Monthly Archives: September 2021

Well, there's a shocker…and how sad to lose another very funny, smart man. My favorite comedians all tend to be the kind with unique voices…the kind where if someone quoted one of their jokes to you, you could say, "Hey, that sounds like a Chris Rock joke." Or a Lewis Black joke or a Kathy Griffin joke. (I used to use Dennis Miller as a great example of that but if I quoted some of the recent material I've heard him do, you'd say, "Hey, that sounds like a Donald Trump speech.")

But Norm was Norm from the first time I heard him. I wrote about that back here and will quote it now…

I've always found Norm Macdonald to be a very funny guy. I first saw him one night at the Improv. I was there with Victoria Jackson, back in the days when she didn't think folks like me were destined to burn in Hell for destroying America. She wanted me to see this new comedian she'd "discovered" so we saw Norm…and he was quite good. He did 15 strong minutes around 9 PM and then we joined him at the bar and talked a bit. He had to be at the Laugh Factory up on Sunset at Midnight and didn't have a car…so the three of us went to my house to talk, then Victoria and I drove him up to Sunset and watched him do the same material to even better response.

But as funny as he was on those stages, he was even funnier in my living room. It has never surprised me that he's attained such a following.

I don't know what else to write here except that I always found him funny…and honest. Some comics tell stories allegedly from their own lives and even if you're laughing, you're thinking, "That didn't happen." But with Norm, everything funny seemed possible if not probable. Such a loss.

Following up on today's Mixtape entry, here's what the record of "California Dreamin'" sounded like when Barry McGuire did the lead vocal. Somehow, he doesn't sound to me like someone who would stop off in a church and get down on his knees to pray for better weather. Thanks, Steve Stoliar…

Today, it's The Mamas and the Papas with "California Dreamin'," which was a pretty big hit in December of '65. It was written by John and Michelle Phillips and they sang backup on it when it was first recorded by Barry McGuire. McGuire was famous for "Eve of Destruction," which I always thought was a stupid song so it wasn't on my mixtape. Later, McGuire's track on "California Dreamin'" was replaced and it was turned into a Mamas and Papas record. I can't say I was ever that fond of it but I guess I was fond enough to put it on my mixtape.

Here they are performing the song on The Hollywood Palace on January 29, 1966. This is either them lip-syncing to the record or they performed it on the show and someone has dubbed the record over their performance. Since there are no other musicians in sight and since the Hollywood Palace Orchestra didn't play this kind of music, I'm inclined to suspect the former…

I know I quote pundit Kevin Drum a lot on this site but that's because he has a way (often) of cutting through a lot of political jibber-jabber and getting to the basic truth of an issue. Here he is explaining why we're having a recall election today in California. The man's right. He's absolutely right…

For chrissake. I've rarely seen such stream of pseudo-analytic bafflegab in service of avoiding the simple and obvious answer. Here's the deal: The recall is solely the work of "Stop the Steal" Trumpistas who took advantage of the fact that California requires only 1.5 million signatures to certify a recall. Even in their current moldering condition Republicans still make up about a third of all voters, so all the nutbags needed was signatures from the 20-30% of their compatriots in the nutbag wing of the party. Easy peasy, especially if you're gathering signatures at the same time that Trump and Fox News are firing up the nation about corrupt Democrats trying to take the presidency away from him.

• Just looked at the polls for today's recall election in California. Right now, you and I and everyone reading this are within the margin of error to tie Caitlyn Jenner…and we aren't even on the ballot.

You learn something new every day…and if you don't, I do. I found out today that all those Garfield and Friends cartoons I wrote are also on the Tubi streaming channel — and they have been for some time. Tubi is owned by Fox, Pluto is owned by Viacom and they have a lot of programming in common. Looks like I may be able to get two orders of McDonald's fries with my share of streaming revenues.

At the moment, Tubi seems to be running shows from the beginning of Season 7 and Pluto seems to be running the end of Season 7. I have no idea how many episodes each can access. Several folks who wrote in say that these streaming channels often run the same episodes over and over and over and over and over and over and don't have all episodes of a series they stream.

Jonathan Chait discusses the bind that Republican leaders like Florida's Ron DeSantis are in. They're trying to frame their anti-mandate policies as taking a stand for individual rights. But that puts them in league with folks who think the vaccines turn you into zombie chipmunks…and they don't want to alienate that kind of supporter.

Meanwhile: Most observers seem to feel that the Recall Election in California will fail to unseat Governor Gavin Newsom. As Ed Kilgore notes, his main opponent — talk show host Larry Elder — is not waiting until the ballots are counted to allege fraud. Of course.

Kevin Drum points out The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in America today. There's a lot more of The Good than you might expect.

Here's another one of these…

• I am sometimes amazed at the number of people in this world who would jump off a cliff if you told them that the Common Wisdom among most people is that it's not a good idea to jump off a cliff.

Ever since I learned there was a Garfield & Friends channel on PlutoTV, I've been watching occasionally. They're running shows I wrote in 1991 and 1992 and haven't seen since. One or two, I'm not sure I ever saw at all. So I sit here, occasionally amusing myself or more often thinking, "Why the hell did I write that?" Yesterday, I heard a minor character speak and I thought, "Who was that? We had such fine actors in the cast, I can't believe one of them gave that bad line reading or that I let it through."

And then I realized who it was. It was me. Yeah, I occasionally did a bit part…and when Garfield's creator Jim Davis was in town, so did he.

It's fun and educational to watch these now. I can't look back on old work without learning something. I learn it too late but at least I learn. I also have an emotional response that I'm not sure I can describe to hearing the voices of actors who worked on the show but are no longer with us. Lorenzo Music, Gary Owens and Howard Morris — three great actors and great friends — were in every episode. I'm also hearing Stan Freberg, June Foray, Rip Tay;or, Don Knotts, Paul Winchell and a few others we've lost.

I'm relatively new to Pluto TV and I still don't understand some things about it. Although they presumably have access to all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends, they only run a select chunk of shows at a time. I'm not keeping close track but it seems like yesterday, they were running thirteen or fourteen shows over and over, not always in the same order. Today, it seems like they're running a limited number of shows — probably the same number — but some were in yesterday's rotation and some weren't.

But I may be wrong about this. I'm not making a close study.

Each show is interrupted several times with a little "we'll be right back" message which is like a commercial break only it isn't a commercial…though Friday, I did see one actual commercial in there. For some reason, they don't put these little "time out"s between cartoons. They stick them in the middle of a cartoon or near the end. So a character says the next-to-last line of the cartoon and there's a funny end line coming but you have to wait a minute or so for that last line.

I don't understand why they do this. Perhaps I would if I understood the business model of PlutoTV. Is there any revenue stream apart from the occasional few bucks from the occasional commercials? I have a feeling that when I get my cut of what they're paying to run these shows day and night, it'll be about enough for an order of McDonald's french fries. A small order of McDonald's french fries.

One of my favorite cabaret performers is a gent named Mark Nadler who, in non-COVID times, tours the country performing. Sometimes, as in the video below, he has a small band with him. Often, it's just him and a piano. Either way, he's a great entertainer.

Our video today is a show he did on PBS back in 2015 and the theme of the show was the year 1961 — which, not coincidentally, is the year Mr. Nadler was born. But it was also a year in which a surprising number of great songs were born and his show was filled with them. What's embedded below will have a special resonance with you if you're familiar with a lot of the music but it should please anyone.

I am here offering you three choices, one being to not watch it at all. I do not recommend this but you're free to do as you wish and you won't hurt my feelings one bit. Well, maybe one bit.

Secondly: I have set this video embed so it starts 40 minutes and 32 seconds in, thereby giving you the last sixteen-or-so minutes of his show. In those minutes, he performs one of the strongest pieces of cabaret material I have ever witnessed. If you were to ever perform on a stage in front of a live audience, you would pray to have a "closer" this good…and again, it will help if you know the music of '61 somewhat.

Or you have a third option, which is watch the whole show which runs close to 57 minutes. To accomplish this, click on this link. It's all good but if you don't have the 57 minutes, just click below and enjoy the last sixteen. The guy is really good…

The Internet is full-to-bursting this morning with remembrances of 9/11 and a wide array of answers to the question, "What did it mean to us?" I read a number of them and stopped after this essay by Lucian K. Truscott IV who says, basically, that we lost the War on Truth…

The legacy 9/11 has left us is that there is no common set of facts we can agree on about anything: Not about the COVID pandemic and masks and vaccines; not about the climate change that has killed hundreds and left town after town burned to the ground or under water and destroyed by tornadoes and hurricanes. We cannot agree that votes counted amount to elections won or lost. We cannot even agree on the common good of vaccines that will save us, that science is worth studying, that learned experts are worth listening to.

I think we lost a certain amount of that before the planes hit the World Trade Center but 9/11 certainly turned the partisan divides into impenetrable walls.

Anyway, this is not a remembrance of 9/11. My experiences were no more special or worth recounting than yours or anyone's. Maybe one thing we can agree on is that it was horrible and that it changed the world in many ways, few of them for the better. And I think I'll do myself and maybe you a favor by not dwelling on it today. The posts on this blog this weekend will not be about that. If you need that, you have an entire World Wide Web of it just one click away.

I sometimes tell people that I got into "show business" (including the comic book business) for the anecdotes. I love great stories about things that happened and like most folks, I often settle for "probably happened" or even "might have happened." I have sometimes repeated a story acknowledging it might be spurious and saying, "I hope this actually happened."

For instance: In the comic book field, there's a tale about a freelancer working for DC Comics who grabbed one of their editors and dangled him out a very high window. I don't know how many times I heard that from people who claim to have been there and witnessed it.

The name of the freelancer changed. The name of the editor changed. The reason for the dangling changed. The number of stories-up the window was changed. But either lots of freelancers dangled lots of editors out windows there or the tale has been reimagined by a great many tellers. I doubt it ever happened even once.

Here's a clip of Billy Crystal on with David Letterman, telling a Redd Foxx story I've probably heard from a dozen different people who claim to have been there and witnessed it.  I don't know who told it to me first but I wrote about a version of it in a column I did in 1996. You can read it on this very blog at this link.

The story is always about Redd Foxx but the name of the act that preceded him changes from telling to telling and the punchline is always the play-off with the theme from Sanford and Son.  Some of the other details are flexible.

There are a few things amiss with Billy's story. The clip starts with a mention of the MGM Hotel and a mention of him being at a fight between Ken Norton and Larry Holmes in the afternoon. The way the clip is cut, we can't tell if he said the fight took place at the MGM but in reality, Norton fought Holmes in the evening of Friday, June 9, 1978 but not at the MGM. The fight was at Caesars Palace.

Also, Redd's 2:30 AM show probably wasn't at The Frontier Hotel. It was probably at the Silverbird Hotel, which is where Foxx played in 1978 and did, as the ad above shows, a 2:30 AM show on Friday and Saturday nights. And without further adieu, here's Billy…

What especially intrigues me is that the story is about Foxx doing a show with almost no one in the audience…and I've met so many people who claim they were in the audience for that performance.  If this actually happened, maybe the reason so many people claim to have been there for it was that it happened more than once. Maybe that's all Redd Foxx ever did at his 2:30 AM shows.

I do know Jack Goldfinger, the magician Crystal says was on the stage just before Redd and the next time I see Jack, I'm going to ask him about this.  In the meantime, you can decide for yourself if it actually occurred and if you believe Billy Crystal was present when it occurred.  He sure sounds convincing but so did everyone else who ever told this anecdote.

One other thing: You'll notice Mr. Crystal says that before the show, someone was hawking Redd's comedy record, You Gotta Wash Your Ass. I posted its cover at the top of this article and if you can't tell, the thing on the right is the rear end of a donkey. The joke might have evoked at least a little laughter if you could have perceived that.

The dates check out on that since it came out in 1975. I wrote in the above-linked article that as a collector of funny albums, I was always intrigued by the sheer number of different "party records" (i.e., dirty records) Foxx made and how many zillions of them were sold. I also wrote…

I always wondered what was in those albums. The jackets divulged nothing about the contents but I somehow knew my parents wouldn't be thrilled to catch me buying one. It was many years later that I came across one in a second-hand shop and bought it, wondering just where all the others had vanished.

I took it home, put it on my turntable and…well, I made it through about half of the first side before giving up. There were a lot of jokes about women being basically worthless and stupid and men being even more worthless and stupider. There were a lot of references to body parts not generally itemized in mixed company. I didn't laugh but the audience on the album sure did, proving that you can laugh at anything if you're drunk enough.

Well, the Redd Foxx record I listened to was You Gotta Wash Your Ass and I thought it was pretty poor. You may feel otherwise if you listen to it and you can listen to it here. Good luck.

• With his new vaccine mandate, Joe Biden has lost the support of all Americans who were never going to support him no matter what he did.