Monthly Archives: April 2007

There are days when America feels like a nation in the grip of Civil War. There are days, months, even years when it feels like we can agree on nothing and that we, as a people, are incapable of viewing anything with a sense of unanimity and common ground. And then there are those rare moments when we feel as one…when everyone is on the same page and of the same mind, and truly there is widespread agreement on something.

I have just browsed political websites that run the gamut from Ultra-Liberal and Ultra-Conservative. And I am here to tell you that our great nation is united in its disgust of George Tenet.

I have a section on this website called Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More.* An amazing number of folks have failed to grasp the concept that this is all about restaurants that I went to and about which I have fond or at least interesting memories. They write to me as if I have committed some grievous factual error by omitting some eatery that they went to in 1958 and which I never heard of. Wrong. The section is about places I've eaten. Me. Not you. Me. You want a page on the web about your favorite restaurants? Hey, no one's stopping you.

When I get the time, I will be adding to mine the somewhat-famous outlet of Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills, which closed forever either today or yesterday. It's part of the Beverly Hilton which is part of a big hotel/shopping center which is part of a forthcoming development of super-luxury condos. The Hilton's staying but undergoing massive renovations that involve the ousting of the notorious Polynesian bar-restaurant.

Trader Vic's was one of those establishments I really wanted to enjoy but rarely could. It felt like a great place to hang out, eat and/or drink something slightly exotic and take in an atmosphere of what we wish Hollywood nightlife was like but too often is not. But the times I wound up there — usually because someone I needed to eat with wanted to dine within — I found the service to be smothering and the food to be largely inedible and way overpriced. I've had expensive meals where I could understand the pricetag and others where I felt I'd just paid $24.95 for the exact same thing the Sizzler sells for eight bucks. Put enough Teriyaki Sauce on that Malibu Chicken, have it served by an overly obsequious waiter…and you have a Trader Vic's entree.

My last evening on the premises would have been in October of '05 when we had a bachelor party in one of the private rooms for my pal, Paul Dini. We had a great time in spite of the cuisine. We had exotic beverages. (I chug-a-lugged a 7-Up with a flowered swizzle stick in it.) We had festive decorations. We had several lovely young ladies who'd been hired to artfully disrobe to music. Mostly, we had friends around and you can enjoy being anywhere if you have that. I was wise enough to leave that as my final visit to Trader Vic's so I have fond memories of the place. I'm sure a lot of people do and are mourning its demise.

[*Update, years later: That section of my weblog has been converted to a separate blog: Old L.A. Restaurants]

One hopes the obits for saxophonist Tommy Newsom, who died Saturday at the age of 78, will all remember what a fine musician he was and not just focus on his alleged boring personality. Newsom was a member of The Tonight Show Band beginning in 1962, even before Johnny Carson took over as host, and he stayed on 'til the night Johnny had departed. Not only was his playing valuable to that wonderful orchestra but his skill as an arranger was put to good use. Everyone else in the music business seemed to know this. Newsom was in constant demand for outside jazz gigs, both for his musicianship and for his charts.

The job of Musical Director on The Tonight Show went through a scuffling period before Doc Severinsen nailed it down on a permanent basis. Newsom became his second-in-command, stepping into the position when Doc was away. For a while, when Ed McMahon was off, they'd bring in an outside announcer to handle his job but in the early seventies, Carson decided he didn't want a "stranger" as his sidekick, even for an evening. So when Ed wasn't there, Doc would move over to function as announcer and that increased the number of nights when Tommy moved from playing his sax to leading the band. (There were even nights when Doc and Ed were both off. When that happened, Tommy would be the announcer and someone else from the orchestra — usually Shelley Cohen — would conduct.)

Johnny was already getting good monologue mileage off Severinsen's outrageous wardrobe. The writers went the other way with Tommy, penning jokes about how bland and unexciting he could be. Newsom was a brilliant musician but his awkwardness speaking on camera often yielded comedy gold. It certainly paved the way for David Letterman's practice of putting non-professionals on his show. A lot of the seemingly spontaneous banter between Johnny and Tommy was carefully scripted but there were nights when Newsom would come up with something so clumsy (or just odd) that it was hilarious.

At some point around the late eighties, Johnny more or less retired the "Tommy Newsom is so boring that…" franchise and only rarely went for such jokes. He also stopped using Tommy in sketches, as he'd occasionally done, and almost completely eliminated Newsom's role as Doc's replacement. The story is that Johnny decided he wanted Ed and Doc there any night he was hosting so the two men were asked/ordered to schedule their extracurricular projects for guest host nights so they'd be there for Johnny. And then on guest host nights when Ed was off, Doc would serve as both announcer and musical director…so Tommy rarely got to front the band. The official word around the Tonight Show set was that Johnny simply thought the lines about Newsom's lack of charisma had gone on too long, but many suspected a personal falling-out.

Whatever the cause, Newsom continued to contribute his playing and arrangement to what was truly an outstanding band. Whenever I was in the NBC studios and they were rehearsing, I'd race for Studio 1 just to listen. The sound was amazing and Tommy Newsom was a major reason.

Continuing with our festival of obscure Laurel and Hardy film clips: Our next installment is a little less than three minutes of a British Pathé newsreel from 1947. The first part is an interview with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor. Then comes a brief chat with Stan and Ollie, who were then about to begin touring the British Isles with what turned out to be a highly successful stage show.

You'll hear Hardy talk about an upcoming film version of Robin Hood that, alas, was never made. The storyline would have cast Oliver as Friar Hardy and Stan as Little John Laurel, the two main Merry Men of Robin Hood's band. It is unknown why the project never made it to the business side of a camera. Instead, they wound up making no movies for several years, which was our loss. Here's the newsreel…

I finally got around to watching the recent Bill Moyers special, Buying the War, which is about how the Iraq War was "sold" to the American people, how the press went along with it and how even a lot of prominent Democrats fell right in line with the narrative.

A lot of pro-Bush folks are quite upset at this show…and I suppose that if one is still clinging to the idea that our leaders did everything right, I understand that. I can also understand why newsfolks and pundits whose faulty predictions and disproven "facts" are reaired would be upset. (Nothing seems to upset Bill O'Reilly more than having someone haul out his old words.) I'm not sure though why anyone who can get past the "our team" mentality is bothered by anything other than the long, sad litany of how our leaders — Republican and Democrat, in the press and out — screwed up. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine who's still gung ho and supportive of the Iraq War urged me to watch Buying the War. He thinks the U.S. did the right thing to take out Hussein but is mad that it was justified with fibs and incompetent reporting.

You can decide for yourself since the whole thing can be watched online at this site. You can also watch Moyers' weekly show online on this page. He has a nice interview up with Jon Stewart, which includes the host of The Daily Show reflecting on his recent, contentious interview with John McCain. You might also enjoy Moyers' interview with Joshua Micah Marshall, the Master Blogger I quoted here the other day. I don't know how long these videos will be up but last night here, I told you about a program called Orbit Downloader which can be used to capture the video clip to your harddisk for later viewing.

Nothing above, by the way, should be taken to infer that I've changed my view that public money should not be used for television programming. I watch a lot of things on PBS but I still don't agree with the idea of government funding of the arts.

I don't think this link will work for very long but while it's operative, you might want to read the 2001 profile of late Jack Valenti that ran in The New Yorker. Mr. Valenti had an amazing life and during the decades that he worked for the Motion Picture Association of America, he served that organization well. This is not to say I liked all or even most of what he did, which included consolidating the majors in ways that would suppress the minors and step on unions. Before that, he served a flawed Chief Executive who did a lot of damage. Jack Valenti is the man who said in 1965, "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my President." A lot of us were glad someone did.

I'm sorry that I have no great Jack Valenti anecdotes to report here. I met him twice for a grand total of about three minutes and the only thing I recall is that I asked him which was tougher — working for the studio heads he then served or working for Lyndon Johnson. His precise response has long since escaped my memory but I recall noting it was a very measured, political answer. He was just talking to a jerky kid, not a reporter, but he still wanted to make sure he didn't say the wrong thing. I guess that's why he lasted as long as he did in both those jobs.

A great old Disney tradition fades away. The corporation is getting rid of the name "Buena Vista" wherever it was used on business enterprises.

A childhood memory. During the early sixties, my family (Mother + Father + me) used to drive down to San Diego every summer to visit my Uncle Henry and Aunt Tillie, and to go to the zoo. Nowadays, I drive down to San Diego every summer to attend a big mother of a comic convention which is also kind of a zoo but that's another matter. Back then, we made those trips…and my Father drove at a leisurely pace, stopping off a half-dozen times along the way so it took all day. I was in the back seat with a pile of comic books I'd acquired but refrained from reading so I could enjoy them on the trip.

One year, we stopped off at a little lunch place in Long Beach and then went into a nearby drugstore to get a few items we needed. There, I saw a large, well-filled display of Comicpacs — a whole rack of plastic bags of DC Comics. In each, you got four comics which then sold individually for twelve cents each, and you got them for the amazing discounted price of forty-seven cents. Only it really wasn't a bargain because the store there charged sales tax, which they didn't do at newsstands where comics were sold without the plastic bags. There was also the obvious drawback that you could only see one of the four comics you were buying. What if the other three were books you didn't like? Or worse, books you already owned?

I had so many comics, the odds were I'd wind up with dupes but I still decided to gamble. I bought one package where the visible comic was one I didn't have — a recent issue of Superman I'd somehow missed. As luck would have it, two of the other three were comics I not only owned, they were in my pile to read on that trip.

That was why Comicpacs did not work for me. Insofar as I could tell, they didn't work for anyone. Several companies in the sixties tried selling comics in packs of three or four and every attempt was a failure.

I now understand why the companies tried it. Their regular comic offerings were on a returnable basis. Newsstands got them, in effect, on consignment. If they sold, the newsstand made a few pennies. If they didn't sell, the stand shipped them back and the publisher ate the cost of printing…but it was worse than that because if the comic got damaged or frayed on the rack, it could get shipped back and the publisher was out the cost of printing it. Or if the newsstand got cluttered and the dealers just decided to return books a few days after they went on sale — or not to even put them out at all — the publisher was out. At one point, DC considered an acceptable sale of a comic to be a 50% sale, meaning that they'd print 400,000 and sell 200,000. Not an efficient way to do business.

That whole system pretty much crashed and burned during the seventies. Some comics are still distributed that way but not many. Most go through an alternate system of non-returnable distribution that replaced it and saved the industry…but that came later. The bagged comics were the sixties' attempt to sell comics on a non-returnable basis. A store got a shipment and the bags stayed on the racks until they sold, whether it was one month or six or longer. Often it was longer.

It never worked for most publishers, though Western Publishing (aka Gold Key Comics) had better luck than most because Western was a giant in selling activity books, puzzle books, jigsaw puzzles and books for kids. That gave them momentum with many kinds of stores and national chains, and they were able to sell their bagged comics at the same time. The problem was, as I learned in the seventies when I worked for Western, that they were sometimes too successful selling the books…which meant that they were not successful enough. That sentence obviously needs a heap of explaining so let me try to do so by example…

You have a store and I'm a salesguy for Western Publishing. I do a great job of convincing you to buy bagged comics from me to sell in your shop. Let's say we consummate this deal in January. In March, we deliver to you a crate of 300 units, each unit being a plastic bag containing the March issues of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, with the Bugs Bunny in the front and therefore visible to consumers. I've made a tidy profit but I've also trapped myself out from selling you more. It may take you six months or a year to sell enough of those 300 bags so that you'll want to order additional bags containing other books. All that time, kids who might buy those other packs are looking at your display and saying, "Oh, I have that issue of Bugs Bunny." And they don't buy.

And if by some chance, I do get you to order more bagged comics before you're out of the previous shipment, we find that the two selections work against each other. You get in a crate of units that contain the July issues of Woody Woodpecker, Scooby Doo, Pink Panther and Yosemite Sam with the Yosemite Sam in the front and you put them on display alongside all the bags you still have from the earlier shipment. What we then find (what Western found) is that consumers would look at the two bags and worry that they contained the same comics in a different order. And when they thought that way, research found, they tended to view the whole product with suspicion and not buy anything.

In the seventies, Western's newsstand distribution was dying. They were selling so poorly in some states that they simply pulled their wares off the racks in those regions because they were getting so many returns. (So were DC and Marvel but unlike Western, DC and Marvel received revenues when their characters were merchandised. They owned Superman and Spider-Man, whereas Western did not own most of the characters in their comics. So there was no point in putting out books that were, in essence, loss leaders for licensing.) Western tried hard to make the plastic bags work. They built special displays and they tried putting stickers on the bags that told you what was inside. They even had their salespeople talk stores out of ordering too many of one bag and they experimented with limited returnability. Still, the distribution method never succeeded and when they finally gave up on it, they gave up publishing comic books at all.

I could have told them it wouldn't work. I could have told them that back when I was ten and going to San Diego with my parents. I didn't want to buy my comics in plastic bags and as it turned out, neither did almost anyone else. We want to buy our comics on an individual basis. And then we take them home and put them into plastic bags. That's how it's done.

This is silent home movie footage of Stan Laurel at his apartment in the Oceana Apartments out in Santa Monica. He spends most of it admiring the Academy Award he received in 1961 for — and I quote: "Creative Pioneering in the Field of Cinema Comedy." Laurel did not attend the ceremony due to poor health so Danny Kaye accepted for him. Stan was quite proud of the award — as you may be able to tell in this film — although he did nickname it "Mr. Clean."

In the years after Oliver Hardy died, Laurel made no public appearances despite many offers. He told visitors to his home that he was afraid audiences would be disappointed to see him as an old man. He doesn't look bad to me in this film. Matter of fact, he still looks like a very alive, able performer. See what you think.

When I see or hear something I like on the Internet, I like to save a copy to my harddisk. Streaming audio and video, after all, has the tendency to go away. So how do you do this? Here are some tips but they're only for PC users, I'm afraid.

I've tried a number of ways to save videos from sites like YouTube and Google Video. The best thing I've found — which is not to say it works everywhere — is Orbit Downloader. This is a free program that acts as an add-on to your browser. It works best when you're on the home site of a video clip and not on a web page that has it embedded. Let's say you see a YouTube video on my site and you'd like to capture a copy. Click on my embedded copy anywhere except where you click to start or stop the video. That should take you to the YouTube page where the clip originates. If you have Orbit installed and the clip is playing, hover your mouse over it and in a second or two, it'll give you a little window you can clip which will enable you to save the video as an FLV file.

You'll need an FLV player installed to run these clips later. The one I use is FLV Player and it's also free but you may have to root around on this page for a company called Applian Technologies to find it.

If you download FLV Player there, the installer may also ask you if you want to install a couple demos of Applian products. You may want to do this or you may not. Applian makes an array of programs that capture streaming audio and video from websites. They are not free and in some cases, they take a little effort to set up properly. Depending on how badly you want to capture the stuff that Orbit won't grab for you, the time and expense may be worth it. Many of their products like Replay A/V have a timer function and a tuner for Internet radio broadcasts so you can use them like a TiVo to record online programs. I've captured shows from BBC Radio and Internet radio stations (like Shokus Internet Radio) with Applian software.

I've been using their wares for some time and have generally been happy with them…but I'll caution you about one other thing. They seem to come out with a new product every month instead of upgrading the old ones. Many of their products provide overlapping functions and when a new one comes out, I'm never sure what it does that my old Applian products don't do. Make sure you experiment with a demo before you cough up any money. That's good advice, of course, for any software you purchase but it seems especially prudent in this case.

William F. Buckley Jr. writes the kind of column about Bush and the Iraq War which, had it been written by anyone else, would get denounced as the ravings of a leftie.

Mark is back from the L.A. Times Festival of Books up at U.C.L.A., an event that continues through the weekend with more booths of authors selling and signing their books and more panel discussions and lectures. The place was crowded, the sun was hot and people seemed to be having a very good time. If I didn't have to work on a book of my own, I might be going back tomorrow.

I attended one panel discussion today — "The Age of Spin: Controlling the Message" with Joe Conason, David Goodman, Michael Isikoff, Frank Luntz and the moderator, John Powers. The topic drifted a bit, thanks in part to a small but vocal group that was present to argue that the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy that involved "controlled demolitions" and scheming that the press has refused to investigate. There were people outside the hall and inside with jars of 9/11 rubble that they held up to prove…uh, I'm not sure what. I'm also not sure what kind of scenario they imagine — who arranged these demolitions and why. The thesis seems to be that the lack of evidence is evidence that there's been a conspiracy to hide the evidence.

The rest of the panel was predictable and somewhat entertaining. You can probably catch it on C-Span some time in the coming week and if you do, you'll hear Frank Luntz being very amusing as he defended his own work as a Republican pollster and advisor and Michael Isikoff defending his position as a reporter who works for corporate overlords. David Goodman said that Hurricane Katrina was a turning point for the Bush administration in that they were unable to control the imagery of dead bodies in New Orleans the way they banned photos of the flag-draped coffins being shipped back from Iraq. And Joe Conason discussed the way "spin" was used to sell the Iraq War. For more information, catch it on C-Span whenever it runs. (Someone let me know if you see before I do when it's airing.)

Afterwards, I got to meet Conason and get a book signed, and I told him my theory that the entire Bush administration was a "controlled demolition." He laughed and added, "…of Democracy." I also got a book signed by Paul Conrad, the longtime editorial cartoonist for the L.A. Times.

There were other things of interest that I'll mention as I recall them. Right now, I'm going to thank my pal Gordon Kent for getting me a ticket to the panel and then I'm going to get back to work.

This is a Laurel and Hardy clip — not a particularly funny one but historic, nonetheless. It has usually been reported (by me, among others) that the only TV appearance Stan and Ollie ever made was on the Ralph Edwards program, This is Your Life. Insofar as American TV is concerned, that appears to be true. But in 1955, they did this brief bit on a British variety series called This is Music Hall, saluting some of their friends in that area of entertainment who were members of a club called the Water Rats. Stan was a lifelong lover of English music hall performers.

For the next few days in this space, I'm going to be spotlighting some obscure footage of my favorite performers. None of it will be particularly entertaining but it's always nice to see a little more of those two guys. Here you go…

Yes, I'm plugging another live show in Los Angeles. My friend Shelly Goldstein is a brilliant writer and singer who's been wowing them lately in the British clubs. On May 12, the day before Mother's Day, she will be doing a special mother-themed show she's calling "The Mother of All Cabaret" at The Gardenia, a small 'n' friendly supper club located near La Brea and Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. I've seen Shelly there and she's very funny and she sings like a dream and what more do you need to know? Oh, right: When to go. The show starts at 9 PM but for the best seating and a darn good meal, go early and have dinner. And you'd probably like to have the number for reservations, which is (323) 467-7444. She has my highest recommendation.

Had a nice time today at the Hollywood Collectors Show out in Burbank. I spoke to many of the folks I mentioned would be there and encountered many other persons of interest in the aisles. Got Mickey Rooney to sign a copy of his autobiography (the first one — he's done two) and bought Bill Marx's new bio about his life as a musician and his father's as a comedy legend. It's called Son of Harpo Speaks.

Mr. Rooney seemed surprisingly healthy but a bit disoriented by the crowds. Hard to believe that at age 86 — he'll be 87 in September — the man has been in show business for more than 84 years. I heard someone today describe Sid Caesar as an "old-timer" and he is. But Mickey Rooney was a performer before Sid Caesar was born.

Oddly enough, Rooney wasn't the oldest actor in the room today, nor was he the shortest. Jerry Maren, who was born eight months before The Mighty Mick, was wandering around. Maren was in his late teens when he played a member of the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz, and you saw him in a video clip here the other day playing Buster Brown.

My friend Earl Kress and I had a nice chat with Mally Lewis, daughter of famed ventriloquist Shari Lewis. Mally has been carrying on the family tradition, performing (and doing a fine job) with Lamb Chop. Actually, the whole place was full of interesting folks…but not too full today. The longest lines seemed to be for Rooney, Henry Winkler, Erik Estrada, Joey Heatherton and Seka. Most but not all of those folks are scheduled to be there tomorrow.