Monthly Archives: November 2021

This afternoon at 2 PM (my time), the box of Planters Salted Cashews I order from Amazon via this link was $28.99. Now, less than eight hours later, you can get them for $17.09 apiece. Is this the work of Insider Cashew Trading?

At a birthday celebration for Stephen Sondheim, Marin Mazzie — another great talent who is no longer with us — performed one of the composer's most powerful songs. This is from Follies…

At a concert in London, Bernadette Peters sang another of Sondheim's most powerful songs. This is from Into the Woods…

In a concert performance of Sweeney Todd, Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone performed this amazing tune…

Under the opening titles of the movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Zero Mostel and a chorus sang this lively number. (Caution: I do not recommend any part of this movie after these three minutes…)

And in the 2008 Broadway revival of Company, Raul Esparza had this wonderful musical moment…

Last night at 7:15 PM, I posted this item here (click or scroll down a little) about the fluctuating price of a certain box of Planters Salted Cashews on Amazon. At that moment, the price of a box was $15.06 and I wrote, "Click here to go see if it still is."

I just went to see if it still is and it isn't. As I post this less than nineteen hours later, that box is now $28.99.

Folks have sent me different theories as to why the price of this product goes up and down and up and down and up and down and sometimes, up and up and up before it goes down and down and down. The only suggestion that sounds possible to me is that it might have something to do with how many boxes they have in inventory in their various fulfillment centers. If lots of people place orders — possibly including people motivated by my posts here — and Amazon's reserve supply goes down, the price goes up until they get more in stock.

Or something like that. I am still — to use that word again — discombobulated about this. So stay tuned to newsfromme.com for the latest Cashew Price News. Reporting live, I'm Mark Evanier.

I don't have much to say about Stephen Sondheim that others aren't saying. Greatest composer of our lifetimes…greatest composer of all times…the man who made lyrics matter…all of that is true to some extent. I'd write about how he and his work impacted me but everyone who knew his work has their version of that story and no one's is that important. It's the collective impact that matters.

The thing I feel should be underscored is how many actors owe him for the jobs they got…and the witty, meaty roles that came with that employment. When Neil Simon passed, a lot of people said he'd rebuilt the audience for comedy on the legitimate stage. Sondheim surely did the same for musicals. Though he was famously tutored by Oscar Hammerstein, he took the form in which Hammerstein worked and elevated it to new levels, new possibilities, new everything. He had a lot to do with the advancement of musical theater that was not musical comedy.

I remember years ago on a theater discussion group, there was a small group of Sondheim fans who were honestly furious at him for not writing more shows, not giving us more songs, not taking the form to greater and greater heights. Some of us argued back that the guy's only human and we should be grateful for what he did give us. Here's one of the best things he left us…

As you may remember (here and here), I was discombobulated — I think that's the first time I've used that word in anything I've written — by a fluctuating price on Amazon and elsewhere. It's the price of a box that contains eighteen 1.5 ounce packages of Planters Salted Cashews. Those little packets are, as I said, "just the right amount for a quick snack."

The box was $11.24. Then it was $22.50. Then it was $27.49. Then it was $15.06 and that's when I bought three boxes to hold me for a few months. Then the price went back to $24.69.

A number of you wrote to ask me why I didn't, for example, just buy the 2.5 lb. canister that Costco sells for $19.27. Here is the reason I didn't buy the the 2.5 pound canister that Costco sells for $19.27…

If I open up 1.5 ounce package of Planters Salted Cashews, I eat 1.5 ounces of Planters Salted Cashews. If I open up the 2.5 pound canister of Kirkland Salted Cashews, I eat 2.5 pounds of Kirkland Salted Cashews. These are salted cashews we're talking about, people.

I think it is better for my health if I don't eat 2.5 pounds of Kirkland Salted Cashews a day. Don't you? And yes, I suppose I could reapportion the 2.5 pounds into little baggies of 1.5 ounces each but that would involve having the 2.5 pound canister on the premises and opening it and…well, I think you can imagine what would happen.

And if you would do the same thing I would, I should point out to you that the box with eighteen 1.5 ounce packages of Planters Salted Cashews, which has been $24.69 since my previous post on this topic is, as of this moment, mysteriously down again to $15.06. Click here to go see if it still is.

In the last week or so, we all had our opinions about the Not Guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse and the Guilty verdicts for the three guys responsible for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Whatever you think about those verdicts, it might be interesting to consider them in light of some other recent verdicts…

• Kevin Strickland always maintained his innocence. He'll walk free Tuesday for the first time since 1979, after a judge ruled he was wrongly convicted.
• On Nov. 23, just two days ahead of the holiday, [Pervis] Payne was formally removed from death row, where he has been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he's always said he didn't commit.
• Two of three men convicted in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X have been exonerated after a New York judge dismissed their convictions Thursday. The Manhattan district attorney and lawyers for the two men moved to vacate the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam in the 1965 killing, and Manhattan judge Ellen Biben tossed out the verdicts.
• Alice Sebold has remained silent after the man convicted of raping her was exonerated. The award-winning author is at the center of a heartbreaking saga surrounding a wrongful conviction that resulted in an innocent man spending 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Anthony Broadwater broke down in court this week when the rape conviction at the center of Sebold's memoir Lucky was overturned.
• Dontae Sharpe, a Charlotte, North Carolina, resident, breathed a heavy sigh of relief Friday upon receiving a pardon for a murder he didn't commit — after spending 24 years in prison.
• It has been 72 years since three black men and one teenager in Groveland, Florida were accused of kidnapping and raping a 17-year-old white teenage girl at gunpoint. Now, seven decades later, the four men have been exonerated by a Lake County Judge.

These are all in the last week-to-10-days and were easily found by Googling "wrongly convicted." Betcha there were others.

I've been paying attention to cases like these — and there are a lot of them — since many years ago when I heard someone say on a news program about one then-recent exoneration, "It's not amazing that someone could be wrongly convicted. It's amazing that they get exonerated. Once the government has convicted someone of a crime and sent them to prison — especially if they've been executed — the state has a compelling interest to not reopen the case and to not prove the system got it wrong."

I'm not drawing any conclusion here. I'm not sure what conclusion I would draw other than that it sure happens a lot. But I'm sure there's some conclusion in there.

Bob Newhart's performing career really began with a 1960 record called The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart that still ranks as the 20th best-selling comedy album of all time — not bad for a guy no one had (then) heard of. Before that, he'd done a little comedy writing, including a monologue he submitted to Don Adams in which the comedian would play the commander of a submarine. As Newhart later told the story, Adams declined to buy the monologue…then went on TV and performed it anyway. There are other tales of Mr. Adams allegedly doing things like that.

Having his material stolen was among the factors that moved Newhart into performing what he wrote…and that first record of his did include a monologue in which he played the commander of a submarine. Here on The Ed Sullivan Show for January 8, 1961, Ed pretends that it wasn't decided in advance that Newhart would perform that particular piece on the program…and Bob pretty much gives away that it was planned. So here's Bob Newhart in one of his first TV appearances favoring us with "The Cruise of The U.S.S. Codfish"…

Reader Dan Kravetz sent in this correction to this item…

Thank you for sharing the article about the incident at Carmine's restaurant on September 16. However, it did not take place at the Times Square branch, but at another location, on Broadway at 91st Street.

The owners of Carmine's also own Virgil's Real Barbecue on 44th Street (across Times Square from Carmine's), which is my favorite dining spot in the theater district. If you haven't tried it, you should do so the next time you are in town.

Thanks. I have tried Virgil's and it was very good…but I think the last occasion I was there, it was before a show and though we were plenty early, so were a lot of folks ahead of us in line. There was no way we could get seated in the restaurant in time to be seated in the theatre when the curtain for our show went up. I'm not sure if that's a recommendation for the place or not.

I'm still thinking it'll be a long time before I travel anywhere…and a longer time before I travel anywhere by air. Masking up has brought with its other drawbacks, a certain amount of some minor mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia that I'm sure I can overcome but maybe not right away. Also, it seems like everyone I know who flies anywhere comes back with a horror story of ghastly delays and/or flight attendants having to go mano a mano with militant anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers. Close to home, I shall stay for a while.

I've used the above graphic before here. I have an odd fascination with the story of the Sears and Kmart department stores, which have for some time been under the same management. Or maybe I should say "mis-management" because every time I read about them, I see that the proprietors have a new plan to reverse the chains' fortunes and restore them to their former glory…and each time, more stores close. As this article notes…

The two chains are only a shell of what they were when the holding company that owns both emerged from bankruptcy less than three years ago. At the time, the holding company — given the overly optimistic name Transformco — still had 223 Sears and 202 Kmart stores nationwide. That was already down 87% from the 3,500 stores between the two brands when they merged together in 2005 to form Sears Holdings. But the percentage drop in stores since the company emerged from bankruptcy in February of 2019 has been even steeper.

Today there are only 21 full-line Sears stores left in the mainland United States, and two more in Puerto Rico, according to the store locator on the Sears website, once recent closings are eliminated. Another seven stores listed on the site are limited to selling appliances, and in some cases, mattresses, rather than the full range of offerings that once was a hallmark of both chains. And by the end of the year there will be only six Kmarts left in the mainland United States, along with six more in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

I used to have a friend, also named Mark, who was genetically incapable of going into a business of any kind and not telling you how poorly it was run and how he could make it soar to new heights. Anywhere. No matter what it was — bank, restaurant, nail salon, porn shop — no matter how successful it was — the folks in charge were idiots and he, having placed one foot into the place, could tell you how to save it. At the time, his profession was stocking the shelves at a Montgomery Ward department store…and that chain would still be around if instead of having him stock shelves, they'd made him C.E.O. of the corporation. Or so he insisted.

I thought he was wacko then. Today, I figure that if he was running Sears and Kmart, he couldn't do a worse job. I also think a trained seal might do a better job, depending on who'd trained it.

Like most people, I haven't been inside a Sears in decades. But I did go to a nearby Kmart that is no longer nearby. The place was shabby. The merchandise was cheap in terms of prices but cheaper in terms of quality. Half the stuff on the shelves seemed to be items that had been purchased, taken home, returned to the store, sloppily resealed and put back out for sale. And it was just about impossible to find anyone to answer a question or help you with your purchase. As near as I can tell, the myriad "rescue" plans of the chain's management didn't include fixing most of these problems.

The locator on the Kmart website tells me there are no Kmart stories within 100 miles of me now and I don't feel like shlepping down to Puerto Rico to do my Christmas shopping. There is a Sears Media Center thirteen miles away and a full-size Sears about thirteen miles away but I'm not going there either. It's about an hour drive and there's no guarantee it'll still be in business when I get there.

This is the opening to the Batman TV show from the sixties except they don't sing the word "bat"…

At this link, you'll find a map of the world covered with little green dots. Every green dot represents a radio station at that location and if you click on the dot, you can hear that radio station. In some cases, you'll have your choice of many in the same city. That's enough radio to last you for the rest of your life…and several lives after that.

In a post here on November 7, I complained about the rising price of…no, not gasoline. Cashews. For years now, I've been buying a certain size box of Planters Salted Cashews. Each box contains eighteen little baggies, each of which holds 1.5 oz. of said nuts.

Recently, the boxes skyrocketed in price — from $11.24 a box to, at the time I wrote that post, $27.49. That was the price on Amazon and when I looked around online, other vendors had instituted similar increases.

I didn't understand why…just as I have no idea why the same boxes of eighteen 1.5 oz. portions went down to $15.06 for a week and are now back up to $24.69. Fortunately, I bought three boxes when they were $15.06. Hopefully, that'll hold me until the next price drop.

And this one's from The Ed Sullivan Show for November 10, 1963. Shelley Berman was still one of the hotter "stand-up comedians" in the country even though he did most of his bits sitting on a stool. Here he is with the plight of a man with a cut finger in a strange town…

Remember the reported incident last September at Carmine's Restaurant in Times Square? The way we heard it then, some people came in, the host asked to see proof of vaccination and they became physically abusive to him. This article suggests that maybe that wasn't exactly what happened at one of my favorite places to eat in New York. Correction.