Monthly Archives: November 2021

Today is Felix Unger Day, referencing the character from The Odd Couple. What makes it Felix Unger Day? Well, let's watch the opening narration from the first few seasons of the TV show which went like this…

Two things about that voiceover: One is that the announcer was William Woodson, a much-heard announcer and, away from a microphone, one of the funniest people I ever knew.

Secondly, the Odd Couple TV show went on the air in 1970 so this is a reminder of how terrified TV networks were then about the subject of D-I-V-O-R-C-E. ABC bought a show about two divorced men but partway through its first season, they added this opening narration…to suggest that divorce could be just a temporary condition. The same year, CBS wouldn't allow Mary Richards to be a divorced woman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Things have changed.

Also, you'll note in the video a screen credit for Jerry Davis, who was the producer of The Odd Couple TV show for a while — I think this was from the second season. Jerry had a wonderful career full of many things of which he was deservedly proud. He used to say that the only thing he regretted was that he was the person who introduced Erin Fleming to Groucho Marx. He might also have tossed in that he was one of the first producers to ever hire the writing team of Mark Evanier and Dennis Palumbo.

Meanwhile, a Twitter post by my longtime pal Joe Brancatelli reminded me of something I'd told him back in the previous century and which I mentioned here back in 2009; that the Odd Couple theme, which most folks know only as an instrumental, has lyrics. They're not great lyrics, mind you, but lyrics they are. What's more, they were written by Sammy Cahn, who had 31 Academy Award nominations and four wins. Neal Hefti wrote the tune.

The song was written for the movie but the lyrics were heard only on the soundtrack album. You can hear them in the second half of this video…

From The Ed Sullivan Show for February 5, 1967, we harken back to a time when Kermit was a blonde female frog who sounded just like Rosemary Clooney. It's a classic Muppet routine…

This post was first posted here on 9/19/10. In recent years, for reasons I'm sure you understand, Costco has gone from being a place where I shop often to a place I go on rare occasions but I get a lot of deliveries from them.

Since this first appeared, the KMart near me has done what KMarts everywhere have done: Gone out of business. But that's okay because I have all the ball peen hammers anyone could ever need. I have one.

I gave up on Brita filters after deciding they were no match for the shouldn't-be-there things in our drinking water in my area and I no longer buy white vinegar. But I do buy lots of Rao's Marinara Sauce and I still feel the same way about the business establishment from which I get it…

For reasons I'm not sure I can explain, I like shopping at Costco. Well actually, I don't really like shopping anywhere but since one must at times shop, this one prefers to do it at Costco and not that many other places. Some of that is because when you shop at Costco, you go home with such large quantities that there's less need to shop again soon.

But I also like the feel of the place, the mood of the customers and employees, the little women in the hairnets dispensing free samples…and the fact that in almost every visit, I take home something that makes my life better in some way. I have been to five different Costcos in Southern California and as I'll tell you in the next installment in this series, one in Indiana. I felt very welcome in all of them.

That is not the case with other huge stores. In the last few months, I found myself in a Kmart, a Best Buy, a Target and a Walmart. I couldn't wait to get out of the Walmart. There was something tacky about the place…a joyless mood with customers afraid to make eye contact with one another. I was there because I was looking for three items I'd been unable to procure anywhere else and the Walmart website said this particular store had all three in stock. It lied. They were out of two and had never heard of the third…or so said a pale store employee who looked like one of the orphans in a bad road company of Oliver. I was almost happy to hear that they didn't have what I wanted because that meant I could leave immediately. Which I did.

The one nice thing about the store for me, though I didn't purchase anything, was that anything they seemed to have in multiple colors, they had in orange. Some Walmart exec must have ordered this because usually when you have to pick the color of something you're buying, my favorite color is not an option. I'm even surprised when you can get an orange in orange. Anyway, I got out of there fast and didn't even pause to buy something that was orange.

My assistant Darcie and I stopped into a Target a few months ago to pick up a new vacuum cleaner for my mother's house. They had about twenty sample models on display and once I'd made my selection, I had the nigh-impossible task of flagging down a store employee to fetch me a fresh one from the back. Darcie and I fanned out to scour the aisles but we could find no one. You'd have better luck trying to hail a taxicab in Times Square on New Year's Eve if you were non-white and bleeding.

Finally, one clerk apparently made a wrong turn and wandered close enough that Darcie could tackle him. He grudgingly looked up the model I wanted and told me it was out of stock. Then he looked up my second choice and told me it was out of stock. After he informed me my third choice was out of stock, I told him, "Let's do this the easy way. Tell me which of these vacuums you do have in stock." He actually said, "All of them, except for the ones we're out of."

I go occasionally and voluntarily to a Kmart near me because it's near me and sometimes, you have a sudden urgent need for a ball peen hammer. Best Buy isn't bad but for some reason, every time I find an item I want, it's the only one they have left and it's been purchased by someone else, returned and resealed. The sales people sometimes look that way, as well.

So it's Costco for me and I am well aware that it's a different kind of store from the other institutions. For one thing, at Kmart you can buy one of something. But at Costco, people look at each other like they're not ashamed to be there. Oh, one may occasionally fight over a rotisserie chicken but for the most part, it's a very friendly place.

When I take my business there, I not only come home with truckloads of toilet paper, case lots of white vinegar and enough Brita filters to purify Lake Michigan…I usually come home with an anecdote or two. I've told some of them here before and will be sharing a few more under this category heading in the next few days. You may wind up with more of them than you want but I'm afraid that's just part of The Costco Experience.

Back in 1985 — give or take a year — my buddy Mike Peters hosted a PBS series called The World of Cartooning with Mike Peters. Mike, as you may know, is an award-winning of political cartoons and also the comic strip, Mother Goose & Grimm. He is also a wonderful human being if you can forgive that he still stubbornly insists on looking just like he did back in 1985 — give or take a year.

On this series, he interviewed important cartoonists like…well, like Mort Walker in this episode…

If you've been trying to "friend" me on Facebook and I haven't responded, it's not that I don't like you. Well, it's not necessarily that I don't like you. But I'm currently at 4,937 "friends," they only allow you 5000, I have over a thousand pending requests…and lately, when I do try to accept a friend request, their software won't allow it. It tells me I'm already over the limit. But that's only sometimes and…well, the reason I haven't accepted your request may be somewhere in that conundrum.

Some of you have noticed that I'm not talking much about Donald Trump and politics on this blog lately. That's because I get into moods when I don't want to think about Donald Trump and politics. This is probably not a permanent condition but it may last a while. I do think that Joe Biden is doing a pretty good job, especially when you consider how many people in public office are dead-set determined to not let him accomplish anything, including things they'd cheer if "their side" proposed them. And that's probably as political as I'll get for the next week or two.

The other day, a friend told me we all need to boycott In-N-Out Burgers because of their refusal to obey laws relating to vaccinations. I said, "I can't boycott them since I gave them up years ago." She asked, "Did you stop buying their product because of their opposition to gay rights?" and I answered, "No, I stopped buying their product because I decided I didn't like their product." She didn't seem to think that was a valid reason.

Also the other day — a different other day — I had a long phone call with my friend Paul Dini, who is briefly hospitalized with a fairly minor, soon-to-be-gone condition. Not that hospitals need more things to think about now but I got to wondering how long it will be before every hospital bed will be equipped with a webcam and monitor so doctors could check in with patients more often, friends and loved ones could call up to entertain the patients…or bored patients could easily go online into chat rooms and invite friends to "drop by." A patient concerned with his or her appearance could do this audio-only. I would imagine that because of COVID, fewer people are going in to see hospital-confined acquaintances…and some patients can't set up laptops or other devices to receive such calls. There may be a good idea somewhere in this notion. It wouldn't surprise me if it's already being tested somewhere.

That's all for now.

You know what we need? We need someone with a lot of free time to edit the opening titles of the TV series, The Love Boat, into a video showing every single guest on that program in alphabetical order. And I don't care if it runs 43 minutes…

• Just watched a few minutes of Newsmax. Near as I can tell, every bad thing that has happened in the past year is because Joe Biden is President and every good thing is because Donald Trump is really President.

"No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits came out in January of 1967, my first year of high school. At the time, all the kids my age had their favorite band and it wasn't chic for it to be The Beatles. That was too obvious…everyone loved The Beatles so you couldn't love The Beatles. A girl I knew then named Bonnie selected Herman's Hermits and fearlessly predicted that their music would still be popular long after everyone had forgotten John, Paul, Ringo and What'szisname.

I don't think Bonnie's forecast has fared too well but Herman's Hermits music is still played and a couple of their numbers were on my mixtape, partly because I liked them and partly because Bonnie's enthusiasm for the band was contagious and I very much wanted her to like me. Men have done far more destructive things to attract the affection of a good woman than to like Herman's Hermits records.

As you'll see, I had other Herman's Hermits songs on that mixtape…all for naught since Bonnie never went out with me. I believe this video is footage of the band performing at some venue but the audio track is an overdub of the record — which is why the lip sync is off in places. That's Peter Noone doing lead vocals, as he did on almost all their hits…

• Trump supporters have the right idea. They can insist he's still president. I can insist that I'm still in my twenties, comic books are still 15 cents, COVID never happened and Johnny Carson is still hosting The Tonight Show.

One monkey, one dog, two rabbits and a mess of ducklings…

My pal Tony Tollin meant well, I'm sure, when he sent me this link to an article in Consumer Reports on an important part of my diet…the rotisserie chickens they sell at Costco. Do not read it if you love those chickens and wish to keep eating them.

As I explained here, I get a weekly delivery from Costco and it always includes two chickens — one for my cleaning lady to cut up for me, one for her to take home for her family. I've been doing this for most of The Pandemic and even with the reduced physical activity that comes with not leaving one's house as much as I did pre-COVID, I'm down about 22 pounds. It's clear to me that swapping out some of the things I was eating for Costco chicken is a major reason. The article suggests this alternative…

Of course, people buy rotisserie chickens when they don't want to cook at home. But Amy Keating, RD, CR's resident nutritionist, says a roast chicken can be a simple meal to prepare once you get your recipe down. It can be healthier, too.

"You can roast your own chicken using the oven, multi-cooker, grill, or even convection toaster oven," she says. "But skip the salt, or use just a touch, and season it with a variety of dried herbs and spices, such as pepper, thyme, rosemary, sage, and garlic powder. For extra flavor, you can put several garlic cloves and a lemon sliced in quarters in the cavity of the bird."

I'm sure Registered Dietitian Keating also means well and she's probably right for people who can cook. I can't. I really can't.

And I'm not one of those "I can do anything if I work hard enough" people. I long ago accepted the simple realities of my limitations. I'm not going to be a jockey or a ballet dancer or an opera singer or a nuclear physicist or a fine surgeon or anything else that requires skills I simply do not have. My life is a lot better because I chose to pursue what I was least lousy at…i.e., writing. I'm not saying I'm great at that; just that I can name hundreds of professions for which I have even less natural talent.

I also don't have the interest or the time. And every time I see an article that urges folks to cook at home because it's less expensive, I think, "Not if you spend two hours cooking something (plus a half-hour of clean-up) and when it's done, you take two bites, throw it all in the trash and call up Grubhub on your phone."  I've done that many times. I'm not even sure all of the so-called "healthy alternatives" would be healthy if I cooked them.  I once cooked chicken breasts that were like leather on the outside and almost raw on the inside. And into the garbage they went.

I'm not happy that Costco chickens have so much wrong with them.  But I suspect a lot of things I eat have moral or health issues and I just don't know about them.  The Consumer Reports nutritionist recommends that if you're determined to eat chicken from Costco, you buy their more expensive Kirkland Signature Organic version which sells for more than twice the price at Costcos in New York.  If they had them out here, I would.  I have tried the organic rotisserie chickens from Whole Foods but found them sparse on meat and so untasty that I thought maybe I'd cooked them.  They always seem to have been sitting there since before Jeff Bezos bought the chain.

The fact is that we put up with a lot of products that are not as good (or ethically produced) as we'd like. Making your own is not always an option. Tomorrow, if you found out that the shoes you like are made in a sweat shop somewhere by children making a buck a week, I don't think "I'll make my own shoes at home" would be a viable solution. I'm not saying there aren't alternatives but making your own is not always practical.

As if Alec Baldwin wasn't having enough trouble, Saturday Night Live has found a guy who does a much better Donald Trump impersonation. His name is James Austin Johnson and he comes into last Saturday night's cold opening about four minutes in…

I admire the impression but having made the decision to not pay much attention to the former (and in too many minds including his, current) president, I'm not sure I could take much of a reasonable facsimile.

Meanwhile, I'm also not following the Baldwin shooting case much…just enough to suspect that a lot of speculation is filling in for the real investigation that hasn't yet concluded. No matter where culpability may lie, I think the outcome for the movie business will be a lot of realistic-looking prop guns that can't possibly fire live ammo, blanks or anything. Smoke or pyrotechnics will be added via C.G.I. or they won't be there. This may become a law in every state or it just may be a de facto rule because those who insure or bond a film won't insure or bond any movie that won't comply. And it's about time.

I meant to post this yesterday since yesterday was the 58th anniversary of the premiere of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And every time I say that here, someone — often, the same guy — feels it's his duty to write in and inform me, like I have made some sort of factual error, that I'm wrong and it's not a very good movie. Apparently, I'm not entitled to my own opinion…only to his.

This is the main title sequence which was designed by Saul Bass with animation by Playhouse Pictures. In the sixties, your movie was not considered a movie in some circles if Saul Bass had not done your opening titles. Enormous amounts of technical ingenuity went into finding a way to animate for that big, elongated Cinerama screen format. (If you're experiencing a twinge of déjà vu here: Yes, I featured a clip of these titles on this blog before and wrote about them but that video was long ago deleted from YouTube and anyway, the last post about this here was 2008.)

This video was made from source material on which the colors were somehow altered. I am told that the colors on the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray are correct. Yes, I am considered by many an expert on this film — I'm heard on the commentary track of that Criterion release — but there is much about it I don't know…like how and why those colors were changed.

As I have said many, many times on this blog and elsewhere, I first saw this movie at the Cinerama Dome Theater on Sunset Boulevard near Vine the day after Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy and the day before Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Those were life-changing days for this country and the movie was a life-changing experience for me.

I remember so much about that evening. My parents and I were seated in the front row — a row that was later removed from the theater because it was too friggin' close. I could count the pores on Jimmy Durante's nose. I could also notice something hidden in these credits. The crew at Playhouse Pictures were not credited anywhere so they decided to sneak their names in.

At 2:15 into the titles when the world "blows up" and the names rain down, there are other names in there for a fraction of a second…

As any fool can plainly see, there the names of Ade Woolery, Bernie Gruver, Bill Melendez and other folks who worked for Playhouse. I asked Bill about this once and he said, "Yeah, we made up a list and we stuck in our names and also the names of our wives, girl friends or both." You may see some different names in there if you freeze-frame it for yourself…which of course you're going to do.

I have always been blessed with great eyesight so, yes, I caught the fastest glimpse of them when I saw this movie in 1963. I couldn't freeze-frame it there in the Cinerama Dome, nor could I stop it when I saw the movie years later in a conventional theater. I had to wait until it came out in Betamax format to satisfy myself that I had really seen what I was sure I'd seen at the age of eleven. Take a look and then I'll have some words about the Cinerama Dome…

People keep asking me if there's any word on the Cinerama Dome Theater, which has been shuttered since about the time we all donned our first COVID masks. As far as I know (and I don't know very far), it is still owned by Christopher Forman, owner of Arclight Cinemas, and rumor has it he plans to reopen it next month. I have no idea where that rumor came from, if Mr. Forman ever said it or if so, if he's changed his mind.

What I'm getting at is that your guess is at least as good as mine and it may even be better. If the rumor is true, I would expect an announcement very soon but I won't be surprised if there isn't one.  I've seen my favorite movie in that building several times since '63 and it's always a joy.  If they reopen and show it again, it might be the first time I venture into a theater in years.

I really don't care that much about who's in the movie version of Wicked. I think it would have been nice if they'd made it many years ago when Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth were more "age appropriate" to the lead roles and could have played them. And I will note that the most popular stage-to-film transfer of all time might be the movie of Grease where no one who played a high school student looked like one.

But really, a lot of this reminds me of the story of the novelist who sold his book to Hollywood, they made a terrible movie out of it and people said to him, "They ruined your book!" To which he replied, "My book is right there on that shelf, exactly the way I wrote it." Musicals that are great on stage easily survive substandard film adaptations. You can name examples as easily as I can.

I am though irked that someone has started a petition to keep James Corden out of the movie of Wicked.

The petition really doesn't say why, apparently because the initiator of the petition thought it was self-evident. Not to me, it isn't. I think Corden's a very talented, funny man. I gather those signing the petition didn't like the movies made of Into the Woods, Cats and The Prom, all of which he was in. I kinda liked all three of them…and what I thought was wrong with them had nothing to do with Corden, except maybe that he wasn't ideally cast in The Prom.

I assume they don't have him in mind for Glinda or Elphaba but there are several roles in Wicked I think he'd be fine for. And as far as we know, the filmmakers may not have him in mind at all. I just think they should.

• Broadway superstar Kelli O'Hara completed the New York Marathon in under four hours. Okay…so you might think, "What's the big deal? Lots of people did!" And that's true but how many of them did it after launching the Marathon by SINGING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM?