Monthly Archives: November 2016

Why can't you go out and buy cashews in the shell? I didn't know the answer to that question until I watched this video…

John Cassidy on the scandal of Trump University and its settlement. Once upon a time, something like this disqualified a person from public office.

• Apparently, someone told Donald Trump that once you get elected president, everyone has to love you and not make fun of you anymore.

Back in '83, I wrote the pilot and bible for the animated Saturday morning series, Dungeons & Dragons, then wrote one more episode. After that, I declined further involvement. I had other commitments at the time and other offers so I didn't stay with the show. It was a modest success and the mere fact that I'd help sell it got me more offers and inquiries for my services. I also got a few calls of congratulations and/or praise from other writers I knew.

Never take those seriously. I mean it. They may well be sincere in what they say but they may just be buttering you up because…well, why not? Getting on your good side might benefit them in some way down the line. More immediately, at least a few who called were hoping I could help them get an assignment on the series, which I couldn't. I was able to recommend a few writers early in the process before I'd stepped away from the show but not after.

One writer I'll call Zachary called and could not have been gushier: "You did a great job, Mark…really solid work there…just terrific…" Knowing this guy, I felt for a moment like he was Sgt. Bilko and I was Colonel Hall being set up for the big con but he didn't push me to do anything in particular for him so I was cordial and I thanked him and that was that.

Before I get to this next part, you should know this: I had no opinion of Zachary as a writer. Didn't know if he was good, didn't know if he was bad, didn't particularly care. To this day, I don't think I've seen or read anything he's written. I almost never see myself as being in competition with other writers and even when I do, it doesn't matter what I think of them. What matters is what the people doing the hiring think of each of us.

Okay. So a year or two after Dungeons & Dragons went on the air, my agent got a call from some producers who were doing a live-action kids' show for syndication. The pilot had been sold — or so they said — and they were soon to go into production on 25 more episodes for which a story editor was needed. "They want to meet with you," Bernie the Agent said, "but I need to warn you. This sounds like it could be the lowest-paying job you'll ever be offered." Having been offered some gigs that starving homeless folks would have passed on, that sounded pretty dismal.

I asked him, "Is it WGA?" If a show is covered by the Writers Guild of America, there are certain minimums that must be paid. And now that I think of it, that was a dumb question because Bernie and his agency would never have anything to do with a non-Guild live-action show, nor would I, nor should you.

"It's WGA," Bernie said. "But they're doing this show on a micro-budget and they seem to have found some sort of loophole in the WGA contract that allows them to pay you in beads and trinkets. Do you want to go in and meet them or not? It's your call."

Back then, I went in for every interview, even for jobs I knew I wouldn't want. Even when meetings didn't result in employment, I always found them interesting and educational. I learned a lot from some of those meetings and, of course, there's always the slim chance I'll make a good impression and the slimmer chance that those producers will someday be producing something with real money. So I told him, yeah, I'd go in and meet with them.

At the appointed time, I drove to a tiny movie lot in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles — a lot that I didn't even know existed and today does not. It was not easy to find and I was about ten minutes late…which turned out to not be a problem because everyone else they'd been seeing all day was twenty minutes late. The meeting was in a teensy bungalow — the kind of building in which the Seven Dwarfs would have gotten claustrophobia. Just seeing it made me think I wouldn't be working on this show.

The bungalow had been cheaply-partitioned into two rooms. One was the receptionist's space and a little waiting area. The rest was the office wherein I could hear the producers interviewing someone else. "Just have a seat," the receptionist said…and I didn't intend to peek at it but there was a list on her desk of writers who were coming in today. You couldn't miss it and the name just above mine was Zachary's, plus I also recognized his voice.

I took a seat and I couldn't not hear every word that was being uttered in the next office. Clearly, I could hear him say…

"You know, a lot of shows just collapse in the development stage. The guy who writes the pilot…all he cares about is selling the thing and getting his sales bonus. He doesn't give a damn about what Episode 2 and Episode 3 or Episode 12 are going to be like because he's just going to grab his money and run. He doesn't set things up to make for a good series because that's not his problem…"

An interesting point of view on Zachary's part. That has never been my experience or observation but it's certainly possible that a pilot might be able to sell the series but push it in the wrong direction. That, however, was not what was really on my mind at the moment. What was on my mind was, "I shouldn't be hearing this." I shouldn't be eavesdropping, even unintentionally on his meeting, just as I wouldn't want someone listening in on mine.

I got up and told the receptionist that I was going to wait outside. She said that would be fine but before I made it out the door, I heard —

"I'll give you an example. There's this show on Saturday morning called Dungeons & Dragons. It was a good idea for a show but the development on it was horrendous. I don't know who wrote it…it may have been the producer's nephew or someone because it definitely wasn't a professional job. It set the direction of the show all wrong and…"

That was all I heard but it was enough.

I came to a number of immediate conclusions. One was that Zachary knew darn well I was the next interview. That list of writers on the receptionist's desk was unmissable. Another was that he did not realize he could be heard in the waiting area. Yet another was that Zachary was a weasel of the first, second and third order.

Also, I decided I wasn't going to say anything about it or even let him know that I'd heard him. I waited until he departed the bungalow, went back in and then the receptionist escorted me about 2.5 feet into the inner office. I no longer recall the names of the husband/wife producing team I met with so let's call them Buddy and Sally.

I also don't remember the name of their show so let's call it The Fun Show. You never saw The Fun Show. That day I went in for the meeting, Buddy and Sally were certain it was a "go" project with many more episodes to be written and filmed and none of us knew it would never make it onto television. I do not believe anything beyond the pilot was ever produced.

Exactly what happened, I can't say for certain but after I tell you a little more, we'll all have a pretty good guess. And by the way, I'm calling it The Fun Show because Sally was incapable of formulating a sentence about it without using the word "fun," as in "We want this show to be fun" or "The story editor we hire must know how to inject a lot of fun into things" or "Do you think you can give us the proper quotient of fun?"

At one point, she asked me, "What is your definition of fun?" I started to say "Not sitting here, answering these questions" but instead, I said something utterly meaningless like, "Fun is the antithesis of any condition or situation in which people, alone or in a group, are not having fun."

Sally turned to Buddy and said, "See? He gets it!"

They then showed me a 10-minute hunk of their pilot — "the best moments," they said. I managed to stop myself from saying something that began with "If these are the best moments…" but trust me. What I saw was incoherent, amateurish, badly-staged and about as much fun as a root canal with a Craftsman 19HP 42 in. Turn Tight® Automatic Riding Mower.

When it was mercifully over, Buddy pulled the cassette out of the Betamax® and asked me, "What do you think you can do with this?" I was going to name some good TV shows you could record by reusing the tape but I thought, "What's the point? I need to just get the hell outta here." I gave him some sort of answer, thanked them for having me in and got the hell outta there. As I headed for my car, I thought, "Boy, that show would not be the antithesis of any condition or situation in which people, alone or in a group, are not having fun."

The next day, Bernie phoned. "They called but not to offer you the job. They want to know what kind of salary you'd want so if it's too high, they won't have to spend the time deciding if they want you."

I said, "Price me out of it."

He said, "I can probably do that by quoting them the starting hourly rate at McDonald's" — and off my agent went to try and not get me a job. He called back ten minutes later and told me that just to see what would happen, he quoted them basic WGA scale — in other words, the absolute minimum they could pay me.

"I think you're the first one they asked about this," he said. "They apparently have no idea about the WGA contract that they're working under. The man gasped and I heard him repeat the number to the woman and she was aghast. I think they really were thinking they could get a professional story editor for McDonald's pay." Scale wasn't that much money.

An hour later, the phone rang again. It was Zachary, calling to ask me a computer question of no import. After we got through the bogus reason for his call, he said, "Hey, while I've got you here, I heard you were up for the story editor job on that Fun Show thing that's looking for a story editor."

I told him I'd been in to see them (as if he didn't already know that) and that I'd decided the show was not for me. He said, "Well, you know what's best for you. Say, just out of curiosity, if you did want to do that show, what kind of a salary would you ask for?"

I thought a second and said, "I'd start at triple Writers Guild scale and maybe be prepared to come down to double or a little more. They're looking for someone real good and if you quote them anything less, they're going to figure you're on the bottom of the business. Have you talked to them? Because you'd be real good for it."

"Thanks, Mark," he said. "I knew I could count on you. I always tell people you're truly one of the best guys in this industry."

• We can avoid Mike Pence getting booed at Broadway plays. Someone tell him that a couple of them were created by or star gay people.

As it says here, when Donald Trump is inaugurated, he will become the only major world leader who denies Climate Change and wants to roll back efforts to combat it.

If you leave aside the human and property damage that may result — no small matter to leave aside — the horrifying part of it is that he bases his position on no science whatsoever. I don't think he even pretends to. This is a man who couldn't build a model volcano out of baking soda and vinegar. Maybe he's listening to some crackpot denier with no real credentials. More likely, he's listening to industry leaders who moan about how regulations cut into their immediate profits.

Back when one of those Bush guys was in the Oval Office, my Business Manager and I were having lunch and he mentioned some regulation that the president had just managed to get lifted or was about to get lifted. My Biz Guy said, "The problem with this administration is that even if some public good is important, it's never as important as someone rich becoming richer."

That was true then but not as true as it's going to be.

Last night as I'm sure you've heard, Mike Pence attended the show Hamilton on Broadway. He was booed a lot by much of the audience and he was addressed by a cast member from the stage. If you haven't seen the video, I'll embed a copy at the end of this post.

This morning, you have people like Rob Dreher scolding the booers and the cast for rudeness or inappropriate behavior. At the same time, I've been getting e-mails from a couple of Trump-backing friends imploring "us" to show respect for the election results, give the new team a chance, bind the nation's divisions, "Let's all work together to make this a better country," etc.

This gives "us" an awkward decision that all of "us" ("them" included) encounter in life: Do you play fair with people who you feel haven't played fair with you?

Whether they'll admit it or not, what they're essentially asking us is: Don't act like we did when your guy won. It would be bad for the country.

This is a tough position to be in. The friends who wrote me didn't themselves loudly boo Joe Biden or question Barack Obama's legitimacy but they didn't see all that much wrong with it…and they sure cheered on those who vowed to obstruct every single thing the Democratic administration did. That was acceptable behavior to them. So there's the obvious temptation to just give it back to them. Even they understand that.

But they're also right that it isn't fair and could be bad for the country in some ways. So there's also the temptation to show that we're better than that and to not sink to their level and tactics. I also wouldn't like the feeling that I was that rude or that prejudiced.

Now, in the Hamilton incident, I think Dreher and others like him are demanding a civility that they never demanded of their own. I also think this is a minor incident that they're blowing out of scale.

Booing the Vice-President Elect: Well, that doesn't bother me all that much. Every prominent politician gets booed if he or she goes to the wrong baseball game or other public event. Yeah, it's disrespectful. That's why you boo — to show disrespect. I think Mike Pence has been enormously disrespectful to women, gay folks, those not of his own party or religion, etc., and he's done a lot worse than boo them. He's tried to deny them basic human rights.

Booing isn't violence. It isn't even all that effective. Booing doesn't strip away someone's right to marry or get proper medical care or equal pay or anything. It doesn't even rise to the level of "Lock her up!" and more hateful chants that were heard at Trump rallies with Trump up there loving every minute of them. You might even say that booing is free speech, especially if they boo, express their opinion and then shut up. That audience at Hamilton sure wasn't about to disrupt the event, as some protesters do. They paid a helluva lot of money to see that show.

And I thought the statement from the stage, which had not a hint of threat in it and which was in keeping with the spirit of the show, was perfectly appropriate. What Dreher doesn't like is that those who opposed Trump-Pence in the election are showing no signs of acting defeated, impotent and accepting of their new overlords. Dreher himself is one of the more reasonable Conservatives at times. He was critical of Trump's vulgarity and lying. But now, like a lot of them, he's hopeful that this means a lot of the Conservative agenda happens and doesn't want to see it obstructed…like, say, the way Republicans obstructed Obama's.

But I still don't know how I feel about this urging to work with them, give them a chance, etc. I don't like the idea of any leader I'm counting on to advance my views behaving like Mitch McConnell or of the pundits who represent my views acting like Sean Hannity. Then again, part of me thinks, "Well, maybe that's what it takes these days. Maybe we have to do that to save Medicare and health care reform and gay rights and to keep more people like Trump out of power." Installing Rudy Giuliani as Secretary of State is like…well, I don't even have an analogy for that. The best I can do is steal Tom Lehrer's joke about the necrophiliac who was appointed Coroner.

If you've read this far waiting to see me come to some firm conclusion, I'm sorry. I don't have one. I don't like the idea of "my side" being as destructive and obstinate and nasty as Republicans were to President Obama for eight years, commencing well before Day One. I also don't like the idea of "my side" being held to some standard of civility and cooperation by folks who never felt it applied to them and who will not adhere to it the next time a Democrat wins.

This is, for me, an unsolvable problem. One approach gets you the right results by doing the wrong thing and the other gets you the wrong results by doing the right thing. I'll probably decide that the wrong results are so wrong that the wrong thing becomes the right thing…but I'll never feel it's that right. Here's the Hamilton video…

Hey, remember those lawsuits against Donald Trump and his Trump University? The ones that accused him of fraud and deception? Well, it was just announced that Trump has agreed to settle those suits by paying $25 million. Also, I'm not sure if it's included in the $25 million but there's also a payment of "up to $1 million" in penalties to the State of New York for violating education laws there.

In the settlement, Trump admits no wrongdoing and I'm sure his side will spin that there was no wrongdoing; that he's just settling the case so it won't be a distraction from his primary goal, which is to make himself and other wealthy people much richer by getting rid of taxes and regulations. Or whatever his primary goal is as president.

It is true that settling a lawsuit is sometimes cheaper and easier than winning it. People who are sued often do that. And I don't think it reflects poorly on Trump to settle a lawsuit that he insisted over and over he would never settle. The way our legal system works, you kind of have to say that even if you're dying to settle a matter and to avoid going to trial. So I don't think the settlement, in and of itself, proves Trump committed the fraud and deception.

However, I do think that if Hillary Clinton were to settle a lawsuit, regardless of its scope, costs or merits, the folks who don't like her and who voted for Trump would insist that was incontrovertible proof that she was crooked.

As I've mentioned here, I usually enjoy watching Food Network Superstar Alton Brown. The exception is when he takes part in these phony (to me) "competition" cooking shows where they assemble a bunch of folks who are supposed to be skilled at meal preparation and jam them into a contest where they have to whip up something wonderful in nine minutes using two duck eggs, a can of raccoon broth, a hunk of month-old kohlrabi and a rusty spatula. And then it all has to be judged by a panel of people who are less interested in quality than in causing the losers to take some kind of Walk of Shame in tears.

At least, that's what those things all seem like to me. But when Mr. Brown is demonstrating how to cook…ah, then I find him fascinating and he always achieves what I'm sure is his intended purpose: To convince everyone — me, especially — that we are way too uneducated to do anything more ambitious in a kitchen than open a tin of Vienna Sausage. And even that's dubious if we don't understand the molecular structure of the Vienna Sausage well enough to balance its pH with the alkaline structure of the plate on which we'll be serving it.

I'm not kidding when I say I really enjoy this. It makes me feel so good about the fact that I'm not a very good cook. I know I can never learn it the way he does so I'm fully justified in having a pizza delivered instead of making something on my own.

I also think the guy does television really well. I guess that's what most impresses me. I like people who do television really well.

The other night, he was on with Stephen Colbert — another guy who does television really well, though I don't think that's too evident on his show lately. Alton Brown's appearance showed why I think that. This is going to get more analytic than the segment may warrant so you might want to bail now. If you want to stick with me, you're going to have to watch two videos. First, go watch Brown's demonstration for Scientific American of a method neither you nor I would ever employ to make ice cream in ten seconds.

And it really does make ice cream in ten seconds. It probably takes six hours to set up, plus loads of time and money to make the apparatus but, by God, the ice cream gets made in ten seconds. Go watch.

Then watch him doing the same stunt with Mr. Colbert…

I don't think this spot worked that well for a couple of reasons. One is the insufficient time allotted for it. They jumped into it too fast. No rapport was established. There was no build-up to the wonderment of making ice cream in ten seconds.  There's an interesting science lesson here but Brown didn't have time to explain any of that.

They both looked like they were in a hurry to get through it, which is the way a lot of the interviews on Colbert's show now strike me. He's like a doctor who's seeing you in Examination Room A while the next patient is waiting in Examination Room B and Doc has to finish with you in a hurry so he can get over to them.

Brown, who understands how to time a TV show and who knows exactly how long this stunt takes, was under the gun to finish on time and to leave room for the plug for his Broadway engagement…so he was in control of the segment.

I don't think Stephen Colbert is comfy being out of control of a segment on his own show and there's also the fact that the routine, as Brown has developed it, hinges on him being the boss and the other guy playing the stooge. Colbert doesn't do "Stooge" well.

So it all kind of turned into Brown giving orders and Colbert, who's supposed to just play along, trying to do things before he's told and hurry the bit along, while all the time looking for spots to inject a few probably-preplanned lines like the Trump one and "It's Alive!" at the end. They could maybe have played this conflict for fun but there wasn't time for that.

Colbert didn't seem particularly impressed or even to be enjoying what they were doing. Maybe there's something infectious about the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater because it reminded me of those times Letterman seemed to not want to participate in the segment and treated the guest like he wasn't happy to have them there. There were times I wanted to yell at the screen, "Hey, Dave! It's your show! Your staff lives in terror of displeasing you! You don't have to have any guest on if you don't want!"

And lastly, Brown usually does the bit making chocolate ice cream. Here, he was making Pumpkin Spice Latte ice cream. Why? Because it's almost Thanksgiving, a fact they didn't mention? To get the Trump joke in? Making something timeless and familiar like chocolate ice cream in ten seconds is amazing.  Some of us have even made chocolate ice cream at home and we know how long it took.  And since we all love chocolate ice cream, it feels like something worth any kind of effort to make it appear.

Pumpkin Spice Latte ice cream?  No one likes that.  Even the guy making it in this routine hates it.  I don't care if you can make it in ten seconds.  It can take ten years for all I care.  I ain't eating it.

So the bit was too rushed.  Colbert didn't seem to want to do it.  Two smart men didn't say anything all that smart to each other.  Colbert doesn't know how to follow orders — or doesn't want to because he's supposed to be in charge of the activities and is expected to be funny. And worst of all, they made the wrong kind of ice cream.

I still think Stephen Colbert is one of the most talented men ever in television and that he has all the skills necessary to do a fabulous talk show. He might be able to do one if he'd just stop trying to do what every other talk show does but do it faster.

Y'know, I still TiVo him every night…but it's taking longer and longer for me to get around to watching them. What Alton Brown came on to do is a dandy analogy for what I think is wrong with Colbert's program. If the ice cream is any good, it doesn't have to be made in ten seconds.

Kurt Eichenwald on some myths from the presidential campaign that were or are believed by Liberals. He makes what is for me a pretty solid case that (a) the Democratic National Committee did not rig the primary against Bernie Sanders and (b) had Bernie Sanders been the nominee, he probably would not have defeated Trump either. I have friends who want to believe the opposite of those conclusions so badly that no argument will ever convince them.

Jon Stewart with some wise words…

This past election has upped my cynicism a lot…and it was already taller than Everest. I have long believed, and I'm sure I've said it elsewhere on this blog, that about 98% of all politicians say "I will do what is best for this country" and then they decide that what is best for them is best for this country. That was the conclusion I arrived at back in the mid-seventies when I read every book that was then available, written from every conceivable set of prejudices, about Richard Nixon.

Stewart is right that some of our "leaders" tell us government doesn't work, do everything they can to make it not work, then point to their own sabotage and say, "See? Government doesn't work." My cynicism runs deeper than that even. I think when people say "Government doesn't work," their real complaint is "It keeps doing things to benefit people who are not me!" They're always fine with what serves their interests. They just have trouble with the premise that government is supposed to work for everyone.

Some of us were hopeful that when Donald Trump talked about spending tons o' money on Infrastructure, he was going to do what Barack Obama, being a Democrat, couldn't get a Republican House and Senate to okay. That might be a very good thing for the economy and job creation, to say nothing of staving off disaster from century-old water mains and bridges.

Alas, as Brad Palmer notes, Congress seems no more eager to fund that dream for the white Republican than they were with the black Democrat. And besides, what Trump really has in mind seems to be to only do the upgrades and construction projects that will yield big profits for companies like the one he owns. Of course.

I mentioned Daws Butler here the other day. We lost this wonderful man in 1988 and I still miss him. I miss hearing him on new cartoon shows and commercials but even more than that, I miss talking with him, being around him, hearing That Voice come out of an actual human being and hanging on every word he uttered.

That Voice — or maybe I should say Those Voices because he had so many — meant a lot to me when I was a kid. I heard him on darn near every TV show I loved and there was something so comforting about a Butler voice. Many of those cartoons had what we might politely call minimalist animation, "minimalist" being a much nicer adjective than "cheap." There sometimes wasn't a whole lot of personality in the characters visually but Daws more than made up for it with the voices he created for Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Hokey Wolf, Quick Draw McGraw, Augie Doggie and so many others. It was like audible comfort food.

I have been privileged — and don't think I don't appreciate it — to know and work with a number of extraordinary creative talents in TV and also in comic books. Many of them were people whose work I loved when I was a kid watching TV and reading comic books. Then amazingly, I got to meet them and found that for the most part, I loved those people. Daws was one of the nicest, most generous men I have ever met.

And honest. That voice of his could do just about anything but lie. Every single thing Daws ever told me checked out. He was wrong once in a while but he was honestly wrong.

Another great, talented man I got to know was Daws' former partner, Stan Freberg. Stan was a very honest man too but he had a tendency to embellish stories a bit, plus his memory wasn't quite perfect. He would tell me a tale about the old days, back when he was doing voices for cartoons or co-starring with Daws on the Time for Beany puppet show. The story would be so hilarious and wonderful that I would wonder how much of it was true.

So the next time I saw Daws, I'd ask him…and it would usually turn out it was like 97% or 98% — a most acceptable percentage. One little detail here or there was off. Later, I'd ask Stan about some anecdote Daws had told me and Stan would say, "If Daws said it happened, it happened." Once, he said, "If Daws told me my last name was really Schwartz, I'd probably figure I'd been wrong all these years."

That was one thing about Daws. Another was the high standard to which he held himself. And yet another was how it felt like his talent was contagious. It wasn't, of course, but you felt smarter and more gifted around him. He was totally non-competitive and able to bring out the good in everyone.

There are people who in subtle ways let you know that just because you share a room with them, that doesn't mean you share any part of their greatness. Daws treated you like you did, even though you both knew you didn't. That was a magical trait he shared with another man I was blessed to know — another man who was at the absolute top of the field in which he worked. I'm talking about Jack Kirby.

Daws was a teacher — a very good teacher whose classes output some of the best new voice actors of their generation. I have zero ability in that arena but Daws was nice enough to invite me to some of his classes and — to use a term I always thought was silly — you could get a great "contact high" from being surrounded by so much talent. It helped me as a writer.

And another of the many wonderful things Daws gave me was a great friend. His name was Earl Kress and he was a writer and actor who was one of Daws' students.

I just typed that and instantly realized it was inadequate because Earl was more than a student to Daws. There was a bit of a father/son relationship there and a vast amount of mutual affection. Daws thought I should know Earl and that Earl should know me and he was, naturally, right. We were the best o' buddies until Earl passed away back in 2011.

Daws gave us all so much. I miss Earl too but if Daws was still around, he'd be 100 years old today so I'm especially missing him this morning. And not so much for your benefit as for mine, I felt like telling you.

Why did Trump win? Kevin Drum lists and evaluates some of the prevailing theories. There's probably at least a smidgen of merit to each of these and in some cases, a pretty large smidgen.

This is the wonderful Sharon McNight (not to be confused with any non-wonderful Sharon McNights in this world) singing a tune she performs to great acclaim in cabarets. A few years ago, I linked to a clip of her performing this number but here we have a newer, better video of it and the song's worth hearing again anyway…