Monthly Archives: August 2017

More hummingbirds bathing…

As I've mentioned here before, it bugs me no end when people think "talking tough" is an answer to a problem. Anyone can talk tough. Ask me how to solve any problem in the world and I can say, "We're going to stop pussyfooting around. We're going to get in there and kick ass and get it done and if anyone gets in our way, they're gonna regret it!"

That is not a solution. It's what you say when you don't have one and you don't want to admit it. A solution might emerge if you take that attitude but it's kind of like if I ask you, "What's your plan?" and you answer decisively, "To get a plan!"

Yesterday, Donald Trump delivered what they're calling a major speech on Afghanistan and what his administration will do there. It sure sounded to me like…

We're not going to follow the failed policies of previous administrations! No, I'm a bold and decisive leader so instead, we're going to do what previous administrations have done but we may try a little more of it and I'm going to talk tougher to the American people and tell them we're kicking ass and getting it done and if anyone gets in our way, they're gonna regret it! Furthermore, when anything does go right — as some things have based on what my predecessors did — my administration is going to claim full credit for it, and when things go wrong, we're not going to hesitate one moment before blaming my predecessors, because really all that matters here is that I look like a great leader! Thank you and God bless America!

Afghanistan has turned into one of those wars that no one knows how to "win" in any sense of that word so all we can do is not look like we're losing. Kevin Drum writes about it here and again here. All Trump ever cares about is his own reputation and we've all seen how well he's handling that. Now, this…

• Daniel Larison on Trump's alleged Afghanistan policy…and here's another piece by Larison which says more about it. And while you're at it, read Mark Perry and James Fallows and also Fred Kaplan. This is one of those amazing times when lots of Liberal pundits and Conservative ones are saying the same thing.
• In other news, the travel and lifestyle plans of the Trump family are exhausting the budget of the Secret Service. Remember when if Obama went anywhere, his critics would spread stories about him costing taxpayers eighty zillion dollars? Well, the Trumps really are costing us a whole lot of money and those same critics now look the other way because, after all, it's them.
• As Jonathan Chait notes, the new Republican strategy about Obamacare just seems to be lying even more about it.
• The list of false and misleading claims by Trump, as tallied by the Washington Post, tops the 1,000 mark!  Congrats!
• And getting partially back to Afghanistan, Matt Yglesias goes for an overview of the Trump administration and how it really isn't changing very much of what it promised to change…unless doing the same things badly constitutes a change.

Trump's approval ratings do not seem to be plunging as much as some had predicted but they sure ain't going up.  Maybe he's now down to the people who wouldn't squawk if he did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.  Let's hope he doesn't decide to try it just to make sure.

Not long ago, I posted the version of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" that was recorded by my friends in the musical group, Big Daddy. Most of those who wrote loved it but one fellow who signed his message as "Walrus" was really angry, feeling they had desecrated the greatest musical album ever written. Sorry you felt that way, Walrus. Maybe this version will be more to your liking…

Daniel Larison may write for the American Conservative but he has much the same view of Donald Trump as I do. Key quote…

The president could hardly be anything else, since the only things that seem to concern him are how others treat him and the status of his brand. He makes no firm commitments, and he reverses himself according to whatever is most expedient to him at the time. It is almost inevitable that he is winging it because he has no relevant experience or knowledge that would keep him from doing so. Trump believes in himself and nothing else, and Chesterton observed long ago that asylums were full of such people.

Moving on: As Jonathan Chait reports, accounts of that meeting Donald Trump Jr. had in Trump Tower with Russian officials are sounding more and more treasonous. In other words, more evidence that even Maxwell Smart couldn't overlook.

Steve Bannon has this concept called "Economic Nationalism" which he believes is the Republican mantra to remain in power forever. Matt Yglesias explains it for us and tells us why it's nonsense.

Ezra Klein on Trump's defense of Civil War monuments. How many people think Trump would hesitate a second before tearing down anything in this country if he wanted to build a Trump Something — a hotel, a country club, a statue of himself — on that land?

And lastly: Every so often, I run into someone who thinks the United States was a hellhole under Barack Obama and that Trump is great if only because he isn't his predecessor. These folks never convince me that Obama was bad. They don't even convince me that they would have had any problem with anything he did had he been white and/or someone they could think of as "their guy." But for the record, let's review Eight Years of Suffering under President Obama.

Dick Gregory's 1964 interview in Playboy. This was back when Playboy interviews were important and people really did read it for the articles…and other things.

• This is strange. I'm being followed by a moonshadow.

  Moonshadow, moonshadow.

Our friend Leonard Maltin has some nice words about Jerry Lewis. Consider this Equal Time to balance my piece, though we certainly agree on Jerry's success and good works for charity.

The last time I spoke (for three seconds) to Jerry, it was at an event where Leonard was interviewing him. Jerry brought a gift for Leonard — an antique Tuck Tape dispenser with Martin on one side, Lewis on the other. It was not the one in the above photo but similar. Leonard, who collects items like that, was genuinely touched. (Leonard and I sometimes exchange gifts of that nature. I forget if I gave it to him or he gave it to me but at one time, there passed between us a deck of playing cards where the backs were all the same photo of Joey Bishop.)

That was the nice Jerry, the thoughtful Jerry. Later though, I saw him screaming at the organizers of the event over a totally imagined slight. You could say that the truth of the man was somewhere between the extremes. Or you could say that the good moments do not excuse the bad moments, especially when the bad moments seem less than rational. I lean towards the latter.

• Attention, David Copperfield: Okay, we're impressed. Now, would you please put it back? Thank you.

• Remember not to look directly at the eclipse or Steve Bannon.

• Watching live coverage on the Science Channel. Apparently, a side effect of the eclipse is that it makes everyone talk out of sync.

• Okay, so what's Trump going to do to try and upstage the eclipse?

In 1994, a revival of Damn Yankees opened on Broadway. It had a number of changes from the original, mostly for the better. I saw it four times over three separate trips to New York. I was then dating a young lady back there who had a "thing" for Victor Garber, the gentleman playing Applegate when it opened. She just wanted to see him live and then she wanted me to get us backstage so she could meet him.

I'd seen it before but I got tickets and at the last minute, she had an emergency and had to cancel on me. As it turned out, my friend Jerry Beck was not only working in New York then, he was working in the building right across the street from the Marriott Marquis hotel. Damn Yankees was playing in the Marquis Theater in the Marriott Marquis. So I called Jerry, who was just about to knock off work and head home…and instead of heading home, he went with me to see Damn Yankees — him for the first time, me for the second.

Later that night, the lady and I spoke and she apologized profusely and told me that if I was willing to get tickets again for the next night, she would not only show up but she'd reimburse me for the tickets. I am a forgiving type so I said okay, she showed up this time and we went to see it and got backstage so she could meet Victor Garber. I also got to meet someone else and one of these days, I'll tell you about him.

Around Christmas, a friend of mine who was in another Broadway show called me with a tip. She said, "Word on the street is that business over at Damn Yankees has been slipping and the producers were thinking of closing it." I asked how that was possible. I alone was responsible for enough ticket sales to keep it running longer than Hello, Dolly.

She ignored that and said, "Victor Garber was leaving anyway so they've decided to try and boost sales by bringing in Jerry Lewis to play the Devil." That was interesting. She also said the show was going into a brief hiatus and it would reopen with Mr. Lewis on March 12, 1995. Tickets for that date were on sale but they hadn't yet announced that Jerry was stepping into the part then. "So if you act now," she said, "you can see Jerry Lewis make his Broadway debut."

I mentioned this to my friend Paul Dini and on an impulse, we decided to call up and buy tickets, then fly back and see Jerry's debut on the Great White Way.

That was in December. By the end of January, we were kind of regretting the impulse. Neither of us had any other reason to go back to New York and it seemed like an awful lot of money to spend just to see Jerry. We started talking about finding someone else to buy the tickets from us.

Then I got a call from someone who was running a comic book convention in New York on the same weekend as Jerry's first performance. He wanted to know if Sergio Aragonés and I would come back and be guests at the con. He'd pay for our flights and lodging and various other perks. I said, "I'll check with Sergio but I'll do it." Then I added, "Hey, you know who'd be a great guest for you? Paul Dini!" The convention organizer said, "He would be great. Do you think you can get him?"

I called Paul and said, "How'd you like an all-expenses-paid trip back to see Jerry in Damn Yankees?" Paul, as you might imagine, loved the idea. So did Sergio, who not only flew back with us but also bought a ticket so he could see the show that night.

A great coincidence, right? Well, here's the kicker: The convention not only paid for our flight and put us up in a nice hotel but of all the hotels in Manhattan, the one they happened to choose was the Marriott Marquis. We just had to step out of our rooms and take the elevator down to where Damn Yankees was playing. Jerry was quite wonderful that night before a house full of Jerry Lewis fans. He got about a three minute cheering ovation when he made his first entrance.

The show was changed a bit for him and if this had been Sweeney Todd, that might have been sacrilege…but come on. This was Damn Yankees and as I said, the revival had already altered a number of things. The curtain call was quite memorable with Jerry making a surprisingly humble speech and members of the audience singing out, "We love you, Jerry!" That night, I kinda did.

Here's a video someone posted of two musical numbers from the show. If this is from New York, the lady is probably Charlotte d'Amboise, who replaced Bebe Neuwirth as Lola. But I can't recognize Ms. d'Amboise for certain and Jerry did the show in other cities with other Lolas and even for a time in London. Jerry performs "The Good Old Days," interpolating part of an old routine of his. Then he and whoever is playing Lola — and looking at it again, I think it is d'Amboise — do "Two Lost Souls." In the original, this was a number for Lola and Joe Hardy but from the start, even before Lewis was hired, this revival switched it over to Lola and Applegate.

I hope you enjoy it. Right now, I'm struggling to rid my mind of the image of Jerry Lewis as Sweeney Todd, yelling "Hey, LAY-dee" to Mrs. Lovett. Oh, why did I have to think of that? Why?

With the passing of Jerry Lewis, three people have written me today to ask this question that David Goehner sent in…

Are we now down to just two of the zillion-member It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World cast members who are still with us? Only Barrie Chase and Carl Reiner?

There are a few extras still alive but as far as I know, there are only three folks alive who had speaking parts — the two you mention plus Nick Georgiade. Nick played the police detective who accompanied Norman Fell down to the crash site early in the picture.

Hey, if you're in L.A. and you've always wanted to meet the lovely Barrie Chase, she's among the guests at the next Hollywood Show, which takes place October 21 and 22 at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel. Among the other celebs who'll be there one or both days hawking their autographs are Diahann Carroll, Barbara Eden, Ed Asner, James Darren, Lee Meriwether, Loni Anderson, Shirley Jones, my old pal Eddie Deezen and, yes, Jerry Mathers as The Beaver.

A top comedy writer just e-mailed me the following message: "When I saw the headline, I actually sighed to myself, out loud: 'Finally!' Does that make me a bad person?"

No. In fact, the few times I was around Jerry, I witnessed the great anger and death wishes he had for others he felt had somehow wronged him. He was a volatile, oft-furious man and that doesn't make him a bad person, either. To discuss him, it's necessary to hold two distinct thoughts in mind…

1. He was often paranoid, controversial, almost criminally self-indulgent, and "mad" in several senses of that word. That was his way for most, maybe all of his professional life, though it was easier to ignore or rationalize when he was also making funny movies or was truly funny on stage or screen or his loyalists could blame it on the Percodan.
2. Few people in the field of entertainment have ever made so many human beings laugh, and also raised so much money for people in need. He is also justly hailed as an important filmmaker in many technical senses and as a teacher of same.

The better films and the stage act — especially with Dean — lost their sparkle for some of us a long time ago and Jerry became two things. One was that he was one of the few remaining relics of a certain era of show business and/or a fond memory of our childhoods. Neither of those is a small matter. For the last few decades, one of his true pleasures was to make appearances around the country where he'd so some bits of his old act (especially the Typewriter Song) and answer questions from the audience. The shows were nearly always packed with folks over 40 and the questions were nearly always, "I just want to say how much we love you and you're a genius, Jerry!"

If you're under 40, I can't imagine why you'd think this person was so beloved by some. Most of the movies don't stand up all that well, either. The one that gets singled out — The Nutty Professor — strikes me as a masterpiece only in comparison to the other 50-60, depending on how you count. In today's New York Times in a pretty good obit, Dave Kehr writes…

The Nutty Professor, a study in split personality that is as disturbing as it is hilarious, is probably the most honored and analyzed of Mr. Lewis's films. (It was also his personal favorite.) For some critics, the opposition between the helpless, infantile Professor Julius Kelp and the coldly manipulative lounge singer Buddy Love represented a spiteful revision of the old Martin-and-Lewis dynamic. But Buddy seems more pertinently a projection of Mr. Lewis's darkest fears about himself: a version of the distant, unloving father whom Mr. Lewis had never managed to please as a child, and whom he both despised and desperately wanted to be.

I buy the latter interpretation and I would make it even simpler. Every time I was around Jerry, including the one time I worked with him, I saw a distinct Jekyll/Hyde dynamic. Every time, he would be very nice and human and compassionate to someone…and then, almost like someone had thrown a switch, he would be yelling and furious about some minor or even imaginary slight. You could not have predicted what would set him off but something always would.

Eventually, his fame was not as a brilliant comedian but as someone some said had been a brilliant comedian, though without a lot of evidence to back that up. Instead, he was famous for the outbursts, the intemperate quotes (Did you know no woman was ever truly funny?), the feuds and the tirades. So many tuned in his Muscular Dystrophy Telethons not for the entertainment but to wait for those moments when a sleep-deprived Jerry would devolve into self-pity and/or rage at his critics, the dollar figure on the tote board, the lack of appreciation of his friends and show people in general, etc.

The film his fans talk about the most is the one they've never seen, The Day the Clown Cried and they don't crave to see it because it's unavailable. Hundreds of movies are unavailable and no one cares about them. They aren't yearning to view it because they expect a masterpiece. They want to see it because they expect it to stink in a highly entertaining way.

Just before Christmas last year, I wrote a piece here about how Jerry's angry statements and odder philosophical ramblings had stopped being funny to me. I ended it by saying…

I always wanted to like Jerry Lewis but he's made it too difficult. Too difficult. I'm going to stop trying to convince myself or anyone that he was a great comedian and that his tirades are anything other than the ramblings of a bitter, angry man. If you want to continue to see him as someone to be admired, don't let me stop you…because he needs all the love he can get.

But you know what? No matter how much there has been — and he's been loved more than most people on this planet get to be loved — it has never been enough.

This is one time I really mean the "Rest in Peace" part of "R.I.P." He deserves a lot of peace and all the accolades he ever truly earned. I just was never able to be a real fan, no matter how hard I tried.

So I'm sitting here getting ready to write about comedian Dick Gregory, who died yesterday at the age of 84…and I'm thinking, "Well, he'll finally get some attention and recognition for his pioneering work." And then the news pops up on my iPhone that Jerry Lewis has died…

I don't have a great quip about this but I bet Dick Gregory would have. It would have been something about how the white guys can't let a brother have the spotlight for two minutes unless the cops have him in handcuffs or something.

I put up a picture of one of his records because I knew Dick Gregory primarily as a record comedian. He was also as a man who said things that were often quoted by others, often to the extent that no one knew who'd said them first. He was the one who said the line about how it wasn't true that NASA had selected no black astronauts…"They're just saving them for the first trip to the sun!"

He was important not only because he was one of the first prominent black stand-up comedians but because he didn't primarily play to black audiences the way Redd Foxx and "Moms" Mabley then did. He was also topical and politically astute at a time when the punch line to about half of Foxx's jokes was something like "You gotta wash your ass better." Another pioneer in black guys talking to mixed-race audiences about racial matters was Godfrey Cambridge but Gregory got there first.

I never saw him perform but his records were all funny and clever and very, very brave and they're a great record of what was going on at the time in this country with regards to segregation and the resistance to accepting all races — not just his — as equals. I was just talking on this blog about the death of Elvis Presley pulling focus away from the death of Groucho Marx. Let's make a little noise about Dick Gregory and remind everyone that his black life mattered as much as anyone's.