We're reliving a recent trip I took with my sensational friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Day 10 was our last full day in New York but before you read about it, you'll want to read about Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, my Philadelphia Addenda, Day 7, Day 8 and Day 9. In that order.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
As has been noted on this blog, Amber loves Benihana and especially the fried rice they make. So on a drizzly Thursday, we subwayed our way to 56th and 5th and met my pal Rick Scheckman for a Benihana lunch. I first knew Shecky (as so many call him) when he was working on Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. He was in the select group of employees that Dave took with him to CBS so I also knew him all through his employment on Late Show with David Letterman.
Since I'm showing you videos of some of my friends, here's a segment from Dave's NBC show from August 24, 1988 that used staff members as actors. Shecky's the guy playing Elvis and he probably also secured the clip from The Terror of Tiny Town featured in the first bit. Finding clips and doing occasional on-camera roles were among the many things he did for Dave. When I visited him in either office, he also seemed to be the only guy on staff who knew where everything was and how to make quick computer repairs…
We move in a lot of the same circles especially around film experts, so we talked about late night TV and about old movies and about the comedy business as Amber consumed — what was it? Thirty-eight or thirty-nine bowls of fried rice? Whatever it was, she enjoyed meeting another one of my friends.
When Amber first began the dangerous practice of hanging around me, I told her, "You're going to meet all my friends and you might not like all of them because I don't like all of them. But you'll like most of them." She's met an awful lot of them now and after almost every one, she turns to me and says, "When do I get to meet the ones I won't like?" The streak continued with Shecky.
After lunch, we walked down to Rockefeller Center and I showed my rice-consuming friend around that place and told her some of its history. Then she ran off to get a broken nail repaired and I hustled over to the offices of Sirius XM Radio to guest on John Fugelsang's fine program Tell Me Everything on the Sirius XM Insight channel. As I walked in during a break, John told me, "We're going to be talking about the Samantha Bee thing," which was fine except that I'd been away from TV, radio and the 'net all day and hadn't heard a thing about whatever the heck "the Samantha Bee thing" was.
But I got up to speed (sort of) and much of the discussion was carried by John, his fine co-host Frank Coniff and another guest, author David Feldman. John also had me talk for a while about Jack Kirby…and I'm getting to be like a Chatty Cathy doll that way. Pull a ring on my neck and I talk about Jack Kirby…though with great joy and undiminished admiration. The wonderful thing about that is you can talk for days on end about Jack and you'll never get anywhere near exhausting the subject.
A fellow wrote me today, as we all prep for Comic-Con in (gasp!) 32 days. He's hosting a panel there on which he'll be interviewing several people and wanted some pointers on how to do that. I am better at it than some people but worse than most…and the secret to getting better at it is to study the most. I don't much like being on camera but I enjoy being on radio for a simple reason. Minus the visual issues, I can focus on what's being said and I am often very aware of how the interviewing is steering the conversation. My friend Paul Harris is really good at this. I learned a lot being on his radio shows and now when I listen to him talking with others, I'm aware of the skills on display.
They involve keeping things moving and asking questions that are answerable. Most questions that end with "What was that like?" are vague so they lead to vague answers. A good interviewer also poses questions in a way that gets the interviewee to the point A.S.A.P. and follows up when the interviewee omits some vital detail or says something that begs for amplification. John Fugelsang is a terrific stand-up comic but that skill, which involves working alone, does not necessarily go with playing well with others.
In fact, I've known stand-ups who forget that they're supposed to let the other person talk. John isn't one of them. On this visit to his show, since I felt more comfy there, I was more aware of how expertly he choreographs the verbal dance of three other people in his studio plus the caller on the phone. Some day, I might like to try a show like that but I know I'm not ready yet.
While I was up at Sirius XM, I ran into my friend Christine Pedi, who is one of the main hosts of their Broadway channel. You may remember her from Day 7 of this endless Excellent Adventure. She was just finishing recording her show so she came along to play audience for me on John's show and later we walked out together. I just realized that I showed you videos of some of the other people Amber and I spent time with on this trip but I didn't embed a video of Christine…so here's one. The gent with her is Seth Rudetsky who also hosts on the Sirius Broadway channel. As you'll see, he plays a mean piano and she's an incredible mimic…
As we left, Amber called and we had one of those "How did we exist before cellphones?" moments. She didn't know where I was and I didn't know where she was…so she texted me a link to a map and I followed it to a little delicatessen a few blocks away where she was enjoying a smoothie. We walked up Fifth Avenue to a subway station and in a New York minute, we were at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Times Square, heading to hook up with Charlie and Rachel Kochman in Shubert Alley…
This revival of Hello, Dolly! at the Shubert originally starred Bette Midler and David Hyde Pierce and then they left it and were replaced by Bernadette Peters and Victor Garber, who'll be in it until mid-July when Bette and David return to do six weeks. Then the show will close. This has apparently surprised many who remember how David Merrick kept the original production running forever and ever via stunt-casting…bringing in new Dollies every few months, hiring superstar Divas. I guess it was assumed the producers of this version would try something like that but nope. Midler and Pierce come back and that's it. It's kind of a shame because it's a beautiful production with great sets, costumes and choreography.
Watching it, I formed four opinions, the first being what I just said about how it had great art direction and staging. They other three are…
- Bernadette Peters is absolutely wonderful as Dolly Levi.
- Victor Garber is even better as Horace Vandergelder. I mean, he's really terrific and the audience absolutely loved him.
- The songs in Hello, Dolly! are for the most part wonderful but the better the production is in other ways, the more obvious is that it's a very silly, pointless story. Has anyone seeing it ever cared whether the two clerks who work for Vandergelder ever get to kiss a lady? Does anyone have any idea why all these different characters keep running into each other?
Don't get me wrong: I had a great time. We all did. But it's one of those shows where the actors dutifully utter lines that convey the plot and nobody gives even half a damn about that plot. The audience we saw it with was ecstatic from curtain-up to curtain-down but they'd have been even happier if in the Second Act, they'd tossed the storyline and just done the "Hello, Dolly!" number over and over.
I love Bernadette Peters. Remind me one of these days to tell you a story from around 1980 of the one and only time I met her. If I had been cool and witty and charming, I would have told this story long ago. As it was, I was flustered and clumsy and I made a ridiculous fool of myself. This was close to four decades ago and I'm still cringing from it.
And that's right: It's been like 38 years since that happened. Why did she only look about twenty years older on the stage of the Shubert? It was an exciting evening of everyone in the place loving her…and maybe loving Victor Garber a tad more. He was crusty and funny and he alone managed to rise above most of the lines he was given. As I said, it's not a great show but it sure was a great show.
After, we went to John's of Times Square where they have great pizza and we didn't have the pizza. It was a fine, albeit long day and I've tired myself out just writing about it. So come back tomorrow for the much-briefer story of the last day of our trip…with Special Guest Star, Donald Trump! Well, actually it was just a guy who looks like Trump but that's almost the same thing.