Monthly Archives: July 2015

Roderick George Toombs was once the most hated man in the wrestling game but I liked him. Under his stage/ring name of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, he wrestled hundreds of times with most of the audience booing him and wishing for him to die a slow, painful death. People paid good money to go see him wrassle, praying for his defeat and humiliation.

His career was a masterpiece of acting and showmanship since, first of all, he was a real nice guy when he wasn't being paid to play a rat. And secondly, he became a superstar of professional wrestling without really having the physique for it. Hulk Hogan — against whom he was often pitted — was constructed like a wrestler: 6'7" and body-built to a glistening sheen. Roddy was barely 6' (shorter than I) and not all that muscular. Still, through Roddy's sheer personality and performance, he managed to look like someone who might very well kick the Hulkster's ass. I do not think it is a coincidence that Roddy was among the 1% of professional wrestlers who ever manage to make money doing anything in front of an audience besides wrestling.

It seemed to me his success was due to three things, one being that showmanship and his ability to work a crowd. Another was his willingness to endure the physical strains and injuries that can occur in the ring even if you're following a scenario wherein you're supposed to triumph. And the last of the three was his ability to laugh off the hatred he sometimes encountered when, as per the script, he won. Some people who take this kind of thing way too seriously really despised him. To Roddy, all of this was part of the job.

Back in the eighties, I co-produced and wrote a CBS special and he was our star. He was utterly professional, totally cooperative and very eager to please everyone. I can't think of a star I ever worked with who had less ego. My favorite moment of the experience? It may been this incident which I related here before as follows…

We were having lunch at the old Hamptons Restaurant on Highland — the one I was later a partner in but this was before that. The guy at the table behind Roddy kept moving his chair around and bumping into Roddy's chair. Roddy asked him politely to stop doing that. The guy kept doing it so Roddy asked him again…still polite but a bit less so. Finally, Roddy asked the waiter to tell the man to either stop bumping into him or move to another table.

The other diner got angry at Roddy (not yet realizing who it was) and turned to him and barked, "What's your problem, fella?" Roddy turned and got up and said in a Clint Eastwood reading, "My problem is that you keep bumping my chair." The other diner for some reason was itching to make this Roddy's fault and to demand an apology. He got up too…and from the body language, it looked for about two seconds like someone was going to take a swing at someone.

But then, and I wish I had a photo of it, the other guy suddenly realized he was messing with "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, the guy who liked to take a folded-up metal folding chair and bash his ring opponents into unconsciousness with it. The change in facial expression was acute and hilarious. He promptly apologized to "Mr. Piper" (addressing him that way) and moved his chair around to the other side of the table so he was nowhere near Roddy.

And Roddy whispered to me, "See? The reputation does me some good."

He died last night at the age of 61. Cardiac arrest, they're saying. You know, you hear so much in and around show business about people who seem nice but really aren't that I want to make this point: He played a bad guy but he was a good guy. Isn't it nice that it can also work that way?

Are you Hooked on Words? Being a writer, I am but what I'm actually asking is if you've played a game on your Smartphone or other electronic device called Hooked on Words. So I guess I should ask if you're hooked on Hooked on Words.

I have it on my iPhone and I play it when I'm waiting somewhere for a few minutes. The app shows you columns of random letters — six columns at a time, each containing seven letters. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find words in it. Like in the illo below, you can find "ring" or "grin" or "side" or "bedtime." Your finger can go from any letter to the letter up, down or diagonal but you can't repeat the same tile in a word. As you use up letters, others drop down to fill the voids.

I usually don't play it for very long and I really don't keep score. I just give myself little challenges — like one time, I'll decide to see how many words I can find regardless of length before the nurse comes out to tell me the doctor is ready to see me. Or other times, I'll decide to take as much time as I need but to only make words of six or more letters.

Most of the time to spell a word of any length, you have to go up and down and diagonal and move around in an odd pattern. Every once in a while though, the random letter selection just gives you a nice, long word by chance.

The other day I was waiting for the doctor who's making my knees work better and I started playing, not really playing hard or concentrating. All of a sudden, I noticed that the game had by chance given me a seven-letter pattern that was very familiar, though it wasn't acceptable as a word. I immediately did a screen capture so I could preserve it and share it with you. The screen capture has been Photoshopped only to reduce the size of it. I didn't change what's in the image in any way.

Here — take a look: Ignore the word "tit" and check out the second column from the right. What are the odds of that?

Also: On Sunday at 9 PM, Comedy Central is running some sort of special using material from The Daily Show. It's called News Your Own Adventure: The Quest for the Best Daily Show Segments and that's about all I know about it.

And on Thursday, Stewart's last day as host, they're airing a day-long marathon of old shows. I sure hope they're thinking of rerunning a lot of that material in the future. I think it would draw a consistent audience despite its age.

This article over at Hollywood Reporter says, as I quote: "Jon Stewart's final Daily Show episode will feature guests Louis C.K., Denis Leary and Amy Schumer. The longtime late-night host made the announcement at the end of Thursday night's episode." No, he didn't. He said those people would be on next week but he didn't say they'd be on his last show.

The piece also says the last show will be 50 minutes long. I assume that's so and I'm waiting to see if anyone tells my TiVo, which still thinks it's 32 minutes.

After I posted the previous message, I thought of one other thing I should have said. Bill Carter says that something Stewart put on The Daily Show made Megyn Kelly cry. That may be so but I don't think it got her to change her act, nor did it probably cause any of her viewers to think less of her as a newsperson. My admiration for Jon Stewart is vast and great but I sometimes think his lasting impact is being exaggerated.

Also: I still don't know what's going to happen in the Daily Show timeslot between the time Stewart does his last show and Trevor Noah does his first. And has anyone heard anything resembling a debut date for the new Jason Jones show or the one with Samantha Bee?

Bill Carter on what Jon Stewart achieved on The Daily Show. I think this essay (and other praise Stewart is now receiving) may make too much of the more concrete effects — like getting CNN's Crossfire canceled, which given its ratings was no major toppling. I think Mr. Stewart gave us a brilliant, entertaining show that raised a lot of awareness in this country but didn't have a whole lot of impact in quantifiable ways. He exposed an awful lot of lying and hypocrisy among politicians and pundits and newsfolks…but I'm not sure it did those people a whole lot of harm.

Max Fisher thinks the online lynching of Dr. Walter Palmer has gone too far. It probably has if you look on it as an attack on one individual. If you look on it as a mass revulsion against trophy hunting, maybe not…but I'm sure it wouldn't feel that way to me if I were Dr. Palmer. And it's unfair that his employees, family and even some of his patients are being punished to some extent.

Interestingly, the worst things I've read online about the man were when I cruised, just outta curiosity, some online forums where hunters post. I'd expected messages defending the man's actions and while I saw some, I saw a surprising number that said things like, "It's men like him who give all hunters a bad name."

When I'm writing, I like to be hit in the face. By air, I mean. (If I liked to be hit in the face any other way, I'd try to find a job like when I worked on MacGyver. The three worst weeks of my life as a TV writer.)

Anyway, I like a little breeze coming at me…not enough to ruffle papers or even my hair but just enough to keep the atmosphere moving. This is probably not unrelated to the fact that I have Sleep Apnea and must sleep with a device clamped onto my nose that forces air into it all night. I tend not to breathe normally when prone so I require a bit of an assist at night, and there's a teensy bit of the same problem when I'm perpendicular.

So as I sit here at my computer, I usually have a small electric fan hurling oxygen my way. For years, I had an adequate fan there but I recently replaced it with a real good one, the Ozeri Brezza III Dual Oscillating 10" High Velocity Desk and Table Fan. It's pretty quiet, it has plenty of different speeds and it has a nifty little remote control so I can turn it off or down when I'm on the phone and don't want the party on the other end to think I'm in a wind tunnel. The remote also lets you move the air flow from side to side or up and down so you can point it exactly where you want it.

I did not check out every possible option; just bought this one and decided I couldn't have done better. There may be others just as good or cheaper but I thought I'd tell you of my happiness with it. If you want to check it out, here's an Amazon link. It's $43, air not included.

Duane Hanson wrote me to say…

I understand why you don't get the idea of hunting. It was never part of the culture or reality where you grew up. While I am of a similar age to you, I was born into a lower middle class family in a very rural area of northern Minnesota. My family hunted deer, ducks and geese. If my dad got a deer during the fall hunting season, it meant the freezer would be full and we would eat better all winter. In addition, deer hunting in places like Minnesota provides a necessary service by keeping the deer population at a manageable level. There is a limited amount of forage available and during harsh winters many thousands of deer can starve to death if their numbers outstrip the available resources. Nature's population control can be pretty brutal.

I never became a hunter myself and moved to a bit more urban area eventually, but I have many relatives who still look forward to hunting season in the fall and the chance to fill the freezer with venison and game birds. That type of hunting is a far cry from the trophy hunting pursued by people like the dentist who killed Cecil the lion. I have never been comfortable with trophy hunting and I understand the opposition to it. At my place of employment there's a guy just down the hall who has the walls of his office covered with big game trophies. I know trophy hunters feel pride and accomplishment in what they do, but I find it a bit creepy.

I'm afraid I find it more than a bit creepy. I do understand the kind of hunting where you grew up. It's not something in which I can ever imagine myself participating but I get it. There are lots of activities in that category like skydiving or race car driving or watching Will Ferrell movies. (Well, maybe not the Will Ferrell movies.) I just don't "get" the rush of pride and excitement that some seem to associate with trophy hunting.

And putting the head of the animal you killed on your wall? I'm not sure I could even stand to be in your house if you did that. I have left rooms because of taxidermy.

By the way: A lot of folks directed my attention to the segment Jimmy Kimmel did on his show about this. Watching Jimmy Kimmel is close to skydiving or race car driving in my book but this was pretty good. So you see: I am open to new experiences. Sometimes.

Here we have several years worth of openings from The Muppet Show…in German. Looks to me like someone — aware of the value of the international market for these programs — made sure that when they shot the openings in English with title cards that said "The Muppet Show" made sure they also shot them with "Die Muppet Show" for Germany. I wonder how many other languages they did this for…

Nate Silver, who interprets political polls the way Jascha Heifetz played the violin, says Donald Trump ain't as popular as some people — chief among them Donald Trump — say. Yeah, 20% or so of Republicans say they want him as their nominee but you can't win the nomination with 20%…and Trump's negatives suggest he'll have a hard time driving that 20% much higher.

I would also add that it's still a long, long time until people have to cast a real vote. I think a lot of them are enjoying the show he's putting on and not listening too much (or caring) about what he'd actually do in office. Let's see where he is when it comes time to get serious.

Also, Silver doesn't mention this but I have it on excellent authority that Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham all now have lower favorability ratings than Dr. Walter J. Palmer. Perry and Fiorina are, however, polling slightly ahead of Bill Cosby.

A man named Jonathan Pollard will be paroled from prison in November after serving thirty years. Fred Kaplan says Pollard is one of the worst traitors of the twentieth century for selling U.S. secrets to Israel. And here I thought a traitor was anyone who voted for Obama…

Happy Birthday, Professor Irwin Corey! Congratulations on living to be as old as your stage wardrobe!

Folks on Yelp are posting scathing "reviews" of Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who I think it's safe to assume now really, really regrets his decision to go Zimbabwe and hunt down a lion. He wanted to mount its head on his wall and now much of America is crying for Dr. Palmer's head to be mounted on a wall somewhere.

Yelp occasionally deletes a batch of these "reviews" but they apparently can't delete as fast as Dr. Palmer's detractors can report. Here's a typical one that's up at the moment…

I needed a tooth extracted, so Dr. Palmer shot me in the neck with a crossbow, chased and tracked me for 40 hours, and (once I collapsed from pain and exhaustion) removed my entire head and skinned me.

Best part, they accept my insurance!!

I dunno if Dr. Palmer can or will be prosecuted in this matter but it looks like at the least, his dental practice will suffer and maybe end, and that he'll have to go through life with a lot of people thinking he is a horrible, horrible human being. If the least is all that happens, I for one will not think he went unpunished.

This is news footage of Jack Benny's funeral, which took place on December 28 or 29, 1974 (accounts vary), two or three days after the great comedian passed away. The location was Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, a place I have visited too many times, including for the burials of three of my closest relatives…