Monthly Archives: December 2018

This very afternoon, our buddy Stu Shostak offers his annual Christmas Gift-Giving Guide on Stu's Show. You can hear it as an audio show online or watch it as a video program online or on your Roku-enabled viewing device or TV. I'll be Guest #2, explaining that the gift of true love this year is one or more volumes of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips.

The festivities commence at 4 PM Pacific Time. I'll be on around 4:45, give or take five minutes…and the other guests are worthy of your attention, as well. To find out how to listen or watch, go to the Stu's Show website where you will be presented with many options. If the show inspires you to order some Pogo books for a loved one, come back here and order by clicking on the Pogo link in my right margin. Even if that loved one is yourself. Hey, you deserve a gift, too.

It's Randy Rainbow time!

Janet Ybarra is back with a follow-up…

Thanks for running my comments today, and also for explaining your love of The Honeymooners in the context of forgiveness instead of just "Well, Jackie Gleason was hysterical and that's why I like it."

But since you were sensitive to Cosby's many victims, let me just leave you with this thought to ponder. If you had a daughter, would you want her getting involved with — let alone marrying — a guy who was conditioned to think it's ok to raise a fist to a woman in any sense because Kramden did and got laughs (and maybe this hypothetical guy doesn't grasp the themes of love and forgiveness)? Just asking.

Hmm. Well, if I had this hypothetical daughter, I wouldn't want her getting involved with a bus driver who's paid so little that they have to live in the crummy apartment that the Kramdens had. And no, I wouldn't want her living with a guy who would even joke about belting her but I might also think she knows this guy better than I do and maybe she really loves him.

I also wouldn't want her living like Ginger and Mary Ann did on Gilligan's Island or living like Lois Lane did on the Superman show or living like Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke or anyone on The Sopranos or hundreds of other fictional characters on fictional shows I could name.

In the real world, I am against anyone hitting anyone for any reason except possibly genuine self-defense or protecting someone who genuinely needs protecting. In fiction, it's a different matter, especially in a situation like The Honeymooners where Ralph never does it, Alice knows he'd never do it and they both love each other like crazy. It makes me a bit uncomfy since the joke doesn't play as a joke for some but maybe it's a nice indicator of progress that the concept of belting your wife no longer seems as funny as it once did.

Forgive me, dear friends, but I'm about to suggest you devote four hours of your life to listening to a podcast. Do it one chapter at a time but check out Bagman, a seven-chapter series produced by Rachel Maddow and her crew. It's the story of how Richard Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew got caught dead-to-rights at the most basic, primitive form of political crime: Taking bribes. And it's also the story of how he sought to escape conviction and punishment by rallying his base against the press, attacking the prosecutors and using the power of his office to obstruct justice.

Ms. Maddow does not dwell overlong on the parallels to current events but she does point you towards that comparison. And even if you ignore that or don't see the similarities, it's still a helluva story that was not fully reported at the time, largely because Mr. Nixon's own concurrent scandals were more important and more colorful. Not only does Maddow cover the Agnew story in full but she and her team have unearthed large quantities of hitherto unknown facts and details. It's really a superb reporting job, involving as it does current-day interviews with reps from both Agnew's team of lawyers and from the squad prosecuting him.

As I said, it runs four hours and I certainly found it worth at least that much of my life. You can listen to or download all seven parts from just about any major disseminator of podcasts (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.) but the easiest might be this page where MSNBC has put them all up. How long they'll be there, I don't know so listen to Part One and see if you get as hooked on the story as I did. If so, download them all so you can listen to them when you can. And don't miss the part where investigators uncovered how Agnew, who routinely scolded Americans about morality and the sanctity of Family, was found to have a couple of mistresses.

Cookie Monster Week — which is fast turning into me posting a Cookie Monster video every other day — continues with this one. I'm guessing one day someone at the Sesame Street offices turned to someone else at the Sesame Street offices and said, "You know, our target audience is three-to-five years of age. What do you think the average child of four is dying to see?" And that other person at the Sesame Street offices said, "Oh, probably a good parody of Les Miserables!"…

I've received quite a bit of mail on the topic of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" as discussed here. A number of folks referred to the song as being "banned," which I think is an incorrect term that muddies the issue. The song isn't being banned. Anyone can play it. A few radio stations have merely decided to not play it, which is absolutely their right even if their reason seems silly. If you and I ran a radio station, there would be hundreds of thousands of songs we would never play. I personally would never allow "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" by Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods.

But "Baby, It's Cold Outside" isn't being suppressed. In fact, I'll bet because of this inane controversy, ASCAP payments to Frank Loesser's estate for it will go up, not down. (By the way: Mr. Loesser is one of my all-time favorite creators of songs but if I ever assembled a CD of his 50 Greatest Hits, this tune would not be on it. Maybe on his 100 Greatest. He wrote a lot of great songs, most of them better than the one under discussion.)

Also, some people seem to have a problem with "Baby, It's Cold Outside" being passed off as a Christmas song. It isn't a Christmas song. It's a "cold weather outside" song. But this is an even more pointless debate than whether it's a song about rape.

Janet Ybarra sent me a link to a piece by Camilla Collar who feels that the song is really about "slut-shaming" — the social condemnation of a woman for having sex. Well, maybe if the lady in the song slept with the guy in the song and anyone else found out about it, yeah. Janet also writes…

I agree when you say we can consider time and intent, but also our cultural mores change over time and can sometimes draw lines on material once considered acceptable but now seen as racist or whatever…although I'm not necessarily saying that's what's happening.

I'd be curious as to what you think about The Honeymooners, which strikes some of us today (particularly those of us who have lived it) as portraying domestic violence. Now please realize I'm not saying we should keep people from the content but I certainly believe there is room for media criticism and analysis and asking the questions.

Also, would you ever have an interest ever again watching The Cosby Show, given what we now know of Bill Cosby? I don't.

Well, I watched The Cosby Show once back when its star was the most beloved TV dad ever and after that, I had no further interest in watching it. So in light of his new reputation, my interest in the show has gone from zero all the way down to zero. I did though once love his records and live performing and I Spy and even had a good opinion of the Fat Albert cartoon show…and I doubt I will ever get the pain of 50+ women far enough out of my head to again enjoy any of the Cosby stuff I liked. Sometimes, you can separate the art from the artist and sometimes, you just can't.

As for The Honeymooners: I loved that show. I still love that show…and I'm mainly referring to the classic thirty-nine half-hour episodes, which I think comprise one of the ten-or-so greatest TV shows ever done. The "Honeymooners" sketches and musicals that Mr. Gleason did before and after the thirty-nine were of varying quality — none of them as good but some of them rather entertaining.

I don't think any of it portrayed domestic violence except maybe when Ralph slammed his own thumb in a drawer. It portrayed a guy who occasionally threatened to send his wife "to the moon" via fist…and I think it's not insignificant that he didn't say "I'll beat the hell out of you." He made a cartoony threat because he was a cartoony guy on a cartoony show and his wife Alice never believed for one second he'd ever strike her or anyone. In fact, if it had ever come to fisticuffs between them, my money would have been on Alice. Ralph was no more likely to hit her than Rob Petrie was to smack Laura around or George Burns was to deck Gracie. As I recall, Ricky Ricardo actually did spank Lucy on at least one occasion.

Yeah, the threatened lunar launches are dated and a little uncomfy but I can't think of a sitcom where the husband loved his wife more than Ralph Kramden loved Alice. All of his crazy get-rich schemes were about trying to make a better life for that wonderful woman who'd paid him the supreme honor of marrying a fat loser like him. Maybe it's possible to view the threats as a reminder that couples do lose their tempers and say things they don't mean. "Forgiveness" was a big theme on that series. Ralph often needed forgiveness for his Big Ideas and his Bigger Mouth.

And you knew Ralph was a large-hearted soul because you saw how much he cared for her, and also because he had Norton. How could anyone who had Ed Norton as a best friend not be a good guy?

I think it's fine to criticize Ralph's fist-shaking and to wish it wasn't there. But sometimes, concern about such things remind me of a huge fight I had with ABC Standards and Practices back when I was doing the Richie Rich cartoon show. I have to rush off to an appointment right now but maybe I'll write about that later today or tomorrow. Thanks, Janet…and all of you who wrote.

Just in case anyone remembers Ross Perot at all, here's an 11-minute video that debunks the belief that if Perot hadn't run for president in 1992, George H.W. Bush would have won a second term and Bill Clinton would never have made it to the White House…or at least wouldn't have made it to the White House then. I'm not 100% certain.

It's true that exit polls showed pretty decisively that Perot did not take more votes from Bush than he took from Clinton…so in that sense, no, Perot did not cost Bush the election. But it is true that Bush's popularity was plunging during his last year in office…and maybe there's no way to measure this but I sure had the feeling Perot's speeches were contributing mightily to that plunge…

A number of readers of this blog have written to get my "take" on the controversy about the ol' Frank Loesser song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside." A couple of radio stations have decided to remove it from their playlists because they think it makes light of date rape. I think it kinda depends how you stage it. The same is true of the song "Take Back Your Mink" which Loesser wrote and included in the show, Guys and Dolls. You can find a lot of ugliness in songs if you want to interpret them that way.

But you have to consider the time and the intent…and this whole hoohah still ranks high on my "Who gives a damn?" list. So a couple of radio stations elect not to play it…or some theater decides not to stage The Vagina Monologues because someone there feels it might offend transsexuals. Being private businesses, radio stations and theaters have the right to play or not play — or produce or not produce — any song or play they choose for even the stupidest of reasons.

If they're uncomfortable with any work of art for any reason, fine. Let them choose something else. But let's not act like the government is banning something. Someone's (usually arguable) guess that it will upset someone might be cause for removing it from one venue. That's kind of the premise of most censorship movements…and I don't think self-censorship is a crime.

There are plenty of songs, books, movies, paintings (etc.) that get dated by changing tastes and morals and sensibilities. Drunks don't seem as funny to me as they once did. I don't think some depictions of minorities come across today the way they did once upon a time. The folks who don't want to play some song on their channel might be wrong that audiences won't be comfy with it but that's all they are…wrong. And a commercial endeavor has the right to be wrong.

The folks complaining about the non-playing of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" sound to me like the folks who get upset and scream there's a "War on Christmas!!!" when some store decides not to put a nativity scene in their front window this year. No one's stopping them from viewing a nativity scene a thousand other places and no one's stopping any of us from hearing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" a thousand other places.

Here — here's a link to hear the original 78 performed by Frank Loesser himself along with his wife Lynn. Lynn sure doesn't sound to me like she's being violated in it. If you feel she does…okay, maybe I'm wrong. But that's all I am: Wrong. And bloggers, perhaps more than anyone on this planet, have the right to be wrong. Some of us exercise that right to the fullest…

Day after tomorrow (i.e., Wednesday), our pal Stu Shostak does his annual Christmas Gift-Giving Guide on Stu's Show. It can be heard as an audio show online or watched as a video program online or on your Roku-enabled viewing device…like, say, a TV set. Why am I telling you this? Because I'll be his second guest on Wednesday, telling you all why the gift of love this year is one or more volumes of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips.

The show starts at 4 PM Pacific Time. I should be on around 4:45, give or take five minutes…and the other guests are worthy of your attention, as well. To find out how to listen or watch, go to the Stu's Show website where you will be presented with many options. I'll mention this again Wednesday morning.

Boy, she's amazing — Petula Clark, I mean. It's not polite to tell a lady's age but everyone in the house tonight knew she was 86 and while she doesn't sound exactly as good as she did in 1965 — how could she? — she sings way better than any of us in the audience were prepared to settle for. Not only that but she sang for about 100 minutes without an intermission or having her band play a number without her. She didn't even sit down and she doesn't look anywhere near 86 either.

And that's all the more remarkable when you consider that her professional singing career began when she was nine years old and her film debut was at age 12. None of this is humanly possible.

Tonight as part of a current tour, she performed before an audience that was just the right age to watch and listen as she topped the hit parade of the sixties with hit after hit. She sang most of 'em for us as well as tunes made famous by others plus some new offerings. There were also selections from Sunset Boulevard, Evita and the film version of Finian's Rainbow and by the time she got to "Downtown" (second from the end), every customer in the house had gotten exactly what they came for.

I had a great time. My friend Shelly had a great time. You'd have had a great time. I actually looked for you but you didn't seem to be there. Your loss.

This evening, my friend Shelly Goldstein and I are going to see the lady on the above album cover perform live. And if that lady doesn't sing the title song from that album, I'm going to make Shelly get up on stage and sing it…at least three times, plus a chorus or two of "I Know a Place."

So if anybody needs me tonight, I'll be in 1965. And before the show, I'm taking Shelly to dinner at a Howard Johnson's.

There was a time when Love's Wood Pit Barbecue restaurants dotted the California landscape and seeped into other states, as well. Some folks believe it's impossible to get decent barbecue in a chain. You need a small, one-of-a-kind restaurant in a building that used to be a welding shop and was converted by some guy who's obsessive about good bbq and has been doing it all his life. I've been to some great places that fit that description and also some where the food was close to inedible.

Love's fell somewhere in-between but they were always conveniently located and there are times you need to eat and you can't find one of the "other" kind of bbq joint, or maybe you're just not in the mood to gamble. Love's had decent ribs, great chicken, terrific sandwiches and easily the best beans I've ever had in my life. I used to go to every Love's I ventured near and for a time, I had a running correspondence with a gent who was either the president of the company or very close to that. Each time I ate at a new (to me) Love's, I'd send him a critique. He'd write me back a nice letter and toss in coupons for free meals. A fine relationship.

But I liked Love's for other reasons beyond the coupons. They were friendly and dependable and the food was pretty darned good. So you could often find me at the one on Pico Boulevard near Beverly or at the one on Hollywood Boulevard at Cherokee or at the one in Encino or the one in Pacific Palisades or any other one. I probably went to twenty different Love's including the one Love's Junior they operated (briefly) on Ventura Boulevard in Van Nuys. It was an attempt to repackage their cuisine into something that functioned like a fast food outlet. Had that experiment succeeded, I assume we'd have seen them in locations too small to handle a full-sized Love's or in food courts.

Alas, over the years the chain just lost business and got smaller. The one on Pico, which had once been a kind of "flagship" Love's and was used as a model and training facility for others, turned mysteriously one day into a place called Noonan's. Noonan's was the name of the company that supplied uncooked ribs to many L.A. restaurants and they went into business in some kind of partnership with Bob Morris, who had founded R.J.'s for Ribs, Gladstone's and other popular Los Angeles restaurants. (Morris now operates the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe in Malibu, which is not covered on this site because it's open and thriving.)

Then it became Bob Morris' Beverly Hills Cafe even though it wasn't really in Beverly Hills…and it may have changed names one or two more times before closing down. The building is now the office of a limousine company. The Love's on Hollywood Boulevard seems to change identities every time I'm in the area.

There were some changes of ownership and some lawsuits in the Love's operation. A lot of them closed and the ones that didn't changed names. The Love's in Brea, for instance, changed its name to Riley's and went on serving the exact same menu for years. The one in Chula Vista renamed itself The Great Rib Restaurant, which was a subtitle that Love's sometimes used in its advertising and on its signs. Eventually, all such after-life Love's closed. For a while, the company website claimed there was one left in Jakarta, Indonesia but I wasn't about to go and check.

Folks who loved Love's still love it…and miss it. If you do some Googling, you'll find a number of different recipes that purport to be the secret to replicating Love's Beans and others that teach you how to make the sauce. Since the recipes differ, some or all of these are obviously wrong.

The following one, which is sometimes attributed to the L.A. Times, is probably bogus.  For one thing, Love's beans contained bits of pork and beef in it, probably leftover scraps from other things prepared in their kitchens.  A no point does this supposed recipe for their barbecued beans tell you to add any such pieces of meat…nor does it call for any beans, either.  So I'm pretty sure it's wrong but here it is anyway…

2 cups cider vinegar
3 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons celery seed
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
2 tablespoons lard
1/4 cup pickling spices

Place lard (not shortening) in a pot. Add sugar and then other ingredients. Cook over a low flame stirring occasionally until sauce reaches the desired consistency.

Every so often, I order a case of genuine Love's sauce from the Love's website. As you might imagine from all that alleged brown sugar, Love's sauce was very sweet but it was and still is awfully good. Putting the sauce on things I now eat makes them better but it also makes me miss the real restaurants all the more.

I really enjoyed Harold Prince: A Director's Life, a new PBS special about the great director (and producer) of so many fine Broadway shows. He was involved in one capacity or both in The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Fiorello!, West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, Flora, The Red Menace, Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Candide, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth Century, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman and a few million others.

Even if you aren't a theater buff, you might get something out of it. Hearing Prince explain why he did this or that or how he handled being in charge just might teach you something that's applicable in some other profession or arena. I'm going to watch it again and maybe again after that.

You can catch it for a while on your local PBS station and it's also online for a limited time at this link.

Here's a link to a pretty good obit on this fine performer.

And I said I thought the clip of him dancing was from The Ed Sullivan Show. Nine of you so far have written to say no, it's from Hollywood Palace. Okay, so it's from Hollywood Palace. I believe nine people are always right unless they're the Supreme Court.

That's me in the center flanked by Ken Berry and his F Troop co-star Larry Storch at a birthday party for Larry back in 2008. Larry is still with us at the age of 95. Sad to report, Ken died today at the age of 85. I saw it announced on Twitter by his former wife, the wonderful Jackie Joseph.

There doesn't seem to be a good, well-researched obit up yet. I'll link to one when there is and you'll be amazed at this guy's credits. In his teen years, he was touring the country and getting reviews that usually called him the next Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. He was a top song-and-dance man but he also had a good flair for comedy. He gained fame as a performer with "special services" while in the army and his career was even promoted by his Sergeant, who was — believe it or not — Leonard Nimoy. Later, he became a favorite of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. Burnett featured him often as a guest star on her popular series and added him to the cast of the "Mama's Family" family.

Before that, he was a star of the famous Billy Barnes Revues (that's where he met Jackie) and that led to many TV roles and to him starring in F Troop as the hapless Captain Parmenter. If you watch those shows, you will sometimes see Berry pull off some amazing physical comedy.

I had the chance to meet him a few times and found him to be very humble…but still a little pissed that CBS had canceled Mayberry R.F.D. back in 1971. That was the successor to The Andy Griffith Show which kept most of that show's supporting cast with Berry plunked into a central role like Andy had. It was axed not because it was unpopular but because it was rural and that was the year CBS didn't want rural shows on its schedule even if they were winning their time slots. He said, "We played by their rules, we won by their rules and then they changed their rules."

Until the last decade or so when he began to have some health problems, he was one of those performers who was always working. If you want to be impressed, go look at the partial list of his TV appearances on his Wikipedia page. You've got to be really talented to work that much and he sure was. If you still don't believe me, take a look at this clip, which I think may be from The Ed Sullivan Show The Hollywood Palace. And stay tuned to see some of it again in slow-motion…