Monthly Archives: September 2021

Jack Kirby would have been pleased to see this "answer" on tonight's episode of Jeopardy! And what would have pleased him most was not that it showed he was famous but that he was being credited as a co-creator. He did not see that often when he was alive.

He saw himself being praised as a great artist — and when he complained to Stan about not being acknowledged for inventing (or co-inventing) characters and comics, Stan's response was usually to praise Jack more as an artist. Happily, Jack is now formally acknowledged the way he wanted to be…and yes, I know: Too little, too late. But "better late than never" is applicable here and we have to settle for that.

I have respect for a number of things Stan Lee did during his long career but I do not buy any of the excuses that absolve him of blame for Jack not getting the credit he deserved. Hell, if he'd just said in public (or in depositions) some of the things he said to me in private, he could have lived up to that line about how with great power comes great responsibility.

And in case you're interested, the contestant on Jeopardy! who rang in on this answer was their long-reigning champion, Matt Amodio, the guy who starts all his responses with "what" even when "who" or "where" would be more proper. His response to this one was "What's Kirby?"

I just watched (on my iPad), the first episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart, which I think is the first thing I've ever watched on AppleTV.  As with addictive drugs, the first one's free and then you pay…in this case, $4.95 a month for AppleTV.  I shall do this because the show is, as they say, Must See Television.  It's worth five bucks a month all by itself and they're only, I believe, doing two a month.

If I were a right-wing guy, I might be suspicious.  The problem addressed in this first outing of The Problem is U.S. soldiers suffering from exposure to toxic chemicals from "burn pits."  This is one of those issues any human with even a teensy nugget of empathy would be ashamed to not care about.  Presumably, future episodes will address more controversial topics.  I'd think, "Yeah, he's right about this but he's trying to win my heart over and then he'll hit me with his Liberal Propaganda."  Well, maybe.  But that doesn't mean he won't be right again.

It's a solid, well-produced show and if you forced me to find a fault in it, it's that it makes its point in a smattering of minutes, then hammers it home over and over.  Jon, you had me at "soldiers suffering due to these burn pits." But just when I thought the show was preaching to a choir it had already converted, Stewart gave us an interview with a gentleman in government who's at the heart of this problem and any possible solution…and therefore gave us an insight into why government sometimes doesn't work they way we want it to.

So I'm signing up for AppleTV. The next installment is apparently about why people don't want to wear masks and how foolish that is. And just as Mr. Stewart is frustrated that the solution to the burn pit problem isn't happening A.S.A.P., I'm a little frustrated that we have to wait two weeks for that episode.

Here's a preview of Episode #1.  Don't bother watching it.  Just pick up any Apple-connected device and watch the entire program…

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was a ground-breaking show that ran on NBC from January of 1968 to March of 1973. It changed network television and launched a lot of careers and now somehow manages to look incredibly dated but also ahead of its time. The show was a co-production of its hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, and George Schlatter's company. There was later much bad blood and squabbling between the hosts and Schlatter over proceeds and credit for the show.

Four years after Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In left NBC, Schlatter brought it back for a series of specials as Laugh-In with no mention of Mssrs. Rowan and Martin…or of anyone who'd been in the cast of the original version. Instead, he assembled a new cast of largely unknown performers, many of whom remained that way.

This is the first episode of that revival and it aired on September 5, 1977 to, as I recall, very mixed reaction and not-great ratings.  The critics seemed to feel that the lack of any real host or hosts yielded a lack of focus and made the show seem way too disjointed.  I thought it was a mistake to throw so many unfamiliar faces at us with no names attached.  The performers were not identified until the cocktail party sketch near the end.  It starts at 41:40 if you want to zip ahead to it.  I can't match most of these people up to the roles they played throughout the show either.

The big guest star was Bette Davis. The cameo guests included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Garner, Henry Winkler, Ralph Nader, Rich Little and Barry Goldwater. And the troupe consisted of Sergio Aragonés, Antoinette "Toad" Atell, Nancy Bleiweiss, Ed Bluestone, Kim Braden, Claire Faulconbridge, Wayland Flowers (and Madame), June Gable, Jim Giovanni, Ben Powers, Bill Rafferty, Lenny Schultz, Michael Sklar and Robin Williams.

Robin Williams was obviously the breakout star but I'm more interested in the first name among the regular players: Sergio Aragonés.  Could that possibly be my friend and partner, the world-famous cartoonist from MAD and Groo the Wanderer?

It could be and it is.  Sergio did the cartoon graphics throughout the show and was a writer-performer in many of the pantomime blackouts.  He's the guy with the Sergio Aragonés mustache, dressed as a Karate expert and a Mexican general among other guises.  There's a bit in there with a cartoon Sergio studying the navel of a lady in a swimming pool and he not only drew himself but they shot that at the home he had back then in the Hollywood Hills.  He was in all the other episodes of this Laugh-In and turned up on some other shows produced by George Schlatter.  You can spot him here and there in the margins, too…

• I'm getting stricter. I'm now refusing to be alone with myself without proof of vaccination or a copy of a negative COVID test taken within the past 72 hours.

The Fifth Dimension appeared many times on my old mixtape. "Up, Up and Away" was one of many hits for them written by Jimmy Webb and when it came out in May of '67, it was played almost non-stop on KHJ radio.

In fact, I recall the competing Top 40 radio station in L.A., which was KRLA, countered with a version of the record that incorporated its call letters into the lyrics. I have no idea if the Fifth Dimension recorded a special version for them or if KRLA got permission to have soundalike group come in and dub different lyrics over some lines…or what. But at points in that version, the vocal would be "K-R-L-A" instead of "Up, Up and Away," even though the tune called for five syllables there instead of four.

That's about all I can think to write about this song other than at some point, I got awfully tired of hearing it every time I turned on the radio. It's fine but not when heard incessantly…

I just convinced a lady I know to get vaccinated. We'd talked about this before and she was not an anti-vaxxer, though some of her friends are. She just hadn't gotten around to deciding if her pro-vaxx friends were right or her anti-vaxx friends, most notably one from the latter group who seems to have incontrovertible proof that hundreds of thousands of people have died soon after receiving one of the three popular vaccines.

You may not have heard about these hundreds of thousands of people because various sinister forces have done a great job of keeping it quiet. But you can't fool this friend of hers. He would know. He fixes mufflers for a living.

Actually, I'm taking credit I don't fully deserve for her decision. It was me but more effectively, it was all the places she now can't get into without showing proof of vaccination or a very recent test. These include concerts she might like to attend, restaurants she might like to patronize, the place where she works and her folks' home for Thanksgiving. She's not afraid of COVID. She's afraid of exclusion and I don't get it but, hey, if it works…

I canceled my trial subscription to Paramount+ which I only got so I could watch the Tony Awards. I wonder how many people signed up for that reason and how many of us canceled. Now I have to contend with Apple TV so I can watch Jon Stewart's new show which starts tomorrow. Some of the advance publicity makes it sound like Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Jon Stewart but of course we shall see.

Early episodes of Mr. Stewart's tenure at The Daily Show have been popping up on YouTube and they remind me how this guy was good when he started and he just kept getting better and better.

Lastly for now: How amazing that we are no longer surprised, shocked, outraged or even that interested when a recount in Arizona confirms that Donald Trump lost that state in the 2020 Presidential Election…and he just goes out and tells everyone it proved that he won.

This year's Tony Awards got me to thinking of memorable moments from past telecasts…

This is a clip I've featured before on this site but it's been it's been fourteen years so why not? It's from the Tony Awards ceremony in 1990 which they opened with a scene from the musical Grand Hotel, which was running then on Broadway. An actor named Michael Jeter, whose life had once hit rock bottom due to substance abuse, made an amazing personal comeback in that show. In it, he played a bookkeeper who was dying but still managed to perform an amazing, energetic dance number. The role and the win led to much bigger things for Mr. Jeter.

You'll see that number — the other man in it is Brent Barrett — and then you'll see the opening titles for that Tony broadcast. Sit through that (or fast forward) because the first award presented is the category for which Mr. Jeter was nominated. Spoiler alert: He wins…and his acceptance speech will moisten your eyes…

Last July 1st, I bought two tickets to see one of my favorite comedians, Ricky Gervais, perform at the Orpheum Theatre here in Los Angeles next month. At the time, The Pandemic was fading and I figured that by mid-October, it would be safe to be in a big performance space like that, especially if everyone was suitably masked. I also figured that if COVID got worse, Mr. Gervais would cancel his appearance as he'd done twice before. When they first sold seats for this show, it was to be held on June 24, 2020 and then it was moved to February 14, 2021 before being rescheduled for 10/20/21.

I bought the tix from a service which promptly charged my credit card and sent me a receipt for the hefty amount along with a note that I would soon receive an e-mail link to transfer the tickets to my account. That e-mail never came and when I tried phoning up the service, I got a recorded announcement telling me how wonderful their service was, followed by another recorded announcement telling me that they were experiencing wait times of up to three hours.

Well, thought I, we have three and a half months before the show. Perhaps the e-mail will come or perhaps the wait to speak with someone there will come down to something less than the running time of How the West Was Won.

Every few days since then, I've sent an e-mail — the same one, over and over, — to an address that allegedly gets messages to the proper folks at the service. I have had no response.

Also every few days since then, I've dialed them up to see if the recorded announcement has changed and it has…occasionally. For a brief period, the wait time was a mere two hours but it soon went back up to three. I just checked and it's three. They also added an announcement that they were only helping folks attending events within the next 24-48 hours.

If the interminable wait time persisted — as it has since early August — I would have to call on October 18 and remain on hold for however long it took to get to a person there. What if it's four hours by then? Five? Ten?

And even if I did reach a person there and that person there said they'd have the proper e-mail sent to me A.S.A.P., that might not be the end of this. I've been victimized too many times by someone who told me, "You'll have what you need shortly and if it doesn't arrive, just give us a call back!"

Happily, I no longer have this dilemma. It's been solved and I wish I could say it was solved by the service but it wasn't. It was solved by Ricky Gervais canceling that performance. Earlier today, I got a message from the service telling me that and also that 120% of what I paid is now in my account with them, waiting to be used to purchase more tickets from them. This is valid until December 31, 2022. I can also request what they call a "cash refund" — I suspect it's not cash but a chargeback to my credit card — which they will process not immediately but "within 30 days."

And what if those 30 days pass and I don't receive my refund? Well, I guess I could always write them an e-mail or call.

So I signed up for the free trial of Paramount+ in order to watch the Tony Awards special and I couldn't get it to work on my TV. Everything was outta sync — sometimes so wildly that I was watching one winner accepting the trophy while hearing the speech of the next winner. This was only on this one channel. The other streaming channels I checked were fine.

Resets and reboots didn't solve the problem but I did see a lot of menus showing me what else I could watch on Paramount+. I realized I really didn't need that channel so I watched the Tonys on my computer — where it played fine — and then canceled my subscription.

By carving the Tony Awards into two separate shows, they effectively wound up with two hours of The Stuff You Have To Sit Through To Get To The Good Stuff, interrupted by a little of The Good Stuff. This was followed by the two hours on CBS which featured most of The Good Stuff. I enjoyed the CBS segment but wonder if we'll ever get back to one Tony telecast that mixes the awards and the musical presentations. American Television needs to face the mounting reality that the public really doesn't want to watch people get awards…especially people they've never heard of involved with shows and films they haven't seen.

Both shows were marred by occasional slip-ups and technical problems but, hey, that's live TV. I enjoyed the presentation on CBS and, as they intended, I sure felt that Broadway is back.

This is the opening number from last night's The Tony Awards Present: Broadway's Back! The song was written by Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman and Amber Ruffin, and performed by host Leslie Odom Jr and some fine Broadway dancers. I didn't catch all the lyrics so I turned on the closed captioning for myself. You can do the same thing.

My favorite part of last night's Tony Awards was when they bowled us over with three duets from past shows: Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel singing "For Good" from Wicked, Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal performing "What You Own" from Rent and (best of all) Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell favoring us with "Wheels of a Dream" from Ragtime.

I saw someone online say that this segment only served to remind them that this year's offerings didn't have the same power and timelessness. Well, maybe. This year's Broadway shows certainly have plenty of excuses for not filling their stages with history but I did think some of them sold a lot of tickets with the numbers they presented — especially Moulin Rouge and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.

I'll write more about the ceremonies when I get through with some work that stubbornly insists it's more important than blogging. Here are those three duets I so enjoyed…

• Apparently, if your TV can't play Paramount+ properly, Tech Support from Roku or Paramount+ consists of telling you to buy a newer set and see if that solves the problem.

• So I keep turning both Roku and Paramount+ on and off and every time, the audio and video are outta-sync by a different (but still unwatchable) interval…not just on the Tony Awards but on other Paramount+ shows. Everything looks like a poorly-dubbed foreign movie.

• Watching the Tony Awards on Paramount+ totally out of sync. The audio is at least fifteen seconds ahead of the corresponding video.

Folks have been sending me links to websites that track public figures who (a) came out against vaccinations and/or masks, (b) came down with COVID and, in too many cases, (c) died from it. The sites I've seen in this category all seem to have a jubilant "got what they deserved" celebratory air about them which makes me real uncomfy. Cheering on the pain and death of others is not something I enjoy and I sure hope I never do.

But yeah, once in a while, someone I think has done terrible things dies and I can smile at the notion that they won't be doing those terrible things anymore. Schadenfreude does bring out the worst in us.

Yesterday when I dropped by a nearby eatery to pick up a "to go" order, there was some sort of mask-related psychodrama winding down. One loud guy was screaming and cussing and threatening because they wouldn't serve people like him with an exposed face. I didn't catch enough of it to fully understand but the cussing guy sure reminded me of folks I sometimes encounter who just love to scream and spread hatred and if masks hadn't been his reason, it would have been something else. Maybe.

But there are people opposed to vaxxing and masking who aren't fanatics or screamers or even operatives who feel empowered by leading a crusade against what Liberals or "woke people" or political opponents are advocating. They're just people who are wrong, possibly because they don't have good doctors or don't trust the ones they have. Or they've been grossly misinformed.

Or maybe they're like a guy I knew back in school who took a bizarre pride in never changing his mind about anything. He thought that was a trait indicating dedication and forcefulness and character. I thought it was a way to stay on the wrong side of an issue forever. I wish there was a way these people could back off on the positions they've taken…a way they could cover their faces and save face at the same time.