedian. I don't know what that observation is worth but it fills a few more lines of this blog.

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.