Monthly Archives: December 2023

We have a three-way tie in today's contest to be a Person I'm Glad I'm Not. The first two are Rudy Giuliani and Rudy Giuliani's lawyer. The third, of course, is Donald Trump. Trump has a permanent spot on that list.

Hey, the guy's 98 years old today…and I hope I'm in as good a shape when I'm 88, let alone a decade later. I don't remember who my first "favorite entertainer" was but I'm pretty sure when The Dick Van Dyke Show came on, the guy with his name in the title knocked all others out of the competition. And he was great in lots of other things…which you can name just as well as I can.

I have met a lot of my heroes and a few of them — shall we say? — disappointed me as human beings. Dick did not. If anything, he turned out to be nicer, funnier and more worthy of admiration than I'd imagined. I hope he lives along enough for this to be considered "middle-age."

I spent today at a memorial service for Marty Krofft, who died on November 28 — a man I knew very well, a man I worked for on and off from 1978 until…well, a little over a month ago, he asked me to write a new project he has pending. I have no idea what, if anything, will become of that project now but that's not important. What's important is that today an overflow crowd of friends, family and folks who worked for the Kroffts gathered to pay a much deserved tribute.

By "overflow," I mean there weren't enough seats for them all in The Old North Church at Forest Lawn. The service there was warm, emotional and so moving that no one who couldn't find a place to sit down minded standing. We went from there to the burial site at Forest Lawn and from there to a wonderful gathering with food and more speeches and a lot of hugging, all on a big studio soundstage. I got to see some old friends and co-workers and to spend a little time with Marty's brother/partner Sid Krofft. Saying you had a "good time" at a memorial/funeral for someone feels odd but you know what I mean.

Would you like to see some or all of what transpired at the Old North Church? Marty's three wonderful daughters arranged to stream it online and it's still there. I don't know how long it will be up but right this minute, you can watch the entire thing at this link. It runs about 96 minutes and if that's too much for you, there's a lovely video of Marty's life that starts at around the 6:40 mark and a moving speech by brother Sid that starts at 1:06:20. Marty had an amazing life and he was very good to me…most of the time.

I said in this message that there were rumors that someone was trying to set up a streaming channel that would run, over and over and over, the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon that I developed in the eighties. Well, it shows you what I know. Someone has. It's on the Freevee and Plex services.

Looking for info on this online, I find a lot of articles about the series, many of which don't seem to understand that I developed the show for television, I did not create it. And I certainly did not create the game. I took an existing idea and changed things around and reworked it into the series that CBS bought and then I wrote the pilot script and part of one other episode.

What's going on with Rudy Giuliani has become one of those traffic accidents that you can't not look at. At least, I can't. He lost a defamation suit for claiming that those two campaign workers in Georgia has been tampering with ballots. Today, on his way into the trial to determine how much he's going to have to pay them in damages, he stopped to tell news cameras that he was not wrong; that they really did tamper with ballots and when he gets on the witness stand, he's going to prove it.

In other words, he defamed them again. And he intends to use his time under oath to try to convince the jury that those ladies did what it's already been proven they did not do. Good luck with that, Rudy.

I have a busy day ahead. Gotta run.

My pal David Jablin produces and directs movies and in 1981, he was the man behind Likely Stories, an anthology show on HBO that ran some audaciously clever short films. Most were the work of filmmakers and actors who later went on to greater heights. You will recognize a lot of names and faces in the montage below of segments that appeared on Likely Stories.

David's Likely Stories should not, by the way, be confused with Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories…which were also audaciously clever.

Much time and expense has been spent recently to remaster David's for the higher-definition televisions on which we now watch things. And David has set up a website on which you can spend many hours viewing these films. Here's a little overview of them and then I'll recommend some to watch and give you a link…

See? I told you you'd recognize a lot of people.

All of these films are worth your time but I'd recommend you start with "Focus on Fishko," "Mastergate," "School Girls & You," "The Selling of Vince D'Angelo" and "Public Enemy #2." A few of these are a bit R-rated but you can handle it.

This series was one of the first things I ever loved on cable TV, well before I met David. I've plugged these films before and I'll probably plug them again…and they've never looked better. Here's the link. Now go enjoy yourself.

Another of Donald Trump's bad lawyers, Alina Habba, was all over the news shows in recent days assuring all that her client was not only ready but eager to take the witness stand in his New York Civil Trial today. And of course — because why would he do such a thing? — Mr. Trump is not testifying today or, according to him, any day.

So what's the deal with Ms. Habba? Well, Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone has been telling us for some time that she's a terrible attorney and in his latest video, he tells us why she may not be an attorney much longer…

I continue to be amazed and fascinated (in an odd way) at how Rudy Giuliani has managed to go from being one of the most respected men in this country (and a Time Person of the Year) to destroying his reputation, his career, his bank account…everything. Margaret Hartmann has written a stunning overview of all the lawsuits, indictments, personal embarrassments and rotten decisions that have brought the man who was once "America's Mayor" to where he is today.

And hold on. Because it's going to get much, much worse for him before this week is out.

Hey, are you a fan of the 1966 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!? The one directed by Norman Jewison, written by the guy who co-wrote It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, William Rose? The one starring Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters, Brian Keith and a host of others? The one with the great Jack Davis poster?

That movie? Are you perhaps thinking of buying it for someone for Christmas or even for yourself?

Well, hold out until January 16 next year. That's when Kino Lorber is bringing out a new Blu-ray of it with the best-ever transfer and a new commentary track by my pal Michael Schlesinger and me. I'll post an Amazon link for it here in a week or so.

T.J. White wrote me to ask…

Howdy, Mark. So a few years ago, soon after the announced official end of MAD Magazine, I asked if you had ever at any time submitted any articles to MAD for publication. I didn't get a response and then, after belatedly checking Doug Gilford's MAD Cover Site, realized you WERE published in MAD! You're credited for an idea in the Jan. '94 issue ("Sergio Aragonés Looks at Cars"…photos of him raptly gazing at actual cars, along with a letter from the editor telling him to stick with drawing) and a one-pager piece "What's The Difference?" in the end of the June '96 issue, accompanied by Rick Tulka's usual wacky artwork. (Also the first issue of MAD I ever bought!)

So I'm curious, how did your lone official MAD article come to fruition? Did you submit any pieces in the past and this was finally the one that made it to print? Any attempts since that one to get published? If it was your first attempt, did you just decide to be like "Why not give this MAD writing a shot?" or were you called upon/recommended by a MAD person to provide a one-page filler article to bump that issue's page count up to its usual 48 pages?

Every career has its regrets and one of mine is that I passed up a number of opportunities to probably/possibly join The Usual Gang of Idiots as a regular contributor to MAD. I loved MAD and still prize my complete collection of that publication. I have two original MAD painted covers — one by Norman Mingo, one by Frank Kelly Freas — on a wall of my home. I even managed to add an actual longtime MAD cartoonist to my list of Best Friends. The magazine was and in some ways still is a very important part of my life.

In a way, I didn't pass up trying to write for MAD as much as I put it off, figuring the opportunity would always be there.  Let that be a lesson to me.  I also, in a way, knew too much about MAD…like in the sixties and seventies, I knew how difficult to break in there.  Al Feldstein was the editor and I'd met him and knew enough about him to know how tough he was about buying from new writers.  They also had plenty of "regulars" who were part of the extended family that the publisher Bill Gaines liked to have around him.

They turned down a lot of good people because they really didn't need new people.  It was the same way with artists: Very few new ones got in because they had Drucker and Davis and Sergio and Dave Berg and Don Martin and Woodbridge and Jaffee and so on.

Later on, as some frequent contributors left or passed away, there were probably some promising times for me to pursue it but I didn't.  Feldstein retired in 1985 and his job was filled by John Ficarra and Nick Meglin.  I knew them both socially and liked them both and I should have submitted then but I was busy with this or that.  I just plain put it off.  In '94 or so, I finally sent them pitches for three articles and they bought one…just that one-pager.  They urged me to send more but I was again, suddenly too busy with this or that.  There were (and still are) a lot of things I wish I could make time for or did make time for.

None of this should be taken as a complaint or as me asking you to feel sorry for me.   For a writer, there are a lot of worse things than not having the time to do everything you'd like to do.  And right now, I think I'd like to have dinner.  Thanks for the question, T.J.

One of the first TV detective shows I liked watching was Richard Diamond, Private Eye. It was created by Blake Edwards as a radio show that ran from 1949 to 1953 starring Dick Powell and it later returned as a TV series that ran from 1957 to 1960 and starred David Janssen. It was the first of Janssen's four TV series, the other three being The Fugitive, followed by O'Hara, U.S. Treasury, followed by Harry O. As longtime readers of this blog know, Harry O is my favorite TV series about a detective.

I discovered Richard Diamond in syndicated reruns in the early sixties and I was sometimes puzzled by various elements. That was until I discovered that the show had run four seasons with major format changes from time to time, and the local station didn't air them in sequence. The shows were on a very low budget but the scripts were clever, a lot of notable actors guest-starred and it was hard to take your eyes off Mr. Janssen for two seconds.

I also liked his mysterious secretary "Sam," played by an uncredited actress who for a time was Mary Tyler Moore. You heard her voice and saw a little of her face or legs but not enough to really know what she looked like. My crush on Ms. Moore started before I know to whom the voice and legs belonged and I definitely noticed when someone else took over as "Sam."

It's Mary in this typical episode, which was the first in Season Three. It also features Barbara Bain, Ross Martin and the role of Mort Sahl was played by Mort Sahl…

On May 1, 2011, Albert Brooks appeared at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at The Grove, a big L.A. shopping center. He was promoting his then-new novel, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America and someone captured it with a shaky cellphone.

Mr. Brooks started off by saying that as a kid, he went to Kiddyland, an amusement park that was on the same ground on which that Barnes & Noble now stands.  He was wrong. Kiddyland was torn down to build The Beverly Center, another big L.A. shopping center a mile or so away. He then talks about the book.  He then takes questions from the audience and some of it's pretty interesting.  Some it is pretty amusing.  You can decide which is which…

Every year around now, Time magazine names its Person of the Year and a whole lot o' people who never read nor care about Time the rest of the year get outraged. No matter how Time explains it's for the person who "for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year," people want to see their fave win it. Never mind that in the past it went to Hitler, Stalin, The Ayatollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin and all sorts of folks who probably fell into the "for worse" category. As far as some people are concerned, it recognizes greatness no matter what its awarders say.

This year, it went to Taylor Swift. Fine. None of the folks protesting the selection care what's inside Time. Why should they care who's on its cover? If it was my decision and make the cat Person of the Year.

Among my fondest wishes for 2024 is that some part of politics, however small, will be about what's best for human beings, not about "owning" the opposition and making their heads explode.

I worked on 121 half-hours of the cartoon series, Garfield & Friends. There's a sub-channel on the Pluto streaming network that runs the show 24/7. As far as I can tell, they don't run all 121 in sequence and then repeat them and repeat them. They select something like a six-hour block of episodes and then run them four times a day, then run a different six-hour block the next day and a different one the next day and so on.

If they ran them all in order, they'd be repeating them all every two-and-a-half days. Either way, it means running every episode a little over 144 times a year. The voice actors who worked on the show and I each get enough money from this to buy the occasional can of Spaghetti-O's…but not too often. The animators and artists and others who worked on the show don't even get that.

Rumor had it that someone is trying to set up a streaming channel to run the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show that I also worked on. If they do and they run the show 24/7…well, there were only 27 episodes of that series so they'd be going through the entire run almost twice a day.

One of these days, Warners is going to set up the What's Opera, Doc? streaming channel that just runs What's Opera, Doc? over and over, every hour of every day so you can tune in any time and watch What's Opera, Doc? It's seven minutes long so if they put two minutes of commercials between each showing, they could run it 160 times a day, which would be 58,400 times per year except in Leap Year when it would be 58,560 times.

I don't think the families of Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, Mel Blanc and the artists who made that film will even get a can of Spaghetti-O's. Well, they may get the O's part but they won't be seeing any of the spaghetti part.

Because there are some scenes from movies you just can't see often enough…

…is the first night of Hanukkah so here are reruns of my two favorite Hanukkah videos…

I watched some of the Republican debate the other night and I don't seem to be able to go to any current events website without it showing me a clip of Chris Christie. If I didn't know this man's history, I might be impressed with the guy. There was a reason he left the governorship of New Jersey with an approval rating only slightly lower than that of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Chris Christie calling Donald Trump a bully is like…well, like Donald Trump these days accusing someone else of cognitive decline.

I also watched a little of a town hall meeting Christie did recently and about 80% of what I heard was the kind of straight talk I wish we got more of from politicians.  You can watch a little of it here.  Actually, you could watch all of it there but you won't.  Believe me, you won't.

I had to keep reminding myself that some of the best con artists and crooks in the world can say all the right things 80% of the time. Some of them can even do it 99% of the time and then turn around and screw you on the remaining 1%. They lull you into a false sense of trust…then you blink and suddenly they've got your pants.

I continue to be amazed at how Trump, his lawyers and cohorts like Rudy Giuliani are losing darn near 100% of their legal filings and motions.  When all these arraignments and trials started, I figured they'd win some but lose more…but they're losing just about every single one.  Christie's been getting booed, at the debate and elsewhere, for saying Trump is going to be convicted of at least one felony.  I wonder how how many of those who booed think…

1. Trump's innocent of all charges so he can't possibly be convicted
2. Trump's guilty of something but he shouldn't be convicted because the prosecution is dishonest
3. Trump's guilty of something but he shouldn't be convicted because they want him as President anyway
4. Trump's guilty, he'll probably be convicted of something but Christie should be out there supporting him anyway
5. Christie's right but we don't like being reminded of it
6. Some other combination that makes even less sense than any of these

Christie's probably right when he says that Haley and DeSantis are running to be Trump's Veep or in his cabinet…and/or to position themselves for the 2028 Presidential Election. If the latter, it would mean they assume Trump will lose this time — because if he wins, there might not be a 2028 Presidential Election. Ramaswamy looks like he's running just for the attention, the way Pat Buchanan used to. But what the heck is Christie running for? Among all voters nationally, he's polling at 2.7%

The polls don't mean much yet. At this point in the election that gave us President Trump, Ben Carson was ahead of him in fighting for the Republican nomination. But still…2.7%? That's about what Mickey Mouse gets in protest write-ins. It's half of where Ramaswamy is at the moment and no one even thinks he's a serious candidate.

If you announced your candidacy tomorrow, you'd be within the margin of error of tying or beating Christie. The man's in the same lonely boat as Rudy: Republicans don't like him since he broke with Donald and Democrats haven't liked him since he signed on with Donald in the first place.