Monthly Archives: December 2018

This is the most popular thing I've ever posted on this weblog. In fact, it's so popular that proprietors of other sites have thought nothing of just copying the whole thing and posting it on their pages, often with no mention of me and with the implication that they are the "I" in this tale. Please don't do that — to me or anyone. By all means, post a link to it but don't just appropriate it and especially don't let people think it's your work. This is the season for giving, not taking.

Yes, it's true…and I was very happy to learn from two of Mel Tormé's kids that their father had happily told them of the incident. Hearing that was my present…

I want to tell you a story…

The scene is Farmers Market — the famed tourist mecca of Los Angeles. It's located but yards from the facility they call, "CBS Television City in Hollywood"…which, of course, is not in Hollywood but at least is very close.

Farmers Market is a quaint collection of bungalow stores, produce stalls and little stands where one can buy darn near anything edible one wishes to devour. You buy your pizza slice or sandwich or Chinese food or whatever at one of umpteen counters, then carry it on a tray to an open-air table for consumption.

During the Summer or on weekends, the place is full of families and tourists and Japanese tour groups. But this was a winter weekday, not long before Christmas, and the crowd was mostly older folks, dawdling over coffee and danish. For most of them, it's a good place to get a donut or a taco, to sit and read the paper.

For me, it's a good place to get out of the house and grab something to eat. I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.

Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.

I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had.

Instead, I continued over to the BBQ place, got myself a chicken sandwich and settled down at a table to consume it. I was about halfway through when four Christmas carolers strolled by, singing "Let It Snow," a cappella.

They were young adults with strong, fine voices and they were all clad in splendid Victorian garb. The Market had hired them (I assume) to stroll about and sing for the diners — a little touch of the holidays.

"Let It Snow" concluded not far from me to polite applause from all within earshot. I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.

"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"

The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."

I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"

Again, a "No."

I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…'"

"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"

"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle…and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…" directly to him.

A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé…he wrote that…"

As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no…the little fat guy wants to sing."

But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing…and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first…then properly impressed.

On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways…Merry Christmas to you…" Big smiles all around.

And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight…which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.

I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.

Tormé thanked the harmonizers for the serenade and one of the women said, "You really wrote that?"

He nodded. "A wonderful songwriter named Bob Wells and I wrote that…and, get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down."

Then the gent I'd briefed said, "You know, you're not a bad singer." He actually said that to Mel Tormé.

Mel chuckled. He realized that these four young folks hadn't the velvet-foggiest notion who he was, above and beyond the fact that he'd worked on that classic carol. "Well," he said. "I've actually made a few records in my day…"

"Really?" the other man asked. "How many?"

Tormé smiled and said, "Ninety."

I probably own about half of them on vinyl and/or CD. For some reason, they sound better on vinyl. (My favorite was the album he made with Buddy Rich. Go ahead. Find me a better parlay of singer and drummer. I'll wait.)

Today, as I'm reading obits, I'm reminded of that moment. And I'm impressed to remember that Mel Tormé was also an accomplished author and actor. Mostly though, I'm recalling that pre-Christmas afternoon.

I love people who do something so well that you can't conceive of it being done better. Doesn't even have to be something important: Singing, dancing, plate-spinning, mooning your neighbor's cat, whatever. There is a certain beauty to doing almost anything to perfection.

No recording exists of that chorus that Mel Tormé sang for the other diners at Farmers Market but if you never believe another word I write, trust me on this. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Happy and sad are explained by Kermit the Frog and You-Know-Who…

Two hours ago, I was with some friends in a restaurant where four Christmas carolers were making the rounds, stopping at each table and asking, "Do you have a favorite holiday song we could sing for you?" When they got to ours, I asked if they knew "Be a Santa" and was not surprised that they didn't. Their repertoire was formidable — two of them were clutching 4"-thick binders crammed with lyric sheets — but they were unfamiliar with the tune by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne from the not-too-successful 1961 Broadway show, Subways Are For Sleeping. If you never heard it, you can hear it here.

(And if it sounds a little familiar to you maybe you're recalling it from this recent post on this blog.)

Subways Are for Sleeping, by the way, is the musical that the infamous producer David Merrick kept running longer than it might have thanks to a sneaky trick. I wrote about it on this blog sixteen (gulp!) years ago.

Getting back to the carolers: Someone else in our party then requested a more conventional song and they favored us with that. But when they got to the next table, do you know what the diners there requested? "Baby, It's Cold Outside."

Later, I ran into one of the carolers in a line for the men's room and we got to talking. I asked him if that song was enjoying a new boom in requests. He said, "I guess you could say it is. Since we began doing this this year, it's been requested about three times a night. That's an increase from the last four years when I did this and nobody asked for it at all." He also told me a couple of people objected to being asked "Do you have a favorite holiday song we could sing for you?" That's what they were told to say but it draws the occasional reply of "Why can't you ask if we have a favorite CHRISTMAS CAROL?"

I asked him what the reply to that was. He said he told them, "We have Hanukkah songs. We have New Year's songs. We have a lot that just say 'Enjoy the holiday season!'" Then he added, "That doesn't seem to satisfy any of them."

I'm weary of these people who are battling the War on Christmas that exists only in their tiny minds and as a ginned-up controversy on Fox News. They seem to think that roaming bands of Thought Police are arresting and/or beating up people who say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." Personally, I always thought "Happy Holidays" was like "Seasons Greetings" or "Joy to the World" or "Glad Tidings" — a shorthand way of saying "Whatever you celebrate, I hope it's good for you." What an awful thing to say to someone.

Seems to me that some (note I did not write "all") people believe this is a Christian Nation and Christianity is the one true religion in the world, and saying anything else but "Merry Christmas" is an insidious plot by all those faux religions to deny that fundamental truth. If anything is harming Christianity these days, it's people who claim to be Christians and then do unChristlike deeds. There are a lot of them in the news lately.

Here's a memory from my childhood…though what I remember is somewhat different from the various reminiscers in this video…

My folks and I didn't live in Beverly Hills but we were not far from it and we often patronized businesses in the vicinity of Uncle Bernie's Toy Menagerie on Rodeo Drive. There was a great Ontra Cafeteria about a block away.

The folks in the video recall it as a magical place full of wonderful things they wanted…and it had this amazing Lemonade Tree and another which grew lollipops. I recall it as, first of all, a store full of off-brand, generic toys that I didn't particularly crave. They didn't have the stuff advertised on my favorite cartoon shows. They had very little made by Mattel or Hasbro or Wham-O or Remco or even Milton Bradley. It was a lot of dolls and toy soldiers from overseas but nothing with Huckleberry Hound or Bugs Bunny or Popeye.

So we stopped in once in a while because it was supposed to be this enchanted place that thrilled little children…especially little children from very wealthy families because things were not cheap at Uncle Bernie's. How could they be? Rodeo Drive then wasn't what it is today but it was still damned expensive real estate, and that Lemonade Tree must have cost a few bucks to build and maintain.

As I recall, the lemonade was not self-serve. A salesperson would dispense a tiny cup of it to each child while asking them what kind of wonderful toy they'd love to have their parents buy for them today. I'd, of course, name something from TV that was not on their shelves. I think I once said I wanted a Kenner Give-a-Show Projector with Yogi Bear and the saleslady tried to tout me on a teddy bear more suitable for a kid half my age. We got out of there so fast I didn't even finish my thimble of lemonade.

So I didn't think it was The Best Toy Store in the World as this video claims. I didn't even think it was The Best Toy Store in a Three-Block Radius. Over on Beverly, a few doors south of where Nate 'n Al's Delicatessen still is, there was a larger toy shop that stocked merchandise with Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers characters, and toys seen on television and my father could buy them for me without taking out a second mortgage on our house. Still, I'm glad Uncle Bernie's is a precious memory for some folks around my age. We need all we can get.

In the interest of not linking only to stories that show Donald Trump in a bad light, here are two that might (note the "might") suggest he's on the right side of two issues…

Matthew Yglesias explains why Trump might be right that The Fed is erring with today's hike in the interest rate. And Fred Kaplan explains why Trump might be right to be getting U.S. troops out of Syria. That's two possible times out of a total of what? Four hundred or so?

William Saletan thinks that the worst thing anyone can do that will enrage Donald Trump is not to accuse him of lying but to provide evidence that he's lying. It's an interesting distinction and it explains a lot about his hatred of the press and his campaign to get people to disbelieve what reporters say simply because it was said by reporters.

It's him again…

SmilerG has a follow-up question to our piece here about cue cards on variety shows…

I'm wondering why physical cue cards are still used these days. I'd think hand-printing them with the required big markers on card stock is "old school."

Electronic prompters have been around for a while and surely could be more quickly created (loaded), with less labor and cost. Newscasters use the version of prompters that are attached to each camera, but aren't there also stand-alone versions? These wouldn't require sketch actors to look right into a camera, as the stand-alones would be positioned differently, more like the traditional cue cards.

I think the main reason we still have cue cards is that some performers simply prefer them…and that alone is reason enough. They find them easier to read than any prompter device they've tried so that's that.

But I can think of other reasons, one being that you don't have to worry about the prompter going down or tech problems. There's a guy standing there with all the lines written on big cards. That's pretty foolproof. On those news shows where someone's reading off the prompter, they nearly always have a printed-out script right in front of them because prompters do fail. A lot of shows think of the cue cards as the back-up for the prompters.

Also, that guy (or gal, I should note) with the big cards can move around easily to just the right position, holding them higher or lower in an instant, more or less moving with the performer who's reading from them. There are stand-alone prompter devices but they're not as rapidly moved…yet.

And sometimes, they want more than one line of dialogue displayed at a time. The cue cards Johnny Carson used for his monologues were not held by anyone. They were laid out side-by-side in front of them so he could decide to jump from the third joke to the fifth or skip one and come back to it. If you watch his old monologues, you can catch him peeking to the right (on your screen) for his first jokes and to the left for his last ones. There are other comics who when they read from cards, want two or more displayed at a time and the cue card holding person knows how to instantly do that.

There's a bit of personal rapport that exists between a performer and his/her cue card person that you don't get when it's coming off a TelePrompter operated by someone who's not right there on his or her feet on the edge of the stage, just three feet away. That may factor into it at times. I remember watching Bob Hope taping a sketch with his eternal cue card guy, Barney McNulty. Barney was to cue cards what Alexander Fleming was to penicillin. He held Bob's cards for something like half a century and every time Bob read a line wrong, he'd blame Barney, and Barney would apologize even though everyone knew it was Bob's fault.

Their relationship was a significant part of the atmosphere on those stages. I'm not sure I can explain why but it wouldn't have been the same without a cue card person there. When it wasn't Barney and Hope fumbled a line, Bob would blame whoever it was and say, "Hey, how come we couldn't get Barney today? He wouldn't have made that mistake."

Penny Marshall starred in or directed many, many things that were very, very successful and made a lot of people happy. She also made a ton of money and may have turned down more offers to act or direct than any other Hollywood figure of her generation.

I had about a half-dozen encounters with her, most of them brief although she was a guest star once long ago on a special for which I was head writer. In each case, she treated me and everyone else around us like we were all beings from a warring planet who were disguised as friendly humans so we could get close enough to murder her. I'm sure she wasn't like that all the time and I wish I'd seen the other side.

Her work will endure and it'll make a lot more people happy. I hope she knew that.

On December 18, 2000, this blog was born. The site had a different name and address, and there was really no good blogging software then so I hand-coded it. But that was no big deal because I figured to only post an item or two each week. That plan didn't last long.

Eventually, I converted to this name, this address and this software, after a few years with a different software. As soon as I post this, there will be 26,119 posts up here. If that sounds like a lot, look at it this way: This blog started 6,574 days ago so it's an average of only a little less than four a day.

I have not written them all, at least by myself. A crop of very sharp readers (I like to think…) send in good questions or recommend fine links. So some of you deserve some of the credit.

In that time, I have occasionally thought about blogging less but never for long. I don't think I've ever considered giving it up…or taking advertising or setting up a paywall or anything which might make it more profitable. The Amazon links bring in roughly the amount of money that it costs me to have this thing online via a not-cheap hosting company that almost never goes down. Since I moved to them a few years ago, we've averaged about sixteen minutes a year of offline time. My two previous hosting companies were averaging sixteen offline minutes a week and sixteen a day, respectively.

That's about all I have to say here. Thank you for your support and your patronage. And I'm sorry I can't give up all that paying work and just do this for a living. The previous sentence is only about 10% accurate.

One of those videos I post each year just before Christmas and maybe my favorite…

Take it away, Michael Kilgore…

At the end of your dream scenario of Alec Baldwin renouncing his role for the duration, I pictured that in my mind with him obviously reading the statement off cue cards, as he so often does, which would ruin the effect. I suppose that's a necessary trade-off for getting that level of celebrity to keep coming back, but I find staring offstage as noticeable as you find Colbert show editing.

In your variety show background (or elsewhere), have you ever had to nudge an Important Guest Star away from the cards to improve their performance?

No because all of the variety shows I worked on were taped and then edited for broadcast so the use of cue cards was severely limited. I only recall one or two times we used them on the shows I did for Sid and Marty Krofft and there were good reasons in those few instances.

I can almost justify the use of cue cards on Saturday Night Live because it is live and if an actor "dried up" (forgot his or her lines), you'd wind up with on-air break-ups or prompting or other breaches that are less professional than using cue cards. You're also dealing with a succession of guest hosts who don't have experience in live television and sometimes with sketches that are rewritten at the last minute. You kind of need the cards there in case of emergency. I would agree though that some actors aren't good at avoiding the kind of offstage staring that rankles you. When I worked with Dick Clark, he was real good at reading cue cards without looking like he was reading cue cards.

I think maybe I've been giving D.J. Trump too much credit.  For a year or three now, I've been looking at his infamous tweets and thinking there was method in their madness; that while they seemed nonsensical and petulant to me, they weren't directed at me and must have been achieving some desired effect on his base.

To folks like me, they seemed like little mini-tantrums by an unstable guy who got pissed about something, snatched up his iPhone and thumbed out the first primal thought that came into his mind without running it past a saner head or even asking himself, "Will it help me or anyone if I send this out?"  Even I take that pause before I post to the 'net and I'm not under investigation, subject to impeachment, imbued with the power of the presidency, etc.

I really thought he wasn't just firing without thinking but his over-the-weekend whine about Saturday Night Live making fun of him causes me to think, "No, he really is that childish."  I guess he doesn't ask anyone, "Do you think this is a wise thing to send out?" before he hits "Tweet."  Even the White House Custodial Engineer could have told him he'd just look like a big baby, and that the crackdown he calls for will never, ever happen.

The SNL sketch that sent him off — reportedly, their It's a Wonderful Life "remake" — wasn't even the harshest thing they've done about him. The cold open I'd like to see them do would go something like this: They'd have an Oval Office setting and they'd trot out all the usual players — Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh, Ben Stiller as Michael Cohen, the shirtless guy as Putin, etc. — and right in the middle of it, Alec Baldwin stops in mid-sentence, everyone on stage freezes and Baldwin breaks character…

He pulls off the wig, turns to everyone and says, "I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore. This man is no longer a clown to make fun of. This man is doing so much damage to the country I love and causing so much anxiety and pain among the poor and the non-white that I can't make fun of his hair anymore. This is much more serious than that."

He walks off, the other cast members look at each other to ask "What do we do now?" And then they all realize he's right and they start pulling off their wigs and appliances and in unison, they tell the camera, "Live from New York…" etc., and the show proceeds with no more Trump imitations. Until he's no longer a threat.

My cold is gone…and thank you all for the home remedy suggestions, none of which I followed. I find that the few illnesses I get go away in a few days if I get lotsa sleep, drink lotsa water and don't stress out.  I don't know about your health but following what Trump's done lately has sometimes been hazardous to mine.

I'm writing something today that I really like.  I don't know if anyone else will but I'm enjoying writing it so I think I'll do just that the rest of the day and make this the extent of my blogging.   I'll be back to you tomorrow.

A baby chick is born…