Monthly Archives: June 2023

Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell performing one of the songs from the musical Ragtime…

I get e-mails all the time asking me for more or less political content on this blog. Many of them argue that I'd get more or less hits if I wrote more about Donald Trump or less about Donald Trump. I'm sure some of you are right but I'm not about to spend any time figuring out which of you that might be. I discovered after the first few years of this blog that for me, it was important to not care how many hits I get. A lot of things in life are more fun if you don't attach your income or reputation to them.

The amount of time I spend here writing about Trump — or any topic really — has nothing to do with clickbait, everything to do with what I spend time thinking about within this silly head of mine. And at times, I find the need to prioritize what goes on in there.

Back when it looked like O.J. Simpson might stand trial for two murders, I looked at that situation and thought, "Hmm…this could occupy an awful lot of time that would be better spent working on scripts." I think I even thought the "hmm" part. So I didn't pay much attention to that case until it was getting close to a conclusion…and then, as I expected, it took up way too much of my time and attention. It simply became impossible to look away and I was glad I hadn't started following it sooner.

I'm trying to do that to some extent with the current Writers Strike. I have no predictions about how or when it will end other than that it will…somehow and someday. Perhaps the predictions of those actually involved in the negotiations might (note the might) have some merit but I'm even skeptical about that. Nevertheless, yesterday at the Burny Mattinson memorial, I had the following exchange with a friend who I ran into there…

FRIEND I RAN INTO THERE: I'd like to get your take on the strike. How do you see it playing out?

ME: I have no predictions about the strike and no faith in anyone else's.

FRIEND I RAN INTO THERE: I know that. You keep saying that on your blog. But if you did have a prediction, what would it be?

This attitude is not unlike another one I'm encountering more and more these days. It's when someone asks you a question that surely has an honest-to-God factual answer somewhere, you tell them you have no idea what it is, and they press you to guess anyway. The premise here is that a wrong answer is better than no answer at all. No, it isn't.

I keep thinking of a time many years ago when I was walking down a street and a car pulled over — two older people seeking directions. They asked me if I knew how to get to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Projecting (I'm certain) a great sense of confidence, I told them, "Sure" and I proceeded to give them detailed, definite instructions on how to get there. They repeated them back, I told them they had it down and they thanked me and drove off as instructed…

…at which point, I realized I'd just given them detailed, definite instructions on how to get to the Beverly Hilton.

This was thirty years in the past and for all I know, they're still driving around, unable to find it and saying, "But that nice young man told us we have to turn left on Wilshire…"

The wrong answer is not better than no answer and a prediction when you don't know enough — or don't think the matter is predictable at all — is not better than no prediction.

I don't think the next Presidential Election is at all predictable. I mean, I'm prescient enough about it to bet money that I will not be the winner and — don't take this the wrong way — you won't be, either. But beyond that, who the hell knows? We don't even know whether the Republican nominee will be in prison or well on his way there…and it's not like we can look at past elections when that's been the case and try to determine some sort of trend in that situation.

I have a too-vague-to-really-mention-but-I-will-here-as-an-example hunch that Joe Biden will step aside for health reasons — and that reason might even be true. But since I haven't given the man a physical lately, there's no reason to give that hunch any weight at all.

So I'm kind of trying to maintain a controlled attention to the next presidential election and also to the strike. I don't want to think about these things more than I want to think about these things…which is enough to stay reasonably well-informed but not to become too obsessed. I have more important things to do including…well, just about everything else.

Someone — it was probably me — once said that Burny Mattinson worked for Disney so long, he made Jiminy Cricket look like a recent hire. Actually, he started there right outta high school and worked on everything the animation department did after that — or at least everything good. They started him out in the Traffic Department — moving things around on the lot — and in six months, he was an assistant animator on Lady and the Tramp, making things move about on the screen.

He died last February at the age of 87 and if he'd lived until June, he would have received the first-ever Disney Service Award for 70 years with the company. That is not a typo. I meant to type "70 years." Here, I'll spell it out for you: Seventy years.

I didn't know Burny as well as most of the folks who attended the Celebration of his Life today at the Motion Picture Academy Theater…but I felt I knew him well enough to accept the invite. There, we all heard lots of stories about Burny the Animator, Burny the Producer, Burny the Storyboard Artist, Burny the Character Designer, Burny the Illustrator, Burny the Director and (mainly) Burny the Swell, Fun-to-be-around Guy. It made me wish I'd gotten to know him better but I sure did know his work. If you're a fan of classic Disney animation from Lady and the Tramp forward, so do you.

One of my current favorite musical comedy performers is a gent named Rob McClure who I saw in the national touring company of Something Rotten and wish I could see in more shows. Here he is performing a number on a recent PBS special edition of Great Performances…

The other day for no particular reason, I clicked on a YouTube video of a Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? from February 28, 2000 and I just clicked on the timeline to begin watching in the middle. This was all random.  And like you (probably), I think to myself how I would have fared if I'd gone on the show.  And like you (probably), I am pleased with the vast accumulation of cash and prizes I know I would have amassed. And like you (probably), I know that if I had gone on, I would have been lucky to go home with a case of Turtle Wax and the last vestige of my dignity.

On the episode I came across, I quickly came across this question: "Which of these medical conditions often causes sufferers to suddenly and unexpectedly fall asleep?"

The choices, as you may be able to make out in the fuzzy screengrab above, are (A) Sleep Apnea, (B) Epilsepsy, (C) Narcolepsy and (D) Eczema.  This was for $4000.  What's your answer?

You probably would quickly eliminate Epilepsy, which is a brain disorder that causes seizures.  You'd probably also rule out Eczema, which is a skin condition.  You're a smart person. So then, of the two remaining choices, which would you pick as your Final Answer?

My Final Answer: Both (A) and (C).  Narcolepsy is a condition that more famously causes people to suddenly fall asleep…but I have Sleep Apnea and before I began sleeping with a C-PAP machine, it caused me to suddenly fall asleep — suddenly and unexpectedly.

Deprived of a peaceful night's slumber by my then-undiagnosed condition, I stumbled through my days' activity in about a tenth of a stupor and sometimes did fall asleep. Once, it was during a network-type meeting at CBS all about a TV pilot I was writing. I was later told that one exec in the meeting took it as a sign of my not paying attention. Another, who had championed my hiring, successfully spun it as proof of how hard I was working, staying up all night to make the script as good as humanly possible.

Neither was the truth. I just had Sleep Apnea. If you don't know what that is, read this explanation. And note that one of the things it says is a symptom of Sleep Apnea is "Excessive daytime sleepiness." Doesn't that sound to you like it's a correct answer to the game show question?

Also listed on that page among the dangers of Sleep Apnea is "Car accidents from drowsy driving." That's what almost happened to me. I was driving home on the Ventura Freeway having just attended — here's some irony for you — a memorial service for a fine gent named Peter Ledger, a comic book artist who had been killed in a car accident at the way-too-young age of 49. As I passed Topanga Canyon Boulevard, I fell asleep at the wheel.

It was just for a second. I did not swerve. I did not crash. I woke up instantly, realized what had happened and promptly took the next off-ramp. I then quickly found a 7-Eleven store where I chug-a-lugged a cup of Pepsi that was about the size of one of the smaller Great Lakes. The Caffeine kept me alert as I drove cautiously home on surface streets and I didn't drive again until I'd had medical attention and solved my problem.

Anyway: I've written about my Sleep Apnea here many times and have been pleased to hear that it inspired others to find out that they needed treatment. My main point here is about the question on the game show. Narcolepsy turned out to be the correct answer to the question and the guy in the photo chose it and won the money. But Sleep Apnea would also have been correct and I don't know why I'm spending any time on this 23 years after the show aired but nothing is too trivial for this blog.

A few years ago, Paul Shaffer and his current band were playing at Cleopatra's Barge, a nightclub inside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. One night, he had a special guest in the audience and you'll never guess who it was…

Baden Smith — who lives way off in Adelaide, South Australia — sent me the following…

Hi, Mark. Seeing that Dick Van Dyke compilation video reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask you: In the episode "Coast To Coast Big Mouth," it's revealed that Alan Brady is bald. The question: Was it known at the time that Carl Reiner was bald, or was this episode's tonsorial twist as much a surprise to viewers as it was the characters?

If you were then a watcher of talk shows, it was no shock. I don't know exactly when Mr. Reiner began losing his hair but he never made it a secret. He was known to go on shows with and without his hairpiece and ask the studio audience to vote on how they preferred to see him. Even when he had the toupée on, he would often say things like, "This is such an important event that as you can see, I wore my hair!"

Carl Reiner had an amazing career, always working as an actor, writer, producer and/or director on something…and usually something widely respected like Your Show of Shows or The Dick Van Dyke Show. The man got 18 Emmy nominations and won 11 of them, plus there's a bust of him in the Hall of Fame Garden at the TV Academy. Yet in a business where jealousy can be as potent a driving force as money, he was utterly undisliked by anyone.

That may have been because he had one of the healthiest egos in Hollywood. He spent most of that long, long career making others look good. He made Sid Caesar look good. He made Dick Van Dyke and everyone on that program look good. He made Mel Brooks look good. He made everyone who starred in a movie he directed look good. He was on television for many decades yet he never did anything called The Carl Reiner Show. There are some stars who obsess about getting their names in the title.

And when he did create something that could have been called The Carl Reiner Show and it was suggested that someone else star, he said, "Fine. I'll just produce and write it!" Not keeping his baldness a secret was just another sign that he may have been The Most Secure Man in Show Business.

When all the current political chazerai is over, someone is going to write a book I want to read. It will be the story of the bizarre life choices made by a man named Rudy Giuliani who somehow went from being the most beloved, respected man in America to the least.

The Left hates him because he tried to steal the last election for Donald Trump. The Right hates him because he didn't succeed. He had a successful law practice but now he's fighting to keep his license and he's the target of a number of investigations and the butt of so many jokes. If his enemies had plotted to sabotage his life, they couldn't have done a better job of it than he has.

And I probably need to provide a link for those of you unfamiliar with the Yiddish word, chazerai. Like most Yiddish words converted into English, there are about ninety different ways to spell it.

Someone named Laura assembled this nice little montage of clips from my favorite TV show. All I know about her is that she used Adobe Premiere to do it…

I missed an interesting anniversary last Friday. It was seventeen years to the day from when I had a Gastric Bypass operation. It reduced the size of my stomach therefore reducing the size of me. Depending on now you figure it, I lost somewhere between 100 and 135 pounds. Some of it eventually came back and some of what came back was lost again, this time through more organic means. Nothing I say in this piece should be taken as a recommendation or encouragement for you to rush out and get this done. I'm just telling you how well it worked for me. In those seventeen years, there has not been one second in which I regretted having it done.

Except maybe for this: My physician warned me about this at the time and he was very wise but somehow, I didn't think this would actually happen to me. He warned me that there would people who, though purportedly friends of mine, would feel the urge to tell me some possibly-bogus story about some possibly-non-existent person they knew who had the surgery, felt fine for a while, then dropped dead. Gosh, that was helpful information.

And here's something I realized the other day and wanted to share with you or someone: I recall three different people in my life doing that to me. One was a fellow comic book writer. One was a not-too-famous stand-up comedian. And the third was a guy…I don't really know what he did but I kept running into him at comic book conventions. All three of them tried to plant in my mind that I had perhaps made a fatal mistake by having the surgery…

…and all three of them have since dropped dead. I, at last report, was still around.