Monthly Archives: February 2016

Last night, I viewed a Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from May 20, 1975 that I recently TiVoed from Antenna TV. The first guest was Joan Rivers and I've forgotten what a good comic she was back then. I came to dislike her later on when she got frantic and nasty but she was pretty good in this episode.

The second guest was Truman Capote, discussing several topics. One was the only topic he was sometimes capable of discussing: The greatness of Truman Capote. Another was the lurid details of a crime he, being Truman Capote, knew all about but couldn't tell us all about. That is to say, he couldn't tell us much about the crime but he drop many a lurid detail. He said that soon, the whole world would know about this crime and it would be the most sensational story ever…and I'm wondering if we ever did or if he just made it all up. He also dished up juicy gossip about Jackie Onassis.

And he spoke of how he was about to make his acting debut in a "mystery thriller comedy" written by Neil Simon. He didn't mention the title of the movie but he was talking about Murder by Death, which came out in June of 1976, thirteen months after this Tonight Show aired. Oddly enough, Capote said that in it, he would play a "Sam Spade type detective."

He did not. In the film, Peter Falk played the Sam Spade type detective and Capote played the much smaller part of a host who invites the Spade doppelgänger and other parodies of great fictional detectives to a party where murders are committed. I cannot believe anyone but Capote ever thought he could or would play the larger role Falk played and I wonder how he got confused or just what happened there. He also said the film would start shooting in October so I guess they had plenty of time to disabuse him of his errant notion.

Neil Simon, by the way, hated Capote's amateurism in the role and spent the entire filming period trying to persuade the producer, Ray Stark, to fire Capote and replace him with "any actual member of the Screen Actors Guild." He did not get his way.

Simon's first choice for the part, who wanted to do it but was committed elsewhere just then, was Orson Welles. One time when I heard Simon doing a Q-and-A with an audience, he was asked what the big difference was between writing for the stage and writing for the screen. He mentioned Murder by Death and said, "If I'd done that as a play, I would have had the power to fire Truman Capote."

Finally, the last guest Mr. Carson welcomed was Bob Speca, who had spent the morning before they taped setting up a display of dominoes to be knocked down during the program. These days, one can see exhibitions in which teams of domino setter-uppers spend days, even weeks, arranging squadrillions of dominoes to be knocked down, usually setting some record that will stand for about as long as the dominoes did. Mr. Speca, arranging 7,500 dominoes all by himself in about six hours, seems to have started the fad/sport with this, his first appearance on the Carson show.

At least, I remember never seeing anyone do it before and I also recall how the next day, everyone was talking about it and fraternities were organizing bigger, more elaborate domino pushovers. According to Craig Tennis, who was a Talent Coordinator for Johnny at the time, he was the one who'd found and booked Speca…and everyone on the program thought he had lost his sanity. That was until the segment was a colossal success and it was often included in anniversary shows thereafter.

From the night of Speca's appearance, every Talent Coordinator on Johnny's staff and every other talk show would aspire to finding something comparable. It was The Great Talent Coordinator Success Story.

And what's Bob Speca doing these days? Amazingly, he's still setting up and knocking down dominoes. Here's a recent example of his handiwork. Nice to see he's made it pay off…

Kevin Drum checks out the tax plans of the top four Republican candidates for the Oval Office. To no one's surprise, they all give a token tax cut to the middle class and a huge one to the top 1% of earners. Ted Cruz gives the biggest tax cut to the rich.

And they all balloon the deficit between six and nine trillion dollars over ten years. Donald Trump increases it the most, though I suppose all would argue that this will stimulate the economy and the growth will make up the lost revenue — which it never does. No matter how many times cutting taxes for the very rich fails to pay for itself with economic growth, some people will never give up the idea that it does.

I am so glad John Oliver is back on the air. If you haven't seen this week's episode — especially the segment about voting rights — track it down immediately. And while you're at it, read this interview with the man.

If he were being totally honest, what would Mitch McConnell say about replacing Justice Scalia? He would say something like this.

Jonathan Chait deals with the hysterical nutcases and their ridiculous claims that George W. Bush was President when the World Trade Center fell on 9/11. Some of those looneys even claim there was something wrong with sending America to war over non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction.

I used to wish I could dance like Gene Kelly. Actually, Gene Kelly has been dead for twenty years and he's still, in his current state, a better dancer than I am.

Anyway, I no longer wish I could dance like Gene Kelly even in his prime. I wish I could dance like Jack Stanford…

The most outspoken Liberal on the Supreme Court mourns the passing of the most outspoken Conservative.

Okay, now they've gone too far. Cartoonists who draw for Playboy are circulating the word that the magazine, which just dropped photos of naked women, is getting rid of the gag cartoons, as well. This is troubling because, first of all, it was one of the two best markets for such material, The New Yorker being the other. There are still approximately 72,730,522 places where one can see photos of nude ladies but the number of places to read good gag cartoons just got cut down to almost nothing.

Whether you liked the cartoons in Playboy or not, the magazine had a commitment to them that made cartoonists wish every editor or publisher was Hugh Hefner. Hef was a wanna-be cartoonist himself and even drew a few for the early issues. He soon realized he wasn't good enough to meet his own standards so he hired folks who were. He paid them well and gave their work lots of room and in many cases, first-class reproduction. The guys in The New Yorker didn't get full pages or, often, the chance to paint their work in full color.

I can guess why Playboy's doing this. It saves money, plus they're now following the model of contemporary men's magazines…and those don't run a lot of cartoons. What a shame.

I started to write a post about how I think the void on the Supreme Court is going to impact the election but I'm busy and Amanda Marcotte said pretty much the same thing better than I could. The one thing I don't quite agree with is when she says…

Everyone knows the real reason [Republicans oppose Obama] is the conservative base has never accepted that a black Democrat could be a legitimately elected President, and after 7 years of having to live with a President the majority of white voters voted against, Republicans are going to use this as a chance to throw a nationwide temper tantrum.

I'm sure race is part of it but I think there are plenty of Obama detractors where that isn't an issue or is a tiny part of it. There are Republicans who just plain think any Democrat of any color is bad and unworthy of public office, just as there are plenty of Dems who feel that way about any Repub — or will in the future. Bill Clinton was a white male and my righter-wing friends felt he was only President of the United States by some flukish technicality and wasn't really President the way Reagan or Bush were.

I'm really wondering if in my lifetime, we will ever see a president who is accepted, albeit grudgingly, by the opposition party. Or if from now on, the rule is going to be if your side loses an election, the person who won is illegitimate, unqualified for the position for some moral reason and maybe a legal one to boot, and every single thing he or she does is wrong, potentially lethal to the United States and probably an impeachable offense.

In the last few months, eBay has been flooded with fake sketches for sale. I've seen at least a half-dozen bogus Jack Kirby sketches offered — i.e., sketches that were in no way drawn by Jack — and we will soon reach the stage where there have been more bad counterfeit Charles Schulz drawings than there were actual Peanuts strips. There are a couple of sellers who specialize in nothing real and others who intermingle phonies with real ones. Some of these fraudulent drawings have been sold for the kind of prices that ensures their makers will not stop cranking them out.

Beware, beware, beware. Even some art dealers who've been around for a while and look as if like they should know better have been fooled.

There is relatively little fakery of published drawings. Almost no one whips up a phony page from a printed issue of Fantastic Four or Batman because…well, that's a lot of work, the real one might well be floating around, and it's too easy to compare the page being offered for sale with the version in the comic book. It doesn't take as much effort to copy/trace a drawing that a great artist did for some admirer, especially a drawing that if it was published at all was published in some obscure publication.

It's especially easy when the artist in question is deceased, though live artists have been spoofed as well. Not long ago, a collector paid megabucks for a phony sketch — so much so that he stubbornly refuses to believe he got taken. No one — including the artist who allegedly did the drawing — can convince him otherwise.

Phony drawings should not be confused with re-creations. There are a lot of those around too and when done with any integrity, they are clearly signed as such. Mike Royer, who inked much of Jack Kirby's work in the seventies, has done re-creations of many pages and covers and he signs and dates them in a way that leaves no doubt that the piece in question was never touched by Jack. Other artists do this too, including artists who are replicating pieces that they never worked on in the first place. This is all Kosher. Passing a newly-created pencil drawing off as if was by Frank Frazetta is not.

How can you, the art buyer, protect yourself? There's no easy way and some fakes are really, really good. Frankly, I would never buy an "unpublished" sketch by mail, nor will I "authenticate" a piece I haven't seen in person. And I'm supposed to be an expert at this regarding certain artists. That should tell you something.

Another version of this post will appear on this blog in a few months, followed by another and another and another…

So…uh, what happens if the Supreme Court is 4-4 until the next president can nominate someone…and the high court has to decide this year if Ted Cruz is eligible for the presidency?

How about if there's a Bush v. Gore style dispute over the election in November?

Or if another Supreme Court Justice dies or steps down? (I guess the answer to that depends on whether we're left with four liberals and three conservatives or four conservatives and three liberals. Whichever it is, everyone's going to have to change their position in a hurry about whether Obama can nominate someone.)

Some legal scholars are saying Obama could make a recess appointment while the Senate isn't working and put a ninth justice on the court if he acts swiftly. There would doubtlessly be legal challenges to this but who would settle it? A tied Supreme Court?

Lastly for now: What if he appointed Bob Newhart to the Supreme Court? Everyone loves Bob Newhart. How could anyone vote against Bob Newhart? Plus, he's 86 so he'd probably die or resign in a year or so, by which time there'd be a new president to appoint his successor. It's a win/win, I tell you.

I am just now getting into the works of Steve Reich, the composer who has done much the last few decades to take music in new, interesting directions. One of the many admirers of his work is Stephen Sondheim and a little more than a year ago, the two men took the stage in New York for a joint conversation moderated by John Schaefer and a performance of many of their individual compositions. It runs a little more than two hours but they might just be two hours well spent…

The other day, I had a sudden need to have an envelope delivered to an office in Burbank. Never mind what it was; I just had to get it there in about an hour.

I'm still not driving on account of my knee so I decided to try a new app that's supposed to be like an Uber for deliveries. I'll leave its name out of this because I think what's wrong with it is that its founders released it without adequate testing and they'll have it fixed soon. Either that or it'll be out of business.

Anyway, the way it works is that if you have a package you need to have delivered, you enter your address and the destination address. For some reason — probably so they can send them advertising — they require the e-mail address of the recipient. You estimate the weight of your package and take a photo of it. The specs and photo go out to their network of freelance, roaming delivery folks who are looking to make some extra bucks like people do with Uber or Lyft. They bid on the job and you select the bid you like — presumably the lowest one.

I haven't used Lyft but I've had great luck with Uber. I've also been utterly satisfied with two services — Caviar and DoorDash — that pick up orders from restaurants and bring them to your front door. Both have worked precisely as expected. This delivery service didn't.

I sent the info and the photo and waited for the offers to roll in. The delivery was to an office ten miles from me and it was 3:00 on a busy afternoon. So I was thinking that a price of $20-$30 was about right.

It took a few minutes but I finally got an offer. For $1400.00. And yes, I typed that right.

A minute ago, I got a second offer: $800.00. Okay, so it's $600 less but it was still ridiculous.

Then came what turned out to be the final offer I received. This one was for $14. Quite a range of prices there, wouldn't you say?

Since time to get the package there was slipping away, I didn't wait for another offer…which was a good thing because there wasn't one. A page saying the deal was on gave me the cell number of the person with whom I had entered into this deal and I copied it down. Then I noticed that the same screen told me that the trip would cover an estimated 310 miles. Something was clearly unclear.

I went to a screen that was supposed to tell me the current status of the little mission I had just launched and couldn't find any trace of it. In fact, I went to every page I could access of the app and couldn't find my task mentioned at all. Quickly, I called the phone number of the delivery guy and got him on his cell. "Oh yeah," he said. "I'm sorry I had to cancel the delivery." The app had not informed me had done this.

I asked why and he said, "I'm in Las Vegas." He really was over 300 miles from me.

"They don't have all the bugs out of the app," he explained. "My phone is registered in Los Angeles but I live now in Vegas." How did this app get out of Beta-testing without that coming to someone's attention? He went on: "Your package is going to an address on a street with the same name as a street here in Vegas. I thought it was a local delivery so I put in my bid…then I realized it was another city so I canceled."

I told him about the two bids he beat out. He said, "Those guys are probably in other cities and they're using some sort of automatic bid thing that doesn't notice you're thousands of miles away and it just quotes you a price based on sheer mileage. Good luck finding someone who's local and I hope they get this app working properly."

That was the end of the call. By now, there wasn't time to look for alternate delivery services so I summoned an Uber car which was here in two minutes. I ran out, hopped in and rode out to Burbank where I had the driver wait while I took the package in. Then the trip continued and he brought me back home. Total charge, since there was a lot of traffic and a major "surge" on, was $66.

Oh — and we didn't get it there in time, officially. I was supposed to have it there by 4 PM when the office was closing for the day. We got there at 4:20 but one person was still there and just locking up. So they accepted it and I felt that enormous sense of relief you get when you can suddenly stop fretting about something that you've been fretting about with a clock ticking.

On the ride home, I adopted my new philosophy for when something doesn't go right: Oh, well. At least I have something I can write about for the blog. And I wondered how such a flawed app made it onto the Apple Store and my iPhone.

Still, it's a good idea. Sometime when time is not such a vital factor, I'll probably try a couple of other similar services. I may even try this one again. Like I said, they're either going to get the insects out of this thing soon or go outta business.

This will sadden many of you. I've known about it for some time and it saddens me. One of the greatest comedians of our time, and a gentleman I had the honor of knowing a little and working with a little is Shelley Berman. I don't think a lot of people realize how important he was to the art we call stand-up comedy, even though he did a lot of his sitting on a stool. He is — well, I guess I have to say was — a brilliant, funny man but what's happened to him is not funny at all.

Announcer Christopher Bay is a close friend of the Bermans and he's been helping them out for several years now. This morning, Christopher issued this statement…

Folks —

Earlier today, I spoke with Sarah, Shelley's devoted wife of 68 years, and she has asked me to make a statement regarding Shelley's health, as there have been many questions and quite a bit of speculation in recent months.

I am sorry to report that our beloved Shelley is suffering from Alzheimer's. It was discovered early last year, and has progressed to a point where I have been asked to make this announcement.

Shelley is no longer able to perform onstage or to give interviews. His physical health is frail, but considering that he is 91 years old, he is doing relatively well physically.

His mental state, however, is failing. As Sarah said in a letter to friends, "Shelley is at a stage where he does not remember most of his past. He mixes events up a lot." He still sees people and and loves being around them, though. Sarah says, "He is still a performer."

He will remain at home as long as possible. The Bermans' daughter Rachel comes in as often as she can to help her mother, and they are surrounded by friends who will also lend a hand whenever they are needed.

Sarah wants me to thank all of Shelley's friends and fans on Facebook for all of your support and loyalty over the years.

Please keep the Bermans in your thoughts and prayers as they face this final trial, together as always.

There it is. That great comedy mind is failing and there's nothing anyone can do about it. On the one hand, you can say he's lived a rich, full life, blessed by great success and his wonderful spouse. On the other, it's just plain sad. Maybe some of you would rather not hear about the sad part but I felt you should know.

And I have this pal named Leonard Maltin who has seen more movies than you have — and by "you," I don't mean you, the person reading this. I mean all of you who read this blog. He's seen more movies than all of you put together and he never, ever under any circumstances, no matter how dreadful the movie is, walks out on one.

Until now. Leonard finally came across one that had him heading for the lobby after close to an hour. And when you think of some of the films that didn't cause him to take a hike, you have some sense of how much he disliked this one.