Yearly Archives: 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, wait. We've done that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One thing I plan to do in 2015 is to finish my long-planned and long-in-length biography of Jack Kirby. I started on it when his widow Roz was still alive at her urging and briefly thought I might get it finished while she was still around to see it. That proved to be impossible. She died a little less than five years after he did. That might have been time enough to chronicle the life of an ordinary person but this was Jack and I was still coming across new sources of information at the time we lost her.

At that point, I decided there was no further hurry. I should just keep searching for such sources and I would get the book done whenever it seemed to be done. That could have occurred a decade or so ago but the Kirby family became embroiled in various legal problems and I had to wait until that all got settled. Well, that all got settled so I'm planning to finish the book this year.

That's a goal, not a promise. If it takes longer, it'll take longer but I don't think it'll take longer. My current draft manuscript is at 231,607 words and that just covers Ant Man.

No, seriously, that's the whole thing at the moment but I have many areas to expand on and some that are so trivial, I need to do some heavy trimming. I'm thinking of publishing it in two editions — one for folks who want to know the details of Jack's life without hearing what he ate for breakfast on Tuesday, June 12, 1956 and a fuller edition for those who do. Incidentally, I am not planning on much artwork in it. That's what my first book on Jack was for.

I don't have a publication date yet. I don't even have a publisher, though I've had enough offers that I'm sure that won't be an obstacle. What I think I need now is a number of research assistants to help me as I double-fact-check and fill in some blanks on what I've already written. In a few weeks, I'll be asking for volunteers who want to help me get this thing as right as possible.

Just called Rose Marie and asked her about the song, "Mama Says No-No." Rose has some of the best, most interesting anecdotes about her career but there doesn't seem to be one about this tune. She heard it somewhere — she doesn't recall where — and used it in her act for about ten years…until she got tired of it. She thinks she was the first — and maybe only — person to record it. And that's about all there is to that.

If you're in Southern California on Saturday, January 24 and want to meet Rose yourself, she'll be appearing at the Hollywood Show out at the Westin Hotel by LAX airport. Around 80 celebrities will be there selling photos and autographs including much of the casts of Dynasty, Good Times, Lassie, Lost in Space, Laverne & Shirley and the movie, A League of Their Own. Rose will be there along with her co-star from The Dick Van Dyke Show, Larry Matthews.

And, oh yes, Dick Van Dyke will be there. That's pretty impressive.

On April 16 of 2007, I posted this here — a remembrance of a book that changed my life a little. I don't draw much anymore because, among other reasons, I got trapped in one of those vicious circles you hear so much about. The less I drew, the worse my drawing got…and the worse my drawing got, the less I drew. That I could/can draw at all has a lot to do with the lessons in this book published when I was six, and with cartooning lessons I got on my TV from Walter Lantz and a gent named Tom Hatten. Tom Hatten was the host of the Popeye cartoons on KTLA here in Los Angeles and he inspired a lot of kids — not just me — to want to learn how to do that. So did this book…

I mentioned recently here that my one-time love of Woody Woodpecker cartoons flowed from the drawing lessons that the character's "boss," Walter Lantz, used to give on his cartoon show. Let me expand on that and mention a book that I suspect figured big into the lives of many folks my age who got into animation or drawing. Around 1958 (though possibly before), the Whitman Publishing Company brought out Walter Lantz Easy Way to Draw, a "how to" cartooning book written clearly and properly for a young audience.

I doubt Mr. Lantz (seen below in the photo at left) had much to do with its contents. The book is credited to Frank McSavage and Norm McGary, two artists who worked a lot for Western Printing and Lithography, publishers of Whitman books and tons of coloring books, games and puzzle books featuring Woody and the rest of the Lantz menagerie. Western also created and printed the Lantz-licensed comic books published at the time by Dell…and this was such a lucrative relationship for Lantz that he seems to have surrendered a lot of control of his properties to Western. The designs of his characters were constantly changing on screen and when Western standardized them for their books and magazines, Lantz recognized that those artists (McSavage, especially) knew what they were doing and adjusted his films and the other merchandise to match. He also employed McSavage and McGary directly from time to time.

Easy Way to Draw is a great book and my copy, which I must have gotten soon after it came out, moved me to sit for hours and attempt to replicate the drawings it featured. There was a concise, understandable explanation of the principles of animation along with step-by-step diagrams on how to draw Woody and his pals. Lantz had all these characters like Homer Pigeon that I didn't really know that well…and as an avid reader of Walter Lantz comic books and watcher of Walter Lantz TV shows, if I didn't know them, no one did. But I learned to draw them about as well as a kid my age could have learned to draw them and I'm sure it made me like them more. One day in school — I don't remember exactly why — I did a big drawing of Homer Pigeon on the blackboard. All of the kids in class were impressed, even though none of them knew who it was, either. Alas, these skills had limited value. When I got a little older, I learned you couldn't attract girls by showing them how you could draw Wally Walrus.

I'd wager big that I'm not the only person in my age bracket who was encouraged in a career towards drawing and/or animation by this book. It appears to have been kept in print for some time even if that meant dropping chapters and slapping a more "modern" cover on it, which they did. Still, you don't see a lot of copies around because it encouraged its owners to draw right in the book or cut out certain pages. So either you loved the book enough to despoil your copy or you loved it enough to keep it in pristine condition and never want to part with it. I'm in the latter category. I wonder if anyone's done a "how to draw cartoons" DVD or computer program that is now having the same impact on the nine-year-old Future Cartoonists of America.

Here's one of the great things about this blog. I just posted a question about a song on the Michael Feinstein show…and before long, my friend Dave Sikula sends me the answer. Not only that but his answer includes a link to this video featuring another friend — the great comedienne and performer Rose Marie.

The song is called "My Mama Says No-No" and it was written by Sammy Gallop and Ted Fiorita, not for a Broadway show or a movie but just for the popular song market. Dave thinks Rosie introduced it and if this weren't the middle of the night, I'd call her and verify that. I'll call her at a decent hour and let you know what she says. In the meantime, here she is belting it out like a champ. Thanks, Dave…

New Year's Eve, PBS ran the second in a series of specials that Michael Feinstein is doing from the newly-reopened Rainbow Room in New York. Each is an hour of Mr. Feinstein and some cabaret and Broadway performers singing the kind of songs that cabaret and Broadway performers sing. If you missed it and you enjoy that kind of thing…well, I can't embed the video but you can watch it online here. It runs an hour and I thought it was pretty good.

Quick question: About halfway through, Feinstein introduces a young lady (young = 16 years old) named Julia Goodwin who sings a peppy little song that I don't recognize. Should I? Ms. Goodwin, by the way, is obviously someone we're going to hear a lot from in the future.

And if you missed the first of these specials, you can watch it here. Warning: PBS links have a way of disappearing when you least expect. So do PBS stations.

Years ago, the folks who make Kentucky Fried Chicken decided that for marketing reasons, they'd try to hide or at least play down the fact that their fried chicken was fried. They began stating that KFC stood for Kitchen Fresh Chicken. At around the same time, Kellogg's didn't change the makeup of their Sugar Frosted Flakes. They just changed the name to Frosted Flakes.

Now, High Fructose Corn Syrup is getting a new moniker. Somehow, it all reminds me of the real bad golfer who turned to his caddy after 17 holes of terrible shots and divots and lost balls and going way over par. They were at the eighteenth hole — the most difficult one on the whole course — and he asked his caddy, "How do you think I should play this hole?"

And the caddy answered, "Under an assumed name."

Our first Mushroom Soup Day of 2015. Mark, having blogged aplenty the last week, is scaling back to a more human pace today.

I spent the first day of the year writing pages for a book that no one is paying me to write or even knows about…just something I'm doing for myself to decide whether it's really a whole book worthy of offering to publishers.

I spent most of the second day up at the Magic Castle. The Castle opened its doors on January 2, 1963 so you can do the math and figure out which anniversary it was. They opened yesterday to members only and had a big party and there was a kind of "State of the Castle" presentation about how it's doing and what it will be doing so I got to see a lot of friends and magicians and magician-friends.

There was a special performance by Tom Mullica, who was long hailed as the master of "cigarette magic." Here's a video I posted once here of Tom doing the act that earned him that distinction. It's an act he no longer performs for health reasons and also because many performing venues frown on (or are legally prevented from) allowing smoking, especially the way he did it.

Tom now performs a tribute act in which he transforms himself into his old friend, Red Skelton. But last night at the Castle, he returned to his magical roots and favored us with a new, smokeless magic act and many folks in the trickery industry were there to see this very clever man.

I will be back with you soon.