Several of you sent me info on the various Nigerian scams, which apparently are (according to this website) a "Five billion dollar worldwide scam." So I guess someone's falling for them. Amazing.
The E! Network is rerunning the very first episode of Saturday Night Live on Monday. Actually, it wasn't even called that on its first broadcast in October 11, 1975. I explained about that here.
Did anyone else see Jerry Lewis interviewed this last evening on Larry King Live? It was an emotional and, at times, disturbing hour. Jer, who we all remember as the skinny kid alongside Dean, has put on rather startling poundage due to a drug called Prednisone. He also, at times, did not seem to be quite there mentally. He occasionally rambled, especially at first, though there were long stretches of the old Jerry. (To read a transcript, which won't convey much of the discomfort, click here.)
His annual telethon for Muscular Dystrophy starts Sunday evening and runs through Monday, and I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty uncomfortable thing to watch, even for — perhaps, especially for — folks who tune in to see Jerry go over the top with emotion and self-service. It may be the first telethon where folks are more worried about the health of the host than of the kids in the wheelchairs.
The E! Network is rerunning the very first episode of Saturday Night Live on Monday. Actually, it wasn't even called that on its first broadcast in October 11, 1975. The now-forgotten Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell had prior claim on the title so the new late night program was called NBC Saturday Night. Didn't matter. For some reason, everyone — fans, TV critics, everyone — just started calling it Saturday Night Live and a few months after the Cosell show evaporated, the SNL name went on the NBC show officially. (I believe some prints of some of the reruns were altered to slap the name on them.)
What I find most interesting about that first NBC Saturday Night is that the idea seemed to be to throw everything at the wall and then see what stuck. Today, we think of the show as 90 minutes of sketch comedy with one guest host and one musical act. But when they started out, the sketch comedy was but one of many elements and not even the most important. In addition to comedy sketches, the first episode featured…
The Chevy Chase spot was probably the biggest hit. The other sketches — the kind of material that would become the core of Saturday Night Live — were few in number and short in length. There was the cold opening with Chase, Michael O'Donoghue, and John Belushi. (Although he would not be counted as a member of the original cast, O'Donoghue had more to do in the first episode than some who were and was billed as one of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players." So was character actor George Coe, who quietly disappeared from the troupe soon after.) There were a few other short skits, the longest of which — a courtroom scene — was an old routine that had been done almost precisely the same way on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.
Then the second week, Paul Simon hosted and the show was devoted primarily to music. In addition to Simon, they had Art Garfunkel, Phoebe Snow, Randy Newman and the Jesse Dixon Singers. Add in another Muppets spot and another film by Albert Brooks and there wasn't much time for sketches.
It wasn't until the third week, hosted by Rob Reiner, that sketch comedy had a significant chunk of the show. Even then, the longest comedy segment was the Albert Brooks film, which was so long they had to insert a commercial break in the middle of it.
Producer Lorne Michaels was later quoted as saying something like, "I had the ingredients from the start but it took me a while to figure out how much of each to include." If you watched the episodes in sequence, you'd see it take around four episodes (over five weeks) before they decided they had a sketch show, and a while longer before they began to subordinate everything else to that. That was a quick discovery process. Michaels had originally negotiated a deal with NBC that gave them 17 shows and with it, an understanding that they'd tinker with the format and probably not solidify things until around Show Ten. Ordinarily, one of the great lies of network television is when they say, "We won't even look at the ratings for the first few weeks" but in this case, they seem to have at least been sincere about giving the show room to develop.
That would probably not happen today. Despite the history of shows like SNL and Seinfeld that were given time to grow and which became insanely profitable, a TV show is now expected to debut in pretty much its finished form. Not long ago, a producer sent the following to me in an e-mail. It's from an article he was writing about a recent, unhappy experience…
What I learned was that nowadays, a show goes on the air and based on the ratings of the first one, it's declared a provisional success (if they're good) or a provisional flop (if not). If you're a provisional flop and your ratings go up the second week, you might have a fighting chance at proving yourself. If you're a provisional flop and you go down the second week, it's pretty much over. You're a bomb and the smell of death rises into the air. Your promotion disappears, your guest stars drift away, and advertisers write you off. It's a premature verdict but it has a way of coming true from its own momentum.
Lorne Michaels' new show had some things going for it when it debuted. For one thing, it had no competition. For another, NBC was looking to open up that time slot for new programming and it would have been embarrassing and injurious to that effort not to stick with the new show for a time. They also had nothing else to put on.
As it happens, the first Saturday Night did pretty well and it was hailed as something innovative. Looking back on that first episode, it's hard to see why. So much of the show was George Carlin's stand-up act…funny but hardly a major breakthrough in television programming. Apart from Weekend Update, the freshest bit of material on the first broadcast was probably Andy Kaufman's "Mighty Mouse" routine…and he wasn't even a regular.
No matter. The show appealed to a generally-neglected, younger audience. It felt new, even if it wasn't, and in TV, that can be the hard part. In a few more weeks, it would actually start to be innovative. One can only wonder how many hastily-cancelled shows might have managed that if they'd had a few more weeks.
Okay, no baseball strike. I guess that's good, but what I always find interesting about these battles is how many fans instinctively leap to side with Management and adopt the notion that those damn players are too greedy. Of course they are…but if they don't get more, the money does not go to house widows and orphans. It goes to the owners of major league baseball teams, who already have a helluva monopoly and racket. Think George Steinbrenner and ask yourself if that kind of person is a victim in such squabbles.
But this seems to be the way a lot of the public thinks. Back in the seventies, when Johnny Carson was having one of his many battles with NBC over cash, the Los Angeles Times ran an incredible letter about how, at a time when however-many people die each year from starvation, it showed a lack of values that Johnny wanted a few million more per annum. I fired off a rejoinder which was published and which basically said, "If Johnny getting less translated to fewer commercials, I'd be all for it. But that's never how it works and I don't see why he should take less so NBC can make more. If any values are askew here, it's in the notion that the guy who made the business successful is the bad guy for wanting a fair share of the pie."
Same thing with baseball. If players taking less would somehow translate to lower admission prices or fewer commercials, great. All for it. But that never happens. Baseball is going to make a certain amount of money and all the fighting was not over how much it's worth an hour to play Shortstop but over what percentage of that certain amount would go where. Perhaps the public attitude about all this will change the next few years as we go through The Great C.E.O. Compensation Scandals. We're going to hear an awful lot about men who ran huge corporations into the ground, did everything wrong, but still got out with huge salaries and performance bonuses while the grunts who did their jobs well lost both their positions and their pensions. It'll be interesting to see how all that impacts America's attitude about labor.
Ultimately though, it doesn't affect me. I have all that money coming in any day now from Nigeria…
A prominent creator in the comic book industry recently wrote me a long, frothing-at-the-keyboard e-mail, urging me to help him protest what he seems to think is the greatest miscarriage of justice since O.J. tried on gloves. Basically, it comes down to the fact that when this creator was at this year's Comic-Con International, a security guard didn't know who he was and treated him like a common attendee. The convention had closed, the hall was being cleared and this Prominent Creator was asked to move along like a person of no importance. I wrote the following to him in response…
Sorry…I not only don't think you were wronged, I think you were in the wrong on this one. The convention center's security folks have no reason to know who you are. Over the years, I have seen such personnel subject far more important people than you or I to far greater indignities than being treated like an ordinary person.
Many moons ago, I was walking out of NBC when I saw a new gatekeeper stop Dean Martin, who was driving in to tape his weekly TV show, and ask who he was there to see. Dino was not pissed. If anything, he was rather amused…and even gentle as he informed the guard of his identity. It was at most a minor inconvenience to Mr. Martin because, I suppose, he didn't feel he had to prove to some stranger that he was famous. Some people, I guess, do.
I've been busy with an incredible financial matter that just dropped into my lap via e-mail. It seems that a group of Nigerian investors have amassed a sum of Forty Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars as commission for oil sales contracts. In order to get it into this country, they need to transfer it into someone's U.S. bank account. Well, as luck would have it, they picked mine! Can you believe it? I've given them all the numbers and passwords for my savings and credit card accounts and within 10-14 days, they're going to transfer the money into my account for safekeeping and then, after they get to this country, I will give them the money back, minus my 15% commission. Do you realize how much money that is? Wow. Am I gonna be rich!
Seriously: I've now gotten well over a hundred of these e-mail offers to send all my banking info to total strangers in another country…usually Nigeria but occasionally others. If you don't know all about this scam, the details are spelled out here…but what I still want to know is: How much is anyone making off this racket? Are people really falling for it?
Spent a lovely last evening at the Hollywood Bowl, listening to one of the great jazz pianists, Chick Corea, who was performing with various "friends" including vibraphonist Gary Burton, saxophonist Michael Brecker and vocalist Flora Purim. What was on stage was great, though the event was marred a bit (for us) by audience members talking to one another and into cell phones. The fellow behind us alternated between telling them to quiet down and committing the same sin for which he was scolding others. I fear home video has gotten folks in the habit of talking while a performance is in progress. We need to get militant about these people and start hitting them with large blunt objects.
Shelly Goldstein, who knows as much about the Beatles as I do about Mark Evanier, corrects me: Apple Corps was not a charitable foundation, at least not primarily. It was mainly the boys' own management/recording company with a few charitable aspirations vaguely down the line. Silly me: I was recalling the version that The Rutles formed and confusing parody with reality. Which, these days, is easy to do in all walks of life.
Mike Rieder sends in this link to an article that lays out the case for the legality of George W. just charging off to war with Iraq without Congressional approval. I'm not convinced and neither are a lot of prominent Republicans, even. But it may all be academic because while G.W.B. may not need a Congressional declaration of that war to act, he also doesn't need the criticism and divisiveness that would come from not obtaining it.
Guy Gilchrist, sometimes in tandem with his brother Brad, produces terrific newspaper strips, including the current version of Nancy. Here's a link to a great two-part interview with Guy in which he discusses his strips and the problems of both syndication and self-syndication. And don't miss the second part.
Thanks to the many of you who've recently clicked on our "donate" buttons and sent this site some money. I'm way behind in sending personal gratitude but will attempt to catch up soon. Or so I claim.
The deadline is dead. Long live the deadline.
In the meantime: Does George W. Bush have the legal right to plunge us into war with Iraq? It probably doesn't matter since if he tells the planes to go drop bombs, the planes will go drop bombs and — ta-dah! — we're at war, Constitution or no Constitution. I happen to feel his administration has unhesitatingly ignored that document in other areas and I don't see why this should be any different.
If however, you're interested in why he probably doesn't have the legal right, here's a link to a simple explanation by law professor Jeff Cooper. If you come across an equally straightforward counter-argument, let me know so I can post a link to it.
James Traficant's in jail. Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney and Gary Condit all were defeated. What in God's name is happening to our long and glorious tradition of nutcases in Congress? Oh, sure, we still have Charlie Rangel and Dana Rohrbacher…and Tom DeLay can always be counted on to say something really, really stupid and outrageous. But I'm worried. What if we lose a few more of those guys and C-SPAN starts to look a little less like the Sci-Fi Network? This is not a good trend, people. We have to do something about it…and soon.
Were he still with us, Jack Kirby would have been 85 years old today. He's been gone since '94 and still, not a day goes by when I don't find myself talking about or at least thinking about him. Those of you who met Jack know that he had an odd way of speaking, forever making unusual connections and leaping from one seemingly-disconnected topic to another…though if you really thought about it for a while, you could usually figure out the segue and see the brilliance of how he got from here to there. I am still just coming to understand things he said to me in 1971 and being amazed at their wisdom.
Also born on this date was my other great early supporter in the world of comics, Chase Craig. Chase was the executive editor for Western Publishing Company — for their Dell and later, Gold Key Comics — for several decades. Before that, he was a wonderful gag man and cartoonist, as I attempted to explain in this obituary from earlier this year. This is another one of those columns I removed from this site because it's in my new book but I'm putting it back up for a few days, just so you can read about this wonderful man.
In 1968, back when The Beatles were fab, John Lennon and Paul McCartney appeared on The Tonight Show to announce the formation of their new charitable foundation, Apple Corps. Alas, Johnny Carson was not hosting that evening. Sportscaster/game show host Joe Garagiola (of all people) was behind the desk from which he did a spectacularly awkward and uninformed job of interviewing John and Paul.
Johnny Carson is finally welcoming Lennon and McCartney onto The Tonight Show but, of course, not in reality. Currently at the New Frontier casino in Las Vegas, Carson impersonator Jeff Fairchild is starring in "On the Air, Tonight's Show," a live tribute/facsimile of the vintage talk show. "Johnny's" guests each program include not just the two Beatles but, usually, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley. They obviously have a hell of a Talent Coordinator.
I am not recommending this show because, first of all, I haven't seen it. And I'm dubious because it's at the New Frontier, which is like a very large Roach Motel with video poker machines. It rents out its shabby showroom to a steady stream of low-budget shows, none of which last very long. If you and I could scrape together the money, we could go in there and put on a show, praying all the while we'd do enough business to interest a real hotel. But given the track record of shows at the New Frontier, we'd be better off pumping all the cash into those video poker machines. At least, they pay off once in a while.
Another obituary, this one from the Associated Press…
Sony closed the final chapter of its legendary battle with Victor Co. of Japan to dominate the home video machine market, when it announced Tuesday that it would discontinue its Betamax VCRs. Sony will stop manufacturing Betamax machines by year's end as the company refocuses its efforts on DVD and other technologies now dominating the market, Sony spokeswoman Shoko Yanagizawa said.
No great surprise there, of course. We long ago rid ourselves of all emotional attachment to the format, as discussed in this column. Still, it's sad to say farewell to an old friend…though it isn't a total farewell. I still have one working Betamax in my main video setup and two more in a closet. Once the making of home DVDs becomes practical (there's another Format War in progress on that front), we'll copy all our irreplaceable Beta tapes to them and be done with it.
The management of this website agrees completely with this article by Robert Scheer about the prospect of a Major League Baseball strike. And is outraged if all or most of this article by Paul Krugman about Bush's forestry policy is true.
And now the management of this website is returning to its deadline.
Horror of the Crypt of Fear #12 is a new, small and limited-edition fanzine devoted to the work of the late, great comic book artist, Johnny Craig. It was originally supposed to be a surprise tribute but, sadly, Craig passed away while its publisher, Bill Leach, was assembling articles, rare photos and drawings by a number of terrific illustrators including Al Feldstein and Marie Severin. The zine is now a lovely memorial to one of comics' great illustrators and it's available from Bud Plant Comic Art. (Also included in the book with my permission is the obit I wrote for Craig which is posted here on this site. I was proud to be a part of it even if Mr. Craig didn't live to see it.)