Monthly Archives: November 2017

I received a number of messages asking me why I hadn't done an obit/remembrance/anything here on the passing of David Cassidy, who died the other day at the age of 67. "Surely, your paths must have crossed at some time since you got into show business," one wrote. No, they didn't. They crossed briefly around 1967 when we were both attending University High School in West Los Angeles. Apparently, we also co-existed at Emerson Junior High School before that but I only found that out years later when I got curious as to why my yearbooks sold for such high prices.

The one time we spoke: There was a talent show at Uni Hi and I was involved in producing it. David, who was a year or so ahead of me, asked to be a late entrant into the program but at that point, the rundown was already locked and it was too long so I told him no.

There. That's my David Cassidy anecdote. Not really worth the trip, was it?

Later, someone told me who his parents were and I would have liked to talk to him a little about them but we never spoke again. He was acting a bit at the time but this was a few years before The Partridge Family and his stardom. I do not recall having any particular feeling for or against that series or his records or anything else he did.

Around 1971, he was on the cover of every single "fan" magazine oriented towards teen-age girls and a few of them were published by a company that occasionally employed me to write this and that. One day, I casually mentioned to an editor there that I'd attended the same high school as Mr. Cassidy and instantly — don't ask me to explain why — I was offered the job of ghost-writing a column they ran called something like "David Cassidy Gives Advice." Teen-age girls were invited to write in and ask David for help with life and relationships and love and such, and he would tell them what to do.

Keep in mind that I've never been a teen-age girl. If I were one in 1971 and I had a problem in my life, I don't think I would have asked the guy starring on The Partridge Family for any wise, sage solutions. I'm just saying.

Then again, if I'd been the guy starring on The Partridge Family, I don't think I'd have given a teen magazine permission to run such a column, have some stranger write my replies and sign my name to them. But as it was explained to me, Mr. Cassidy had done exactly that. He didn't want to read the letters that came in, consult with the person answering them or apparently even read the column he allegedly authored.

In those days, I'd write anything for money. Those days should not be confused with these days when I'll write almost anything for money. I said, "Okay. Let me have the mail and I'll take a whack at it." The editor replied, "Oh, just write whatever you want" — meaning "Make up phony letters." She said the real mail they received for the column would be of no use to me.

I asked if I could see it if only to get some sense of what kind of advice the advice-seekers were seeking. She said, "I'll give it to you if you insist but they all ask the same question and it's a question you can't answer in the column." I was handed a sack of about 40 letters — that week's arrivals — and I went off into a corner to read.

About 25 of the letters did not ask "David" for any advice about relationships. They asked if they could meet him, if they could get an autographed photo, if he liked girls with bangs, if he was going to be in their city, etc. About 15 did ask questions about love and relationships but as the editor had warned me, they were all the same question about the same love and the same relationship. They all said, approximately…

I'm 15 years old and I'm really, really fond of this boy at school named Todd. We've gone out a few times and now he is telling me that he loves me but that I need to prove my love for him in a physical way…

They were all pretty much that letter and in more than a few, the name of the boy demanding sex was Todd. Either that given name makes guys especially horny or one kid named Todd was really getting around. I do not recall any letters about anyone in Alabama named Roy.

And of course, it was a letter I could not answer. The magazine could not condone underage females giving in to Todd-like demands, even if that's perhaps what David would have recommended. Meanwhile, a response extolling the wisdom of saving one's self for marriage would have sounded phony and parents would have complained if the magazine even addressed the matter.

So instead, I made up letters from "Jan" who wanted to know if she should wear her glasses to the high school dance even though they made her look less attractive, and from "Lisa" who wanted to know what do do about her boy friend's terrible table manners that caused food to fly in all directions. I — or rather, David — told Jan that she'd look darned unattractive stumbling and bumping into people, and he told Lisa to wear a plastic poncho to dinner one night and maybe he'd get the message.

I wrote two or three of these columns before I secured more interesting and better-paying work but it was an interesting experience…and an educational one. I've never for a second been interested in having children and I'm not sure I can explain why. But if I ever did and it was a girl, I at least knew how to be a responsible father: Never let your daughter go out with a guy named Todd. Any guy named Todd.

Everywhere I went this past weekend, people were talking about Sexual Harassments and all these job-ending revelations. Three different people asked me roughly the same question: Do I think Louis C.K. has disqualified himself as being a stand-up comedian? I don't think Louis C.K. has even disqualified himself from being President of the United States. How many accusers does Trump have now?

Is it possible for Mr. C.K. to make a comeback? Well, let's look at it this way: The whole world saw Mike Tyson bite somebody's ear off and then he was convicted of raping an 18-year-old woman and had to register as a tier II sex offender. Since then, he made a big comeback as a boxer, appeared in several movies and on the Broadway stage and is now starring in a cartoon show on Adult Swim. So why shouldn't Louis C.K., who did not rape anyone as far as we know, not resume his career? Besides, the only real qualification to be a comedian is that you make people laugh.

Matter of fact, of all the people losing jobs over the charge of sexual impropriety so far, Louis C.K. might make the fullest recovery. He was never in the kind of position where we expect dignity or integrity. We don't place great public trust in comics the way we do newspersons or elected officials. His offense did not involve touching anyone. Okay, well, he touched himself but you know what I mean. And I think he may be smarter than a lot of others in Crisis Management. He had the good sense, as few have, to just come out and say the women were telling the truth. He did not compound his felony by trashing them.

I am not excusing what he did to the ladies who rightly complained but a lot of of folks discussing harassment these days are forgetting there are degrees of wrongdoing here. Patting a woman on the butt is nowhere as bad as rape. Making inappropriate conversation is not a crime of the same magnitude as demanding sexual favors for a job. And when minors are involved, it puts the offenses into a whole 'nother, more serious category. One of the people who asked me about Louis C.K. likened him to Cosby. Compared to Cosby, Louis C.K. is…well, the kind of person we used to think Cosby was.

• Trump pardons Thanksgiving turkeys, says it was the most incredible and successful turkey-pardoning ever, much better than any turkey-pardoning by Obama…but complains turkeys did not thank him sufficiently.

• Have wars or large tax cuts ever "paid for themselves?"

The musical of The Scarlet Pimpernel opened on Broadway in 1997. It was never hugely successful there but it had enough devout fans that it was revived and revised a few times and has been produced often in various versions, never quite getting the reception it probably deserves. This clip is from the original Broadway presentation and it features Douglas Sills, who played Percy, in what I think is easily the best number in the show.

It's a heroic, uplifting tune in which Percy and his "bounders" are pledging to go off and fight one of those battles that you'd have to be nuts to think you could win. In the show (SPOILER ALERT!) they do, but it doesn't usually turn out that way in real life. Every time I hear someone say in a burst of misguided bravado that they're going to accomplish something that seems to me impossible and perhaps suicidal, I hear this song playing faintly in the background…

This is about collecting original art by comic book and comic strip artists. There's a lot of it offered on eBay and for the purposes of this warning, let's divide it into two categories and I'll use Charles Schulz and Jack Kirby as examples. It is also true with other artists.

There is Published Work. This would be the original art to a Peanuts strip by Schulz that was published in newspapers around the world or it would be a page of Fantastic Four or some other feature that was drawn by Kirby that was drawn for an actual comic book. I would say that at least 95% of these that are offered are genuine. Once in a while, you see a photostat passed off as an actual original. Sometimes — and this is true of Kirby and other artists who did not ink their own work — an artist will trace an old Kirby page and ink it himself. These are usually identified as "re-creations" but sometimes they're not or they get mistaken for the original versions.

Then there is Unpublished Work. This would be a sketch Schulz did for someone of Snoopy or a drawing that Kirby did of Captain America…or it could be of any of their characters.

In this second category, if the drawing is signed to someone (i.e., "To my friend, Mike…"), there is about a 30% chance the drawing was actually done by the alleged artist. If it isn't personalized, I would say that number drops down to around 8%.

And if the seller has lots of these — lots of sketches done by different popular artists — that percentage drops down to about 2%…maybe lower if Schulz spelled his name "Schultz." And yes, I've even seen that.

Paul Krugman on the Republican tax plan. There's nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I'm back from the Miami Book Fair where I was "presenting." That's a new term I learned. There were authors there giving speeches, authors being interviewed, authors participating on panels…and the word for all that is "presenting." Other authors I met would ask me, "When are you presenting?" Apparently, it means making any kind of appearance to talk about your book. Anyway, I flew there on Saturday, presented on Sunday and came home on Monday so I'm exhausted. When I'm not, I'll tell you more about my weekend adventure, although being as brief as it was, there isn't a whole lot to tell.

I have to go get horizontal but before I do, I just wanted to say this: If you ever do a documentary about the struggle of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to gain credit and some retirement money from Superman and you leave Jerry Robinson out of the story, it's like you told the story of how the Dodgers won the '65 World Series and didn't mention Sandy Koufax. Good night.

What do you think is the best-selling Broadway cast album of all time? We have here a list of the Top 41 Sellers.

Before you click over there, take a guess what's Numero Uno. I did and I was wrong. The one I guessed was #1 was actually #4.

I miss Reprise!, which was a company here in Los Angeles that revived old musicals for a few weeks at a time. Their shows had minimal sets and even less rehearsal but they often had enough talent to triumph over those handicaps.

In 2000, they offered up Mack and Mabel, which is one of those that never quite goes away even though it's only occasionally been much of a success. The original production with Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters lasted six weeks on Broadway. General consensus: Some great songs by Jerry Herman but the book and staging let them down.

The book has been revised a few times by different parties and it never seems to satisfy anyone. This may be because there really wasn't an interesting story to tell about the relationship between the self-proclaimed King of Comedy, Mack Sennett and his leading lady, Mabel Normand. Anyone who tries that is building on a pretty shaky foundation.

In 2000, Reprise! staged it and I was there. So was someone with a camera. This is Jane Krakowski who played Mabel — quite well, I thought…

I got through my talk with no C-Span cameras on the premises so don't bother looking for me there. Charlie Kochman, who is an editor and a gentleman, interviewed me for an hour and then I sat at a table autographing books for a while.

I'll tell you more when I'm at a real computer and not doing this on my iPhone. And of course, the Miami Beach audiences are the greatest audiences in the world.

The Book TV website has no mention of me this morning so I think I'm safe.

Actually, I love the idea that there's enough interest in Jack Kirby that someone would think there's a mass audience for a talk about him…or at least one as "mass" as it gets on C-Span. And as more and more people learn about this amazing man and what he did, I see that mass expanding. I just don't like being in front of a camera. Some day, I'll tell you about my little list of Things That Matter To Other People That I'm Happy Don't Matter To Me.

And now, I think I'll go shave. Just in case.

When you check into a hotel, make sure the guest before you in that room didn't leave the alarm clock set for 5 AM.

Before I turn in for the night: Jack Kirby had an endless stream of stories about his days in the service during World War II. Those experiences, which have been extensively researched, are the basis for "Kirby at War," a documentary that debuts Monday, November 20 9 on Channel France 3 Lorraine Grand Est after the Evening News Soir 3.

I don't know what that last part means, either. I cut-and-pasted it out of an e-mail from one of the filmmakers, Jean Depelley. He and his partner Marc Azéma created the documentary which was coproduced by France Télévisions, Passé Simple and Metaluna Productions, with the help of CNC, Procirep Angoa and the region Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Again, I don't know what that means. I just cut-and-pasted it…but if you're in France, it might mean something to you.

I believe I am somewhere in this film, dubbed and sub-titled as I probably should be even when I'm interviewed for a film in English. I haven't seen it and even if I did, I wouldn't understand it. But I understood that Jean and Marc are bright, sincere gents so it's probably real good. If you're as bad at French as I am — typing "creme brulee" in the previous post was about my limit — join me in settling for a peek at the trailer…

'Twas a strange day getting here. Remind me when I have time to tell you about the guy on the plane who kept getting on and off and on and off before takeoff, certain he was on the right flight, then the wrong flight, then the right flight, then the wrong flight…

And there was also the guy at the Miami Airport who kept coming up to me, urging me for my sake to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior. If you respect your religious beliefs, you shouldn't be trying to sell them the same way twelve-year-old boys sell chocolate bars outside a mall.

There were other impediments but I made it in time to hook up with my friend-editor (he's a hyphenate) Charlie Kochman and catch Joe Biden being interviewed in a hall full of people who'd vote for him in a second for president. He seemed like a nice, smart man and in-person, he looks even more like McLean Stevenson than he does on television. For a moment there, I thought I was at a Hello, Larry! taping. I was impressed that he didn't demagogue (I think that's become a verb), didn't demonize the opposition…much, and didn't appeal to the worst fears/hates of his audience. There were some in that room waiting to be mined and he didn't go there.

As you might expect, he said nothing about a 2020 presidential bid and I fear he may be too old for that. Then again, I voted for Bernie Sanders and would probably do so again. Biden is here at the Miami Book Fair talking about his book, Promise Me, Dad, which is about a lot of things but mainly about the death of his son Beau.

The former Vice-President said some things about losing a loved one to cancer which resonated with me, having not-so-long-ago lost a very loved one to cancer. I can't think of too many politicians who have had the eloquence or even the interest in talking about a subject like that. There are no votes in it.

Tomorrow — Sunday — I'm doing a batch of interviews, then at 2 PM local time (Eastern) I'm doing an one-hour event called "Kirby's Moral Universe" about the underlying themes and beliefs that underscored the work of Jack Kirby. I have been told that Book TV will be covering the discussion and airing it on C-Span2, perhaps even live.

I find this real hard to believe and expect to find out tomorrow that it is not so; that the time is instead going to a noted Peruvian chef who has authored the definitive book on how to make creme brulee out of quinoa. Then again, most of what I see on C-Span is legislators making speeches to empty rooms so maybe I'll fit right in. Good night.