Monthly Archives: November 2018

• This just in: Trump fires Jeff Sessions. Also claims "My dog ate my tax returns!"

Trump's about to give a press conference where I expect he'll keep saying, "We won, we won, we won!" That's part of his personality. Heck, it's part of his success. He convinces people, "Stick with me because I always win." This morning, I'm even happier than I was when I went to bed last night. I'm reading pieces like this one and this one by Kevin Drum, who is a sane, non-spin Liberal who I think has the right take on what just happened. It was an "about as good as could be realistically expected" night for Democrats.

And things could still get better for them with recounts and late results. Any election where Dana Rohrabacher loses is a good election. He'll be free to go work full-time for V. Putin.

What I'm waiting for now is for Nancy Pelosi to announce, "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" and for Mitch McConnell to say what a sleazy, unAmerican thing that is to say.

Someplace tonight, one Republican Senator turned to another Republican Senator and said, "Well, we've got good news and bad news.  The good news is that Ted Cruz is being returned to the Senate.  The bad news is that Ted Cruz is being returned to the Senate."

Results have been coming in earlier than I expected and, so far, being contested less than I expected.  I'm happy Democrats have taken back the House.  I'm unhappy that the lesson many will take away from certain races is that Trump-style campaigning — smearing your opponents, blatant lying and stoking racial fears — can work.

It's closing in on Midnight here in California and there are still people standing in lines here and there waiting to vote. Vote by mail, people! Vote by mail!

I think this country is better off today than it was yesterday if only because Trump won't have both halves of Congress rubber-stamping his whims and unlikely to hold him accountable for high crimes and low. Yeah, it could have been better but think how much worse it would have been if the House had gone the other way. And though Trump will surely hail today as a big win for him — because he says that about everything — he can't get rid of the Mueller investigation now or bury its findings. That could be, as he says, yuge.

Baby sloths learning to climb…

I don't know how long it's going to be there but Late Night with Seth Meyers is running a YouTube marathon of all his "A Closer Look" segments since Donald J. Trump was sworn in. It runs more than 35 hours (!) and I think it's in a loop until such time as they take it down. You can catch some of it at this link and after it's over, you may be able to access the videos individually at this link. And then again, you may not. In any case, I think this is some of the sharpest political comedy/commentary ever done for television.

I may change my mind in five minutes but I've decided not to watch the coverage of Election Day today, either online or on TV, until we have some real results…like candidates conceding races. I not only think this will be a roller coaster ride but a much longer roller coaster ride than most people expect. If the news is disappointing or even inconclusive, I'd like to go to bed tonight thinking, "At least I got a lot of work done today."

Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers are apparently doing their shows tonight live but that means Colbert does his at 8:35 Pacific Time when the polls won't even have closed in some parts of the country. And not much more may be known when Meyers goes up at 9:35. Whatever they do know, it'll be way outta date by the time we get those shows out here on the Left Coast.

I assume I don't have to tell anyone who's smart enough to read this blog that they have to go out and vote today. My vote-by-mail ballot is long since in and I didn't even have to walk anywhere or stand in line to do that. If your polling place today looks like a ticket booth handing out free passes to see Springsteen, you might want to consider going the "by mail" route next election. That's assuming there is a next election. These days, you can't take things like that for granted.

Saturday evening, a friend of mine and I were at the last stop for Stephanie Miller's Sexy Liberal Blue Wave Tour, which was about 75% stand-up comedy show and 25% campaign rally. Ms. Miller, host of a popular radio show I've never heard, was the M.C. and she did stand-up about the election and politics and Trump but mostly about them driving her to drink. She was followed by John Fugelsang, host of a popular radio show I not only listen to but have guested upon. His stand-up was followed by Margaret Cho, who also did stand-up, somewhat about current events but mainly about herself.

The evening started with an appearance by the President of the United States — Josiah Edward "Jed" Bartlet, aka Martin Sheen. Mr. Sheen was very eloquent, as he always is. Later, he joined a panel discussion that included the three stand-ups, plus Congressmen Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff, plus Rob Reiner.

A couple of observations.  While there was, of course, Trump-bashing galore, I think the crowd was nicer to the opposition than what I see of folks who attend Trump rallies.  At the very least, no one at this event was chanting "Lock 'em up!" about folks who've never been charged with an actual crime, let alone convicted. There seem to be a lot of Trump fans who want to live in an America where you can throw someone in prison just because you hate them.

I also really liked the people I was with, some of whom I fell into conversation with.  They did not seem angry so much as concerned…and not concerned just about themselves.

I wasn't wildly impressed with the two ladies on stage.  Stephanie Miller hit one of my main comedic peeves: The presumption that everyone in the audience loves to get roaring drunk.  Margaret Cho, who I have seen be very funny, seemed to be having an off night and didn't have a lot to say about the main topic of the night…current political events.

But John Fugelsang, who was the main reason I went, was sensational — not only funny but funny about topics that had occurred in the previous 72 hours. I once heard Mort Sahl say that a comic who deals in current events has to read at least three newspapers every morning and write at least ten jokes about what happened yesterday. Mr. Sahl said this in an appearance around 1986 just before he launched into a story about Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt.

But Fugelsang, as I already knew from his Sirius XM radio program, practices what Sahl preached and, like I said, he managed to be very funny. I'd quote some of better lines but I didn't take notes, even mental ones. I think I was concentrating too much on the current lines to remember the ones before. Also, I believe a few of them have already reached their expiration dates. Jon Stewart once wisely remarked that topical humor often has the shelf life of potato salad.

After Fugelsang and the overall fellowship of the attendees, I guess I liked the panel discussion the best. Both Congressfolks seemed restrained in their mud-hurling… though much to Stephanie Miller's delight, Congressman Schiff unleashed a few "f" bombs. That would have been shocking in pre-Trump America but Donald has pretty much done away with the premise that leaders can't have the composure of Andrew "Dice" Clay. Rob Reiner, by the way, revealed that authorities (the F.B.I., I think he said) notified him he was on the pipe-bomber's "to do" list.

I would describe the mood of the evening as guardedly optimistic but it also felt very refreshing to be, just for a few hours, surrounded by generally like-minded individuals. I think it's dangerous to surround yourself constantly with those who agree with you. They tend to reinforce the dumber things you believe. But a few hours a few days before the election seemed good for the soul. Afterwards, many of those on stage were available for "meet and greet" (which meant a lot of photos) and I really enjoyed talking with my Congressman and with John F. And then on our way out, there was a brief chat on the sidewalk with Martin Sheen that had a strangely calming effect on me. These days, we could all do with a few strangely calming effects.

Randy Rainbow is back with a timely message…

My pal Shelly Goldstein pointed out to me the probable reason that the Barbra edition of Mr. Corden's Carpool Karaoke had her driving him around instead of, as usual, putting James in the driver seat. Barbra always insists on being photographed from what she considers the better side of her face. In order to do that, she had to be on right side of the screen facing left…which means she had to be behind the wheel. Bill Maher, when he had her on, did what I think was his first-ever one-on-one interview with a guest where he was on the left. (Bill Maher is usually on the left but you know what I mean…)

A friend of mine who works at CBS and asked that I not quote him by name, wrote to tell me, "Every time I see one of those Carpool Karaoke bits, all I can think of is Craig Ferguson watching it and fuming that his budget for a week of shows was roughly what Corden gets to spend on one bit." Probably an exaggeration but not by a huge amount.

And a third friend, Marc Wielage, sent me the following. Marc knows more about video and production than anyone I know…

For insurance reasons, they do generally do tow cars on projects like this, but it's possible for some they kept it simple and did it as you say: had Corden drive and then just "caravan" them off to prevent any potential problems. But given that Ms. Streisand is 76 and already looks nervous, instead of letting her drive I would tow it as a "picture car."

Microphones are generally hidden in the visors. Musical playback is usually wireless, going to small receivers that the actors have strapped to their waist, and then the signal is fed to their ears with earbuds (and that can be done wirelessly as well). That way, the car interior mics don't pick up any leakage from the instrument track.

I would bet there's a sound person and a director in the car just ahead of them, monitoring sound & picture (respectively). If they're towing the picture car, they would just run wires from the picture car to the camera car. If there's no towing, you could do it wirelessly but they generally have to cheat by putting transmitting antennas on top of the car. They work around this by shooting exterior "beauty shots" of the car driving down the street without the antennas.

They can record both the new vocals and the existing instrumental backing with a multitrack recorder, usually battery-operated Sound Devices or Zaxcom recorder. Multiple takes are not a problem, and often they'll do pickups if either of them hits a bum note. (BTW, Streisand is notorious for asking for a teleprompter, so I bet that was going on, too, so she'd have a safety net in case she forgot the lyrics.)

The camera part is pretty tough, since they generally run upwards of 6 or 7 GoPro cameras jammed on the side windshield roof posts, visors, and on the windshield itself down low. When cars are towed, they usually have a black tarp on top of the windshield to cut down on glare and they also bring in extra lighting to make the actors look better. Hiding this many cameras and lights and microphones in a car is tough. It's amazing it works as well as it does.

BTW, syncing up these cameras for editing in post is a bit of a nightmare, since they tend to run off-speed and aren't the greatest in terms of quality. But the Corden people have this down to a science.

This is more than you ever wanted to know, but that's basically what goes on.

In a follow-up e-mail to me, Marc added…

BTW, they may be using more sophisticated cameras than GoPro (a $400 camera), but that was the gist of how I've seen it done in the past. It's a very complex, messy procedure, because it's very tough on the editors to wrangle all the footage for editing. Corden has certainly pushed this idea beyond any level anybody has done before, certainly a lot more sophisticated that Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Okay, I have one more question: Why don't they pre-record the vocals and is it possible they did that in this case? Ms. Streisand is said to be a very poor lip-syncer but it can't be that difficult when (a) she isn't singing solo and (b) she's only seen in quick cuts. I'd think it would be easier to sync-up her voice to picture in post than it would be to do thirty takes driving around in a car if she wasn't happy with something. And she is famous for spending hours if not days in a recording studio doing take after take to get a song the way she wants it to be.

Dialogue and singing are quite separated in these bits. Why wouldn't they pre-record the singing? That would sure make it easier on the road.

Thanks to Shelly, Marc and the person who cannot be named. And I'll bet one of these days, Corden does one of these with Kermit the Frog and a back seat full of Muppets.

This coming Wednesday, November 7, will mark two anniversaries: 55 years since the Cinerama Dome movie theater in Hollywood opened for business and 55 years since It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World had its premiere screening there. That night, it was filled with celebrities, many of whom were in the movie. This Wednesday night, it will be filled with…well, people like me who love the movie. (Only three cast members are still alive and I would not expect any of them to be present. Well, maybe Barrie Chase…)

This is not a plug to sell tickets for the evening since it's sold out. I just wanted to post something that isn't about the election. The first time I saw that movie — and I saw it in that building — it was the day after one of our greatest national tragedies…the murder of President John F. Kennedy. I'm hoping I will not see it this time the day after another national tragedy.

Notice how I was unable to avoid mentioning the election for an entire paragraph.

I love this film and don't care that some people don't…except that some people are really nasty about not liking it, like somehow they're angry that some of us do. I love perceptive film reviews and discussion but have grown tired of gratuitous insults, not just about movies but about everything. Part of my fondness for this film has to do with affection for its cast and part of it has to do with what it meant to me in 1963. A film does not have to inspire everyone to inspire some people and a movie that inspires some people has value even if you weren't one of those people. I've been left pretty cold and unentertained by every film or TV show that had both the words "Star" and "Trek" in their titles but if they bring joy to others, great.

I'm taking my friend Amber who has a good excuse for not seeing Mad World back in the sixties or seventies…or even the eighties. She wasn't born yet. She knows of some performers in the film — Don Knotts, the Stooges, Jerry Lewis (I think) and maybe one or two others — but this will be the first time she's ever had the opportunity to see Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers and Milton Berle and many others in their natural habitat: With an audience. Yeah, you can hunt them down on YouTube but (a) she hasn't because she had no reason to and (b) they're not that wonderful in grainy black-and-white on chopped-up clips in a little window and watched all alone.

I've held off showing the film to her in my den. Better that her introduction to it and those wonderful performers will be on a big screen with what I'm told will be a wonderful, restored print, and that we'll be in the middle of a warm, enthusiastic live crowd. I'm looking forward to that even more than I'm looking forward to seeing this film for the seventy-nine-quadrillionth time.

If you're there and you see us, please say hello. Those of us who love this film are old friends, even if we've never met.

I was at a political event last night which I'll tell you about later. An oft-heard discussion topic was, of course, "What do you think will happen on Tuesday?" I heard absolutely no one make the following prediction but I will courageously post it here.

I think Tuesday will be the messiest Election Day in the history of Election Days. I think at some polls people will be waiting in line for a ridiculous number of hours and you'll hear all sorts of reports of governors and judges ordering polling places to stay open late to accommodate hundreds of voters who are still in line when the polls were supposed to close.

I think reporters all day will be pouncing on stories of voting machines not working…or registering a vote for Candidate A when the voter clearly chose B…and people being turned away when they clearly should have been allowed to vote. You will hear the term "provisional ballot" hundreds of times. You will also hear terms like "voter fraud" and "hacking" and "challenge the outcome" and "voter intimidation." Somewhere, there will be protesters or "poll watchers" who will be charged with trying to scare legitimate voters away.

You will also hear the word "recount" a lot. And "investigation." And maybe even "Russia."

And of course, you'll have You-Know-Who fanning the flames, charging that every race where the Democrat won was won by cheating and that the Republican should be seated and he already has the proof to reverse the outcome and send many, many people to prison. In the meantime, every race where the Republican won is a huge (excuse me, yuge) victory which would have been even bigger if the Dems hadn't hacked and conspired and he's going to have it investigated and he already has the proof to send many, many people to prison.

What I'm getting at is that you may be eager for this all to be over on Tuesday night before you get to bed but it probably won't be over on Tuesday night. We may all go beddy-bye with many cliffhangers still dangling out there…and people charging fraud over votes their side seems to be losing. In some cases, they may even be right.

Heading for New York City? Then you might do well to take a lesson or two from Sarah Funk. I don't quite know who this woman is but she has a number of helpful, informative videos online that can save you money and/or keep you from being harmed in non-monetary ways. This one is about the cheapest ways to get to the center of Manhattan from the three airports that serve the Big Apple.

I've never tried using public transportation to and from those airports. When I go lately, I almost always travel with someone else and we have too much luggage to schlep on and off a train or bus. Instead, I call Carmel Limo, which is fine except that it's murder to connect with your ride at the airport. If I were traveling alone or lighter, I'd listen to Sarah, especially on the routes that go by train and are therefore unlikely to get stuck in traffic…

One week from today — on Saturday, November 10 at 9 AM PST, Open Registration will happen for the 2019 Comic-Con International in San Diego. If you wish to attend and didn't qualify under Returning Registration or Professional Registration, this is your time. But understand these two cold, hard facts of life…

• You need to plan ahead and study up on how the process works. The Comic-Con people explain it here. The informative folks over at the San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog explain it over here. Do not wait until late Friday night to learn this.
• The odds are against you. How bad they are is the subject of much discussion and debate and of course, it depends on two numbers we can't possibly know now — how many people will apply for how many badges. But estimates for recent years have varied from about a 6% chance to maybe 25%. I have never seen anyone suggest anything better than that.

This will be the 50th of these gatherings in San Diego. That may cause more than ever to join the throngs pounding on the gates…or the likelihood of that may scare some off. Who knows? All I know is that I'll be there for the fiftieth time because I always have a good time at the convention. Full Disclosure: I didn't always.

The first dozen or so were wonderful. There were fascinating people to meet. There were important people to hear speak. There were much-desired things to purchase from dealers. There were interesting things to look at but not purchase. Perhaps best of all, I just felt surrounded by friends, old and new.

But around about 1982 or 3, the con began to feel like a chore to me…something I went to not because I wanted to go but because, as someone working in the industry, I felt I had to go. That alone took some of the fun out of it. For much of the con, I also didn't feel like I had a place to physically be.

I don't like to sell things. This is probably a character flaw of some sort on my part but while I love having people shell out $9.99 (or whatever the price is) for my new book, I don't want to be the one asking them to do so or running their credit cards. I'll occasionally sit and sign for a while at some dealer's or publisher's table but that will never be my table, nor will I spend all day at it.

So then where do I spend the con? There's a limit as to how long you can be walking around the exhibit hall of a four-day convention. Even when both my knees were real and neither was crying out for replacement, there was a limit.

So I began skipping Day One of Comic-Con and leaving for home halfway through Day Four. This was before they started Preview Night, which now makes what is still officially a four-day convention run 4.5 days. Some years, I thought maybe I'd just take the train down for one day, see everyone I wanted to see, do my one or two panels and then head home. Back then, they usually asked me to be on one or two and maybe appear on a third.

Then that changed. I couldn't just go down for one day because they had me on one panel on Friday and another on Sunday. I liked doing the panels so I began suggesting some and volunteering to host more of them so their number increased. I think one year I did ten and then next year, twelve…and I can't figure out what the maximum was because sometimes I was drafted at the last minute so looking back at old program books wouldn't tell us. I'm thinking it was fifteen one year.

And you know what? I started really enjoying the convention again. Now I wouldn't miss a day of it. For much of each day, I have a place to be and I get to interview and/or joust with some pretty amazing people. It's one of my favorite parts of my year.

I don't know what it is you might enjoy about the convention. My observation is that everyone who loves it finds something different to love there. If you love it even a tenth as much as I do, I hope you get a badge for 2019. It's gonna be a good one.

In June of '16 when James Corden hosted the Tony Awards, Barbra Streisand was on the program. So I wondered here, "What are the odds Mr. Corden wouldn't seize on the opportunity to try and persuade Barbra to do one of his Carpool Karaoke segments? I'd say roughly zero, wouldn't you?"

I don't know for certain if he did or not but it wouldn't surprise me if the lady said, "Okay…when my next album comes out." Well, it's out and last night, they aired this Carpool Karaoke that was recorded partly in my neighborhood. I'm kind of fascinated by the technical end of producing these and I also like watching for familiar backgrounds. At least in the final, edited version, he and Barbra didn't drive past my house but they came within a block of it. I have seen my home in a couple of these, once with Amber's car parked out front.

Past articles have revealed that contrary to what some assume, Corden is driving the car and is not being towed. He's in a slow-speed caravan with crew cars behind and ahead of him but he's driving. Barbra allegedly drove in this one. It doesn't look to me like she really is driving but Corden sometimes doesn't look like he's really steering the vehicle. Maybe since it's a different car, they changed a few of their usual procedures.

(The storyline is that she's driving him to CBS and it ends with the car going into the guard gate. But before that, if you can recognize the scenery, you'll see that they go all over the place, including passing CBS at least twice.)

So I'm curious about some things. Where are the microphones? Where does the musical playback come from and who's controlling it since it's obvious they go back and do some songs more than once? Are they really recording both the music and vocals at the same time and if so, does that cause problems editing between takes?

There are moments in these when you see them drive past a recognizable building or tree in the background and then three seconds later, they cut from a two-shot to a close-up and they seem to be driving past that same recognizable spot again. I doubt they backed-up with other traffic on the road. Did they go around the block and try to do Take 2 in roughly the same spot?

Also, there are moments when they cut from a close-up to a two-shot or vice-versa and the backgrounds jump about twenty blocks. So I'm guessing the director is in one of the cars in the caravan watching the feed from one or more of the cameras suction-cupped to the windshield and he can communicate with Corden's car and say, "Let's try asking her that question again." Or maybe he can just hear them. Or maybe…

I don't know. The tech guys really worked this out well, doing something much more difficult than Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. They're also pretty entertaining segments.

It's too bad Corden can't be in two places at once. What I'd like to see happen is that he's driving some musical superstar down Beverly Boulevard and they're approaching Genesee Avenue from either direction and they get stopped by a massive traffic jam — as I have — by James Corden shooting one of his Crosswalk Musicals at that intersection. It would serve him right.

Any way we can move this election up to tomorrow?  I'm not in a hurry to get to the part where all the losers scream about rigged voting machines, eligible voters being denied access to the polls, and general ballot-tampering…but as with most dental work, it's better to get it over with.

I still get three or four unsolicited phone calls per day from someone — a different caller each time — who either wants me to hire them to do work on my home or who is fronting for such a person. The second one today immediately launched into a pitch about how unfailingly honest and candid their company is and how all their books on my job would be open for my full inspection and they'd never hide a thing from me. I asked, "Where did you obtain the list of homeowners you're calling?" The man on the other end said, "Sorry, I've been ordered not to give out that information."

I have to go write something and send it off before 5:30. When I come back later, I've finally learned why there's a severe traffic problem in my area. It's because Barbra Streisand and James Corden keep driving around the neighborhood singing songs from her albums.