Monthly Archives: May 2018

Nell Scovell writes about the lack of female writers on David Letterman's TV shows. There's no real excuse for it but I think the imbalance was a smidgen better than most of these articles suggest. This particular one would make you think Letterman had Merrill Markoe, Nell Scovell and no one else of their gender. There were a few others. I know my wonderful friend Tracy Abbott was a writer on Dave's NBC show and if she isn't a woman, she did a great job fooling everyone, including the doctor who delivered her baby.

Like I said, no real excuse. One that Scovell's piece doesn't really get into but which I've heard is that some shows don't hire women because women don't submit sample material to them or agents don't submit their female clients. There's probably some truth to that but it's part of a Catch-22 situation: The show has never hired women so people think, "Well, there's no chance at a job there so why try?" And that's not an excuse because those who do the hiring oughta do whatever they can to break that roadblock. Even if you didn't create the obstacle, it's wrong to have it in place and it's foolish to not be open to a great new writer simply because she ain't a guy.

Also, these articles should note that Letterman is not the only offender in this area. Years ago at a Paley Center I attended, Bill Maher announced flatly that he would probably never have a woman writer on his show because he never found one who could write his kind of comedy well enough. I'm not sure he hasn't located one or two but his current staff seems to be all male. And the archetype late-night program, The Tonight Show, hasn't done too well in this area either…

Steve Allen never employed a woman writer and neither did Jack Paar. In fairness, it should be noted that those shows had pretty small writing staffs and fairly brief runs, and there just might not have have been anyone around if they had actively tried to find a lady joke writer. There weren't that many Sally Rogerses in those days.

But the number of women writers hired by Dave Letterman's hero Johnny Carson in thirty years on-air was zero. Not a one. Jay Leno hired the first ones and I'm not sure but I think the first-ever female writer in the long history of The Tonight Show was the aforementioned Tracy Abbott. I also seem to recall that after she was hired, someone at NBC Publicity asked her if she'd consider changing her first name…because, you know, what's the point of having a woman writer if people can't tell from the credits that she's a she?

Our dear friend Marvin Kaplan was one of the great character actors and cartoon voice artists.  He passed away in August 0f 2016 and I wish you all could have known this delightful gentleman.  He was very sweet, very funny and — most of all — very Marvin. He was also very active…the kind of actor who when no one's hiring him, he goes out and makes his own job. At age 89, he was working on a movie on which he was an actor, writer and producer.

It's called Lookin' Up and it stars Steve Guttenberg. It's about a bank teller (played by Guttenberg) who loses his job to an Automated Teller, snaps and decides it would be a good time to murder his wife, his mother-in-law and his daughter, all of whom are in serious need of murdering. He is unable to carry out his plans but then all three women die for other reasons and guess who gets accused.

Wanna see it? It's playing through Friday at the Laemmle NoHo Theatre out at 5240 Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood. It will play other dates in other theatres, here and in other cities but that's where you have to go this week to see lovely Marvin's final performance. I hope to get out there myself because nothing he did was without interest and it's always nice to have a little Marvin Kaplan in your life.

Here's a wise article about 17 Secrets of Magicians. I'll add one more: A lot of people think a trick is all about the secret of how it's done. That's true with some tricks but in most, the key thing is how well it's done. This is why magicians are often really impressed with other magicians. Frequently, you know how the trick is done but you're amazed with how well some guy does it. The real magic is not in the gimmick but in the split-second timing and the masterful manipulation that comes with years of practice. It's like in cooking. You might know the recipe but that doesn't mean you can make that item as well as someone who's been doing it for a long time.

We are 65 days from the start of Comic-Con International 2018 so this might be a good time for some of us to unpack from last year's con and begin packing for this one. And if you're going, I always refer you to the official convention website — where lots of helpful information has already been posted with more on the way. But I also refer you to the unofficial convention website, sdccblog.com, where folks who have zero to do with running the con post also-helpful info.

The San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog is compiled by enthusiastic con-goers, headed by a wonderful lady named Kerry Dixon. They can make your convention experience a lot easier with their tips, announcements, shared experiences, suggestions and insights. A lot of these are on the site itself and a lot of them are in their weekly video podcasts where they discuss what they've heard and what they think and every once in a while, they have a special guest on.

They're doing this week's video podcast tomorrow night at 6:30 PM Pacific Time, which due to some strange time-travel technology that I'll never understand is 9:30 PM in the east. Their special guest will be someone who attended the first San Diego Comic-Con in 1970 and has been to every one since and has moderated hundreds of panels and program items. That's right — it's me! I'll be discussing 48 years of schlepping down to S.D. each summer through worse and worse traffic to attend larger and larger conventions…and I'll explain why it's never not worth the hassle. In the meantime, Kerry and her crew will have wise counsel on how to lessen that hassle.

You can watch us live on The San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog site and if you miss it, I'll either post the whole thing here or link you to it or something. All I know is I'll be watching too because I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say.

Since I know you all come to this site in search of great recipes, I have one for you…

As I've only mentioned eight million times here, I'm a big fan of the Classic Creamy Tomato Soup that the Souplantation chain serves during my birthday month of March and occasionally for one other week per year. This past March, it seemed a little less spectacular than the previous March and I decided the time had come for me to not be dependent on them for decent tomato soup. I'd already tried all the canned and boxed soups one finds in any market and found them lacking so I decided to find a recipe and make my own.

I've found one I like almost as much as the Souplantation version. I'm still experimenting with the precise spice components but it's already good enough that I don't care if Souplantation ever has theirs again. It's also pretty easy and, of course, I can make it any time I like. You can make it any time you like too if you can get your mitts on cans of San Marzano Peeled Tomatoes.

This is not hard to do. You can order them from Amazon. You can find them in lots of supermarkets and at least in my neck o' the woods, they have them at some Target stores.  Of note: I found my first cans in a gourmet-type shop where they were $7.50 a can.  Target sells the exact same thing for $3.69.

I've been using the Cento brand but I have no reason to believe theirs are any better than any other.  If your store only has Crushed Tomatoes, I believe they'd work just as well since the whole thing's going through a blender before it reaches your mouth.

To make two or three servings, you need one can of those, half a yellow onion, a tablespoon or two of butter and whatever spices you like.  I've also been experimenting with tossing in two crushed cloves of fresh garlic.  Oh — and it might be nice to have a stove, a pot to cook all this stuff in and the aforementioned blender. A food processor would also work.

Chop the onion up a bit and toss it in the pot. Throw in the garlic if you like. Sauté them if you like in the butter or a little olive oil but I've tried it without sautéing and it doesn't seem to make much difference.  Toss in whatever butter you didn't use for sautéing if you sautéd.  Empty in the 28 ounce can of tomatoes and break them up a little with the wooden (not metal) spoon you'll be using to stir your soup occasionally throughout the cooking process.  Add a little water to the can, swish it around to get all the remaining tomato remnants off the inside, then dump that water into the pot.

Add some salt and then turn on your burner and adjust until you have this mixture simmering.  Let it do that for 45 minutes, then run it through your blender.  Blend it a lot if you want it silky smooth.  Blend it a little if you want it a bit chunky.

The last step is to play around with additives.  You'll probably need more salt and I always add onion powder because I somehow have a big, big jar of it and that's a fine reason to add anything to whatever you're making.

The online recipes from which I stole the components of mine all demanded Cayenne Pepper and sometimes Red Pepper Flakes but I don't like spicy anything.  I get the feeling there is no one who posts recipes online who is humanly capable of not adding Cayenne Pepper to every preparation including French Vanilla Ice Cream and baby food.  I guess they must all have big, big jars of it to use up.

I've also tried adding — not all to the same batch — a dash of sugar, a little bit of cream, a half-cup of chicken stock and when I don't add fresh garlic, some garlic powder. My experiments continue but so far, I like it best with just the salt and some onion powder.

Once it's done, let it rest a while before consuming. Last time I did this, I ate half of it an hour later. I then refrigerated the rest and then microwaved it back to life twenty hours later. It was a little better the next day as some prepared foods tend to be.

When I first swooned for the soup at Souplantation, I asked them to show me the recipe, foolishly thinking I could make it at home. They'll show it to you if you ask but you can't copy it and you can't remember it because it has around thirty ingredients in it, some of which have long, chemical-sounding names like Something Benozate and Something Else Mononitrate. I really like that this has less than a half-dozen components…and really all it is is tomatoes with a few flavor add-ons. If you can get some cheese 'n' garlic croutons in it, that's a great combination.

In honor of what day it is, here's a piece that ran here about five years ago…

My mother died a year ago last Friday. Today, the doctor who took such wonderful care of her for more than the last third of her life phoned to see how I was doing. He was never my doctor. He was my mother's. But that's how strongly he felt a connection to her…and thus, to me.

The answer is that I am fine with it. Do I miss her? Sure…but I miss the woman she was when she could walk and see and do things without me or a caregiver assisting her. But by the time her heart stopped beating on 10/4/12, that person was long ago and far away. So for me the mourning period hasn't been one year; more like ten.

I felt so sorry for her the last decade of her life. It was all about surviving — taking pills, going to doctors' appointments, etc. — and not much else. She couldn't eat the foods she wanted to eat. Couldn't read a book. Couldn't walk without a walker…and then, not very far. She couldn't even get down the front steps of her home without someone to help and couldn't get down the rear steps to go out in her backyard even with assistance.

She hated it. She hated being so reliant on others. And when I had to run over there or haul her into the hospital at 4 AM, she hated what she felt she was doing to my life. Over and over, she talked about how there should be some simple, painless way she could choose to just be done with it. (My mother is not the best example in my life of the sheer humanity that would be involved in allowing the elderly and ill to make that decision. Before long here, I'll post the tale of some neighbors we had whose story makes the case even better.)

So yeah, I miss her. But the elation at seeing her out of pain drowns a lot of that out and so does this: Had she lived another few months, she would have been totally blind, as opposed to legally blind, and she would have lost the last crumbs of the independence she so dearly loved. And to be honest, I would have had to make some hard decisions about where and how it was best for her to live. Nothing I would have decided would have been to her liking…and I'm glad for me I didn't have to pick the least painful alternative.

Every so often, it hits me that she's gone. Most days around 5:30 or 6 in the afternoon, I get the odd sensation that I've forgotten to do something I was supposed to do. And then I remember: Any day I didn't see her earlier, I'd phone her around then to check in, say hello (and usually, something very silly) and just connect. That's what I'm remembering I haven't done yet.

The other day, I was talking about her with my dermatologist. I had an "atypical mole" removed and I was there so he could yank out a few stitches. He said, "It looks like you've been doing a good job cleaning the sutures." I said yes, "I've been washing the area off with Bactine."

He looked surprised. He said, "Bactine? Do they still make Bactine?"

Yes, they do. It's not always easy to find in the First Aid section but it's usually there, just to the left of the Neosporin. Bactine is what my mother used to spray or daub on any cut, scrape, abrasion or place on my body that hurt. It usually stopped hurting within moments and I'm not sure if it was the magic healing/cleansing powers of Bactine Pain Relieving Cleaning Spray or just the fact that my mother was fixing the boo-boo. It may well have been a combination.

My mother could heal anything with a bottle of Bactine. Anything! If I'd needed a heart transplant, she would have just sprayed on about a tenth of a bottle and — poof! — new heart! I'm sure of it.

I always keep a bottle of it in my medicine cabinet. It doesn't work quite as well when I spray it on. I just don't quite have her touch. But it does help, maybe because it reminds me of her. I hope something always does.

Our magical friend Misty Lee does a mystical feat every Wednesday over at this website. Here's last Wednesday's, in which she reminds us all never to listen to baked goods…

• Kansas just passed a law banning police officers from having sex during traffic stops. How often has this been happening that they needed to pass a law?

I'm seeing a batch of discussions on the web about racism at the moment, more specifically about whether — to quote Kevin Drum — "liberals call out racism too often, which just alienates conservative white people and makes them even more sympathetic to racist arguments."

I don't have a strong opinion about that. I would guess some folks are unfairly accused and some folks aren't and some of the people who are sympathetic to racist arguments were going there anyway and didn't need to be driven there. I just thought I'd toss out a thought I've had over the years. It's that there are some folks in this world who are fingered as racists when the truth is that they're just bigoted towards anyone who isn't them. They just aren't capable about giving a damn about anyone but themselves. They might be able to fake concern for others on occasion if and when it seems advantageous…but really, down deep, they simply don't care.

I'm recalling a fellow who worked in an animation studio wherein I once labored. There had been one of those stories in the news — the kind we now see with appalling frequency — where a bunch of white police officers had beaten the crap out of some poor black guy. The poor black guy had done something to warrant arrest but it was, like, shoplifting a Mars bar or a crime of equal severity. It wasn't anything to warrant the kind of beating that leaves permanent damage.

The incident was talked-about at the studio and everyone was appalled…everyone except this one artist. He just kind of just shrugged and said, "Well, he probably deserved it." Or maybe it wasn't even that bad.

People started making remarks about this guy being a bigot. Some took to calling him Archie Bunker. Someone else said he'd rushed to see the movie The Great Race because he assumed it was all about Caucasians. Comments like that. Me, I thought the guy was just the kind of alleged human being who wouldn't have cared if it had been a white guy or an Asian or anyone else, just so long as it wasn't him — one of those "somebody else's problems are somebody else's problems" kind of person.

Calling him out as a racist did no good because he knew he wasn't one; that he had no particular feelings about one race over another. I wonder how many other seeming racists fall into this category…and please understand that I am not saying anyone's any better or worse a human being because what looks like racism is actually a combination of self-obsession and misanthropy. I'm just suggesting that if you're going to deal with assholes, it might be helpful to understand just what kind of assholes they are. We have a great many species.

Neither rain nor snow nor sleet will stop Dave Portnoy from reviewing every damn pizza place he can find. One bite. Everybody knows the rules…

Dave Gordon writes to ask…

Given your comments about Trump and the Nobel Prize, I wonder if you would like to comment on the awarding of that prize to Barack Obama two months after he became president the first time. Since that means he was nominated at least six months before he was elected, it seems…rather presumptious, certainly premature. I'm no fan of Trump, etc etc, but as I've said elsewhere, he was elected by the same system that gave America Abraham Lincoln and J.F.K., and (insert name of any other president you think was a good one). A lot of people, probably in what you guys call the "flyover states" (that name is probably another symptom of the problem) think Trump is at least doing what he promised before the election.

Abraham Lincoln and J.F.K. were elected due to Russian meddling and a ginned-up phony scandal about their opponents' e-mails? Wow. You learn something new every day.

I don't think much of any awards, especially those where the process — who votes, how they vote, what criteria is applied — is generally unknown. The Nobel Prize certainly qualifies for my indifference. Do you know how it's determined? I sure don't, though I do get that if a lot of people say you and I deserve it, we're misunderstanding or misrepresenting the actual nominating process if we then go around and say we were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

So my answer is that I don't really think much of Obama's prize or any selection. It's an award, it's well-known and there's some money attached. That seems to be enough for some people (especially when they win it) to treat it as a great honor. But his was, like you said, certainly premature. If he ever deserved one, he probably didn't deserve it then.

And hey, before we wrap this up, let's discuss two other things, one being your idea that "you guys" refer to "flyover states." I don't know who "you guys" are but I've never used that term. This blog has 25,416 posts in it and that phrase never turned up in any of them. If you're talking about people in Hollywood or Los Angeles thinking that way, I've never heard that term used by anyone around me. With the whole world connected by the Internet these days, I can't imagine why anyone would think that way.

As for Trump doing what he promised before the election…well, he promised a great universal health care system that would cover more people than Obamacare did and be much cheaper. We haven't seen a trace of that. He promised a new prescription benefits plan that would save $300 billion a year and drastically lower the cost of medicine. The plan he's supposed to announce today does almost none of that. He promised to invest more money in U.S. infrastructure than Hillary Clinton was proposing and the White House has just announced he's not going to do any such thing.

He promised to renegotiate NAFTA into a much better deal for the U.S. That was supposed to be one of his highest priorities and that hasn't happened. He promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and influence peddlers and then he recruited from their ranks for his cabinet and administration. He promised tax reform that would hurt people like him and he promised a wall which ain't being built and today's news says that he's been screaming at his staff about their inability to close borders as much as he promised. I think he even promised not to play a lot of golf, didn't he?

The same cynicism I have for awards extends to my not expecting any elected official to make good on all or most of their campaign promises. I think though that Trump has had a lower score than most and a profound belief in his ability to fast-talk his way around admitting when he's reneged or reversed. I'll start changing my mind about him when we see even a semi-workable proposal for that health plan where "everybody's going to be taken care of, much better than they're taken care of now and the government's going to pay for it."

Boy, Chita Rivera is amazing. I know it's not polite to mention a lady's age but last night at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills, every single one of us in the audience was thinking, "She's 85 and she can still sing and dance!" No, not with the vitality and flexibility of when she was in the original West Side Story or Bye Bye Birdie or any of her huge Broadway hits…but even at a reduced capacity, she's still amazing. On the way out, a lady in front of us said, "I'm going to still be tingling tomorrow morning" and I don't know if she is but I sure am.

Broadway historian-accompanist Seth Rudetsky does these shows every so often at the Wallis and perhaps elsewhere. He brings in some legendary diva of the musical theater and it's half-interview, half-performance. Chita answered questions charmingly and amusingly about her career and she sang eight or nine of her tunes from her many stage triumphs, closing with "All That Jazz" and "Nowadays" from Chicago. ("Nowadays" featured a funny, loving impression of her late co-star in that show, Gwen Verdon.) Her sheer energy impressed us all, all the more so when we remembered that she did two performances last evening and we were at the second.

Mr. Rudetsky is also a very fine host and pianist. I said the same thing about him a year ago when he did the same kind of show on the same stage with another pretty talented woman, Audra McDonald. Can't wait to see who he drags there next season.

While we're on the subject of talented folks singing show tunes, I've been too busy 'til now to report on another peachy evening. Last week, I took Amber to the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood to see my pal Jason Graae performing with his pal, Liz Callaway. I felt a little inadequate there. The place was packed with performers and I was maybe the only one present who wasn't qualified to get up there and do a number. (We were sitting with Frank Ferrante.)

If you know Graae and Callaway, I don't have to rave about their talents, individually or collectively. If you don't know them…well, you oughta. Jason probably won't be doing a lot of cabaret performances for a while. He joins the National Tour of Wicked when it opens next week in Omaha. Unless he gets his ass fired, he will be in it when it plays Toledo, Toronto, Detroit, Tulsa, San Antonio, Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles and other cities. He is playing, of course, The Wizard but I'm betting that if he's still in it when it gets here they'll have upgraded him to Glinda or Elphaba. Touring schedule here.

I could tell you how good Liz Callaway is but I already showed you back here…and here's a link to a video I posted of Jason in performance. Put these two on the same stage and it was another reason to wake up the next morning still tingling. Audra McDonald, by the way, is performing down at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. the afternoon of May 20 and there still seem to be cheap tickets available on Goldstar.

Just got back from seeing an 85-year-old woman sing and dance…and boy, was she wonderful. Tell you all about it in the morning.

I get into an elevator in a Beverly Hills building that's full of doctors, including my own.  Before the car heads upwards, another man gets in with me.  My keen eye for recognizing people tells me it's Paul Shaffer, famed bandleader-sidekick to David Letterman.  He's wearing dark glasses and a hat that does not completely cover his totally-bald head but it's definitely Paul Shaffer.

Except that it isn't.  In the second glance I take at him, I see that he is not Paul Shaffer but rather an incredible facsimile.  I say nothing but he says to me, "No, I'm not Paul Shaffer."

I say, "I realized that on second glance.  How many times a day do you have to tell people you're not Paul Shaffer?"

He says, "When I'm out in public, about once every half-hour.  Sometimes, I can hear them whispering or I know from their faces and I just let them think that."

I ask, "Is it better now that Letterman's gone off?"

He says, "A little, yeah. For a while there, I was thinking of flying to New York, robbing a bank near where Letterman tapes and watching them arrest Paul Shaffer."

And that's when I get off on my podiatrist's floor. Except that before I get off, I tell him, "I know how you feel. I'm sick of telling people I'm not Jon Hamm."

As the doors close, he says, "I wasn't fooled."

Some folks are upset this morning that Trump is saying "everyone agrees" he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for a peace that has barely begun to happen. What they don't get is that Trump means everyone on Fox News agrees he should get it. It's just the way the guy talks. Everything he does is perfect. Everyone agrees. What is that lying media talking about when they suggest otherwise? Meanwhile, in other Fake News…

• Joe Conason on why pulling out of the Iran deal might not be good for America but it could be great for Russia. Of course.
• And Daniel Larison writes at some length here and here why it'll be bad for America. Apparently, the main reasons the Iran agreement is "the worst deal ever" in the eyes of Trump and folks like John Bolton are that (a) Obama negotiated it and (b) it somehow doesn't make Iran cease to exist.
• George Will says Donald Trump is not the worst person in our government. That honor, he argues, now belongs to Mike Pence. Frankly, I think the difference between Trump and Pence is about as meaningful as the difference between the Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's and the Crispy Chicken Nuggets at Wendy's.
• Frank Rich is asked if Trump will face any political penalty for his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear pact. Rich replies, "Honestly, I doubt Trump will still be in office when the full fallout of this blunder is felt. The blunder, one should add, is not only to pull out of a deal that was working but also to have no "better deal" (or policy at all) to take its place. But the interesting political piece about both this decision and the onrushing summit with Kim Jong-un is that Trump has persuaded himself that big bold foreign policy moves, however harmful to America and its allies, will rescue him from the rampaging scandal at home."
• A number of corporations gave huge, suspicious cash amounts to Michael Cohen…for what? Andrew Prokop runs us through some of their explanations of what they thought they'd be getting for that money.

So here's what I'm wondering about. We get this steady stream of stories about Trump off-camera being pissed about this or furious about that…stories that obviously have been leaked by sources within the White House. Who's leaking these and how have they been able to remain within the White House?