Monthly Archives: November 2022

We haven't had a song here in a while from the a cappella group, Voctave. Here they are with a favorite from The Music Man…

NOTE: The following article was posted earlier today but since then, I've received some additional information so I've revised it a bit.

In what I wrote about Budd here the other day, I mentioned the firebombing of his club, The Improv. On the club's website, there's this history of the place that's worth your time and it includes the following paragraph…

In 1979, a talent strike was organized against Mitzi Shore and her Comedy Store for failing to pay non-headlining comedians. The Improv was set to reap the benefits of the influx of comedians working only our stage until a massive fire nearly burned the entire building down. Arson was the cause and rumors ran rampant, from a competitor of Budd's (there was only one) to a disgruntled comedian who bombed on stage. The mystery was never solved, but the fire did close the showroom. To help Budd quickly rebuild, Improv favorites Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman organized fundraising shows, just one of many examples of legendary comedians showing their support throughout the years to the place that started their careers.

Two slight corrections to that. First: The fire didn't burn the entire building down…more like half. I walked up there a day or so after the blaze to see if I could volunteer some manpower or help organize the benefits I already heard were being assembled. There turned out to be nothing I could contribute but I saw the place. The showroom looked like it had been charbroiled on a big Hibachi but the restaurant and bar in the front were fine. So was the kitchen. So were the bathrooms.

And workers — some of whom I recognized as comics I'd seen on the Improv stage — were putting up temp walls to section off the rear and to convert the restaurant into a small performing area. Within a day or two, comics would actually be performing there again to bring in money.

It was a contrast that has stayed with me to this day: There was that lovely little showroom where so many careers had already been made and so many people had been so entertained. It was very, very sad. But then there were all these volunteers up front working like mad to save the business and to get it up and functioning. The new stage was partially-erected and Robin Williams jumped up on it and yelled, like he was in a Civil War drama, "The Mouth shall rise again!"

And I think, something like 48 hours later, he was on that stage, performing for as many people as could be crammed into the new, smaller temporary Improv. Something very inspirational there.

Second correction: The part about "The mystery was never solved" was probably true as far as Budd was concerned when that website went up but as of a few years ago, he considered the whodunnit at least half-solved. Here's a quote from this book I highly recommend on the history of The Improv. It included interviews of many of the performers who worked there and it also included this from Budd himself…

…even after the fire marshal ruled later that day that the cause had been arson — and that the blaze had originated in the rear of the building, where our alley's easy access and quick escape was practically an open invitation for anyone to strike a match — none of us, the more we all thought about it, believed that Mitzi could be that vindictive when it came right down to it. We were a lot less confident when it came to two wannabe comics who were among her biggest supporters, Biff Maynard and Ollie Joe Prater, each of whom had well-known substance abuse problems and were just unstable and impressionable enough to maybe do it. We wouldn't know for certain until 2014, nearly thirty years after the incident, when Ollie Joe confessed to setting the fire on his deathbed in a Los Angeles hospital. But, of course, nobody could prove anything definitively at the time.

For years, I heard rumors that Biff Manard and Ollie Joe Prater had been the firebombers. William Knoedelseder even suggested them by name as the culprits in his fine 2010 book on the Comedy Store strike, I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy's Golden Age.  Ollie Joe Prater died in 1991, which is when he presumably made his deathbed confession but Manard was still alive when Knoedelseder's book was published and I wondered how the publisher's lawyers, who presumably vetted the text before publication, had allowed that in.

And now that I think of it, how did Budd not hear about Prater's "confession" until 2014?  2014 was when Biff Manard died.  (And by the way, no one is misspelling his last name.  He spelled it both ways.)

The rumors that Biff and Ollie Joe dunnit never included any actual information about how anyone knew that for sure. It sounded like a lot of people had just asked themselves, "Who might have thought they could benefit from the Improv going away and was a low-enough creature to do such a thing?" Manard and Prater seemed to be the most obvious answers to that question but that wasn't proof.

I did not know Ollie but I sure knew Biff. He was one of the writers on that variety show I worked on, Pink Lady. Among the eight thousand things that went wrong on that show was Biff. He didn't contribute much because he was too busy trying to knife everyone else in the spinal cord.

I have sometimes been accused of being too nice on this blog to certain people who did not deserve kindness or even the benefit of any doubts. In fact, one comedian friend called over the weekend to scold me for not writing about what a horrible person Gallagher was…and it's true that late in life, Gallagher turned into a pretty hateful onstage presence, bashing every minority group in sight and every comedian who was more successful at the moment than he was. But I was writing about the earlier Gallagher, the one who I felt hadn't received his due as a good comic…which he was then.

Still, if you waterboarded me, I couldn't think of anything good to say about Biff Manard or Maynard or whatever he was calling himself.  And apparently, he died with no deathbed confession to having co-firebombed with his pal Ollie Joe. I asked Budd if Prater had implicated Manard in the crime and Budd's reply was, "I'm not sure but if one of those guys did it, the other one did it." Again, not hard evidence.  The more I think about it, the more I'm not sure what to think.

There will be at least one other post about Budd here today. In this one, I wanted to post the following, which was written by the fine comedy writer Arnie Kogen…

So sorry to hear about Budd. In 1981 I was fortunate enough to write for Evening at the Improv. One of the best experiences of my life. Budd Friedman, the host, would intro a celebrity guest host — a Phil Silvers, Shelley Winters, Tony Curtis, Franken & Davis — who would then intro "young" comics like Richard Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld, Rita Rudner, David Spade, Paul Reiser, Andy Kaufman and Stephen Wright to dazzle Improv audiences with their stand up. At one point we had host Lou Gossett Jr open the show with a hilarious monologue about the "Roots" of Budd Friedman. The guy could take a joke. It was a joy to work with Budd and to know him these past four decades. The man was a comedy legend. We will all miss him.

I have not heard anything yet about a memorial service for Budd. I hope though that whoever plans it has it start late with everyone sitting at a tiny cramped table and paying a two-drink minimum.

I've been around professional magicians for much of my life. I don't do much magic these days for the same reason that after I started being around people like Jack Kirby and Sergio Aragonés, I stopped doing a lot of drawing. Why do something like that if the person next to you can do it a thousand times better? But I love magic and I know an awful lot about it.

Every so often, I've found myself in a roomful of magicians when one person was performing. Magicians love watching other magicians even though, 95% of the time, they know how it's done. They love seeing how well someone else does it. They love the unique twists and turns another magician may put on an old trick or how they apply well-known (among magicians) principles in another context.

Sometimes, a trick is even more amazing when you know how it's done because you know how difficult a certain move is to do. It's like how a baseball pitcher might watch another pitcher and really appreciate how that guy puts a certain spin on the ball.

And every so often, magicians love when they don't know how it's done. Magicians love being fooled more than any non-magicians do…because it's such a rare occurrence. 5% may be high.

Our clip today is from a recent Penn & Teller's Fool Us — a show that is somewhat controversial among professional magicians. Some love the attention it brings to the art form…and it has certainly boosted the careers of those who've gone on and done well on the program. And by "done well," I don't necessarily mean they fooled Penn and Teller. They may just have been so interesting and appealing (and maybe funny) that they gained fans and followers.

But other magicians think the show places too much emphasis on how tricks are done, reducing them to puzzles to be solved and inviting YouTube "reveals" and such. Not being a professional magician, I have no real opinion on that. If I was one, my feeling about it might have something to do with whether I could get on the show and, if so, how well it went. I think though that all magicians are excited when they see someone do a trick they can't figure out.

The magician in this clip is Dani DaOrtiz. He's from Spain, he's very famous for card magic…and he's amazing. On a few magician forums I'm on, seasoned pros are admitting they're watching the video over and over and asking, "How the hell did he do that?" Like me, they can figure out some of what he did but not all of what he did. They're all reacting like Teller does here, clearly baffled. And Teller's a hard guy to baffle…

Obviously as a Liberal Democrat, I was pleased by the news that my party will retain control of The Senate. As I write this, I haven't seen Trump weighing in yet on this development but I assume it'll be more of the "We won, they cheated" b.s. from the man who wouldn't admit it if he lost a game of tic-tac-toe.

Of course he's going to announce soon he's running for president again. He's addicted to being the center of attention. He loves speaking before rallies of cheering Trumpsters who think he's either God or His authorized representative. He loves having those people send him "campaign contributions" (which I put in quotes because he so rarely uses them for campaigning) and he wants to be able to explain all indictments and investigations as part of the massive plot to keep him from his rightful place in the White House.

Why would he not run? Because he might lose? He never loses…even when he comes in second.

A large percentage of folks who've made their living as comedians over the last several decades owe an immense debt to Budd Friedman. Budd was the head honcho and chief owner of the Improv, first in New York and then out here in Hollywood. As such, he was part of a rare breed: People who have run successful comedy clubs. He was one of the first and one of the best.

Like most who succeeded, he knew a lot about how to run that kind of business…and a little (less than he thought) about comedy. And like too many, he couldn't resist taking the stage himself — sometimes, several times an evening — to introduce comics and to do what everyone behind his back called "the warm-down." At his funniest, he wasn't someone Budd Friedman would have ever let on his stage. But he knew when the audiences were laughing and who they were laughing at…and he gave the good ones ample opportunity to showcase for friends, family and (most importantly) people who could hire them.

Andy Kaufman might never happened if not for Budd Friedman. And folks like Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Lewis, Robert Klein, Jay Leno, Freddie Prinze, Steve Landesberg, Jimmie Walker and Bette Midler might not have become stars as soon as they did. I remember seeing Leno there — and Bill Maher and Ellen DeGeneres and Kevin Meaney and Jerry Seinfeld and Norm Macdonald and…well, it's a very long list.

I saw Budd almost every time I was there. He was brusque and unfriendly to all but the famous and important…and I didn't particularly like him. Later, I got to know him when he was largely retired and he was much friendlier and quite eager to talk about all the stars he'd helped. Just a fascinating man.

The stars had helped him, too. In 1979 during the infamous Comedy Store strike, the Improv was firebombed and half the club was destroyed. Comedians from all over pitched in, not just to do benefits but to literally rebuild the place — hammers, nails, lumber, the works. The Improv survived and Budd showed his gratitude in many ways. I'm sure in the next few days, you'll be seeing a lot of them speak well of the man. He was 90 years old.

On the Garfield and Friends cartoon show, there were these three annoying bears who popped up every so often. Joshua33 wrote to ask about them…

I loved watching the Garfield and Friends cartoon show you wrote and I still play the DVDs for my kids. My favorite thing on there may have been The Buddy Bears. I understand that you created them in response to network mandates that whenever you had a group on a show for kids, the group always had to agree on everything and the member of the group who didn't was always in the wrong. Was there a specific incident that caused you to strike back like that?

Who wrote their catchy little song? Who did their voices? I know they were always sped up like Chipmunks but someone had to speak and sing for them. Is there anything else you can tell us about them?

Well, let's see: I wrote the lyrics to the song and Ed Bogas, who did all the music for that show, wrote the melody. The core voice actors on Garfield and Friends were Lorenzo Music (as Garfield), Gregg Berger (Odie and many other characters) and Thom Huge (Jon and many other characters). Thom did all the singing for them — that's Thom singing with Thom singing with Thom, all sped — and their speaking voices were Lorenzo, Gregg and Thom. Oddly enough, we had trouble speeding up Lorenzo's voice. We tried it and he still sounded like Lorenzo Music but the engineer fiddled around and finally made him not sound like Lorenzo Music.

For those of you unfamiliar with their song, it went like this…

The Buddy Bears appeared in one episode of U.S. Acres, a series that appeared within the Garfield and Friends show. In that cartoon, their speaking voices were Gregg, Thom and Howard Morris.

Before I answer the first part of your question, let me quote a comment I noticed recently on YouTube. This was posted by someone signed BNSF1995 in response to a Buddy Bears episode…

The Buddy Bears were Mark Evanier's personal attack against cartoons he wrote for before Garfield such as The Get-Along Gang and The Smurfs that preached pro-social values until they spewed out your ears and all over the sidewalk. In fact, CBS Standards & Practices got pissed at him for this particular segment.

That's mostly wrong. First off, I never worked on The Get-Along Gang or The Smurfs, though I did have problems with messages that various folks wanted to insert into Dungeons & Dragons, Richie Rich, a couple of ABC Weekend Specials and maybe a few others. But I crossed swords — this being Saturday morning kidvid, they were toy light-sabres — with Standards and Practices in any number of ways and I argued a lot with one particular lady at ABC.

No one incident prompted The Buddy Bears. Sometimes when you're a writer and you have strong feelings about something, you just find yourself writing about it.

CBS Broadcast Standards and Practices was in no way pissed about them. In fact, during my run on that series — eight years of producing seven seasons of cartoons — I did not have one real argument with them. I think the biggest "note" I ever got from BS&P was something like, "On page 4 of the script, you have Garfield making a reference to Tabasco Sauce. Tabasco Sauce is a brand name. Could you change that to Hot Sauce or anything else that isn't a brand name?"

Actually, we did have a few problems because of one or two (i.e., very few) of the Storyboard Artists who worked on the show. When production began on Garfield and Friends, I had a series of phone calls with the gent in Standards and Practices who'd been assigned to our series. We essentially said to each other, "I won't make problems for you if you don't make problems for me." He gave me a list of six or seven "don'ts" that I agreed were reasonable and in no way harmful to the show.

I can't find my copy of the list right now but I remember a few: Don't choke anyone by the neck. Don't show someone in a car who doesn't have a seat belt on. Don't show someone getting electrocuted by a light socket or electrical outlet. There were others but most were a matter of not depicting harmful actions that youngsters might copy. It was fine to drop a piano or a sixteen-ton safe on a character but not to play with matches. I agreed to these "rules" because none of them would ever stop me from doing anything we wanted to do.

The Storyboard Artists on the show were really good — good at storyboarding and good at following the meager rules. Alas, there were a couple who either didn't get the memo, didn't read the memo…or in the case of one, wished to actively violate the memo. I didn't hear him say this but our producer quoted this one guy as insisting, "Anytime a cartoonist is told not to do something, he has a duty to the Art Form to do exactly what he's told not to do." I told the producer to tell him we had a rule against jumping off the roof of the studio.

But even the problems he caused, we handled. Some people approach this kind of thing like it's a Holy War and the entire future of the show (and maybe Mankind) hinges on them being able to get a fart joke on the air. I think it's wiser to save your ammo for the battles that really matter.

Lastly: This may be a microscopic point but I have no problem with the basic concept of "prosocial values." Where would we all be without prosocial values? I'm thinking about prosocial values like, you know…"Murder is wrong," "Stealing is wrong," "Hatred is wrong," "Cole Slaw is wrong"…

Okay, scratch the cole slaw one. The point is that many things that are called "prosocial" really do correspond to the dictionary definition of "prosocial," which is "relating to or denoting behavior which is positive, helpful, and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship." Is anyone really against that?

The term "prosocial" is getting a bad rap because some people are using it in a pejorative sense and because some things that are being sold as prosocial are anything but. They're often just someone's personal prejudices masquerading as a teachable moment. The moral of the Buddy Bears stories was "Don't do something just because your friends do it. Have a mind of your own." I would call damn good advice even if some people would scoff that it was prosocial.

As you've no doubt heard, Kevin Conroy — best known as the voice of the animated Batman — passed away recently at the age of 66. I did not know the man. Met him once. I was with Paul Dini, who worked extensively on the Batman cartoons, and we ran into him in a restaurant. Paul introduced us and the encounter was so brief that I didn't have time to tell Kevin that I admired the courage he'd shown in his writings and candid comments about being gay and struggling with all that could mean, mostly due to the cluelessness and insensitivity of others.

It is rare but not wholly unprecedented to see genuine courage displayed by an actor who gets paid for pretending to be courageous as someone else. One of many admirable things Kevin Conroy did was to author an autobiographical comic book story which I'm sure made many people more aware of what some people face to just be considered worthy of basic human respect by some. DC Comics has put that story online for free reading. It's a little tricky to navigate your way to it but if you haven't read this story, it's well worth the effort. And you probably know someone who should read it.

Obituaries are up for "the watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher," who died today at the age of 76…and oh, how he would hate being referred to mainly for that one bit. He would have been much happier with this paragraph in the NBC obit…

Gallagher was the number one comedian in America for 15 years, with comedy specials airing on Showtime and MTV. In his career spanning decades, Gallagher hosted 14 Showtime specials and around 3,500 live comedy shows.

That's basically true, though he might have argued it was more than 15 years. He more or less did pioneer the concept of a stand-up comedian doing a special for cable television and his were remarkably successful. He also more or less pioneered — or maybe I should say "popularized" — the business model of the comedian touring and "four-walling" the venues in which he played, renting out the hall instead of being hired to perform in it. He packed arenas and auditoriums and made an awful lot of money that way.

Some pieces you may read will also suggest that he was not well-liked by other comedians…which is also true. It may have had a lot to do with the fact that he was not quiet in his contempt for most of them and that may have had a lot to do with his undisguised anger that he was not getting what he thought was his proper respect from them. But because of one performance one evening, I have a higher opinion of Gallagher as a comic — …or at least of him when he was new on the scene…

It was late 1979 or early 1980. The great voice actor Frank Welker was still doing his stand-up act here and there, and he invited me to see him perform at the Ice House, a comedy club out in Pasadena. It's still there, though I believe it closed for COVID and has yet to reopen…but it was a great place to see a show back then and Frank got us comps and front row seats for one evening he was there.

I took a young lady named Jody who also knew Frank. She worked at the Ruby-Spears cartoon studio (I was a writer for them) and she was about 4'11". Since I'm 6'3"…well, she looked like I should be buying her a balloon instead of taking her on a date. She also had a very strange, goofy laugh. She was sweet and lovely but she laughed like a mule.

When we got to the Ice House, we discovered that Frank was not going on at the announced time. His set would be delayed for perhaps an hour so that an opening act could perform…and the opening act was Gallagher, who at the time was pretty hot in the business and, you'd assume, way too big to be someone's opening act. (A year or two earlier, I'd been to the Ice House to see Frank and his opening act that time was a beginning comic I knew as a TV writer. His name was Garry Shandling.)

You might also assume that front row seats to a Gallagher performance would cause you to leave the club looking like the big loser in a food fight. In actuality, he actually smashed no watermelons that evening. He used no food or props at all. That was because he was there to record a record album.

Without any visual humor at all, just standing at a microphone and talking, Gallagher was surprisingly funny. Everyone had a pretty good time and Jody's distinctive laugh was heard often. Occasionally, she'd still be laughing after everyone else had stopped and that hee-haw sound she made filled the room. Since Gallagher on stage was well-lit and we were three feet from him, we were well-lit and everyone was conscious of the tiny lady who laughed like a burro. At times, they were laughing as much at the sound coming out of her as they were at the guy onstage with the microphone.

And of course, that guy started making comments about it and asking her (and me) questions. I have seen comedians, including some good ones, come up empty in a situation like this. Not Gallagher. He was fast on his feet and he was funny.

There was an intermission after Gallagher's set and before Frank's. Coming out of the men's room, I ran into Frank and he introduced me to Gallagher. I said, "I brought the lady who laughs like a hyena. I hope we didn't ruin your album." He said, "Ruin it? I pray for people like her in the audience. I almost want to hire her to go on tour with me and sit in the third row."

I don't think this record was ever released on CD but it's on Spotify at this link. I tried and failed to figure out how to embed the clip on this site so if you're a Spotify subscriber, you might want to take a listen. Jody can be heard laughing off-and-on during the first half-dozen cuts but especially in the beginning of the one called "Hair."

Below is a video of Gallagher from about that time. It's from the May 9, 1979 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and on it, Mr. G did the kind of spot that caused other comedians to say things about him like, "He's just a prop comic…funny props, not a funny guy," Whenever I heard that kind of talk, I disagreed with them. At the Ice House that evening, I saw an hour of him without props and a lot of it — not just the parts with us — consisted of "crowd work," chatting with the audience and ad-libbing. I dunno how he was later in his career but that night in 1980, he was pretty sharp…and there wasn't a watermelon in sight.

• Republicans seem to be thinking, "Maybe we oughta pick candidates who can win an election and also fulfill the duties of the position well instead of just nominating whoever kisses Donald Trump's ass the most."

If you missed out on the badge sale last week for Comic-Con 2023 — or even if you didn't — you might want to get ready to grab up tickets for WonderCon, which takes place March 24-26 at the Anaheim Convention Center, very close to that Disneyland place. Tickets go on sale next week and there's some sort of discount deal if you buy a 3-day badge early. Keep your eye on the website.

WonderCon is run by the same folks who run Comic-Con and though it's smaller, there's more than enough to see and do there for three days. I know some folks who attend both but prefer WonderCon because it's a little less tiring, a little less overwhelming, a little less elbow-to-elbow and a lot easier to get into. I also know WonderCon attendees who book a few extra days at whatever hotel they're staying at for WonderCon and spend that time at Disneyland and/or Disneyland California Adventure.

Tickets for WonderCon will probably not sell out as rapidly as they do for Comic-Con but if you wanna go, I wouldn't wait to make my purchase. I expect to be there hosting the usual panels and such…and having a very good time.

You've probably already heard about this. I have an interesting story to tell about him but I also have a phone that's constantly ringing and a whole buncha things I gotta deal with. I shall write about this man later today or tomorrow or whenever.

We were talking here about my favorite TV detective series, Harry O, and about its similarity to the longer-running series, The Rockford Files, which I liked but not as much. The two shows both started veteran TV actors — David Janssen was Harry Orwell and Jim Garner was Jim Rockford — and they both played private eyes who lived on the beach, had good senses of humor and rarely got involved in fights or shootings.

Harry O debuted on ABC on September 12, 1974 and Rockford Files debuted on NBC on September 13, 1974. And recently, my friend Scott Shaw! reminded me that they both were adapted into Gold Key comics that came out the same month and — this is the amazing part — their first issues had the same plot and the same teaser line on their covers!

You'd suspect collusion or that it was a deliberate plan of some sort but no. The first issue of Harry O was produced out of the Los Angeles office of Western Publishing. It was written by Don R. Christensen and drawn by Dan Spiegle. The first issue of Rockford Files was produced out of the company's New York office and it was written by Paul S. Newman and drawn by Jack Sparling…and yes, I was pretty upset that the editor I worked for in the L.A. office didn't give the Harry O assignment to me and —

— I'm sorry. I can't go through with this. As with certain earlier Gold Key Comics I've written about on this site — like here and here and here and here and here and here — all of this is fake. Western/Gold Key never put out a Harry O comic book or a Rockford Files comic book or any of the others.

I made up those covers in Photoshop…in this latest instance because Scott asked me to. It was all his fault. He lured me back into a life of crime. It won't happen again. I hope.

"Legal Eagle" Devin Stone has a new video up comparing 'n' contrasting the scandal about Hillary Clinton's e-mails with the scandal about Donald Trump's classified documents. If you don't have the time or interest to watch the whole thing, I'll summarize for you: Whatever Hillary did, she did a lot less of it and she fully cooperated with the investigations and none of the investigators found grounds to charge her.

There. I just saved you a half hour if you don't want to watch. I actually found it worth the half hour but, as any browser of this blog is well aware, odd things interest me.

I like the way this man explains things. At the end of this video, he makes a sales pitch for Nebula, a subscription channel via which you can get his videos earlier (well, by a few hours) and get access to quite a few that I can't post here because he doesn't post them to YouTube. I went ahead and subscribed, partly to get the exclusive videos and partly to support his efforts like this…

Buster Keaton — without stunt doubles or CGI…