Monthly Archives: May 2022

Everyone's favorite rock group that's made out of felt — Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem — perform Paul Simon's song, "Kodachrome." This video has been online for 6 years, 4 months and 19 days, and it's been viewed 3.4 million times. I have no idea why I didn't link to it before. Hell, I have no idea why I'm up writing at this hour…

That's right: This is a post about corned beef. If you don't feel like reading a post about corned beef today, skip it or go find another blog. This is a post about corned beef.

I prefer corned beef to pastrami. I don't dislike pastrami. I just prefer corned beef. This shocks some of my Jewish friends and they don't buy the excuse that I'm really only half-Jewish. To them, pastrami is the nectar (well, the luncheon meat) of the gods whereas corned beef is just a stage that some cuts of meat will grow out of when they evolve and better themselves to become pastrami.

I have two reasons for preferring corned beef, one being the taste. Years ago, I used to often lunch with an old high school buddy named George and we made a kind of unofficial survey of local delicatessens. One of us would order corned beef on rye and the other would order pastrami on rye and we'd swap halves so we could each have both. We did this at Nate 'n' Al's, at Canter's, at Junior's, at Factor's and a few others. In each case, we both preferred the corned beef over the pastrami.

We even felt that way dining at the Stage Delicatessen during the few months when that New York institution tried and failed to open in Beverly Hills. (The Stage has since failed to remain in business in New York, as has the Carnegie, another place where I preferred the corned beef over the pastrami.)

In some cases, it was a small preference but since they were always the same price, why go with your second choice? And by the way: If you've never heard of Factor's, that's where Mel Brooks often eats so that alone establishes its credibility as a serious delicatessen.

We even did our Taste Test in downtown L.A. at Langer's, which treats it as settled law that they have the best pastrami, if not in the country then certainly this side of Katz's on East Houston Street in New York. Langer's pastrami was good, no question about that, but George and I both thought their corned beef was better.

Shortly after that, I lunched at Langer's with my agent and I placed my usual deli order of a corned beef on rye with no cole slaw anywhere on the premises. The server looked at me like I'd ordered Lasagna Bolognese at a Vegan Chinese restaurant and my agent began thinking of dropping me as a client.

And I have another reason for favoring corned beef over pastrami. In many delis — especially the ones that really pride themselves on their pastrami — a pastrami sandwich comes with a side of attitude about mustard. You sometimes get a smidge of disapproval if you ask for non-hot yellow mustard to put on corned beef but you often get treated like a dangerous heathen for wanting it on pastrami. Every time I see a video about Katz's in New York, I'm afraid to ask for French's or Heinz there…and with good, I think, reason.

As a person with many food allergies, I am adamant about eating what I want and not what someone else tells me to eat. I avoid restaurants that won't let you — to use the old Burger King jingle — "have it your way." Some restaurants don't want you putting ketchup on one of their burgers. I've been to those places. Or the chef insists on putting peppers on any meatball sandwich he makes. I wrote about such a place once.

I don't want to argue about this with someone who doesn't understand that this is more than a personal preference…it's a necessity. Spicy foods do not like my digestive system and the feeling is mutual. I'm especially scared of the kind of hot mustard that contains horseradish.

In L.A., I really like the corned beef in the delis I mentioned above — the ones that are still in business, at least. I also like it at Magee's in the Farmers Market, though I prefer their roast turkey. And I even have perfectly fine corned beef at home…

They carry these at the Costco stores around me — Bill Bailey's Microwaveable Corned Beef.  It comes fully-cooked and you just heat it up…though I find it's way better if you don't heat it anywhere near as much as the directions tell you. (Remember: You're heating it up, not cooking it. When I followed the instructions, it went way past heating-up and became overcooked.)

I've written about these before, telling how they used to turn up at Costco in February and began disappearing after St. Patrick's Day. I'm hoping they're now there year-round. At least I hope they are because I go through about one a month, making little sandwiches with MY MUSTARD OF CHOICE now and then for a week or two. I make them small, as opposed to the kind you get served in some delis. The Stage, when it was in town, served you one that required you to dislocate your jaw in reptilian fashion to take a bite. And of course, they charge accordingly.

Costco also sometimes has fully-cooked pastrami if that's your preference. And once again, no one will try and shame you for applying what they consider the "wrong" mustard. You can even make your sandwich on white bread if you like…and sometimes, the non-Jewish side of me does.

A half-dozen different friends of mine saw The Music Man on Broadway in the last week or three and all raved about it. The most common compliment was that it was worth what they paid to get in.

I'm not sure how much that was but I just checked and at this moment, it's possible to buy two seats near the center of the fifth row for tomorrow night's performance for $614.00 apiece. Of course, that price includes a $2.00 per ticket facility fee. There is one (1) seat available in the last row of the mezzanine for $212.25. And of course, that price also includes the $2.00 per ticket facility fee.

Here's a one-minute-and-fifteen-seconds "sizzle" reel from the show. It looks good but I'm not sure it looks $614 good…

My little essay on working hard as a writer brought me this query from L. Jonas…

I read what you wrote about how writing can be hard work. Do you have any tips for how to cope with how hard that work can be? I'm especially thinking of the alone part of it, of feeling alone and lonely for so many hours. I can't write with someone else in the room but I also can't stand being alone for long stretches of time. Any suggestions?

Yeah: Learn and appreciate the difference between being alone and being lonely. Those don't have to be the same thing. When I spend all day and/or all night writing something with no one else around, I don't feel disconnected from the rest of the world. I'm just not around anyone else. And I often take a break to talk to friends or to go somewhere to be around other people. I doubt I'll do this much in the future but for a while, I'd go to Las Vegas for a few days, hole up in my room and just pound away on the laptop.

The great thing about doing this was, first and foremost, I could set my own hours — write all night, sleep all day if I liked. Eat when I felt like it and what I wanted to eat. Secondly, if someone phoned and I wasn't in the mood for a long chat, all I had to say was "I'm out of town" and they didn't expect one.

If I wanted something to eat and/or to be around people, I just had to get into the elevator and go downstairs. There was always someplace open to get a meal, always someone performing to watch for a while. I find it very easy in that city to strike up a conversation with strangers. And then, when I feel I'm nudging myself to get back to work, I just head back up to my room with the perpetual "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and I'm as alone as I want to be. It's like turning the outside world on when you want it, turning it off when you don't.

Maybe I'm okay with the "alone" part of my vocation because I was an only child. No brothers, no sisters. I always had my own room filled with plenty of things (like comic books) with which I could entertain myself. I was also a kid who skipped grades in school and that can make you very, very alone at Recess or Lunch. But I came to like it in a way, and I think it had a lot to do with me becoming a writer. I read a lot and spent a lot of time making up my own little stories just for me.

I keep getting back to that movie line I quoted in the earlier piece: "This is the life we have chosen for ourselves." No one is forced to become a writer. There's nothing keeping me in the profession other than (a) I enjoy it and (b) I have no real aptitude for anything else.

I have written with partners and I've also written in "writers' rooms" amidst a whole gang of writers. Both have their benefits, especially when you're collaborating with someone you can learn from. I still felt the need to also write something on my own…at my own pace…and to my own satisfaction. And I never feel lonely. I just feel like the rest of the world is in the next room until I finish my script or come to a natural stopping point for now.

In the last few years, the talented Anna Brisbin (aka "Brizzy") has taken the voiceover business by storm. Part of that is because she's studied the field and knows it well…so well that she's just launched a three-part series that explores the history of voiceovers, going way way back to Thomas Edison and those before him who found ways to record sound. Here's the first chapter and I'll be bringing you the other installments as she releases them…

If you're a writer or want to be one, make sure you read this post by Ken Levine. It's about writers who think everything they do is perfect right out of the typewriter or inkjet printer. They don't rewrite…they don't look at what they've done and consider that just maybe it could be made better.

But I will, of course, quibble with one point. Ken writes…

Kurt Vonnegut…once said something to this effect: When you get a group of writers together usually they'll all squawk about how hard it is to write. And there will be one writer who says it's easy, he loves it, piece of cake. Vonnegut says invariably that will be the worst writer in the group.

I agree kinda with that view but I'm also unimpressed by people who want to be writers, sacrifice everything to become writers, manage to become writers…and then bitch 'n' moan constantly about having to spend long hours writing. There's a line in almost every movie about The Mafia or any organization not unlike The Mafia. At some point, someone says something like, "This is the life we have chosen for ourselves."

There are people in this world who willingly, even eagerly become plumbers and then complain about having to unclog toilets. There are people who dream of becoming lawyers then gripe about having to read all those damned law books. At a party once, I met a guy who said he was "male talent" in porn films and heard him explain what a pain it was to get up every morning and have to go in to be paid to have sex with beautiful women. As if he was only doing it because someone was holding his grandparents hostage or something.

I know why some of us complain about the long, struggling hours of writing. We want to remind others that sitting at the keyboard all day is working. We're not there playing Sudoku.

Okay, you're right:  Some of us are playing Sudoku but that's during our breaks from actually writing. We need to sometimes alert others that we're a bit weary and our minds are still back in our stories so we may not be the freshest, most attentive company.

Also, sometimes when your work is being handed to others to perform, direct or evaluate, you feel you should remind them that it took you, a professional writer, five weeks to write that. They ought to not be approaching it with the assumptions that they can come up with a better line in twenty seconds. Maybe you can on occasion but don't be so quick to dismiss those five weeks.

Complaining about having to work hard at writing doesn't mean you're a good writer or a bad writer. It might mean you're an annoying writer and I try to catch myself when I might be sounding like one. Please don't dismiss what I'm saying here. I was up all night writing this.

Debuting this weekend on your local PBS outlet is a Great Performances special — the recent British production of the recent Broadway revival of Anything Goes starring Sutton Foster. You might want to consult your local listings and set your TiVo or DVR to snag this one. Here's a preview…

Here is tonight's webcast by the folks at The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog with their special guest, me…

I got two more cold calls today from folks who said they were contractors. Just for fun, I asked one what a Floor Joist is and he didn't know. The other one I suspect was a contractor but he tried the old "I spoke to you last year and you were very nice to me and you asked me to call you back in May because you'd be ready to do some work on your house" routine.

I don't need a contractor but if I did, I (first of all) wouldn't select someone I'd never heard of just because that person phoned me. I'd ask people I trust who've either employed contractors recently or are in allied fields and I'd get recommendations. And I (second of all) wouldn't deal with someone who started our relationship by lying to me.

But it looks like the calls are starting up again. I suspect someone somewhere is selling a new list of prospects and I'm on it. Between them and the calls looking for my vote, I'm going to get a lot of spam calls in the coming days.

We're now 70 days from this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and if you're going to need a hotel room down there, now is the time to book it.

Tonight, my friends who run The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog launch another season of podcasts and incisive news coverage of what's being planned for the con. Their efforts are, you'll note, unofficial. They are also valuable even though they are not connected with the convention or those who run it.

Their first podcast of the year is tonight at 6:30 PM Pacific Time, 9:30 Eastern, and their guest is me. Watch it live on their site or look here later for a link.

So I was sitting here a few minutes ago, trying to figure out what to write about here today. I was going to write about how Mattea Roach, the 23-year-old lady who won 23 times in a row on Jeopardy! was finally defeated last Friday evening. She played the game about as well as it could be played and seemed delightful and humble to most of us…but somehow aroused a lot of anger from anti-social people on social media. People were saying they didn't like her hand gestures, which of course is a perfectly logical reason to hate someone you've never met.

I'm being sarcastic obviously. I think some people were angry because she was young, some because she was female, some because she's openly gay and some because she reminded them of that stuck-up girl back in high school who was smarter than they were. There's a lot of envy and resentment on the Internet, often badly disguised with silly reasons.

But my pal Ken Levine wrote at length about this yesterday so I was trying to think what else I could write about when the phone rang…

As longtime followers of this here blog may recall, I used to get a dozen calls a day from contractors who wanted me to engage them to do work on my house. Actually, some of them were people who said they were contractors but weren't…hired by some sort of agency that makes calls trying to drum up work for contractors. I was on some sort of list and for months and the calls just wouldn't stop — until finally, they stopped. For the most part.

I answered the phone, thinking it would be someone wanting me to cast my ballot for someone in the current election here in California. Instead, it was a man who addressed me by name and told me he was a neighbor of mine. He told me the address…and if he lived at that address, he'd be a neighbor of mine except that there is no such address. He obviously had mine and he subtracted 150 from my house number and said that was his address. Then…

HIM: I met you last year. My son and I came by and introduced ourselves. We're contractors and…

ME: Gee, I don't remember that…

HIM: You were very nice to us and you said that you might have some work you wanted to do around May of this year…

ME: Gee, I have no memory whatsoever of meeting any contractors on my block.

HIM: We had just done some work on the house directly across the street from yours and the man there told us you might be interested.

ME: Across the street from me? What was the man's name?

HIM: I don't recall it at the moment.

ME: Well, there's no house with the address you gave me and said was yours. Are you even a real contractor?

I didn't get the answer to my question because that's when he hung up on me. I just sat here wondering, "Does that ever work? Do people really hire a contractor based on a pitch like that?" And lately every time I wonder about something like that, I look at the news and some of the ridiculous things that some people believe and I have my answer.

Heading for Las Vegas? Well, if you're ready to spend $30,000 per night for accommodations, here's where you can stay. Or you can stay for free here if you're gambling so much and so poorly that they figure you'll lose that amount every night…

Many folks are writing to remind me that Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) had an Alfred Hitchcock connection, having played the songwriter in the Hitchcock film, Rear Window.  Whether this had anything to do with Ross/David recording his version of the theme from The Trouble With Harry is unknown to me…but a lot of musicians who never worked with "Hitch" did their versions of that song also.

The Tony Award nominations are out and it'll be interesting to see if the June 12 telecast gets more viewers than usual. Two people that most Americans have actually heard of are competing for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical — Hugh Jackman for The Music Man and Billy Crystal for Mr. Saturday Night.

Having not been within 2,820 miles of Times Square in the last few years, I of course have seen none of the nominated shows — or even the non-nominated shows — so I have no rooting interest here or predictions. It'll be nice though to see the scenes from all those productions and maybe it'll even entice me to get on a plane in the next year or three. The award ceremony will apparently be available live to anyone, no matter where they reside, if they have some upper-tier subscription to Paramount+…which I don't.

Paramount+ will also offer an exclusive hour of I-don't-know-what before the three-hour ceremony on CBS…so that will make for a four-hour broadcast. Or five if Billy Crystal gets to give an acceptance speech.