Monthly Archives: February 2016

Apparently, the first "no naked women" issue of Playboy is out but I haven't seen it yet. Let's see if when I do, it changes my mind that this will turn out to be a short-lived marketing decision. From what I can see online, "no naked women" actually means "they're only naked in some photos and when they are, you can't see as much of them as you used to be able to see."

In the meantime, you don't have to buy that issue to read its feature interview, which is with Rachel Maddow. You can read it here. I don't agree with her on everything but I agree with her on a number of things.

I'm not going to watch.

Well, it's been a while since I had a real odd rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on this site. Here it is as refried by the Maniacal 4 Trombone Quartet. Thanks to Phil Pollard for telling me about this…

Jonathan Chait argues that Democrats and Liberals should be happy if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination: He's just about certain to lose and if by some fluke he did win, he's preferable to Cruz or Rubio, who are starting to look like the only other options. He makes a comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger's stint as governor of California and it's not a bad comparison.

This morn's economic news is that the American economy added enough new jobs last month to bring the unemployment rate down to 4.9 percent. There was also a decent boost in wage growth.

So if you're Donald or Ted or Marco or Chris or anyone running for the Republican nomination, your work is cut out for you. If these numbers were occurring under a Republican president, you'd be citing them as incontrovertible proof that the country was on the right track and whatever the G.O.P. was doing was working and we have to stay the course at all cost. But Obama's president so you have to argue the numbers are bogus and the nation is in terrible, terrible trouble. Let's see how they do that.

As I mentioned in the obit on Joe Alaskey, whenever I worked with Joe, he was a solid professional. I also mentioned that his most recent job was narrating Murder Comes to Town, a series seen on the Discovery Channel.

I was wrong on that second count. I received a message today from a publicist telling me that the show is actually seen on the Investigation Discovery Channel and I have corrected the original item. She also wrote, "Joe was a beloved colleague to ID's production team, who are saddened by the news" and she told me this interesting fact: Last Friday, Joe recorded his narration for the final episode of the show's third season. It will air on Monday, March 14.

There are many qualities one must have to be a real pro but they all revolve around being dependable. Joe had been very sick for quite some time. Let's give him some applause for sticking around until he'd completed the job.

And now, here's Gilbert Gottfried. If there's a commercial before it, just sit through it. It may be just as funny…

Matthew Yglesias on what Hillary (or Bernie) may be able to accomplish with a Republican congress. It ain't the big stuff, true…but there's lots of small stuff.

I was about halfway through watching the first chapter of The People Vs. O.J. Simpson the other night when a very important question popped into my head. I asked me, "Me, why are you watching this?"

When all this went down two decades ago, I paid way too much attention to the case, catching all sorts of interview shows along with the trial itself and reading most of the books. I became convinced that Orenthal James Simpson murdered two people in the coldest of blood and that the evidence proved it far beyond reasonable — or even unreasonable doubt.

I did not like the way this story unfolded in reality. It was an ugly one with bad guys not only winning but trampling over a lot of good guys in order to set a murderer free. Watching it was maddening and disgusting and it left me with a very bad feeling about justice and fairness. So I repeated to myself the other night, "Me, why are you watching this?"

It seems to be a very well-made series, though some of the casting is odd. Cuba Gooding is a fine actor but he lacks Simpson's movie star twinkle and friendly appearance which I think is essential to playing a guy who lived well off that twinkle. John Travolta looks a bit like a Muppet version of Robert Shapiro and seems like he was digitally removed from some other movie and inserted into this one. I'm not sure though that the real Shapiro wasn't the same way. And we've yet to see Nathan Lane as F. Lee Bailey, which asks the musical question, "Can a very funny, likeable actor shed all trace of his sense of humor and decency as a human being?" I am dubious.

I would certainly watch if they change things so evidence rules the day, Judge Ito doesn't let the trial turn into something that could have been staged by the Ringling Brothers, they switch Marcia Clark out for Vince Bugliosi and the jury is a lot smarter and less driven by skin color. Alas, the first chapter seemed about 97% factual, which is pretty high for one of these. So it still comes down to: Do I want to sit through this unpleasant, frustrating story again?

I don't know. I'm TiVoing the series. Let's see how far I get in the actual viewing of it. I might not make it too far past whenever Nathan Lane shows up, especially if they don't think to have F. Lee Bailey suddenly develop a conscience. And while they're at it, they could remember who's playing the role and have him perform a couple of show tunes.

Another great talent has been wrested away from us: Emmy-winning Voice Actor Joe Alaskey died earlier this evening. He was 63 and the cause was cancer.

Joe was an on-camera impressionist and comic actor but he achieved his greatest fame doing voices for animated cartoons, including the role of Grandpa Lou Pickles on Rugrats (following the late David Doyle) and many of the major Warner Brothers characters, especially Daffy Duck. Joe won his Emmy in 2004 for his portrayal of Daffy on the series, Duck Dodgers.

Joe was born in Troy, New York and like many impressionists, learned at any early age that one could overcome great shyness by becoming someone else. One of his best was Jackie Gleason and as he got older, he could not only sound like the man they called The Great One but look like him, as well. When Gleason's voice needed to be replicated to fix the audio on the "lost" Honeymooners episodes, Joe was the man.

A few years after that, Joe was called upon to redub an old Honeymooners clip for a TV commercial. When he got the call, Joe assured the ad agency that if they needed him, he could also match the voice of Art Carney as Ed Norton. He was told they already had someone to do that — someone who did it better. Joe was miffed until he arrived at the recording session and discovered that the actor they felt could do a better job as Art Carney…was Art Carney. Joe later said that playing Kramden to Carney's Norton was the greatest thrill of his life, especially after Carney asked him for some pointers on how to sound more like Ed.

Voice matches were a specialty of Joe's, ranging from a few lines on a TV show to supplying the voice of Richard Nixon in the Academy Award-winning film, Forrest Gump. He often redubbed actors for the TV or airline releases of movies when "naughty" words had to be replaced — Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross, for instance. In cartoons, he was one of several actors who inherited Mel Blanc roles — in Joe's case, before Mel had passed on. Blanc voiced Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Tweety in Who Framed Roger Rabbit but decided that Yosemite Sam was too taxing on his throat so Alaskey spoke for that character and also for Foghorn Leghorn in a deleted sequence.

After Mel was gone, Joe was one of several actors who played Bugs, Daffy and most of the others. On The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, he spoke for both Sylvester and Tweety. (His greatest challenge? I once watched Joe for a while as he recorded lines as Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester and Yosemite Sam for a G.P.S. It tooks days and thousands of lines for each…and after he finished as Sam, he couldn't speak for almost a week.) He also created the Daffy-like voice of Plucky Duck on Tiny Toon Adventures.

He was also heard in many commercials and non-animated TV shows. Recently, he was working as the narrator of Murder Comes to Town, a series seen on the Investigation Discovery Channel. He was also flexing a few of his non-vocal skills as a writer and as a cartoonist.

He loved voice acting and did not regret that he'd largely abandoned his work in clubs as an impressionist and acting in front of the camera. Two of his most visible roles were as the star on the 1988 cult film, Lucky Stiff, and the role of Beano Froelich on the TV situation comedy, Out of This World.

I was delighted to know Joe for many years, to have him on several of my Cartoon Voices panels at Comic-Con, and to work with him in 2014 on The Garfield Show. Joe was temperamental and fiercely insecure at times, and you might hear of problems with directors and other actors. I can only tell you that when I hired him, he was an absolute professional. The only problem we had was that Joe had so many different voices that it was sometimes difficult to choose which one we wanted out of him.

The one I liked best was when he sounded like Joe Alaskey. He had a long, long list of voices but that's the one I will miss the most.

So Cosby lost his big bid to get his case tossed out in Pennsylvania. The judge ruled that a previous prosecutor's decision not to prosecute did not constitute a grant of immunity to the once-admired comedian. One assumes this will be appealed since Cosby still has money and no expense to run up lawyer bills is to be missed.

Assuming then that the trial goes forward, it's starting to feel like the whole defense is going to come down to: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…can you really find it in your hearts to sentence this poor, aging blind man who can barely walk, and who gave millions of dollars to charity and billions of laughs to the world, to die in prison?" And the answer to that, especially if all those other victims testify, may be yes.

On the subject of the technical expertise demonstrated by Grease: Live, we have a nice example. Carrie Havel, who was the Assistant Director, posted a video to Facebook of a few moments showing what she did during the "Greased Lightning" number, calling out camera cuts. I can't embed a Facebook video here but the folks at Slate can so you can go view it on their site. Like certain magic tricks, some things in television are more impressive when you know how they're done.

And speaking of magic: If you go full-screen and look real careful at the various monitors on display in front of Ms. Havel, you may be able to figure out how they did that amazing transformation of the car during the number.

The man at left in the above photo is Ray Goulding, who passed away in 1990. The man at right is Bob Elliott, who died yesterday at the age of 92. Collectively, they were Bob and Ray, two of the funniest men ever heard on radio…or anywhere, for that matter.

They were two radio broadcasters who teamed up in 1945 — or 1946 according to some accounts — and quickly became highly successful and, until Ray's passing, inseparable. They also became highly imitatable. Before long, every city in America that had a radio station capable of reaching beyond a five-mile radius had at least one set of on-air personalities doing or at least trying to do what Bob and Ray did.

Often, they tried to do exactly what Bob and Ray did. Back in the sixties, I ordered a couple of reel-to-reel tapes of Bob and Ray radio shows from a guy who was selling them in the comic book marketplace. We corresponded briefly and he told me he was thinking he shouldn't be selling these programs. He'd realized that among his customers were other radio personalities who were listening to the old Bob and Ray bits, then going on the air and parroting them.

I doubt any of the thieves achieved their level of audience delight. It wasn't just the material that was funny. Bob and Ray were funny. Their deadpan delivery was totally convincing, especially when they did their bogus interviews. Didn't matter if it was Bob interviewing Ray or Ray interviewing Bob. Each could effortlessly switch from Straight Man to Comic and back again.

There is so much to say about these guys…like they were stars of MAD magazine for a brief time. When Al Feldstein took over as editor of MAD in 1956, he tried goosing the magazine's sales by buying old material from name comedians and adapting it for the printed page. The presence in that publication of Bob and Ray — drawn by Mort Drucker — was just perfect. It also led to one of their main writers, Tom Koch, becoming a regular contributor to MAD for decades.

They also voiced hundreds of very funny commercials, including their spots as Bert and Harry Piel, cartoon pitchmen for Piels Beer. Again, one could soon hear others imitating them. They appeared on Broadway, receiving rave reviews from everyone who wasn't John Simon. They were dependable guests on all the major talk shows. They were just everywhere and always good.

Here is the New York Times obit for Bob and here's the Washington Post. Bob is survived by his son, Chris Elliott, who has continued the family tradition of being deadpan funny, especially when he used to appear with David Letterman. His granddaughter Abby is also keeping it going.

It's real hard to pick one Bob and Ray routine to post here but this one, as presented in their Broadway show, can't miss. Here they are, doing what they did so well…

I generally like Bill Maher's show but I have a big reservation: Maher's promotion of — shall we say — "questionable science." He does a good job debunking bogus political arguments and "facts," then turns around and promotes theories of health that have about as much credibility as those who claim Barack Obama is a gay Commie Infiltrator born in Kenya.

Last Friday night, he had on a man Samir Chachoua who claims to have found a cure for AIDS that's being supressed by the medical establishment. Our chum Paul Harris does a good job summarizing the segment and why the man's claims are not to be believed. He also directs us to this article by David Gorski who goes into greater detail. It's very disappointing that Maher doesn't apply the same skepticism to wild medical and science claims that he does to things said by Donald Trump.

Here's a profile of our friend Misty Lee. It focuses on her career as a professional magician…and perhaps overstates how rare it is for a woman to have that job description. Yeah, it was kind of a boy's club for a long time but an awful lot of progress is being made in that area.

Unmentioned in the piece is that Misty also has a very successful career in voiceover and that she operates her own cosmetics company. I suspect that if I hadn't had a fine, experienced orthopedic surgeon available to replace my knee, she could probably have learned how to do it with a day or two of study…