Yearly Archives: 2015

As I've mentioned someplace here, I wasn't a huge watcher of David Letterman the last ten years or so. I still admire the hell out of the guy as a brilliant, clever man…but I thought his show in its final decade became way too predictable and that the characterizations of him as grumpy or crabby were often not unfounded. Mostly though, he seemed to me uninterested. I'd tune in for a great guest, partly for the great guest but partly because a Steve Martin or a Tom Hanks would usually cause Dave to actually act like he was enjoying his own show. When he didn't, I couldn't.

On Facebook the other day, I got into a bit of back-and-forth with a friend who was declaring it a Cosmic Injustice (or something on that level) that the innovative, edgy show of Mr. David Letterman was beaten in the ratings by the (to him) non-innovative, safe show of Mr. Jay Leno. I told him that if it had been Dave's shows from the previous century being beaten by Leno's shows from this century, I'd probably agree with him. But the Dave of this century was not, to me, the Dave who did things no one — except maybe Steve Allen — had ever done before on TV. Too often for me, he was not even the guy who did things he himself had not done the previous week.

I offer as support for my position that amidst all the well-deserved tributes upon his retirement, few of those who hailed him as a great groundbreaker mentioned any groundbreaking from the last ten years. They all mentioned the Suit of Velcro (1984) or sending Larry "Bud" Melman to the bus terminal (1983) or the 360° show (1986) or crushing things with a steamroller (1983) or the Monkey-Cam (1986) or bits with Andy Kaufman or even a few things from his early days at NBC. Even the clips Dave himself showed of great moments were mainly from 10+ years back. Remember the clip he had on the last show of him working the drive-thru at Taco Bell? That was from 1996.

When the tributes mentioned more recent moments, they were almost ones where outside circumstances forced Dave into unprecedented territory: Dave returning after his heart attack, Dave revealing that he was being blackmailed, Dave holding our hands after 9/11, etc. He was terrific in how he handled them but then the next night, the comedy bit would be to send Pat the Stagehand up to throw something off the roof. Once in a while, a guest would do something to shake things up like Joaquin Phoenix clamming up or Drew Barrymore flashing — and by the way, I have now seen the clip of Drew exposing her breasts more than I've seen the one of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.

Handed a challenge, he was almost always great but the show he did most nights was configured to not challenge him in any way. There were no surprises for Dave. Penn Jillette wrote a piece about a time he and Teller were on the old show at NBC…

After Penn & Teller's first appearance on his show, Letterman himself took us aside and told us privately to hit him as hard as we could in our next appearance. He asked us to be as mean to him as possible and not to let him know in advance what we were going to do.

Teller got an idea. We called the producer and told him our idea. The producer said it was too mean, we couldn't do it. We asked him to tell Dave that. The producer called back right away and said that Dave wouldn't hear the idea, he just wanted us to do it. We dropped hundreds of live cockroaches all over David Letterman. He freaked. He lost his s—. When we went to commercial, Dave swore at us and pushed us away from him. He wouldn't even look at us. He didn't say goodnight to us. But he called the next day to thank us and tell us we had done exactly what he had wanted. He said it was great TV and he welcomed us back any time.

That was the David Letterman of NBC. That was not the guy on CBS. My friends who prefer Dave over Jay all say, "I loved the old Jay." Well, I loved the old Dave. I thought both those guys took to coasting but it bothered me more with Dave.  He was so good improvising on the fly.

Before at least ten of those friends write and tell me, "I loved Dave even when he was coasting," let me say I understand that. He was a fascinating presence on our TV and I even enjoyed the early stages of that coasting after he seemed to decide he would not venture outside a controlled environment. I hope you can understand how some of us who'd been watching him avidly from the days of his morning show just felt too much déjà vu and also that a guy with his power shouldn't be acting like he was doing his own show under duress.

At some point, I realized that I had a filter available to me…a way of watching for Dave's good moments without sitting through the interviews he clearly didn't want to be doing, the monologue jokes he did without enthusiasm and the desk spots when he complained about things that shouldn't be troubling a guy with his clout and dough. All I had to do was unSeason-Pass my TiVo, not watch the regular telecasts and catch the great, filtered excerpts on YouTube.

Here's one from 2007. I think I was still TiVoing Dave every night at this point but I was watching with a less effective filter — my Fast Forward button. He did not venture out from behind his desk for this one…just sat there and made smartass remarks, but I did laugh out loud at it. They sent guys dressed as Spider-Man — and when they ran out of those costumes, other characters — into a Jamba Juice outlet across the street. The joke, of course, turned out to be that no one in New York City seemed to care one bit. (It helps to remember, by the way, that this was four years before the Spider-Man musical down the street. Guys walking around in Spider-Man costumes were a little more unusual then than they would soon be…but still, no one cared.)

That was funny enough but there were two added elements to the joke for some of us, one being that this Jamba Juice was located in the building that then housed the offices of DC Comics.

Also, you'd never know it from much of the publicity but Spider-Man was co-created by a very gifted man named Steve Ditko who, as was too frequent in comics once upon a time, received neither proper credit nor moola for his contribution. His contributions included designing that iconic costume and much, much more.

Watching this, I was aware that Mr. Ditko's office was (and I believe still is) not far from that Jamba Juice. He could well have been walking down that street at that hour. He might even have decided to stop into that Jamba Juice for a refreshing Mango-a-Go-Go® Smoothie. The bit's even funnier when you imagine that and his reaction…

The Jennie-O company makes about eighty-seven thousand different turkey products, a few of which grace almost every supermarket in Los Angeles. They make your turkey burgers and your turkey franks and your turkey sausage and your ground turkey and your turkey bratwurst and your turkey bacon and your oven-ready turkey breast and your turkey meatballs and your turkey pastrami and your turkey ham and your whole turkeys and…well, you should grasp the concept by now.

My favorite Jennie-O product, as I've mentioned here before, is something they call Turkey Pot Roast (or sometimes, Bone-in Turkey Pot Roast). This is a turkey thigh that's been slow-cooked via a process that makes the meat very tender. In previous posts here, I've itemized the reasons I like them…

1. They taste great.
2. They're easy to make and you can do it without any prep. If at 7:00, you get the urge for turkey, you grab one out of your refrigerator, pop it in the microwave and you can be dining on one of these by 7:15. These are lifesavers when I have one of my difficult-to-plan days…which lately is every day.
3. They're healthy. Or at least healthier than anything else I'd be likely to eat if I didn't have one of these available.
4. And they're cheap…about $3.33 a pound for cooked, almost-boneless turkey. One Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast usually weighs in around three pounds so for ten bucks, I get an awful lot of good, cheap meals. They also reheat rather well.
5. And did I mention they taste great?  They do.

Note the part about heating them up in your microwave at home. When last I wrote about these, the Jennie-O folks were marketing them two ways. One was what I just described. The other was a version — basically the same but with the skin left on — that supermarkets could purchase to heat up and sell the same way they sell hot rotisserie chickens. This version I don't like as much because…well, here: I'll make another list…

1. They don't give me the above-described convenience of having a supply in the fridge, thereby being able to heat one up whenever I want one. The unpredictability of my life demands that I have something like that available and Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts are the best thing I've found that fits into that category.
2. The stores that carry the already-heated ones are some distance from me. The nearest one is about a half-hour drive and they don't always have them.
3. And sometimes when they do, they've been sitting out in the display case being kept warm for hours. Not as good.

So that, as I've written here, is why I decided to always keep a few of the "home" version in my icebox — which is what I did until a few months ago when the Jennie-O folks stopped making that kind.

You may recall I was always on the hunt for them. First, I bought them at Costcos. Then one Costco after another in my town stopped carrying them, despite my repeated calls and urging.  I don't know why they stopped.  Maybe they had to make room for the display of thirty-gallon canisters of A-1 Sauce.

But that was okay because I found out that the Fresh & Easy chain carried them. Unfortunately, the Fresh & Easy chain keeps being acquired and changing management and at some point, they ceased to carry Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts. (You want to know why the Fresh & Easy company has been in so much trouble? Try calling them up and asking them to carry a product. I don't think their Customer Service department ever imagined they might have to service a customer.)

But that was okay because shortly after they stopped, the Ralphs supermarket chain began carrying them. That was the easiest of all for me and I was very happy. Now, Ralphs has stopped carrying them…and so have enough other retailers across the land that the Jennie-O company no longer packages the kind you take home and keep in your refrigerator until needed. They may bring them back at some point…and then again, they may not.

So says a senior exec at the Jennie-O company who was inordinately helpful in telling me where to purchase this product back when they made this product. Since they don't at the moment, she has now set me up with someone at one of the markets that sells the other kind, the kind they heat and sell next to their rotisserie chickens. The nice lady at Jennie-O has arranged for me to purchase them unheated from that market.

I mention all this because my past endorsements of Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts brought a lot of messages from folks who said they'd tried 'em and loved 'em. I wanted to alert you that if you're looking for them, you're not going to find them where you once did…now. They may come back. They may not. But they can be had in the deli section of some markets, all warmed and ready to take home. (In Los Angeles, they're often at outlets of Jon's Market and also Sprouts. Sprouts is a chain that's kind of like Whole Foods Markets only the selection is better and you can buy meat there without taking out a second mortgage on your home.)

If you find a place that sells them hot and you want to buy them cold, ask to speak to the manager of that department. You may have to buy them as I do in quantity, in vacuum pouches that contain several.

And that's all I have to say on the topic. This has been your update on Turkey Pot Roasts. Stay tuned to this website for late-breaking news on the vital topic of Turkey Pot Roasts. I'm Mark Evanier, your Turkey Pot Roast reporter. Thanks for listening.

Interesting facts about my favorite place to shop, Costco…

I belong to a group called Yarmy's Army. I am one of the youngest members in fact of this club for veteran comedians and performers. We meet, we eat dinner together once a month and sometimes the group puts on little shows with the talents of its members.

There's one such show on Sunday night. It's at the Lonny Chapman Theater on Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood and it will feature the talents of Peter Marshall, Hank Garrett, Fred Willard, Greg Lewis, Jim MacGeorge, Howard Storm, Mike Preminger and others. Tickets are cheap. Talent is high. It's at 7 PM and if you'd like to attend, here's how to do it. Do not worry. I am not performing. Really good people are.

Several folks I know who've seen it are raving about Something Rotten, a new Broadway musical that they say is very clever and funny. It's kind of a modern look at the Renaissance and it deals with two playwrights trying to escape from the rather formidable footsteps of that Shakespeare guy.

I haven't seen it but I want to. In the meantime, we can all listen to its complete cast album — online and free for what I assume is a limited time. Go here and click. It's probably good marketing as listening to the first few songs made me want to see it even more.

Dennis Hastert.

Matt Taibbi savages Judith Miller for her Iraq reporting and for pinning the blame for its inaccuracy on just about everyone else. I don't know why he's so angry. Helping get this country to make its all-time greatest military mistake resulting in countless deaths and untold billions…why should a little thing like that harm a reporter's career?

The fine folks who run Comic-Con International today announced…

Don McGregor, John Stanley to Receive 2015 Bill Finger Award

SAN DIEGO – Don McGregor and John Stanley have been selected to receive the 2015 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

"I asked on my blog for suggestions of worthy recipients," Evanier explains. "I received dozens of worthy names, but the frequency and passion with which these two gentlemen were suggested led us to an easy decision."

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. "The premise of this award is to recognize writers for a body of work that has not received its rightful reward and/or recognition," Evanier explains. "That was what Jerry Robinson intended as his way of remembering his friend, Bill Finger. Bill is still kind of the industry poster boy for writers not receiving proper reward or recognition." Evanier will present the awards on July 10 during the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards ceremony at the 2015 Comic-Con International.

Don McGregor began his career writing comic books with work for Warren (Creepy, Eerie) in 1971, and in 1972 he joined the editorial staff at Marvel Comics. Before long, he was writing for Marvel where his work became known for its unique voice. His runs with the character Black Panther in Jungle Action and on Killraven in Amazing Adventures drew strong fan response, as did his later efforts for other publishers: Detectives, Inc; Sabre, Nathaniel Dusk, and the acclaimed Ragamuffins. He also wrote Zorro both for comic books and comic strips. Don will appear at Comic-Con to accept this award for his inspiring body of work.

John Stanley is best known for writing and occasionally drawing Little Lulu for Dell Comics from 1945 to 1959, turning Marge's single-panel gag cartoon into a popular and hilarious series of stories and creating most of the supporting cast for Lulu's world. His rich characterizations and humor made for a memorable series, and he applied those skills to other Dell and Gold Key comics, including Nancy and Sluggo, Melvin Monster, O.G. Whiz, and Thirteen (Going On Eighteen). As with his contemporary Carl Barks, Stanley's work was almost completely anonymous, but avid fans unearthed the secret of who was doing that superb work. Stanley left comics for other work in the early seventies and passed away in 1993. His Finger Award will be accepted by his son, James.

The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914-1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The major sponsor for the 2015 awards is DC Comics; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada.

Additional information on the Finger Award can be found at this link.

Four years ago (as reported here), I saw an extremely-limited run of the Neil Simon play, The Sunshine Boys, starring Jerry Van Dyke and Dick Van Dyke. (Well, at least they did most of the play. There were a few changes.)

I thought they were both oddly cast as old, washed-up Jewish comedians, especially since neither looks or acts anywhere near his actual age and it's hard to think of these guys as forgotten performers. But hey, it was the Van Dyke Brothers — two real pros who can't not make something interesting and funny. I'd go see either one of them play the title role in Mame and a lot of you would, too. When I wrote about it back then, quite a few of you sent me messages to say, "Gosh, I wish I could see that." Well, you can see most of it in this video.

The first twenty minutes or so are missing but if you know the play, which is the same as the movie, you can follow the story. If you want to skip ahead to when Dick makes his entrance, that occurs a little more than ten minutes in. And don't go looking for The Doctor and the Tax Collector sketch. It was replaced by a musical number…

A new Gallup Poll says Americans are getting more Liberal (or maybe Libertarian) in their views of what's morally acceptable. If this polling is right, there's been a huge leap in just the past four years for folks being fine with gay relations; also in having a baby outside of wedlock, pre- (or non-) marital sex, divorce, stem cell research and even polygamy. I can't think of any public discussions of polygamy in the last four years except the dire warnings of some that Gay Marriage will surely lead to it.

A few folks I know will deny all this and/or predict we're speeding to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah…but they probably said that when the numbers on gay and lesbian relations went from 10% to 12% okay with it. This country is constantly expanding its definition of what's morally acceptable. On the sex-related issues, for instance, we're always moving in the direction that what consenting adults wish to do in private is their own damn business.

Still, a lot of this is too simplified. Take suicide, for instance. The poll says 19% of us now consider it morally acceptable. Yeah, but whose suicide? I'm sure it's different if you're talking about a despondent teenager versus, say, a 90-year-old person who is in miserable health and pain. (That's surely why doctor-assisted suicide ranks so much higher.) Or take gambling. If a rich person wants to go gamble with highly-disposable income, that's a lot different from the father of a family on welfare taking next month's rent money to Vegas and putting it all on Double-Zero.

I also wonder how much rising opposition to the Death Penalty has to do with feeling it's wrong for the government to kill people and how much is the feeling that it's being administered unfairly and/or that we execute innocent people. And how come the poll didn't ask people about one of the bigger moral issues of our time…the serving of cole slaw? I'd like to think I've done my part to raise opposition to that abomination a few points. I'm all for expanding tolerance on most of these issues but there are some things a decent society just cannot tolerate.

Jack Kirby is finally getting some of the recognition that he's deserved for so long. He's being recognized as the co-creator of so many of the Marvel Super-Heroes and even better, he's had a pretzel named after him.

My three favorite lyricists in the world are probably Johnny Mercer, Stephen Sondheim and Frank Jacobs. For over fifty years (that is not an overestimate) Frank Jacobs has been one of the most prolific writers for MAD and while everything he does for them is great, I have a special fondness for his poems and song parodies.

Back when the song "Downtown" — the one recorded by Petula Clark — was heard everywhere, Frank did his own version of and it went a little like this. (Well, actually, it went exactly like this…)

When you eat meat / but hate the meat that you're eating / Then you've surely got
Ground Round!

It's so unnerving / when they're constantly serving / in an eating spot
Ground Round!

It may be called a Chopped Steak, a Salisbury or Beef Patty!
No matter what it's called, it's always overcooked and fatty!
What can you do?

Sound off to your waiter there / And loudly pound on your table
Stand up on your chair / And shout Ground Round!
Piled on my plate I see / Ground Round!
Always you're conning me! / Ground Round!
Why must it always be? / Ground Round! Ground Round! Ground Round!

I loved that one. A few years ago, I was moderating a panel on MAD at Comic-Con and I asked each panelist to name one thing they did for the magazine that people always mention to them as especially memorable. Frank thought for a second — a lot of possible answers there — and mentioned "Ground Round." I, to prove his statement and I suppose to be a show-off, immediately quoted the lyrics from memory. I seem to remember Drew Carey singing it, also from memory on some talk show once.

Anyway, it's in this new book of his work along with hundreds of other goodies, including his great spoof of West Side Story with John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev heading the rival gangs, all expertly drawn by Mort Drucker. Saluting Frank's work like this makes for a book that really has some of the best things that ever appeared in that magazine.

I still think, as I've suggested for years, that MAD should put out a record — I guess a CD, now — of good vocalists and an orchestra performing Jacobs song parodies but this will do for now. Here's your Amazon link to get one.

P.S. Any singers out there with a keyboard or a Karaoke track of "Downtown?" Make a video of "Ground Round," upload it to YouTube, send me a link and I'll embed the first one here! That'll get you at least ten viewings.

Six funny women discuss the problems faced by funny women. A few of them are also faced by funny men.

Texas and nearby states have been experiencing record-shattering and destructive rains, including ten inches in a single 24-hour period in Houston. Bill Nye (Science Guy) took to Twitter and wrote…

Billion$$ in damage in Texas & Oklahoma. Still no weather-caster may utter the phrase Climate Change.

This has triggered a monsoon of hateful replies calling him names and suggesting new places on his body for his bowtie and such. The change in climate could not possibly have anything to do with Climate Change.

I have the feeling that if the same kind of flooding had hit San Francisco — or any part of the country that has accepted Gay Marriage — the same folks who are attacking Bill Nye (S.G.) would say it was obvious it was God's way of showing He was pissed. How about if we spread the notion that the rains are clear signs that God is against Gender Discrimination, the Death Penalty, Open Carry and Rick Perry running for president again?