Yearly Archives: 2015

I have just changed the photo of the dragonfly in the previous posting. Rephah Berg, who reads this blog and often sends in wise and informed corrections, tells me I had a pic of a damselfly, not a dragonfly. I hope I have it right now. Thanks, Rephah.

As you read this story, please keep in mind that I was nine years old at the time.

When I was that age, I would sometimes go down the street to play with a girl named Julie. I liked Julie the way a boy of nine can like a girl of eight, which is altogether different from the way he might like her, say, four or five years later. Julie was fun and Julie liked me and the only problem really was that she had way too much energy. You got the feeling that every morning, she'd start her day with a nice, healthy bowl of Sugar Frosted Sugar.

If she'd had her way, all we would have done all afternoon was run around. She wanted to run into her backyard and play on the swing set and then she wanted to run out to the front yard and roll on the front lawn and then she wanted to run back into the backyard and play some more on the swing set and then she wanted to run out to the front yard and climb the big tree out there and then she wanted to run back into the backyard for a little more swing set and then run out front to play hopscotch on the front sidewalk and then run back to the swing set…

I had energy at that age too but not like that. She also didn't want to go inside to play board games (which I liked) or to watch cartoons on TV (which I really liked). She always wanted to run around outside. Fortunately, one day I got the power to stop her from doing this.

That afternoon as we were running from the swing set to the front lawn or maybe from the front lawn to the swing set, I suddenly heard Julie scream in terror. It was the kind of scream that makes you think someone has just been murdered. "What is it?" I asked her with huge worry.

"It's…THAT," she shrieked, pointing at the hideous, deadly monster that was looming above us.

It was a dragonfly. In case you've never seen one, they look like this…

She ran from it like her life depended on it and I ran with her because…well, because she was running, I guess. We sprinted to the back of her house where there was a little hiding place behind the garage. She crawled into it and cringed in a fetal position, trembling. After a few minutes of that, she pleaded with me, "Peek out and see if it's gone."

I peeked out and it was gone. "What," I asked, "is so scary about a dragonfly?"

Julie looked at me like I was mad, truly mad. "Don't you know about dragonflies? They sew your mouth shut and you die!" This is apparently an old urban legend even in rural areas — one of those things some people believe based on no evidence whatsoever. I had never heard it before but someone had told it to Julie, thereby inducing nightmares as well as daylight terrors.

I asked, "How does a dragonfly sew your mouth shut? Do they carry needles and thread?"

She answered, "They do it. I don't know how they do it but they do it. They sew your mouth shut and then you can't breathe and you die!"

I asked, "Can't you just breathe through your nose?"

She answered, "Okay, then you starve to death. You can't eat if your mouth has been sewn shut!"

Being way too logical about something this silly, I replied, "You can go a few hours without eating. Couldn't they unsew your mouth before you starved? I once saw my mother take the stitching out of a sweater and it took like three minutes."

By now, Julie was angry with me. "Look! Would you like to have your mouth sewed shut? Even if it didn't kill you, it would probably hurt a whole lot."

I had to admit she had a point. Unless, of course, dragonflies use Novocaine.

Since the evil monster had flown off to go sew someone else's mouth shut, Julie cautiously left the hiding spot and play resumed. But she kept glancing about, ever vigilant for dragonflies of any size or hue. From that moment on, I owned that young woman.

At 4:00, I wanted to go into the house and watch a favorite program — The Webster Webfoot Show on Channel 13. On it, "Uncle" Jimmy Weldon and his duck puppet hosted some of my favorite cartoons. Julie, however, wanted to stay outside and run back and forth between the front lawn and the swing set…and all I had to do was to point at nothing and yell, "Dragonfly!" Julie would scream and we'd run into the house, make sure all the windows were locked and then, while we were in there waiting for the mortal danger to pass, watch cartoons.

After three or four, she was restless and wanted to go outside and run back and forth between the swing set and the front lawn some more. "Go look and see if the dragonfly is still around," she told me. I headed for the window but as I did, I saw on the TV screen the beginning of a Screwy Squirrel cartoon so I told her, "There are dozens of dragonflies flying about outside. They're in squadron formation!"

Julie screamed, ran into her room and hid under the bed while I watched Screwy Squirrel.

This went on for a few weeks, as I recall. I could make Julie do just about anything I wanted by merely pointing to imaginary dragonflies. One day though, I pushed it too far.

I was collecting baseball cards then so I had a lot of gum around the house. I never liked the gum as much as the cards. In fact, the gum was so horrible that given the choice, I'd have preferred to chew the cards. But the gum was light pink and not that far from the color of lips so that gave me an idea.

We were in Julie's house one day playing a board game I wanted to play, hiding from dragonflies I'd "seen" outside. After I won the game, I told her I would go outside and check for dragonflies. She thought I was so brave…maybe the last time any female believed that.

I went outside, chewed up a wad of the gum, smeared it over my mouth, then staggered back inside in a panic, making grunts like I couldn't talk. Julie screamed, "A dragonfly sewed your mouth up!" I nodded in silent agony. Horrified — and before I could stop her — she ran to her mother's room.

All the time I was there playing, her mother was in a little private study doing…well, I'm not sure what. Reading, maybe. She'd check on us every hour or so but mostly, she left us alone. Julie pounded on her mother's closed door and when Mom opened it, Julie cried in desperation, "You've got to do something! A dragonfly sewed Mark's mouth closed!"

I, of course, walked up chewing the gum and saying, "What's going on?" Julie's mother knew exactly what had happened.

"Did Grandma tell you that silly story about dragonflies?" she asked Julie. Julie said, "No, it was Grandpa! He said dragonflies sew your mouth shut and then you can't breathe and you die!" Her mother told her that was a silly superstition, scolded her for believing such nonsense and said, "I'm going to give your father's father a call and give him a piece of my mind." Then she admonished me for scaring Julie so. I said I was sorry and would never do it again.

Julie and I went outside to play and, sure enough, a dragonfly buzzed right past us. She flinched but didn't run and then we talked a little about how people believe things that aren't true. I said, "The problem is that there are things you have to watch out for that are dangerous and when you're watching out for the wrong things, the real dangerous things can get you."

"Real dangerous?" she asked. "Like what?" I told her that a fully-grown crow could pick up a 100-lb. child — like, say, either of us — and fly us off into the sky and we'd never be seen again. She was skeptical but I half-convinced her when I said, "Didn't you see the news last night? It happened to a kid who lived in Culver City!"

Julie looked around and saw several crows sitting on a nearby phone wire. I said, ominously, "Those look pretty well-grown to me!" Taking no chances, Julie insisted we run back into the house and close all the windows.

I know it sounds mean but I had a good reason. It was almost 4:00 and there was a good chance Uncle Jimmy would be running another Screwy Squirrel cartoon.

Last Thursday night when I watched Jon Stewart's final Daily Show, I was disappointed. It had for me the same problem as Colbert's last Colbert Report, being the kind of self-congratulatory tribute that seemed excessive given that the host is not dying or going away forever. The opening segment felt bloated and padded…though props to Comedy Central for letting the first act go 25 minutes and 30 seconds without a commercial. They made up for it later but still…25:30? Nice.

The video tour of the office and staff was well-done but long and I really didn't get any sense of who all those people were. Stewart's final "rant" — to alert us there was bullshit in the world — seemed obvious and not the way to end a series that was so often able to surprise us and by going where no show had gone before. And then it ended with Springsteen, who of course had zero to do with the program. I guess I'd hoped for something less predictable.

Ah, but that was the first time I watched it. Prepping to write something here, I gave it a second look a day later and this time, it struck me quite differently. What I glommed onto in that viewing was the incredible love and respect those people have for each other and for Jon Stewart in particular. It was there in almost every moment of the show but especially in the last shot of Act One when Colbert and Stewart embraced and then all the other correspondents came rushing in for a group hug.

If you looked closely, you could see how genuinely happy they were for being on the show and for having had Jon Stewart in their lives. Even Wyatt Cenac — who had some harsh words for Stewart in a recent interview and who played it cool in his segment — seemed overjoyed to be there, at least in that shot. He was hopping up and down with the rest of them.

If you missed it and you still have the show on your DVR or want to go check it out again at this link, take a look. Samantha Bee looked a little uncertain as to why she was there but everyone else there and in the dance party at the end was real, real happy to be a part of it all and to have had Jon Stewart in their lives. I'm trying to think of another person on television who evoked that much respect and love from darn near everyone who worked with them and I can't.

Viewed that way, I liked the last episode. Sometimes, you have to look at these things twice to see what's really going on.

Matt Taibbi watched the debate last night and he thinks the Republicans have a very large Donald Trump Problem.

Dan Gheno, this blog's official reporter on the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, has been camped out there 24/7 to get this photo for you.  It's the new marquee for Mr. Colbert's incoming program.  Looks good to me. A job well done, Dan. You can go home now.

Daniel Larison on the Republican debates. He, like many people, think Carly Fiorina "won" the first debate, the one that is like the points on Whose Line Is It Anyway? He thinks no one "won" the second especially in demonstrating any real grasp of foreign affairs.

I'm writing up a post on Jon Stewart's last Daily Show, which disappointed me in many ways. I don't think I'll have it up here until tomorrow but if the script I'm writing today goes south on me, I may stop working on it 'til tomorrow and finish the blog post today. Hopefully, not.

Last night, I watched the first Republican Debate and the last Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I enjoyed one more than the other.

The "debate" — I think that's the wrong term for that format; joint press conference is more like it — was about what I expected. Today, websites are filled with fact-checking which shows that a lot of untrue things were said. The most annoying thing about the event may be that that doesn't matter; that when we speak of who won and who lost and who helped their campaign, no one loses significant points either for lying or not knowing what's going on in the world. Swagger seems to matter more. Even people whose main complaint about Obama is that they think every single thing he says is a lie don't care much when their guy fails to connect with the truth as long as he seems passionate and outspoken.

I find it hard to imagine any of those ten men inspiring voters for any reason other than they have an "R" after their names on the ballot. A lot of them looked like they'll say anything to get elected. Scott Walker is sure he could get our allies to reimpose sanctions on Iran? No, he can't.

Mike Huckabee complains about Obama unconstitutionally using executive power to accomplish goals but pledges he himself will use executive power to overrule the Supreme Court. Does anyone buy that? And, uh, what happens when the Supreme Court says he can't do that? We'll never know because he's never going to be president.

Trump was Trump. The people who love his "unfiltered" remarks got enough of them to love. I still think his lead is like the similar lead Rudy Giuliani had at this point in the 2008 election. In Trump's case, I get the feeling he'll be in it as long as he can sell himself as the leader and that he'll find some lame excuse to bow out once he starts not being in first place in some primaries. Fox News seems to be trying to sell him today as the Big Loser last night. I don't think he was but he did demonstrate that he doesn't have (or perhaps isn't interested in) real answers to policy questions. And he probably did lose a bit of ground with women voters.

The rest? Ben Carson looked like he'd been prescribing recreational drugs for himself. John Kasich probably helped himself in that no one knew who he was before the debate and now some do. I was impressed with Marco Rubio up to the point where he got more extreme over abortion than most "pro-life" voters and even his own past positions. Ted Cruz has outrage to offer and not much else. Rand Paul looked like a guy who hasn't gotten the memo that his campaign is over.

Chris Christie actually had some decent moments, I thought, but it's too little, too late. The guy needs to cut himself away from the herd somehow and he missed an opportunity to do it. He isn't going to win sounding like everyone else.  Come to think of it, he isn't going to win no matter what he does.

If I had to bet on which one of those people is going to be the nominee, I'd pick Jeb Bush but he sure didn't distinguish himself. When he's complaining about Obama abandoning Iraq, someone needs to ask him about his brother's Status of Forces agreement that pledged the U.S. would get the hell out of Iraq. (Fred Kaplan has a fact-check on many of the foreign policy statements and while we're at it, Politifact is comparing other claims to the record.)

I would guess that this morning most Republicans are about as unenthused about their potential nominees as I am about Hillary Clinton. Last night when the Oval Office seekers were all asked if God wanted them to run, I could only think about that joke: If God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.

This optical illusion worked for me for about a seventeenth of a second. Maybe it'll have a more lasting effect on you…

Sez here that Jerry Lewis has donated a batch of his movies to the Library of Congress including a print of The Day the Clown Cried. There is a ten-year embargo before it can be screened…and I guess someone's presuming that by that time, Jerry (age 89) will not be around and therefore will not have to hear reactions to it — or something.

I know people who are obsessed with this unseen movie. Here's a story I told here a few years ago…

One day back when we all had our video on VHS tapes, I was printing up fancy labels for some of my homemade recordings. The labels came on a sheet of twelve and I had eleven to print…so I was going to waste one label on the page. On a whim, I used the last one, printed THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED on it and slapped it on an old cassette I was otherwise going to toss. I put the tape on my shelf of movies, spine out for all the world to see. I just wanted to see if anyone would notice.

No one did until a few months later. A friend came by and was waiting in my video room while I got ready so we could leave for a restaurant where we were meeting others. Suddenly, he saw the tape. He yanked it off the shelf, thrust it at me and yelled, "PUT THIS ON! I must see this movie!" I started to tell him he didn't but he interrupted and shouted, "NOW! I must see this movie NOW!!!"

Imagine if you will that some evil villain has tricked you into drinking a fast-acting poison. Imagine you're getting dizzy and your knees are buckling. Imagine that your only hope is an antidote and that the only clue as to where and what that antidote is is on a videotape. Imagine how you'd act in that situation, then triple the intensity and you have an approximation of how my friend acted at that moment. He was five seconds from knocking me to the floor and jamming the tape into my VCR himself.

I finally explained to him that it was a joke. He didn't believe me and I had to run a little of the tape to show him it was not what the label said. I thought he was going to cry.

I suspect that friend will be lined up at the Library of Congress in ten years. I also suspect he will be disappointed and the film will not be either a cinematic masterpiece or something so inept and offensive that's its joy is in its awfulness. I tried to read the script years ago and it struck me as pretty boring. And while I admit to a certain fascination with Jerry Lewis as a person and a performer, I never thought any of his filmmaking was that wonderful…especially anything made after, say, The Nutty Professor. (I'm not even sure I ever made it all the way through that one and it's supposed to be his masterpiece.)

As I recall, interest in The Day the Clown Cried surfaced during a time when Jerry was on TV and in the news a lot coming across as really, really arrogant. He was belittling female comedians and every current trend in Hollywood and talking like the real King of Comedy and opining how people in show business were just plain better human beings than anyone else. Hair and political candidacy aside, whatever you don't like about Donald Trump today is how Jerry was then viewed by a lot of people.

It therefore became irresistible to think that he had this…this "secret." He had this reportedly stinkeroo movie he had to hide from public view, lest the world see that the guy with an ego the size of the Louisiana Purchase had made the worst, most detestable movie ever made. I think that's why the folks I knew who were eager to see it were so eager to see it: Because they disliked Jerry Lewis so much.

I don't think too many people feel that way about Jerry these days. He seems kind of sad and out of touch, especially since he lost the telethon. Survival has also blessed him with a certain importance. He's a symbol of a kind of performer who is almost extinct these days. Who else is alive from his era who was ever that huge a star? No one.

By the way: In all the articles that have been written about the unavailability of this movie and how Jerry has been keeping it hidden, I don't recall anyone ever mentioning one point: I don't think Jerry owns this movie. I'm not sure anyone does but it was based on a book by author Joan O'Brien. When she sold the rights, it was with the understanding that the film would be based on a screenplay she co-authored but Jerry pitched her script and co-wrote a new one.

Production shut down before the film was completed because the production company ran out of money, and they also never made their final payments to O'Brien. So one good reason Jerry didn't release it was because he couldn't. He seems to have confused this point for a while in interviews by claiming he was finishing a new cut and it would soon be out.

But I think if we know nothing else about Mr. Lewis it's that he announces many things that are never going to happen. Remember all the times the stage musical of The Nutty Professor had a firm opening date on Broadway that no one else seemed to know anything about? At some point, he seems to have decided that he couldn't finish The Day The Clown Cried even if he wanted to…and he no longer wanted to. And I find myself thinking that I don't particularly want to see it.

• Rick Perry realizes he appeared dumb in 2nd tier GOP debate; says from now on, he will try wearing TWO pairs of glasses to appear smarter.

Fred Kaplan (Hi, Fred!) gets to ask President Obama about the Iran deal. You won't be surprised to hear that Obama thinks it's a good deal and that there is no reasonable alternative…but you might be interested in how he explains it.

We will, of course, be watching Jon Stewart's last broadcast tonight. I dunno what's going to transpire except there was a rumor they were asking all his favorite targets, be they politicians or pundits, to either appear or tape something for the show. I assume we'll see a parade of past correspondents with Mr. Colbert in the most prominent position and Stewart will say something heartfelt about the staff and the support from the audience.

We shall see what we shall see. I'm padding the recording time on my Tivo just in case.

One thing to keep in mind: Jon Stewart is not dying. He's not retiring from show business. He'll do something else and it's not utterly impossible that whatever it is will cause many of his fans to say, "Gee, I'm glad he left when he did so he could do this." It doesn't seem likely but it could happen. Trevor Noah could also be a lot better than anyone expects. He will, after all, have almost all of Stewart's support team supporting him: Same producers, same writers, etc. Stewart's Daily Show was not a one-man operation and Noah will be reading a TelePrompter loaded with words from that support team.

There are folks, of course, who are happy Stewart is leaving. I suspect if I were a politician or pundit who he'd caught saying stupid or contradictory things, I'd be uncorking the bubbly. He didn't destroy any of these people — Jim Cramer still has a show — but he sure had to make some of them feel a little embarrassed at what they did for a living.

Hey, Rolling Stone has reposted their 2011 interview with Stewart and it's well worth reading.

Oh — and I was wondering what Comedy Central was going to air in that time slot until Trevor Noah's debut. Well, the next two weeks seem to be reruns of this past week and other recent episodes. Don't know if they're going to keep this going until Noah's first show on September 28 or if they have something else in mind. I hope they have something else in mind…or at least that they'll be running older Jon Stewart episodes that I don't still have in the Recently Deleted folder on my TiVo.

I have a few friends who fear greatly that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. It's not so much that they're afraid he might win as that even if he loses, getting as far as the nomination will cause his brand of politics to become the new norm for at least the G.O.P.

I keep reminding these folks how far we are not just from final balloting but from the first balloting. Trump could ride high for months and then collapse when we get to the Iowa Caucuses. Or he could win Iowa and then collapse. It's happened before.

Nate Silver, who's pretty damn good at predicting this kind of thing, puts Trump's chances of becoming the Republican nominee at 2%. Two percent! I think Cosby's at three or four. And that's just The Donald's chance of being the nominee, not the 45th President of these United States. Here is Mr. Silver explaining why Trump will crash and burn.

Yes, yes…I know the song "Artificial Flowers" is from the 1959 Broadway musical, Tenderloin, which had a book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and music by Jerry Bock. The same folks had done the acclaimed show Fiorello the previous year and this show, which was about a crusading clergyman trying to clean up a red-light district in Manhattan, had some of the same elements. Bock and Harnick later supplied the tunes for Fiddler on the Roof, The Rothchilds, She Loves Me, The Apple Tree and other shows.

I still think it's an awfully odd choice for Bobby Darin to have performed the way he performed it.

Here's the song performed closer to the way its composers intended. The singer is New York stage performer Ciro Barbaro…

Okay, so I'm imagining a record producer goes to Bobby Darin when he's at the peek of his popularity and says, "Bobby, sweetie! I've got your next big hit right here. Get this…a song about a little orphan girl — a small child who's living in poverty somewhere. She's so poor that in order to eat, she has to slave day and night making paper flowers by hand. And then — get this — she freezes to death! Great, huh? And here's the best part! It's an 'up' tune…really jazzy with a big band sound!"

Immediately, Bobby says, "Great! I can't wait to record it!" And it was a pretty big hit for him…