Monthly Archives: September 2022

Back here, I linked you to an article by Joe Conason explaining that in The Great Hillary Clinton E-Mail Scandal, the total number of e-mails that turned out to be marked "classified" was zero. So I feel I should also link you to a fact-check by Glenn Kessler who goes into great detail on the matter. The bottom line seems to be that she did things wrong but they turned out to be minor whereas he did some things wrong that sound pretty major. (Actually, the bottom lines seem to be to be that she cooperated fully with the investigation and that the Trump Administration could not muster up enough of a case to formally charge her. But read it for yourself.)

Some nice, efficient people with PayPal were nice and efficient enough to lift the hold on my account with them in record time. It is once again possible for you to donate bucks towards both the short and long term health of this blog.

And again, my thanks to those of you who've already sent money. When I see a name I recognize, I smile because…well, it's because I know that person, at least somewhat, and it makes me happy they think this blog is of value to them. And when I see a name I don't recognize, I smile because I have — I can only assume — pleased a total stranger. There are more in the second category than I expected.

To anyone who can't spare the dough right now: It's okay. Keep on reading. Donate later if/when you can…or don't. I'd hate to think anyone is sending money they can't afford.

I have no date on this but I'll guess late seventies/early eighties. It's my pal Jimmy Brogan doing a set at the Improv comedy club for the TV series, Evening at the Improv. When comedians start chatting from the stage with the audience, it's called Crowd Work and a lot of comics do way too much of it and often not all that well.

But Jimmy's a master of the form and often, he gets through a whole routine at a club without doing a single pre-written line. I think you can see him these days at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach where he opens for Jay Leno. Jimmy was one of the main writers on Jay's Tonight Show for much of its run and was often in sketches and bits.

What caught my eye in this video was one particular member of the audience. There's a gentleman who, when asked his occupation by Jimmy, points to the woman he's with and says, "I'm her husband." And by so doing — by not telling Jimmy what he does for a living — he avoids engaging in banter with the man on the stage. "Her husband" is Lorne Frohman, a very fine comedy writer who I worked with on most of the shows I did for Sid and Marty Krofft. Smart guy, that Lorne.

From Mark Bosselman, I have this question about Red Skelton…

Thanks for the nice story about Red. He seemed like a performer who enjoyed his life. However, and this may seem like a big however, he didn't like to credit or thank his writers for his material. As a writer yourself, what did you make of that and were you aware of this?

No, Red reportedly did not acknowledge his writers much…and it's said he almost never spoke to them.  His writing staff had a pool. Every day, each of them would put in a buck or two and the next time Red said anything to any of them besides the head writer, that writer would get all the money in the pool. Sometimes, it was a lot of bucks.

And there's also the story that an interviewer once asked Red how he managed to be so funny on stage and Skelton replied, "I just go out there and God tells me what to do." At the read-through of the script for his next show, Red was reportedly handled a pile of blank paper with a note from his writers that said, "Dear Red — Please have God fill in the pages."

Things like what he allegedly said are quite insulting to the men who played such a large role in his show's success…so no, I don't like that. Then again, thanks to industry custom (and Writers Guild rules) his writers did get the usual credits on the show and nice salaries. And I doubt anyone whose opinion mattered thought Red was ad-libbing that hour every week.

I am (of course) for writers being credited for their work but there are exceptions. When I wrote for stand-up comedians, they didn't stop in the middle of their routines and say, "By the way, that last joke was written by Mark Evanier." I ghosted gags for newspaper strips and didn't expect credit. I could probably think of a dozen other examples. There are times when it is not inappropriate.

The problem is not giving credit where it is appropriate and another problem is denial and/or lying. I've gotten offers where someone wanted me to write something and wanted me to sign something where I agreed to never claim credit and to back him up if he said he wrote it. I suppose I can imagine an offer so lucrative that I might agree to that but I've never gotten one. I do know writers who've felt forced, due to economic necessity into deals of the sort that didn't pay so well.

The thing is that credit is not just a matter of bragging rights. In most corners of the writing world, credits lead to continued employment and higher compensation. There are people in the comic book world who, I feel, did not receive proper deals and payments because while some fans may have understood what they contributed, the folks with hiring and deal-making powers did not.  Or could get away with pretending they did not.

I don't think that applied to Skelton's writers. They got the usual credits. They were nominated for and even won Emmys and other awards. And like I said, it was no secret in the industry that Red was not the easiest guy to work for.

Thinking back, I only recall meeting one member of Skelton's writing staff — a gent named Martin A. Ragaway who was with him for eight or nine years. He's the one who told me about the "pool." He had many other stories about the star being a problem but at times, dealing with those problems is part of the job description…as anyone who ever watched The Dick Van Dyke Show can attest.

It was a lot of steady employment and it wasn't so overwhelming that Mr. Ragaway couldn't write for other shows on the side. He was a very good writer who could easily have gone elsewhere if he felt mistreated…and he chose not to. What does that tell you?

I very much appreciate the donations I've been receiving the last few days but if you try to give now, you'll see something like the above graphic.  For silly (I think) reasons, PayPal has put a freeze on you giving me money.  It's too complicated to explain but basically, they asked me to send them some proof of something and I did but they couldn't read it on their end so they've frozen everything until some Special Master (like whoever looks over Trump's documents, I guess) can have a look at it, at which time the hold should be lifted.

If you sent me something, I either got it or your revenue source was not charged.  I'll let you know when the freeze is lifted…which, they say, may be in "a few days."  No matter what, I'm very grateful to you all for helping me keep this blog up and running.

Every so often, I find it interesting to take a look at the list of the longest-running Broadway shows.  Here's the Top 20 as of a day or so ago and the first thing I always think of when I look at these is that no show is likely to steal the #1 spot from Phantom of the Opera in our lifetime.  It still shows no sign of closing and it's still 3,643 performances ahead of its nearest challenger.

Broadway shows generally do eight shows a week times 52 weeks a year so that's 416 a year.  So if Phantom ever closes (which is quite an "if"), and if the revival of Chicago is still running then (bigger "if"), Chicago would have to keep running close to nine more years to be Numero Uno.

There are other intriguing facts that jump out at me but first, let's all read the list.  The shows in boldface are still up and running..

1. The Phantom of the Opera – 13,725 performances
2. Chicago (1996 Revival) – 10,082 performances
3. The Lion King – 9,699 performances
4. Cats – 7,485 performances
5. Wicked – 7,235 performances
6. Les Misérables – 6,680 performances
7. A Chorus Line – 6,137 performances
8. Oh! Calcutta! (1976 Revival) – 5,959 performances
9. Mamma Mia! – 5,758 performances
10. Beauty and the Beast – 5,461 performances
11. Rent – 5,123 performances
12. Jersey Boys – 4,642 performances
13. The Book of Mormon – 4,095 performances
14. Miss Saigon – 4,092 performances
15. 42nd Street 3,486 performances
16. Grease – 3,388 performances
17. Fiddler on the Roof – 3,242 performances
18. Life with Father – 3,224 performances
19. Tobacco Road – 3,182 performances
20. Aladdin – 2,866 performances

Like me, you may have noticed a certain absence of shows written by the big names of Broadway. Unless you count the uncredited punch-up he did on A Chorus Line, Neil Simon is nowhere on the Top 20. His longest-running show, Barefoot in the Park, ran 1,530 and comes in on this chart at #61.

The longest-running show that Stephen Sondheim had anything to do with was the original production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which ran 964 performances. It doesn't even make the Top 100 and it's easily beaten out by all three separate productions of Grease.  (I am not for a moment suggesting that this is any measure of Mr. Sondheim's success or influence, nor Mr. Simon's, either.  It's just surprising that the two men most honored for the kind of work they do for Broadway haven't had long-running shows there.  Both would do way better in a list of the number of productions around the world.)

The longest-running show by Rodgers and Hammerstein was the original Oklahoma!, which ran 2,212 performances placing at #35. Not far below it is the original South Pacific coming in at #37 with 1,925.

If I went past the Top 20, you'd find the longest-running Jerry Herman show (Hello, Dolly!) at #21 with 2,844 performances and the longest-running show by Lerner and Loewe (My Fair Lady) at #22 with 2,717.

Disney has three shows in the Top 20 with Mary Poppins not far behind at #24.

In the Top 20, we have 18 musicals and two shows — Life with Father and Tobacco Road — without music, both near the bottom of that 20. The next non-musical on the list is Abie's Irish Rose at #33 and in a week or two, it will lose that spot to Hamilton.

And you may notice other things on the list including the fact that hit shows are running longer and longer these days. Four of the top five are still open…and we'll soon have the Top Four all running when Wicked overtakes Cats in about 32 weeks.  There was a time when a lot of people felt that no show would ever run longer than the original A Chorus Line but Phantom has more than doubled its run and seems unstoppable.

Finally for now: Situated in the Top 10, and likely to be there for a long time, is that 1976 revival of Oh! Calcutta! which played the Edison Theater until 1989.  It didn't matter that it had no stars because it had no clothes…at least in some scenes.  It was a low-budget production to begin with and I'm surprised no one has revived it since because I suspect there would still be an audience for it.  Even the fact that it was never a very good show in the first place didn't seem to matter.

If you're a fan of Red Skelton — and I kinda/sorta was and am — you might want to know that the Red Skelton Museum has uploaded an awful lot of his work to YouTube including many, many episodes of his weekly hour show that ran on CBS from 1953 to 1970. It then switched to a rather sad half-hour on NBC for its final year. But I may be more fascinated by the making of the show and Red's (shall we say?) "eccentricities" than I am by the actual content of the programs.

As I wrote here, I used to run into Mr. Skelton a lot in Westwood Village when I was attending U.C.L.A. about the time his show ended. I would have liked to have talked to him about his work — and he did give me short, get-it-over-with answers to a few questions I managed to slip in. But mostly, he just wanted to tell me (or anyone around) dirty jokes. At least, they were dirty jokes in 1971. Today, they might get a soft "R" rating. At least around me and in a public place, he was a man who went through life making others and himself laugh constantly. I have never seen another human who was that insufferably happy while telling jokes.

You can read that old article of mine if you're of a mind to and if you do, you'll find that I went to see him do his show at CBS twice. Once was a taping with Marcel Marceau as his only guest for an all-pantomime hour. The other was a rehearsal where Red ignored the lines on the cue cards and just told more of his dirty jokes to amuse himself and an audience of his crew and various CBS employees from around the lot. He seemed to live for that rehearsal and the subsequent taping of the actual script, and I'll bet it was jarring for him when he didn't have all that in his life. Maybe he began compensating by telling dirty jokes to college kids in Westwood Village.

I picked out one hour to embed below here. They occasionally messed with the format but most episodes started and ended with a troupe of singers and dancers welcoming you and in the opening, they billboarded the guests. A pretty wide array of folks in show business were guests…and in the sketches, you might also see a lot of great comic actors like Lennie Weinrib, Burt Mustin, Chanin Hale, Joi Lansing, Milton Frome, Robert Easton or Joyce Jameson. Among the supporting players in this one are Walker Edmiston and Dave Sharpe. Dave was a pretty famous stuntman and if you see someone take a big fall or crash through a wall in a Red Skelton Hour of the sixties, it's probably Dave.

The main guest in this one (which aired 2/13/68) is Burl Ives, who plays in the main sketch opposite Red's Deadeye character. Red had a little repertoire of characters — Clem Kadiddlehopper, Freddie the Freeloader, The Mean Widdle Kid, etc. — and he'd play one of them a week. Ives also does a song as does the musical guest, Lulu. There's also Red's monologue near the top, a pantomime bit ("The Silent Spot") at the end and around the 30-minute mark, Red does some comic blackouts and there's one that calls for him to be hit in the face with a tomato. Whoever was throwing the tomato had lousy aim so they had to do it again and again…and the funny thing about the sketch is about how much Red seems to enjoy that they had to do it again and again.

I doubt you'll make it through the entire show but if you do, there are plenty more on YouTube where this one came from…

One of my favorite political writers, Joe Conason, explains the vast differences between what Hillary Clinton did with her e-mails and what Donald Trump is alleged to have done with classified documents.  Short excerpt…

…while we don't yet know the extent or nature of Trump's abuse of classified documents, we can determine how many were found by investigators, after exhaustive searches, among Clinton's thousands of State Department emails.

The accurate answer is zero — although few if any news outlets have informed the public of that startling fact. And it is a fact that the Trump administration itself confirmed three years ago.

That's a photo of my best buddy in the male category, Sergio Aragonés. Sergio is alive and well and surprisingly healthy…and his drawing, which was always sensational, is somehow better than it ever has been.  I cannot come up with any logical explanation for that which does not involve cloning.

I was a bit hesitant to post birthday greetings to my amigo today for two reasons.  One is that any time I've posted them and a photo in the past, I get e-mails from a couple of folks saying, "You scared me!  I went to your blog and for a few seconds there, I thought So-and-So was dead!"  Sergio is, as I just said, alive and well…and drawing.  Matter of fact, I think this is supposed to be a secret but since they can't fire me and nobody told me not to mention this, Sergio has recently drawn some new material for MAD.  The magazine remains, sadly, a reprint vessel but they're doing some new pieces for an upcoming issue celebrating its 70th anniversary!

And the other reason I was hesitant to wish S.A. an H.B. is that in the past whenever I've wished anyone that, I hear that other friends are miffed and feel snubbed that their birthdays weren't celebrated on this blog.  Be reasonable, people.  I already post too many obits here.  If I salute all my friends on their birthdays, this blog will be nothing but He's Dead, She Isn't, He Is, He Isn't, She isn't, He's Dead…

So Sergio is, as he has been all his life, an exception.  He is a gentleman and a very funny person and a very good friend and I've known him for over 50 years and worked with him more than 40 of those and we've never had a fight and even when we disagree about something, we settle it with no friction and I just love the guy.  There.  I said it.

…my cell phone got a call from Bulgaria. I didn't answer it. I just looked at it and wondered how come the usually-efficient Spam Call blocker on my phone wasn't suspicious about a call from Bulgaria. A bit of online research told me that the phone number (the last four digits of which I have concealed) connects to a casino in Bulgaria.

(Must I point out that I have never been within 3000 miles of Bulgaria, I have no business with anyone in Bulgaria and would be shocked if anyone I knew was in Bulgaria?)

So what do they want with me and how would stupidity on my part lead to the emptying of my bank account, huge charges to my credit cards or other results of which I would not be fond? For a second there, I was thinking it might be one of those calls that claims to be from Microsoft to say I have an awful virus on my computer and they'll be glad to fix it for me if I just give them temporary access. But is there anyone brain-dead enough to not get a little leery of a call from a Microsoft Tech Support Office in Bulgaria?

But it's more fun to speculate on some purpose for the call which would make me regret not answering. Over in Bulgaria, let's say, there's a huge fan of Groo the Wanderer comic books and he's really old and he's dying and he wants to leave all his levs (that's what they call the money in Bulgaria) to the folks who've brought him such joy and comfort through the years…especially today since today is Sergio's birthday. (I'll post something about that later.) So he asked a friend of his who also operates a casino to phone me and arrange for the transfer of funds.

Wow. That's sounding so entirely possible that I'm beginning to regret not answering the call.

Well, judging by what I found in my e-mailbox upon awakening this A.M., the big news story is that my pal Ken Levine has decided to end his long-running, popular blog. I certainly understand his reasons and can't argue with one of them. It's just a shame for those of us who enjoy it and find it valuable. Ken is really good at being funny and really good at understanding the business(es) in which he has chosen to work. I know a lot of folks who are good at one of those things but precious few who, like Ken, excel at both. The good thing for him is that now he will have time to have lunch with me again and also to take on eight or nine more careers and be successful in all of them.

My trip to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store yesterday went exactly as I expected.

I'm getting that feeling again that I don't want to pay a lot of attention to politics for a while. It usually involves the realization that I'm paying too much attention to clickbait as opposed to actual developments…and that certain stories (like Trump and the classified documents) are going to play out at their own pace no matter what I do. I can't hurry them along or direct them to what I think is the proper conclusion merely by paying attention to them. Tracking every little rumor, theory or tiny development is just putting yourself on an emotional roller coaster for no good reason.

That said, I would like to suggest reading this conversation with "folklorist" Patricia Turner. She tracks a lot of the absurd beliefs some people out there had or still have, in this case about Barack and Michelle Obama. There are folks in this world who, if they have some negative emotional response to someone, want to believe every horrible thing they can think of about them. Some people these days don't need the slightest evidence to call someone a pedophile.

Lastly for now: I have no conventions planned and no "appearances" scheduled. My jaunt to Comic-Con International was mostly enjoyable but I came home with a stronger-than-ever urge to not leave my house. I expect this feeling to wear off in time for me to attend WonderCon in Anaheim next March but I just don't want to stray much farther than my zip code and a few adjacent ones. This too shall pass.

The 55 greatest James Bond one-line quips…

As much as I've enjoyed some of the films since Sean Connery departed, I've never really "bought" anyone else in the role…and I don't think it's just because he was the first Bond I knew. I think he was just the best (or maybe I should say "most perfectly cast") actor in the part.

This collection shows a little of why I feel that way. Those 007 one-liners are often incongruous, coming at a moment when all his attention ought to be on saving his ass and/or the world, not on being funny. Connery always made them feel natural anyway. The others usually (not always) made them feel like lines someone had scripted.

Some of that may be because they were inserted at more appropriate moments in the Connery films…and I wonder if that was because he refused to do them where he didn't feel they'd fit. But for instance, there's one in this montage where Roger Moore is dangling from a building about to plunge to his death and his witticism just feels so scripted and wrong. But maybe I'm alone in this viewpoint. It wouldn't be the first time.

I might be off by one or two but little counters on this site that I can see and you can't suggest to me that as of the moment I post this message, there are 30,000 unique posts on site. "Unique" does not mean the contents of those posts are brilliant; just that I'm not counting reruns.

How does a one-person blog attain that number? Well, I started this blog on December 18, 2000. That was not that easy to do back then. Today, it like all blogs, runs on fancy blogging software. You just type in what you want to say and it formats and posts everything. Back then, there was no fancy blogging software and I had to hand-code everything. Eventually, blogging software came along and I went through two different programs before I found the one I now use. With each switch, it meant converting all the old posts to the new format and sometimes, that took a lot of…well, you don't want to hear all about that. Here's some math though that might interest you…

12/18/2000 was 7931 days ago. Doing the math, it works out to something like 3.8 messages a day. 62.3% of them have mentioned Frank Ferrante.

Like almost everything else in this world, some days it feels like a chore and some days I'm very glad I started doing it. The response to my little telethon for the month of September makes me very glad and it isn't just the cash. It's the very nice messages I'm receiving also from people who seem to appreciate it. I shall try to thank you by keeping it up and running as long as I am able.

And now, here's another one of these…

My iPad, which I think I've had since around the time women got the vote, is a lot like Merrick Garland. At times, it doesn't seem to want to charge. I have an appointment later today at the Genius Bar at my nearby Apple Store where one of the geniuses there will tell me how much it will cost to fix and then hint, with all the subtlety of Gallagher smashing a watermelon, that it might be easier to just buy a whole new iPad. I know how this works. That's their answer if the case has dirt on it, too.

Otherwise, I plan to spend today not going outside. I'll just sit here with the fan on and work, enjoying the one day of the year when I kind of miss Jerry Lewis a little. And I'll be occasionally peeking out the window to see if the cars are melting yet. They're saying it'll be cooler than yesterday but that's small comfort when they simultaneously issue an Excessive Heat Warning for all of Los Angeles. I think "cooler than yesterday" means, like, one degree.

Oh — and this is a preliminary thanks (more are coming) to those of you who have been donating to my own, non-Jerry telethon. I'm genuinely moved, both by contributions from folks I know and by how many are coming from names I don't recognize. Even better than the money is knowing how many people out there are getting something out of what we do here.

I will not be spending the money you send me on a new iPad but I just got a residual on the episode of the Superboy TV show I wrote in 1988. It will just about pay for one of those real cheap charging cords they sell at the CVS.

Audra McDonald and Michael Cerveris sing one of my favorite Sondheim numbers. That's Seth Rudetsky ticklin' the ivories…