Monthly Archives: June 2016

Jeff Ross is one of my favorite current comedians…and no, I have no idea why he seems to be trying to change his appearance to look more like Jackie Coogan on The Addams Family. Last October, he appeared briefly at an event in Hollywood called Politicon, about which I heard nothing. It was apparently two days out in Pasadena with speeches by most of the talking heads you see on cable news programs. Anyway, here's Jeff doing nine minutes of funny, topical poor taste…

Are you laboring under the impression that yesterday Nate Silver predicted Hillary Clinton would win? Well, not quite. He said there was an 80% chance of it and it does sometimes rain on days when there's a 20% chance of rain.

More importantly, that's a forecast that is subject to change as the election progresses. Things almost certainly will change — and probably in both directions one or more times before November. In fact, a forecast like this may cause things to change…say, if it causes campaign donors to donate more or less in some direction or if it prompts a candidate to alter their strategy. So don't celebrate or mourn just yet.

Ed Kilgore amplifies on this topic. And here, Silver and his staff discuss it in greater detail.

Like everyone who's no longer in school, I had a lot of different teachers back when I was — some good teachers, some not so good. Quite a few of them had no impact on me at all other than to drag me through some class that I was required to take. I suppose the one whose teachings had the most lasting impact on me was Mrs. Grandholme, who taught me touch-typing. I have never used anything taught to me in the realm of Physics or Chemistry but at this very moment, I am using a skill I owe in large part to Mrs. Grandholme.

The runner-up would probably be Mr. Cline, who taught English and History at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High. He imparted little useful info to me but he still left a lasting impression. It didn't have much to do with English or History and I'm still trying decide if it was for the better.

First thing I should do here is to give you a visual. He looked very much like Norman Lear, minus the silly hat. Here — study this picture…

Got him? Okay. Then I should tell you this about Mr. Cline: He was a very funny teacher and oh, how he loved to perform in front of the class. I think deep down, he wanted to be an actor or a comedian…and one year when he emceed a big talent show and fund-raising event in the school auditorium, he was terrific. Campus legend had it that years earlier, one of those events was hosted by Jerry Lewis. I wasn't there to see that but if it did happen, I'll bet Jerry wasn't half as funny as Mr. Cline. (Come to think of it, I've seen Jerry not be half as funny as cold sores.)

Third thing I have to tell you about Mr. Cline: A lot of kids in his classes really hated him and at times, I was one of them.

I found myself, not by choice, in a number of his classes over the years. He started each one the same way: "You can be a pupil or you can be a student." The difference in his mind was that a pupil just sits there and listens and does the work and waits to be taught. A student wants to learn and actively participates and does more than is expected. "I teach my classes for students," he said over and over, putting a special, revered emphasis on the word "students." To that end, he did things like this…

One Monday in History class, he assigned us to read Chapter Four in our textbooks and warned us there would be a test the next day. And indeed on Tuesday, there was a test — on Chapter Five. Because a student would have read ahead.

Another time, he assigned Chapter Six and most of us — by now, hip to the game — read Six and Seven. The test the next day was actually on Chapter Six but the test consisted of one line: "Write down five interesting things you learned from reading that chapter." That's harder to do than you imagine…and I failed because two of the five things I wrote down were actually in Chapter Seven. Because a student would have remembered which pages were which.

I mean, after all! What good is a piece of knowledge if you don't remember which chapter of one book it appeared in?

Yet another time, he assigned us to write an essay that was due on Friday and then on Thursday, he announced he would collect them then. Anyone who couldn't hand his or her essay in a day early would receive a lower grade when he or she did. Because a student wouldn't have waited until the last minute to complete it.

I'm sure his motives were good. I'm sure he thought he was encouraging us to become more inquisitive and serious about learning. But it sure didn't seem to me like that was the outcome.

It seemed to me like he was prompting us to think of everything as a big game where the person in charge — in this case, him — can change the rules whenever he feels like it. Life works that way at times and I suppose that could be a valuable lesson to keep in mind…but it got to be a terrible distraction from any possible actual learning. When I did read the textbook, I wasn't thinking "What can I learn from this?" I was thinking, "How will Mr. Cline screw with us over this material?"

I don't remember very much that I learned in those classes of his. What I do remember are his silly little gotchas like the one in an English class near the end of the semester. He passed out forms and told us to write down the names and brief summaries of all the books we'd read that term. No particular quantity of reading had ever been assigned to us but a student would have been reading many books all year. So we had to make out a list and then he graded us on the quantity of books and also on whether he thought we were reading at the proper level.

I got an "A" on that one, partly because I had read about five good books and partly because I was good at making up phony book titles and fake author names for about seven more. He couldn't very well fault my choice of books he'd never heard of so he gave me high marks for them. I had to resist the temptation to go to him and say that while a student might not have fibbed about what books he'd read, a good teacher would have gone to the school library and looked up titles with which he was not familiar.

I "won" that skirmish but I didn't fare so well the time he ordered us to hand in the notes we'd taken on his previous day's lecture. He hadn't told us to take notes but, he said, a student would have taken extensive, detailed notes. So he was going to grade us on how many notes we'd taken and how detailed they were.

I had taken almost none and what I had written down was in a shorthand style that only I would understand: Key words to jog my memory instead of full quotes and sentences. Mr. Cline had never lectured us on any "right" way to take notes but we were faulted if we hadn't written them the way he thought they should be taken. That time, I decided I had to actually confront him.

After class, while everyone else went to lunch, I went to him and said, "I don't understand why I'm getting graded on a basis other than whether I do the work you assign and understand it. I get the feeling you're going to flunk me because I'm wearing a green shirt and you suddenly announce that a student would have worn a blue one today."

I'll say this for Mr. Cline: You could talk to him like this. I couldn't have had this conversation with a lot of my teachers because many of them had this "Me Teacher, Me Know Everything" attitude. Not Mr. Cline. He prided himself on encouraging his charges to think and question and I respected him for that even though I often thought he was achieving the opposite of that goal.

He explained to me that day why he taught the way he taught and stated, as if quoting something in the Bill of Rights, "A student is someone who takes detailed, extensive notes."

I said, "How about this? A student is someone who learns. You know, a minimum-wage stenographer could have taken down every word you said and not retain one of them. Which of these would you prefer I be?"

I remember that moment. I remember several such moments in my childhood — moments that made me realize that grown-ups and adults and parents and people in power weren't always right.

They weren't always wrong, either. It was important not to fall into the trap of thinking that, too…but it was important to me to fully embrace the concept that they weren't always right and that I needed to question what they said. (Later, it was important to learn — or at least try to learn — to do that in a constructive, non-confrontational way. I still sometimes have trouble with that part.)

When I said that line to Mr. Cline about the minimum-wage stenographer, he looked like I'd slapped him. Then he stammered back a reply: "If you don't take detailed notes, how will you retain what you learn in my class?"

I said, "By listening instead of writing. Ask me a question about what you said in class yesterday."

He asked a question and I managed to answer it correctly with a close-to-verbatim recitation of his actual words. Some of that was luck but I do have a pretty good memory. It's not flawless and there are times when it simply doesn't record things in the first place. But it's pretty good now and it was even better then, especially when I was listening instead of writing things down. And no, I don't remember what question he asked me and I don't remember what I said in reply that day.

As I'm explaining here, I don't remember much of anything Mr. Cline taught me. Just these things I'm telling you now because the long-forgotten things were of no apparent use to me. This "lesson" was.

I think after I answered his question correctly, I pointed to my head and said something to him like, "I took my notes up here. Would you rather I'd taken them on paper instead? Because I can't do both and like every single student you ever had, the minute I'm out of your class, my notebook's going in the wastebasket. With luck though, I'll keep my brain with me for the rest of my life."

During my school years, I argued a lot with teachers and I lost a lot of the arguments, often (but not always) because I was wrong. In that same high school, I got into a nastier-than-it-should-have-been quarrel with an Art Teacher who was very nice and caring and who didn't deserve the crap I gave her over some assignments to design what they then called "psychedelic art." I was politically very conservative back then and really, really uncomfy with all the glorification I saw around me — this was the late sixties — of drugs.

Today…well, today I still don't like 'em but my attitude now is what adults do in private is their business as long as it doesn't harm others. Even if I'd been right in '68, I was wrong to connect that to Mrs. Nichols urging us to create designs not unlike those by artists whose work was then described as "drug-inspired." I lost that spat and I deserved to.

I was wrong about a lot of things in high school. In fact, as I came to realize, high school is a great place to be wrong about things. Get as much of it as you can out of your system then because it matters a lot less there than it will after you've graduated and you're trying to arrange the rest of your life. Now when I'm wrong, I usually pay a much higher price.

To this day, I still think though that I was right with Mr. Cline and his silly (to me) way of teaching…or maybe partially right because maybe his method worked for some of the kids in his class. Keeping us off balance the way he did though seemed counter-productive to me. It caused me to not think of the material and to try to figure out the catch, the hidden trick, the way in which if I did exactly what I was supposed to do, I was going to be told I'd done the wrong thing.

And to this day, I often have that suspicion in my mind. When someone gives me an assignment that's due on Tuesday, I think, "Do I really have until Tuesday or are they going to fault me for not handing it on Monday?" Sometimes, I even forget that I'll be a hero if I hand it in on Thursday or Friday but it's exactly what they want.

I still haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But it's one of those and either way, I have Mr. Cline to thank for it.

Hey, do you know what a Stage Automation Engineer does? Well, here's your chance to find out…

Nate Silver is starting to get serious about forecasting the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election. In fact, he's so serious that he's issuing two different kind of forecasts. Eventually, he says, they'll converge and become approximately the same but right now, his "Polls Only" forecast shows Hillary with 353 electoral votes as opposed to 183.7 for Trump with Gary Johnson getting a smidgen, whereas his "Polls Plus" forecast has her at 317.7 and Trump at 219.9 with Gary Johnson getting a smaller smidgen.

What's the difference between these two forecasts? "Polls Only" is just an aggregate of state polls which Silver and his crew have weighted to give more attention to some polls than others, based on their past accuracy, methodology, sample size and what they purport to be telling us. "Polls Plus" takes all that into account but also factors in certain data like demographics and economic trends.

Right now, you could say that it doesn't matter which one you believe. They both get us President Hillary by a landslide. Later on, one could indicate something that the other isn't telling us.

And there's also a "Now-cast" which shows the electoral totals if the election were to be held today. This could be extremely valuable if they suddenly decide to hold the election today. (Actually, the most interesting thing about this page is that it shows Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party getting 10.5% of the popular vote. I believe he needs to hit 15% to be included in the debates. That's not impossible.)

If you want to know how I look at all this — and I'm always surprised if anyone does — I think that Hillary will win in not a landslide but a tsunami if there isn't some major shakeup in what this election is about. I also think there will be a shakeup. By that, I'm thinking of another 9/11 or an assassination or actual proof that Hillary had Vince Foster murdered or a total collapse of the U.S. economy or something. A lot of people are saying that Trump won't change his game because he's not the kind of person who's used to changing his game. I think he's also not the kind of person who's used to losing so badly and so undeniably in public.

Something will have to happen and it may not be something he's capable of making happen. Which is not to say I don't think he'll try.

Kinda busy today. There may be a lot of such days between now and Comic-Con. Which reminds me: If you're going and you're thinking of attending either of my annual Cartoon Voices panels — the one on Saturday at 1 PM or the one on Sunday at 11:30 AM — I think I've assembled two of the strongest lineups ever. (We're not supposed to announce any programming schedules before the convention does but by now, most of you have figured out that I do certain panels every year and they're always in the same rooms on the same days at the same times.)

Lots of chatter about the Stephen Colbert situation discussed yesterday. In a day or three, I should have a new "Rejection" column up here in which I'll discuss writing on "spec" and when it's okay to do that. SPOILER ALERT: The answer is "Very Rarely."

Here's close to an hour of Kitty Carlisle reminiscing about Broadway and her career. Wonderful stuff…

Just started to write a piece about something Stephen Colbert is doing that I don't like one bit. My pal Ken Levine doesn't like it either and I see he's already written pretty much the same thing I would have written. I just might not give Colbert the benefit of the doubt and suggest it's possible he didn't know what his producers were doing.

It is Kosher to require that applicants for comedy writing jobs show you some samples of how they write. What they're asking for here though is way beyond the norm. If I were a wanna-be writer looking to break in, I wouldn't play along even if only a hundred other wanna-bes were invited to submit. The fact that they may get thousands of submissions is all the more reason to not go along with this.

Suppose they get 10,000 entries. Do we think those will all be read by someone with true hiring power? They certainly won't be read by someone who's high up in the show's hierarchy. Those folks are already working night and day to put on five shows a week. What they'll more likely do is have a bevy of interns wade through the stacks and pass on anything they think is outstanding. It doesn't do you any good to submit brilliance if it has to pass muster with someone who can't recognize brilliance. And of course, the show doesn't lose a cent if they find some good prospects in the first 300 submissions someone considers and then they just dump the rest.

I can imagine a good agent suggesting it might be worth a client's time to whip up a package like the Colbert folks are demanding. That good agent would only do that though if he or she had reason to believe the submission might be one of only a dozen or maybe two dozen and that they would all be read by Colbert or the show's Head Writer or one of its producers.

But one of the points I try to make to aspiring authors is this: Most institutions (magazines, publishers, producers, etc.) that you want to have hire you or buy your writing have some version of what's commonly called a Slush Pile. If you want to be a professional writer, you need to stay out of the Slush Pile. It's called that for a reason. Those are the submissions that no one seriously solicited…the stuff sent in by (mostly) amateurs. Much of it is never read, at least by anyone important. That it's in that pile at all renders it suspect because most of what's in that pile is pretty lousy.

Most of what the Colbert Show will get will be pretty lousy. Yes, they may hire a couple of writers because of this process but, you know, a couple of people do win the lottery now and then. That doesn't mean that the odds are good you will.

Julien Neel, who sings wonderful four-part harmony with his partners, Julien Neel, Julien Neel and Julien Neel, favors us with the Barbershop Quarter arrangement of the Mister Ed theme…

I was away longer than I'd expected today so I didn't get to repost here that the Antenna TV Johnny Carson rerun was the episode with Richard Pryor and Rod Hull that I wrote about here. Hope you caught it. The second airing of it is occurring even as I post this.

The show originally aired June 9, 1983 and I wrote about it from memory for an article that was first published in May of 1999. I got a lot of it right but I think my recollections compressed two appearances. This was actually Pryor's second appearance with Johnny following the "accident" in which Richard suffered severe burns but since everyone was talking about his recent plastic surgery on the set, I guess I remembered it as his first and recalled him talking about the accident. He actually discussed it on the earlier appearance, which I did remember and I kinda combined those two.

I got the segment with Rod Hull and Emu pretty much right except that the point where the bird puppet attacked Pryor came later, just before the show ended. Anyway, it was all pretty funny. This Saturday, they're running a 1978 episode with Don Rickles and Ray Bradbury that I do not recall at all…but doesn't that sound interesting?

I see a lot of folks on the web who are furious about today's Supreme Court decision striking down certain abortion restrictions in Texas. Kevin Drum points out what a sham the law was. It required doctors who performed abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. That sounds like an attempt to protect women's health but in reality, even the people defending the law in front of the Court admitted that there was no record of any clinic needing have a woman admitted. In fact, hospitals wouldn't even grant admitting privileges to doctors performing that procedure because it was so safe.

Lastly for now: Earlier today, I cautioned everyone about taking too seriously the polls that show Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by double digits. Those were polls, I noted, that ask voters which of the two they'd prefer…but the actual ballots will have more than two names. Today, some more polls came out that do show Hillary having a double-digit lead even when other candidates are listed. Let's see if that's the case with future polls. She might be that far ahead…now. There's still a long time 'til we vote for real.

Well now. The Supreme Court has slapped down the folks in Texas who, under the guise of "protecting women's health" passed laws that closed down an awful lot of places where abortions were performed…and SCOTUS did it 5-3, meaning that the vote would probably have gone that way even if Antonin Scalia were still with us.

A lot of folks are (of course) upset about this, especially in light of polls that now show Hillary Clinton with a double-digit lead over Donald Trump. That's a double-digit lead for a person who would appoint at least one new justice who'd vote the way they don't like. There are rumors that Clarence Thomas — the most reliable right-wing vote on the High Court — is talking about retirement and that's gotta ratchet up the worry even more.

I dunno if I've mentioned this here before but I've long thought the way we replace Supreme Court Justices is screwy. It isn't based directly on the will of the people. It has to do with when sitting justices die or get too old to serve. Hinging it on something so unpredictable and out of anyone's control doesn't seem so bad as long as each elected president gets one pick or at most two picks if they serve two terms. One of these days though, this country is going to have a moment when three or four justices die or otherwise need to be replaced in a very short time. Then, the Court could skew wildly left or right and for a very long time. Everyone on both sides will then agree the process needs to change but it'll be too late. We'll be stuck with what we're stuck with for a long time.

By the way: I'd be pleased to think Ms. Clinton has a twelve-point lead over Mr. Trump but unless I'm misreading polls, that's only true in some of these when those who are polled are asked to imagine a ballot with only those two names on it. It's unlikely that in November anyone will be handed a ballot without Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and probably also Jill Stein of the Green Party and other names, as well. When you give people other options, the Clinton/Trump race gets a lot closer.

This is above and beyond the obvious caveat that it's 133 days until Election Day, these candidates don't have running mates yet, issues will change, scandals will be charged, debates will presumably occur, everyone will say or do a couple of really stupid things, etc. I continue to think/hope Hillary will win big but the evidence is not there yet to think this thing is even close to over.

Sparked by the tragic shooting in Orlando, a Who's Who of Broadway got together recently and recorded a new version of the David-Bacharach tune, "What the World Needs Now is Love." And yes, I know: The world has always needed love…and there are plenty of other things that there are just too little of, like Gun Control laws, lawmakers who put principle over special interest groups, and restaurants that don't serve cole slaw. Never mind that right now.

100% of the proceeds for this recording are going to an LGBT foundation in the Orlando area. You can pay for a digital download in iTunes or at BroadwayRecords.com.

Here's a video of the recording session. Try and find Nathan Lane in there. He's about as easy to spot as Waldo…

It's been 365 days since the Supreme Court of the United States voted 5-4 that there is a constitutional right to Same-Sex Marriage in this country. Somehow, God has not unleashed locusts and plagues upon us to show his wrath and somehow, marriage between one man and one woman is still allowed for those who wish to get in on one of those.

A number of websites are today recalling the dissenting opinion authored then by Chief Justice John Roberts. Writing with obviously gritted teeth, he said…

…however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause.

That struck me then as it does now as a kind of sour grapes statement. Yeah, maybe they lost the chance of winning true acceptance without a court decision but they got two things in exchange, one being that they settled the issue everywhere at once instead of having to fight it out in every state and city and little community where holdouts could still muster enough votes to keep in place laws that ruined so many lives.

There are still legislatures in this country that think they can pass laws overruling the Supreme Overrulers. Think how long the LGBT community would have had to wait until the kind of "true acceptance" Roberts described trickled down to the Kim Davis level. Heck, there are still places in this country where they don't like the whole idea of racial integration.

And also, they won this: A real world test of whether there was any truth in all those dire screeches that Gay Marriage would destroy America and lead to every conceivable sin and destruction of religion and decency and everything we hold dear. Men married men, women married women and as noted, none of the horrendous promised consequences occurred. Life on Earth did not cease just as it didn't when it was decreed that black people were equals and women got the right to vote. The black folks and the women might in fact save us all when their vote keeps Donald Trump out of the White House.

Roberts is right that it might have been nice if Gay Marriage had resulted wholly from persuading citizens of the rightness of the cause. But a lot of them have since been persuaded because they've seen how Gay Marriage has not done irreparable harm…and some are probably thinking, "Gee, it's nice to not have that debate going on so loudly in our lives." I'd say that's a pretty good trade-off.

The Daily News has put together some pages on talk shows and which guests have appeared most often on which shows over the years. Alas, they derive their raw data from the Internet Movie Database, which is woefully incomplete on this kind of information. Carl Reiner was one of Johnny Carson's most frequent guests but he ain't anywhere to be seen on the Carson list. Pete Barbutti was on with Johnny over seventy times but they only have him down for fourteen.

They also have Johnny down as a guest on the show fourteen times and there's no way that's right. He hosted it for thirty years but guested zero times. (He did do one cameo walk-on one night when David Steinberg hosted.)

There are also silly mistakes like this one: They list as David Letterman's most frequent guest on his NBC Late Night show, George Miller. They say he was on seventeen times and they describe him thusly: "George Miller was born on March 3, 1945 in Chinchilla, Queensland, Australia as George Miliotis. He is a producer and writer, known for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Happy Feet (2006) and Mad Max (1979). He has been married to Margaret Sixel since 1995. They have two children. He was previously married to Sandy Gore."

That's George Miller the director they're talking about and they have a photo of him. The George Miller who was on with Dave was George Miller the stand-up comedian and he was on a lot more than seventeen times.

The project was a worthy one but it's one of those "garbage in, garbage out" situations and I'm not sure the full data they'd need to do it right even exists. Still, it's nice to be reminded of some of the people who were on those shows, way back when.

I spent last evening out in Pasadena at Vroman's Bookstore, which is a business of a kind that is fast becoming extinct: A real bookstore. I mean, they have actual books printed on paper there and everything, including a staff that loves selling books almost as much as they themselves enjoy reading them.

Last night, they had a signing party for my longtime friend Paul Dini, who has an important and amazing new graphic novel out. It's called Dark Night: A True Batman Story. Here's an Amazon link to order a copy if you can't get out to Vroman's, and this is a book I'm sure you'll hear a lot about.

Once upon a time, my friend Paul was mugged. He was walking home from a date and two big guys decided for no visible reason to beat the crap out of him. He went through a long, emotional recuperation process both physically and mentally. I knew Paul then and I thought (note the past tense) I knew what he went through…but I didn't imagine it was this bad.

What does Batman have to do with this, apart from the fact that it would have been nice if he'd been around to stop the beating? Well, Paul was writing Batman at the time — the animated series and some comic books. And since Paul's the kind of writer who really throws himself into his work, it was impossible to stop Batman and his supporting cast from reflexively entering his life during this period. You'll have to read the graphic novel — perfectly illustrated by Eduardo Risso — to understand how those two realities fused for Paul and how one affected the other but it's a pretty jarring — but ultimately redeeming — tale.

At the signing party, they had me introducing Paul and interviewing him for a while before a packed, standing-room-only turnout. Then came the autographing. The line was so long — I think the last person waited something like two and a half hours — that many of the folks waiting for Paul's signature read the book while waiting. You could see them hit certain sections of the story and glance towards Paul across the room…and you could hear them thinking, "That happened to him?" I think it was reassuring to them on several levels that Paul seemed so fully recovered and complete as a human being.

It was an exciting event — no surprise since it's an exciting book. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.