Monthly Archives: November 2021

We're still talking Odd Couple here, people. Richard Gersh writes…

I agree that seeing the original Broadway cast of The Odd Couple must have been great. Have you heard the story that Matthau wanted to switch roles with Carney at some point into their run, to keep things interesting? I think I recall hearing Matthau say such a thing on a talk show many years ago.

I did see The female Odd Couple when it premiered on Broadway, and for me the highlight was Lewis J. Stadlen and Tony Shalhoub as the Costazuela brothers. I envy the Canadians who saw — according to Wikipedia — a 1970 production with Martin Short as Felix, Eugene Levy as Oscar, and Dave Thomas as Murray.

Here is what I understand: When Neil Simon approached Walter Matthau about appearing in the play, Matthau said he wanted to play Felix and to invest in the play. He was allowed to invest but not to play Felix. There are people who claim that they saw a performance where Matthau and Carney switched roles. Simon said that never happened.

The Odd Couple opened on Broadway on March 10, 1965. Carney left in October and Matthau left a few weeks later…so the period of time when you could see the two of them together was about seven months and in the last month or so Carney was in the show, he is said to have missed many performances. Paul Dooley, who was playing Speed in the show, was Carney's understudy. Eddie Bracken took over as Felix in late October.

So there really wasn't time for Matthau and Carney to get so bored that might have switched roles. And Matthau, who said a lot of things that weren't true in an impish kind of way, may have been kidding.

It's been said that Carney did play Oscar in one or more regional productions years later…but though I've seen dozens and dozens of program books and posters for different mountings of the play with interesting leads, I've never seen one for Carney without Matthau. I'm not saying I don't believe it but I'll believe it when I see it.

I saw the female Odd Couple when it was in tryouts at the Ahmanson here in Los Angeles in 1985. Rita Moreno played the sloppy one, Sally Struthers played the neat one and I thought the gender swap was pointless and the play didn't work. I agree with you that the Costazuela Brothers were the best thing in the show.

I also saw Simon's 2002 rewrite of the original male version which played here in L.A. with John Larroquette (Oscar) and Joe Regalbuto (Felix) and I thought it was very weak. I'm not sure it ever played anywhere else. The Costazuela Brothers became the Costazuela Sisters and, again, they were the best thing in it.

I love coming across and sharing videos of old, largely-forgotten comedians. James Edmondson, Sr. was an old vaudevillian whose act long outlived vaudeville. In it, he portrayed a silly scholar named Professor Backwards and throughout the fifties and sixties, he was very busy on the State Fair circuit and appeared on all the major variety and talk programs. He is said to have been the most frequent guest on The Mike Douglas Show.

Often, a performance would include a demonstration of his ability to write and talk backwards; ergo, his stage name. But you won't see those skills demonstrated in this clip, which is from The Ed Sullivan Show for October 25, 1959.

Edmonson's life came to a tragic end when he was murdered in January of 1976. Shortly after, on NBC's then-new Saturday Night series (later retitled Saturday Night Live), Chevy Chase read a joke about the murder in the Weekend Update segment. Reportedly written by writer Michael O'Donoghue, it went…

Well, the popular TV personality known as Professor Backwards was slain in Atlanta yesterday, by three masked gunmen. According to reports, neighbors ignored the Professor's cries of "Pleh! Pleh!"

That kind of joke later became more commonplace on television but at the time, it was an example of the outrageousness of the new late night show. It drew so many complaints that Mr. Chase, when asked about it, would swear he didn't know there was a real person named Professor Backwards. But some of us knew who he was. He was this guy…

• Why is Chris Christie wasting his time trying to distance himself from Donald Trump? The politician Chris Christie needs to distance himself from is Chris Christie.

John Trumbull sent me the following in response to this post, which was a follow-up on this post…

Just thought I'd write to mention that November 13th is only Felix Unger Day in the TV version of The Odd Couple. The original 1965 play by Neil Simon (and the 1968 movie version directed by Gene Saks) begins on "a warm summer night" in July. Oscar Madison's air conditioner is out and his refrigerator has been broken for two weeks, prompting lots of complaining from Murray, Speed, and the other poker players. As someone who's been in two productions of the play (once as Vinnie and once as Felix), the November 13th date has long sounded "wrong" to me.

This was one of a number of small changes the TV version made, along with changing Felix from a news writer for CBS to a photographer and altering the spelling of his last name from "Ungar" to "Unger." So, obviously, Art Carney and Jack Lemmon were playing the Earth-Two Felix Unger, while Tony Randall was playing the Earth-One Felix Ungar. Really, it's the only possible explanation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go finish my Crisis on Infinite Ungars pitch for DC Comics. Ron Glass and Thomas Lennon are traveling to Earth-Three, where Oscar's the neat one and Felix is the slob.

That is, of course, all true…and there are Earths where Oscar and Felix are female and named Olive and Florence, and one where they're a neat cat and a sloppy dog.

I have a friendly disagreement with my pal Ken Levine, who likes the Randall/Klugman Odd Couple more than I do, whereas I prefer Lemmon/Matthau. I think we decided that it didn't matter which we preferred because if we could see the original with Walter Matthau and Art Carney, that would be the definitive version forever to us. The few lucky people I know who saw the show when it debuted on Broadway certainly felt like that.

Someone told me there is a professionally-shot video of the revival with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, not to be confused with the various bootleg, shot-on-iPhone-from-the-balcony bootlegs around. If this is so, I wonder why CBS/Paramount hasn't broadcast or marketed it.

This is something that occurred in 2010, back when I used to occasionally commute to Indiana to work on Garfield cartoons.  It was reported here on 9/24/10.  Much has changed since then including the fact that I no longer have business in Indiana…and neither does B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue, the chain where I stopped for lunch that day.  Their seventeen locations are now situated in Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan…but no longer in Indiana.

On the other appendage, when this happened, Costco had two locations in the Hoosier State and now they have eight.  Also, I no longer buy crates of Friskies Cat Food to feed feral pussycats — and an array of other species — in my backyard. But nothing else has changed…including, I assume, the way Southwest Airlines handles luggage. Here then is another of my…

A few weeks ago, I found myself driving from Indianapolis, Indiana to Muncie, Indiana in a car the Hertz people rented me. Did I say "car?" "Moving van" would be more like it. It was way more vehicle than I wanted or like to drive but it was the only thing they had available that had a GPS in it. I have unerring directional capabilities on my home turf but when I'm a stranger in a strange land, I can't find my way from the toilet in my hotel room to the sink. The Hertz folks put me in it for the price they'd quoted for a mid-sized sedan so I took it for the duration of my stay in Indiana. I figured that if I had some extra time, I could pay for the trip by moving some pianos.

En route to Muncie, I lunched at a B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue — a favored chain they have back there but not out here — and while chowing down thought, "Gee, I oughta stop off somewhere and buy a new suitcase." Southwest Airlines had rendered my old one unrollable and it was fracturing up one side. I consulted the Yellow Pages app of my iPhone and found a nearby store that from its name seemed like it might have what I wanted. It didn't. Neither did another luggage shop. Both had plenty of bags but not the kind I had in mind.

As I got back into my oversized rental, its excessive bulk made me think of Costco and I realized I'd seen the perfect suitcase a few months earlier at a Costco in Los Angeles. I consulted the app again and it turned out there was a Costco less than two miles from where I was at that moment. This struck me then as unremarkable. After all, there must be Costcos all over Indiana, right? Not right. I later learned that there are only two in the entire state. I just happened to be near one of them…the one in Castleton, Indiana. Minutes later, I was pulling into its parking lot.

It looked just like the ones in Southern California which, in turn, all look like each other. I've been to five different Costcos around here. They vary a bit in whether they have certain add-ons like a tire store or a gas station but they pretty much all look the same on the outside. Within, they look pretty much the same as well, though some are mirror-imaged. As you face the rear of the warehouse, sometimes the groceries are on this side and the tools and appliance-type stuff is on that side.

Sometimes, it's the other way around. It's one of those left brain/right brain things. One of the nice aspects of Costcos, comforting in a way, is their conformity. First time I walked into the one in Burbank, I knew right where everything was. It was in the exact same place as in the Costco I've been known to frequent in Marina Del Rey.

At first glance, the Costco in Castleton was laid out just like both of them and like the one in Los Feliz and the one in Inglewood…but as I moved through it, I noticed subtle and then some not-so-subtle differences. Not everything was in its proper place. The computer software, which should have been over here, was over there. The display of batteries, where you can buy one package containing enough AAAs to power everything you will ever own that takes that size, was not where it was supposed to be, either.

I do not generally have any trace of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but I seem to get it at Costco. I found myself wanting to grab employees and tell them, "No, no! The contour pillows go at the end of the aisle!" If everything or even most items had been in different spots, I could have coped easily…but you know how it is when just one venetian blind slat is twisted and you just have to correct it? It was like that for me at the Indiana Costco. 95% of its layout seemed correct but I couldn't stop wishing the 5% would conform.

Remembering the purpose of my visit, I took myself to the aisle where the luggage was supposed to be. It wasn't there, which I found doubly unsettling. Never mind that my needs were not being met…it was just plain wrong. There should have been luggage there, not just for me but for everyone.

I wandered the entire store to see where they'd recklessly put it and couldn't find suitcases anywhere. I was just thinking that maybe they didn't carry them when a friendly Costco employee, spotting bewilderment on my brow, asked if she could help me locate anything. We were near the spot where I could point and say, making clear I didn't think this was her fault, "Why aren't there suitcases in that aisle there? There are supposed to be suitcases there."

With a forced smile, she pointed halfway across the warehouse and said, "Luggage is right there, sir. Next to the down comforters." And indeed it was…maddeningly in the wrong place. Believe me, it was not comforting to find it near the comforters. I got back some of my bearings though when I happily discovered they did at least have exactly the suitcase I'd coveted in Los Angeles. Costco had not let me down and I have to tell you, it was a good, reassuring feeling.

Once I had my attention off the baggage crisis, I could browse the store with wider eyes. I free-sampled some new kind of potato chip that I enjoyed…and would later learn is not available, at least not yet, at the Inglewood Costco. I watched the guy preparing the hot rotisserie chickens for purchase and I was consoled to see it was the exact same guy who prepares them for purchase in any Southern California Costco.  Costco acquires everything in bulk, including that guy.

Only one other thing unnerved me. I kept spotting items I needed back home and would momentarily forget it was stupid to purchase them there. Like, I noticed the crates of Friskies I buy, two or three at a time in L.A. to feed my backyard kitty committee. For a half-second, I thought, "Hey, this would be a good time to…" before realizing I didn't really want to pack sixty pounds of canned cat food into my new suitcase and haul it back to California.

So it felt a bit odd to be checking out of a Costco with but one item. Everyone else had a cart that looked like the carts I usually push through checkout, loaded down with enough paper towels to blot up the entire B.P. oil slick. I didn't even have a cart…just one suitcase which rolled quite nicely, by the way. A friendly crew member saw me waiting behind a dozen such carts and suggested I avail myself of the self-service checkout counter. I've never seen one of those in any Costco out here but I steeled myself for something else different and did as he advised.

As I was swiping my credit card — and wondering as I always do why we use that confusing verb for that action — yet another cheery Costco crew member approached to inquire, "Did you find everything you wanted, sir?" I told him yes but added, "I'm from Los Angeles and out there, our Costcos are laid out a little differently." He smiled even more and said, "Well, we do things a little different here in Indiana." Indeed, they do…and I'm not saying any of it's wrong. In fact, in time I could even get used to the crates of yardsticks being next to the nine-packs of Kirkland-brand paprika. But it would take a lot of time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the concept of Daylight Saving Time to comedian Chuck Nice…and in so doing, to us…

That title is probably too harsh but some jokes are so easy, you can't resist.

As recounted in this article, "Star Wars actor Adam Driver recently revealed he has no plans to attend Comic-Con International: San Diego (aka San Diego Comic-Con) again."

What were his beefs? Well, for one thing, he was placed in a hotel where he was told he couldn't get a cup of coffee in the morning.

I don't know who told him that. If it was the hotel…well, that might be a good reason not to stay at that hotel again. But wait. What kind of hotel won't furnish you with a cup of coffee during the day? Don't hotels make a nice profit selling coffee to guests? I don't drink coffee but I'll bet you an awful lot of money that the next time I stay at a hotel for Comic-Con, I can get a cup of coffee. Do I have any takers on that?

If he was told he couldn't get coffee by some handler or publicist who'd arranged his appearance at the con to promote the movie, I think someone needs to fire that person. Or Mr. Driver's agent or manager needs to say to them, "Either Adam gets full coffee privileges or he doesn't appear!"

The point of this is that the thrust of the story makes it sound like he hated Comic-Con…and Comic-Con had nothing to do with whether or not he got coffee at his hotel. Or with the fact that the folks who arranged his appearance wanted him to wear a mask if he left his hotel before his surprise appearance. Or any of this.

Yesterday, we had an obit here for Joe Siracusa, the last musician member of the Spike Jones band and a longtime film editor for TV animation. In his later day, Joe received a lot of help from the Motion Picture and Television Fund, an organization that supports working and retired members of the entertainment community with a safety net of health and social services.

Here's a short video the M.P.T.F. put out about Joe. You will especially enjoy the ending…

• Amazon has been hit with a $500,000 fine for concealing information about COVID-positive cases among their workers. You have to feel sorry for Jeff Bezos. That's like three and a half minutes income shot to Hell.

There's a new movie out adapting The Eternals, a comic Jack Kirby created, wrote and drew back in the seventies. Response to it seems to be wildly mixed if you read reviewers and online comments. It's mixed in my e-mailbox where I have several messages from folks who want me to say it's a masterpiece and Jack would have loved it, and I also have messages — at the moment, the exact same number — asking me to say it's awful and he would have hated it.

I will not do either of these things. I can't say it's good or bad because I haven't seen it…and I can't say what Jack would have thought of it because, first of all, he hasn't seen it either. He passed away in 1994 and I'm not all that skilled at posthumous mind readings. Secondly, I'm not Jack Kirby. Sadly, no one is this these days.

Once in a while, I feel confident to say how I think Jack would have felt about someone because I recall him saying I hope no one ever does so-and-so to my work and then I see someone doing so-and-so to his work. But I never heard him talk about the possibility of an Eternals movie.

I can say that he had very little problem with others building on what he'd done, especially if he was receiving proper credit for what he'd done and decent compensation for its ongoing value.   He loved it when characters he created for the Fourth World series turned up on TV cartoons and he received checks…checks he knew would continue for his family after he passed. But he was not at all like Bob Kane, who wouldn't have cared if someone turned Batman into a Nazi mongoose as long as the name of Bob Kane was displayed on the screen and also on a large check. Jack certainly cared about content…passionately.

If you forced me to take a guess at how Jack would have felt, I'd guess he'd be pleased that someone felt that his comic series would have made a great movie and had backed that feeling with however many skillions of dollars it took to make the movie. Whether he would feel a great movie had resulted, I have no idea. Like almost every other author who ever had his or her work adapted to another medium, he would not have expected the end product to be exactly what he had in mind but he would not want to see something that in no way resembled what he'd done passed off as what he'd done.

And if you've seen the film, you can take it from there. But if you hated it, don't make the mistake of assuming Jack would have hated it…or if you loved it, that that means he would have loved it. Because not only am I not Jack Kirby, I'm reasonably sure you aren't, either.

Joe Siracusa died yesterday…about ten weeks shy of what would have been his 100th birthday. His death is being reported by the eminent medical authority, Dr. Demento.

Joe had many fascinating careers but the most impressive — and the reason for the Good Doctor's interest in him — was that he was the last surviving member of the Spike Jones band. That's Spike on the left in the above photo. Joe's head is one of the two on the right. Joe was Spike's drummer — and a key contributor to the craziness of that band — from about 1946 to 1953. You had to be really, really good to play with Spike and his City Slickers in those, his peak years.

Later on, Joe was in a couple of other bands that played zany tunes but he came to realize that popular music was changing and his style was not the style of the future. He decided to put his great sense of timing to work and around 1960, he became a film editor, mostly for animation.

Among the shows he worked on over the years were — and this is very much a partial list — Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Alvin Show, the various Bugs Bunny and Road Runner shows that repackaged vintage Warner Brothers cartoons for television, the 1960 Popeye cartoons, pretty much anything the DePatie-Freleng studio did in the sixties and seventies including The Pink Panther and the 1978 Fantastic Four cartoons, various Spider-Man and Hulk cartoon shows, Muppet Babies, My Little Pony, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons…and well, you get the idea.

He not only cut film but all those years of inserting odd noises into Spike Jones arrangements made him an expert at sound effects and he worked a lot in that area, too.

I got to sit and talk with Joe on several occasions. He was a delightful, funny man.

My friend Vince Waldron — who is just the kind of person who'd know this — wrote to tell me why November 13 is the date that, on The Odd Couple, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That Odd Couple show was adapted for TV by Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson. November 13th was Garry Marshall's birthday.

One sees a lot of news stories these days about inflation and about how the price of everything is soaring. And that can be absolutely true depending on what you buy. But as Kevin Drum notes, those reports focus on what has gone up a lot and they ignore the items where the price hasn't changed or has even gone down. Maybe it ain't as bad as you think.

Mel Brooks' autobiography comes out at the end of this month. I want a copy. You want a copy. I've advance-ordered mine from Amazon. Here's a link so you can order yours. If enough of you do, what I make in commissions will cover what I paid for my copy.

For some reason, the hardcover is much cheaper than the paperback, at least as I write this. The audiobook is even cheaper and it would be nice to hear Mel read it himself but I think I want to read it in text first so I ordered the Kindle version which is cheaper than the hardcover but not as cheap as the audiobook…on Amazon. They have it for eight bucks but only as part of an Audible subscription if you take it as your first selection.

If you don't want to mess with that, Google Play has it for $16.95. That ain't a bad price for fifteen hours of Mel Brooks. Even though I don't get a commission, that might be a better place to get it. And I do hope he mentions Hitler in it.

A few years ago, the gifted writer Gail Simone (Hi, Gail!) did the above Twitter poll, asking folks which of Archie's two main lady friends was more desirable.  Now, I don't put a lot of stock in online polls.  They're easy to rig and often they do not get a diverse selection of respondents.  I am quite willing to accept the results of this one though because, well…that's the obvious result.  In fact, I could have saved Gail the fifteen seconds it took to set this up.  I could have told her the outcome would be a tie well within the margin of error…

…although I hear Mike Lindell has absolute, undeniable proof that there was massive fraud by the well-monied Lodge family and that Betty really won in a landslide.

I have no idea what the appeal of the Archie comic book franchise is today.  I'm not saying there isn't one; just that the old premises — the ones I knew way back when — seem to have been abandoned. That is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if they've come up with something more modern to replace them. Not everything stays relevant forever and when I used to kinda/sorta follow those comics here and there, they were close to relevant. Now, I dunno.