A few weeks ago when Florence Henderson died, I wrote here that she was very smart, utterly aware of her image and quite ready to screw with it and act "against type." She had a good sense of humor about herself and everything and was totally professional. I should have linked then to this video.
It's from the Broadway Backwards show for 2015. Broadway Backwards is another one of those shows staged by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS to raise dollars for their most worthy cause. The premise of Broadway Backwards is that male performers sing songs usually performed by females and vice-versa…so here we have Ms. Henderson singing a tune sung by a buncha sailors in South Pacific.
She was getting up in years, her voice was not what it once was — but she still managed to delight the audience…
Fred Kaplan writes about the Russian hacking to influence our presidential election and what can be done about it. (SPOILER ALERT: Not much.)
Is there anyone who thinks that if the Democrats had benefited from illegal Russian efforts, Republicans would ever stop screaming about it? They'd have Hillary impeached and charged with treason before she got her hand on the Bible.
According to this morn's ratings reports, The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now in Living Color! did great in total viewers, attracting more of them than a Simpsons episode on Fox and the movie Frozen on ABC. NBC had on a football game so the ratings there are a little more complicated, what with different things airing in different time zones.
But Rob, Laura, Sally, Buddy and Mel did attract 7.41 million viewers, which is pretty good. (Frozen got 6.50 but then again, everyone who loves Frozen or might love Frozen has already seen it thirty times and owns the Blu-ray.)
However! In the coveted 18-49 demographic though the Van Dyke rainbow extravaganza did pretty poorly, finishing a distant last in its time slot. Is this a calamity? I don't think so. 18-49 is a big deal because most advertisers want their commercials to reach that age group but there are sponsors who want to reach older folks…or at least don't mind. That's why there are channels like MeTV and Cozi TV and Antenna TV.
CBS is probably delighted. They had to know the show was going to get demos like it did and they scheduled it anyway. We seem to be reaching a time when there are so many channels and alternatives splitting up the viewing audience that a lot of networks will be happy to have anyone watching…even ancient, near-death people over the age of 50.
Bill Cosby's assault trial is set for next June. Here, the New York Post cites Fox News citing a "source close to the disgraced comedian" that he "plans to ask his attorneys to seek a plea deal to avoid a trial."
So one news source I don't trust cites another news source I don't trust saying that someone whose identity is unknown says that Cosby's going to do something he apparently hasn't done yet. Are we a wee bit skeptical this is so? It might be true. It also might be a completely bogus story but it could be predicting something that will actually happen. I believe all psychics are phony but occasionally, their guessing matches what turns out to be reality.
I'm just kinda wondering why any "source close to the disgraced comedian" would leak something like that.
But it is worth discussing: Would those who think Bill Cosby is guilty of some or all of the accusations feel justice was served if he avoids jail time? Suppose he confessed, apologized, paid some huge amount of money to the victim and paid a huger amount to some appropriate charity. And suppose you were satisfied that he really was almost blind and/or in failing health at age 79.
Would it matter to you if he promised to retire from performing? If the victim in this case said she was satisfied?
Or might you think that for such a high-profile star to not get prison time for such heinous deeds would make a mockery of Justice and the premise than no man is above the law? Theoretically, his wealth and power should have no impact on the verdict but we all know it does, and that it works both for him and against him.
I really don't know how I feel about this. If he didn't do time behind bars, I wouldn't think he'd "gotten away with it." But I also might feel he'd gotten off easy because he's a once-beloved star who has done some good in the world…and he shouldn't.
There's a certain kind of chain restaurant I tend to avoid except at Breakfast like Denny's and IHOP — and in Southern California and Vegas, there's DuPar's. They do eggs and French Toast well but come lunch hour, you might as well stay home and microwave a TV dinner. Back East, it's Bob Evans. Until recently, I lumped the local (to me) chain Norms in with the others.
But recently, I had occasion to have supper for reasons of convenience at the Norms over on La Cienega and it was surprisingly good, especially when the check came. It was about 75% as good as some so-called better restaurants that charge three times as much. The last time there, I ordered a steak and fried shrimp special that came with my choice of potato, soup and salad for around twenty bucks. The portions were not small and the food was not bad. The time before, I had a combo plate with chicken tenders, ribs and fried shrimp with the same extras for about the same price. Same opinion.
I also liked the classic decor and the mood…and the servers were awfully friendly 'n' funny, plus it's open 24/7. Definitely a place I now have on my "Places I Dine" list — and it looks like it'll be there indefinitely. A little less that two years ago (as reported here) it looked like it would be razed and replaced by some commercial enterprise of which L.A. probably already has more than enough. But there was an outcry, some sort of special Historical Status was bestowed on it, and it looks now like Norms on La Cienega is here to stay.
Alas, the same cannot be said for the Norms over on Pico, near where I grew up. That's it in the photo above and according to this report, it has only about two weeks to live. I hope that's not so and just not because of its history or architecture. In a time when a lot of poor people are really poor and the incoming regime in Washington seems concerned only with the income level of those making a grand or more per day, it's nice that there are places where someone can get a decent meal for twenty dollars.
The musical Jersey Boys will close on Broadway in a little more than a month, going into the books as one of the longest-running musicals there ever. And of course, it will continue to play elsewhere and it'll be back in a Broadway revival, faster than you can say "Frankie Valli."
Recently at the Gypsy of the Year Awards, various cast members staged a little tribute to their show. Here it is…
Okay, I watched it. The colorization seemed okay to me. Everyone looked to me like they were wearing too much makeup and the Petrie living room looked too busy. Those may have been the actual colors of the set but that set was designed to look right in black-and-white.
After a few minutes though, I stopped thinking about the color and just enjoyed the episodes. What I didn't enjoy were the cuts in both episodes. They each lost a couple of minutes — the top of the hospital scene in "That's My Boy," for instance. The opening scene and tag in "Coast to Coast Big Mouth" were absent as were a few other bits.
I'm going to guess that later today, we'll hear that the ratings weren't great and the demographics were worse. I was going to write that the numbers were probably fine given how cheap it is to air two old half-hours…but then I got to wondering what the colorization cost. I have no idea what that costs these days.
I received a number of e-mails from foes of colorization but — no offense, people — none of them seemed worthy of posting here. They all basically just said, "Colorization is bad because it desecrates the material" with no further argument. Not much of a discussion there. One person did write, "A movie should only be presented exactly the way its director intended."
Okay, if that's the way you want it, stop watching them on your home TVs and seek out theaters that still have 35mm (or in some cases, 70mm) projectors. I don't think you're going to see very many movies and the ones that do turn up will probably have a lot of splices, scratches and missing scenes. But if you want to do that, I admire your purity.
I knew that somewhere on my harddisk, I had a better photo of Richard Kyle and I found it. That's Richard on the right and I took this at one of the earliest San Diego Comic Cons. You now know that annual media-orgy as Comic-Con International but this was back when we convened at the El Cortez Hotel down there. This is probably from 1972 when we are all impressed that attendance topped 900. I did not accidentally leave any zeroes off that number.
The man on the left was the great comic book artist — best remembered probably as the creator of the Jonny Quest cartoon show — Doug Wildey. I have a vague recollection of the conversation that day.
I believe I introduced Doug to Richard and vice-versa, and Richard — who was quite familiar with Doug's work — began talking about how much he admired it and its value as creative art. He noted how Doug, who'd begun like so many as a Milton Caniff imitator, had developed a unique approach to the language of comics and graphic storytelling.
Doug was having none of that. More so then than later in his life, he'd pooh-pooh talk of enduring art and using the visual language to convey ideas. Richard often talked like that but Doug was more likely to hit you with "Hey, I just do it for the money. I just give the editors want they want, hand it in and cash the check!" And Richard just grinned — as you can see, he had a great smile — because he didn't buy a word of that. He knew Doug's work and knew how much passion and caring went into it.
Doug's defense mechanism — saying he didn't sweat over his work when clearly he did — was understandable, given the mores of the business in which he worked. The guys who really thought that way — and I encountered very few — may have been happier than those who gave every job their all, then watched it be badly-inked, needlessly-corrected, poorly-colored, cheaply-printed and quickly forgotten. It could break your heart if you didn't at least occasionally try to convince someone, including yourself, that the dough was all that mattered to you.
I knew Doug a while before I fully understood that about him. Richard got it immediately.
Richard was a very perceptive, good person. He was probably one of the first people ever to write about comic books from the viewpoint of an adult who understood and appreciated the form. He loved good comics but did not get childish or petulant about the bad ones. Almost instinctively, he seemed to understand the handicaps of the industry and so respected anyone who labored in it…even a guy like Doug Wildey whose work belied his claims about grabbing the cash and fleeing.
Richard saw trends coming. He and a fellow named Fred Patten opened a shop in Long Beach — a newsstand that specialized in comics and imported comics. Nowadays, you walk into a comic book shop and see hardcover comics, magnificently-printed comics, high-ticket comics. When Richard and Fred opened the Graphic Story Bookstore in Long Beach, it was amazing to see so many comics not printed on the cheapest paper stock. They'd scoured the world to find them and I recall Jack Kirby at the grand opening, holding court and predicting (correctly) that soon, there'd be comic book shops in every city filled with graphic novels and deluxe collections.
The store went through several names and locations, and Richard delved into publishing. I mentioned his magazine Graphic Story World, which he later retitled Wonderworld. He published other things, such as when he obtained the rights to the then defunct Argosy magazine and revived it with disastrous financial failure. Still, he was proud that he'd done it and of several things that were done for it.
Richard had become friends with Jack Kirby and had heard Jack tell long, wondrous tales of his childhood and of his service in World War II. For Argosy, he went to Jack and offered him a modest fee (though still a lot of money for Richard at the time) to draw a short story for the magazine — but he didn't want super-heroes or monsters. In fact, he didn't want to tell Jack at all what to draw. He said, approximately, "Just do something like one of those great stories you tell people."
What Jack produced was a tale called "Street Code," which a lot of people thought was the best thing he did late in his career. They also wished he'd done more like that and I still kick myself that I didn't arrange something like that. But Richard did. He was also wise enough to insist that he printed from Jack's pencil art instead of having someone else render it in ink.
From "Street Code" by Jack Kirby
When I did my 2008 book on Jack and his artistry, I knew I had to include that story. I didn't need his permission but I called Richard to tell him what I planned to do, to ask that he let me interview him about how it came to be…and what did he have in the way of stats or reproduction materials?
Before I knew it, he'd made the hour drive to my doorstep. He gave me the photostats and original film negatives he had, then we sat in a deli for hours talking about the origin of the story, as well as other topics. He did not ask for any money or even that I say anything in particular about him or his vital role in making the story happen. He was just so proud to see it published again and to have it in a fancy book about Jack. That was Richard.
(He did Jack another favor, too. When Jack found himself at one point without anyone local who could ink his comic book work for DC, Richard helped arrange for an artist friend who occasionally worked in his store, D. Bruce Berry, to audition for the job. Bruce inked Jack's work for several years.)
There is much more I could write about Richard Kyle but someone else already did a better job than I could. Our mutual friend Alan Brennert is an acclaimed novelist and TV writer-producer. He also made some brief forays into writing comic books that were so memorable that DC Comics recently brought out a book that collects just about everything he ever did for them.
Alan is a true hero for all the aid he gave Richard in the last few years but does not mention that in this piece he posted last night on Facebook. He gave me permission to quote it in full here — so here's another testimony to what a great, important guy Richard Kyle was…
My friend Richard Kyle passed away this morning, after the latest in a long series of aftereffects from a stroke in 2014. He was 87 years old. He had been living in a nursing home in Long Beach, California, which is where I met him back in 1974.
I was a recent immigrant to California and knew virtually no one on this coast; I walked into what was then called Graphic Story Bookshop, began talking with the jovial, smart, funny man behind the counter, and we kept talking for most of the following 42 years. In addition to owning a successful bookstore for over 20 years, Richard was a brilliant writer and critic and a founding member of comic book fandom.
It was he who coined the term "graphic novel" that we now see labeling bookshelves at Barnes & Noble. He and Dennis Wheary published George Metzger's Beyond Time and Again, which was the first self-labeled graphic novel, and as publisher of the revived Argosy, he solicited and published Jack Kirby's famous story "Street Code."
I will leave it to others more knowledgeable than I to talk about his seminal work in comics fandom. Personally, I can't begin to say how much Richard meant to me — from giving me a job at his bookshop when I was a college student to letting me type up the manuscript of my first book on the Selectric typewriter in his office, to simply being a friend to me and to so many creative types who wandered into Wonderworld Books (later Richard Kyle, Books) in the 1970s.
It was a magnet that attracted talented people like Phillip Dana Yeh, Glen Murakami, Roberta Gregory, Greg Bear, Herb Patterson, LeClair Pearson, and many others I'm probably too scattered to recall just now. Richard encouraged all of us to pursue our dreams and always had something fascinating and illuminating to say on almost every subject. He was a kind, generous, deeply honest man, and I will always treasure his friendship.
Goodbye, Richard; goodbye my old friend. Thank you for welcoming the 19-year-old me into your bookstore. My life has been the richer for it.
One of the founding members of Comic Book Fandom, Richard Kyle, died today following a long illness. Richard was often credited with coining the term "graphic story" to describe comic books that aspired to tell longer and more personal stories and for a time, he published a magazine called Graphic Story World and operated a bookstore in Long Beach, California called (what else?) the Graphic Story Bookstore.
He was a friend of mine and a friend of comics and I don't have the time right this minute to write a proper piece about him here. I'll try to do it later tonight or tomorrow morning.
Like a lot of you, there was a period there — 9/11 and for a month or three after — when I respected the hell out Rudy Giuliani. The respect ended faster and more thoroughly than my letdown over John McCain, a man who once either placed principles over politics or did a real good job of fooling me into thinking he did.
Giuliani went from being America's Mayor to being its screaming scold and there was a point there where he was pimping out his 9/11 cred as a spokesperson for anyone who'd pay him enough. In this past election, I don't think there was any vile rumor he would not spread about Hillary Clinton and so he did Donald Trump a big favor. Because of Giuliani, Trump wasn't the biggest, hysterical liar out there campaigning for Donald Trump.
There are reports that Giuliani went balls-out for Donald in an attempt to land the position of Secretary of State. Maybe so but it's now being reported that after initial reports that he was on a two-person short list, he's now out of consideration for that and apparently any cabinet post. He'd never make it through any confirmation hearing that examined his recent business dealings and the company he's kept, they say.
Why has he turned into what he's turned into? Michael Tomasky has a long profile/theory about Giuliani that sounds rather credible. You might want to give it a read.
As you may have heard, Sunday night CBS is running an hour special. Two of the best episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show have been edited into some sort of cohesive hour-long story and they've been colorized. A lot of folks seem to be upset about this but Carl Reiner, who created and produced the series, is solidly behind it so I'm not going to get too worked up over it.
I'm going to guess that Mr. Reiner so loves the idea of those shows being run in prime time and treated like classics, he's willing to overlook any qualms he might have about their alteration. He may have none but if he does, I don't think it's a bad trade-off.
He's also, by the way, cheerily overlooking the fact that though he wrote many of the best episodes of that show, the two being run Sunday night — which are kinda being singled out here as the two best — were both scripted by Bill Persky and Sam Denoff. He does however have the best scene in one of them. Here he is having that scene…
I remember when companies first started colorizing movies, there was loud outrage of the pitchforks-and-torches variety among film historians and those who loved classic flicks. And they had a point when they said that most of that enhancement wasn't done very well. The art — and it is an art — has improved a lot since then.
They were also horrified at the thought — and wrong — that the original black-and-white versions of things like Casablanca and It's a Wonderful Life would disappear forever. That was actually predicted and it has not happened. In fact, because of a lot of the same technology and techniques used in colorization, many great old movies — some originally filmed in black-and-white, some shot in color — have been restored and now look better than ever.
I never thought colorization was the tool of desecration that some said it was. At least, once a movie was colorized, it was usually presented in full without scratches, missing scenes, bad audio, the insertion of commercials, etc. That kind of damage, which was a lot more common, always bothered me more.
And when someone colorized the monochrome episodes of Gilligan's Island so they matched the color episodes, even the decriers of colorization had a hard time condemning that one. Someone please explain to me how the artistic cinematography and the director's vision were despoiled there. I'll wait. And while you're at it, tell me why in blessing what CBS is doing tomorrow night, Carl Reiner is defacing Carl Reiner's greatest work.
For the most part though, it comes down to the argument I keep hearing from people in my age bracket and above that it's awful that These Kids Today won't watch something that's in black-and-white. Well, okay — but let me make some points about that…
It really isn't that it's in black-and-white. It's that it's old…and black-and-white is an instant warning signal that something is old.
And there are a lot of old movies and TV shows that even I won't watch or that I wouldn't expect someone under the age of 40 or so to understand or care about. Not everything you and I loved at one time stands up today, even if it's in full, glorious color.
Also, These Kids Today have tons and tons of media available to them, more than anyone can ever absorb. Just in terms of television — leaving aside movies and direct-to-DVD productions and videogames — they have all the channels I had growing up plus hundreds of others. Some of those channels produce some very fine programming and I doubt anyone today can keep up with all the current films and television that warrant attention.
I sure can't. I've never even started on some of the acclaimed recent shows that I expect to like because (a) there aren't enough hours in the day and (b) the present methods of distribution and marketing kinda ensure that I can start watching Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or any of them at some later date. Mad Men will be exactly the same when I finally get around to it.
So if I can't find the time to watch Game of Thrones now, I can't very well fault one of These Kids Today for not seeking out some great TV show made before they were born.
And no, I'm sure The Dick Van Dyke Show is not any better in color…but you know what it is? It's being treated like a classic, like something very valuable. Putting it in prime time in its original greys would not be a special event.
The black-and-white versions of "Coast to Coast Big Mouth" and "That's My Boy" — the episodes CBS is running on Sunday — have aired hundreds of times sans color. Slapping some electronic Crayola™ on them is a stunt, true. But that's the kind of thing you have to do these days to get people to pay attention to something they may never heard of before.
I doubt it'll get a high rating, especially among folks who don't know the show. But those of us who do may tune in to pay our respects and to see what the show's like in this new special wrapping. I actually have a special, albeit adolescent reason.
At age 13, I attended a filming of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I remember many life-changing moments of that evening but a biggie was when Mary Tyler Moore was introduced and she walked out and stood six feet away from me. She was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. To this day, I can't recall enjoying looking at someone or something and enjoying it more — and as I think I said in this article, it wasn't just that it was the first time I'd seen her in person. It was the first time I'd seen her in color.
I've set the TiVo to snare tomorrow night's presentation because it's in color. No, it won't be as good as seeing her in the real flesh but I'll settle for a televised approximation. If it were in black-and-white…well, I'm not that eager to see those episodes for the eightieth time that way.
If I were, I have two different complete sets of the series on DVDs, plus the "best of" DVDs that were released before the first of the complete sets. So I have three copies of these two episodes on DVD plus until recently, they were both on YouTube and the show still runs on Hulu and Cozi TV.
What about viewers who don't know the show or don't have a thing for 1965 Laura Petrie? Well, I'm not sure I'd tune in to watch two episodes of a TV series I'd never seen before. But who knows? Maybe some of These Kids Today will tune in because it is a special event and maybe some will like what they see enough to seek it out in its natural state. That is, right after they catch up on The Walking Dead and about eighteen other current shows, none of which I've had the time to watch even once.
Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement — which health care policy experts predict could cost 30 million people their health insurance — will also bring a major tax break for high-income Americans.
Beginning next January, everything done by the Executive and Legislative branches in Washington will include a major tax break for high-income Americans…and once they get Scalia's replacement seated, that'll be true of the Judicial branch, as well. If Congress votes to declare some date National Prune Day, there'll be a rider in there to make sure the folks who own WalMart and our President get another tax cut.
I don't know what some people thought they were getting when they voted in Trump and kept a Republican House and Senate but that's what they're gonna get.
