Monthly Archives: October 2015

As I've written here before, I don't like Halloween. I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.

I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.

Also, I've always been a fussy eater — an extension of my many food allergies. Even before I knew I had them, I was aware that some foods made me not feel great and I tried to avoid them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve was stuff I simply didn't want to eat…and I would have gotten very sick if I had. Into the trash can it went and I felt bad about it. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.

And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. I promised to stop bashing candy corn on this site so that's all I'll say about that.

So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."

I'm not writing this to try to change your mind about a holiday you might love. If you do, great. As long as you stay off my property, knock yourself out. But over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.

So that's why I'm home tonight and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Kim Davis costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.

The original Monty Python's Flying Circus TV show consisted of four seasons adding up to 45 episodes. The last season of six episodes was done without John Cleese (unless you count a brief cameo or two).

Cleese has often been asked why he left and I've heard him on many occasions just say he was bored with the repetition. Recently when he was asked about this, he gave a longer answer…

You may have heard that the Republican National Committee has announced that after the CNBC debate the other night, they will participate in no more debates involving NBC. Why? Ted Cruz gave the game away on Fox News on Thursday when he suggested debates moderated by Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh…

…in other words, moderators who will ask them questions they want to be asked. No one will ask anyone how come the math on his or her tax plan doesn't add up or how they can defend a past vote or financial association or why they seem to advocate one thing and do another. What they want is pure infomercial. With moderators like that, the candidates could have their answers prepared and just read them off TelePrompters.

They thought the CNBC moderators were disrespectful and interested in confrontation. That may be true, though I would think folks who brag about how they'll stand up to Putin could face a little of that. The CNBC interrogators sure didn't impress me as great journalists, not that a lot of folks do these days. But I think the real problem is that they did ask some questions that caused candidates to give answers they regretted and which may have hurt them. That's what the candidates want to stop.

As I've said repeatedly, I don't like these "debates." I think they distill important issues down to quick, incomplete sound bites. They always remind me of Miss America finalists being asked to summarize their plan for World Peace in 90 seconds. In every one, too many questions are answered, "I have a plan to fix this" and we never get around to hearing what that plan is.

I, for one, would like to have heard Mike Huckabee — an opponent of fetal tissue research and many scientific programs — explain what he would do to hasten the finding of cures for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's. My guess is it involves prayer, not raising taxes, eliminating F.D.A. regulations and creating new ways for private sector researcher firms to claim any damn thing they want and to soak sick, desperate people for remedies of questionable effectiveness.

You know Al Molinaro as Murray the Cop on the Odd Couple TV show (the Klugman-Randall version) and as Al on Happy Days. He appeared a lot of other TV shows including an NBC special that I wrote. I'd always heard he was very nice, thoroughly professional and that on a set, everyone loved him. During the two days I worked with him, that was exactly how it went.

Al was one of those great character actors — like Jack Somack and Burt Mustin — who came to it later in life. Al was successful in other businesses like real estate and he was in his forties (and financially successful) before he decided to pursue a new field…acting. He spent a decade or two doing bit parts and non-paying gigs before he finally began making a decent living in his second career.

I don't recall where it was but I once heard a story about how Al got discovered. I can't verify that it's true but it's such a good story I'm going to tell it anyway.

The way I heard it, an actors' group was putting on a play to showcase their members. They were going to invite every producer and agent they could there in the hope that they would get representation and/or jobs out of it. They selected a play that had lots of juicy, showy roles…but there was one part that no one wanted to do. It was tiny one with only three or four lines and it would not show anyone off in a way that would prompt a producer or agent to leap to his or her feet and say, "I want that person!"

So someone in the cast knew Al, they asked him and he agreed to take it. You've probably already guessed where this is going.

Opening night, they had the house packed with important folks. None of the main actors got any nibbles out of the event but at least one of the agents, seeing Al in his few minutes on stage, rushed back to the dressing room after the final curtain and asked Al, "Do you have an agent? If you don't, I'd like to be your agent." Al signed with the guy and within a week had several national commercials…which led to bigger, better things.

Is this story true? I dunno…maybe not. But I'd sure like to believe it is because Al seemed like such a good guy. He passed away yesterday at the age of 96 but will live forever in reruns.

I've already recommended my pal Kliph Nesteroff's fine new book, The Comedians, here. Now let me recommend that if you're in the Los Angeles area, you plan to attend his kick-off party. It's Wednesday, November 3 at the Cinefamily — or as some of us prefer to call it, The Silent Movie Theater over on Fairfax. Kliph will be showing rare and astounding clips of great comedians in action. Included will be Comedian Backstage, the notorious 1963 ABC documentary about Shelley Berman that he later felt had ruined his career.

Details and tickets are available on this page. If my schedule and my new knee permits, I'll be there.

Jonathan Chait explains how Marco Rubio, in selling his tax proposals, is counting on the fact that Americans don't know how to add. Hey, it's worked before for other candidates. Kevin Drum flat-out calls Rubio a liar.

My right-wing buddy Roger has been telling me that Hillary Clinton will lose because Americans don't trust her. Even if I buy some of the claims against her, who's going to beat her in the integrity category? Rubio, who seems to be deliberately misrepresenting his own proposals? Ben Carson, who says it's "propaganda" that he had an association with that company for which he did all those endorsement videos? Carly Fiorina, who swears by videos and statistics that no one else can see? Donald Trump, who keeps rewriting his own history and insulting whoever points that out? Hey, how about Jeb! Bush, who likes to pretend 9/11 didn't happen while his brother was president and that the Iraq War "kept us safe?"

It's going to be a long 374 days until the election.

The other day here, I linked to a video of Main Street, a barbershop quartet that did a funny medley of recent hit songs rendered in the barbershop style. Here they are on more traditional ground, performing "Lida Rose" from The Music Man, accompanied by a female barbershop troupe, the Treblemakers. I like this a lot…

Comedian and comedy writer Greg Fitzsimmons has come up with a novel way to punish Bill Cosby: Steal his material. I don't think I approve of this.

So I see a lot of online commentators saying Jeb! Bush is toast, as if he hasn't got a chance since he needed to change the game with last night's debate and failed to do so. His chances of winning the Republican nomination may be down around Bill Maher's but politics — at least this kind of politics — doesn't work like that. In sports, as the late Yogi Berra said, it ain't over 'til it's over. In nomination-seeking, it ain't over until your big donors tell you it's over.

It wouldn't surprise me if he got out tomorrow but it also wouldn't surprise me if he stayed in the game — denial apparently being hereditary to the Bush clan — a few more months. He may just think the guys ahead of him in the polls are all so unstable that they could all self-destruct before long. As I understand it, Jeb! still has a lot of money to spend on his campaign. You'll know he's in trouble when he starts selling that exclamation point on eBay to raise funds.

Speaking of which! Mark Thorson, one of my correspondents here who catches a lot of my klutzier typos, sent me this link to an article about a California man who won the right to have an exclamation point in his name. Scott Shaw!, are you listening?

One thing that bothered me about last night's debate was the tremendous amount of factual errors that were made by candidates. There are some in any debate, G.O.P. or Dem, but I don't recall this volume before, nor do I recall them being so defended as some sort of plot by the Liberal Media. Donald Trump denies something that's clearly stated on his website and it's not, "Oops, sorry, I misspoke." It's an attack on the questioner's fact-checking. That's real high school.

During the Bush-Kerry election, I lost a friend…well, first I lost the ability to talk with him and then I lost the friendship. He was hysterical in his belief that within weeks of a Kerry inauguration, America would be a scorched wasteland with the few survivors staggering about looking for others to eat. To him, there were no unflattering lies about Kerry. Everything negative was inarguably true. I had pro-Bush friends (I still do) with whom I could discuss matters. They had misgivings about their guy as I did about Kerry and I think we all voted for the lesser evil, even though we didn't concur on who that was.

But the Kerry-hating acquaintance? Anything bad about Bush was "Liberal Propaganda," not to be considered because, you know, it came from people who were not Bush supporters. That alone proved it was a lie. He really had a trouble having his good/evil views diluted in any way.

I've never backed a candidate who I didn't think had negatives. I have a lot of reservations about Hillary Clinton's plans regarding foreign policy and about Bernie Sanders' lack of very many plans in that area. I don't really want to listen to anyone who thinks their candidate can't do anything wrong because I find those discussions invariably go nowhere except maybe Fantasyland.

Last night, Ben Carson told a lie that even some leading right-wing commentators (like this one) can't paint over claiming media malpractice. If that howler had been uttered by a Democrat — an Al Gore or a Clinton or Obama — we'd be hearing that the person was a Congenital Liar; not just that he or she was a liar but that they had some deep emotional flaw or mental illness that compelled them to spout falsehoods the way a Tourette's victim hurls "f" bombs. I understand the political strategy there. Convince people your opponent can't speak the truth to save his life and you don't have to rebut the true things he says that you don't want your supporters to consider.

There are a lot of good fact-checking sites out there like Factcheck.Org and Politifact. Since they're manned by humans, they can make mistakes — though I've never thought they were all wrong about anything. When I hear someone say they're all biased and not to be believed, I think someone is really, really afraid of being exposed as a fibber. If you hear anyone say I'm wrong about this, don't believe them because they're surely a biased congential liar.

• If I ever run for office, my motto will be "Don't trust the media — especially when their so-called 'fact-checkers' say I was wrong!"

William Saletan on the problems some of the Republican candidates had last night with facts. Don't want to stand behind what it says on your website? Blame the media for reporting it. It's always a great applause line.

Another great cooking lesson from Greg's Kitchen. I like this man because he prepares food the way I do…

Despite my decision to only watch excerpts and summaries of the Republican Debate this evening, I tuned in live a few times and mostly heard government-bashing and a lot of folks who sounded like Jim Webb complaining they weren't being allowed to say enough. Also, no matter what the problem is, someone was able to say, "I have a plan for that" without explaining what the plan is.

I fault the debate format as much as anything else. Thirty seconds to explain how you'd grow the economy? If your plan to grow the economy can be explained in under five minutes, it's probably so vague and lacking in specifics as to be meaningless. Anyone can say, "We'll bring jobs back from Mexico" when no one's going to ask him to explain how.

And don'tcha love Mike Huckabee taking the fearless stand that we should eradicate deadly diseases? Who's going to argue that one? And if you asked him just how that's to be accomplished, he'd probably say, "We'll make sure the researchers focus on this," as if no one's on that case right now. (This, by the way, is the same Mike Huckabee who used to do ads for a bogus Alzheimer's cure and who doesn't trust scientists on Climate Change.)

After, I heard Donald Trump complaining that the candidates didn't get as much time to talk as Hillary had in the Democratic debate. And this is the same Donald Trump who bragged about getting them to make the Republican debate shorter. No one pointed out to him that maybe Hillary got more time to talk because she was sharing the stage with four other people instead of nine.

But really, I do blame the debate itself. It's a silly format and the CNBC moderators asked a lot of lame questions and allowed themselves to be bullied into letting some candidates talk out of turn. Ten Democrats up there might have been just as bad.

They should do these things like Musical Chairs. First debate, you have to be polling at 2% to get in…second debate, 4%…third debate, 6% and so on. When it gets down to four candidates, freeze the number there.

One other thing: I heard Ted Cruz do his big applause line about a flat tax that's so simple everyone can do the math on a postcard…then we can get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. This country is never going to try this but if it did, who's going to collect and process the postcards and the checks, make sure no one is lying about their income and then go after those who don't file at all? If you get rid of the I.R.S., you're just going to have to invent a new agency to do all that and give them all the same powers that the I.R.S. now has. Of course, I guess we could do it all on the honor system, right?

Today (Wednesday), the guest on Stu's Show is Lonnie Burr, who was a Mouseketeer on the original Mickey Mouse Club. Lonnie's done lots of other things as an actor, dancer, choreographer, director, etc., and they'll be talking about all that. They'll also be talking about a strange situation where Lonnie feels estranged from the old Mouse Club group. As Stu says in his ads for today, "After nearly forty years of arranging and planning get-togethers and shows featuring many of his original cohorts, Lonnie no longer gets invited to Mouseketeer gatherings, and the reason may come as a surprise. If you're interested in this, tune in and get surprised!

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. Why? Because we like you!

Today is one month to the day since I had my knee replaced. Everyone keeps asking me how it feels so lemme tell you: It feels pretty good. It hurts now and then but so did the old one for the last few years. Unlike the old one, this one is getting better and better. The leg needs some working-out and exercising and I need to get back into wearing shoes. I've been mainly wearing slippers for the whole month and yesterday, when I put my shoes on for the first time since 9/28, it felt very odd indeed.

The medical bills continue to mount but fortunately, so do the insurance payments. At the moment, the total bill stands at about $180,000 and my current outta-pocket cost is $58.19. I have spent more than that for old issues of Sugar & Spike.

I don't think I'm going to watch the Republican Debate tonight. I'm not going to watch the Democratic ones, either. Whatever is worth hearing will be on highlight reels and YouTube excerpts. I'm growing increasingly bored with so much of this contest. The most interesting part of all this to me is when Ben Carson starts discussing the debt ceiling and makes it clear that he really doesn't understand what it is. Let's see if anyone explains it to him before he gets asked about it tonight. I would also expect that Donald Trump thinks he can finish off Jeb! Bush once and forever as a contender just by forcing Bush to defend his brother's record.

Hillary was on with Stephen Colbert last night. She came off as funny and down-to-earth and I still don't think it serves the public good to have candidates go on talk shows for little "witty and charming" spots which can easily reflect the work of writers more than the reality of the politico. Colbert asked nothing too hard (or hard to anticipate) and it was all pleasant and entertaining and I think people running for public office should be facing tougher interviews than that.

Back later. Maybe.