Monthly Archives: May 2018

A whole lot o' apologizing going on, though of course never any from this White House which thinks never saying you were wrong is the same thing as always being right. Trump reminds me so much of people I've encountered who believe that never saying you were sorry is a way of being tough. No, it isn't. It's a way of telling people you're too scared to own up to your own mistakes.

One of the reasons that what Samantha Bee was wrong is this: She did a report that made some serious allegations about Ivanka Trump — allegations that oughta be discussed. But nobody's discussing what Ivanka did. They're just discussing what Samantha did.

In other news, one of Roseanne's personalities apologized for her stupid tweet, two of them are fighting back and the other nineteen have not reported in yet. And so it goes.

• Samantha Bee should have tried telling everyone she's been taping her show while on Ambien. Which, by the way, is a less effective sleep aid than being on TBS.

You can have a double-earful of Evanier this week. Up now on Ken Levine's nifty blog is Part One of a two-part interview he did with Yours Truly. We recorded it a few weeks ago so don't expect to see us debating which of us has a lower opinion of Roseanne. But we do talk about comic books and Jack Kirby and animation, and I think there's more about my dubious career in Part Two, which goes up next week. You should be listening to all of Ken's fine podcasts but at least listen to the two with me.

Then! Tomorrow (Thursday), I make a return visit to Tell Me Everything with John Fugelsang, which is heard on the Insight channel on Sirius XM Radio. It's done live from 11 AM to 2 PM on the West Coast, 2 PM to 5 PM on the East Coast and I'll be on in the last hour discussing…well, I'm not sure what we'll be discussing. Call in and maybe you can tell us what you'd like us to discuss. This is another show that should be on your must-listen list even when they don't have me on. I do not have a link for you. I think you have to be a Sirius XM subscriber…and if you do, I think the Insight channel is 121. That is all.

The evening before Lyndon Johnson was sworn in for his full term as president (January, 1965), NBC aired a great special called Allan Sherman's Funnyland. It starred (of course) Allan Sherman and his guests included Lorne Greene, Jack Gilford and Angie Dickinson.

Since no one had gotten around yet to inventing the VCR or the DVR or anything that would record both video and audio off the TV, I recorded the latter on my Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder and played it over and over and over. A few years ago, I managed to obtain a DVD of the show and it really was as good as I always remembered. Here's a number from it…

Scott Marinoff wrote…

I'm in complete agreement with your post about the justification for the speedy cancellation of Roseanne, but I would like you to clarify one little detail for me.

It's the part where you posted: "I'm guessing there were execs at ABC who for whatever reason already wanted to dump the show and the tweet put the vote to do that over the top." For the life of me, I can't figure out what you're basing that guess on.

The speed with which the decision was made as well as the star's reputation for…I'll be polite and say "instability." Deciding to ax one of your most popular shows is not an action taken on impulse. It's the kind of thing you run past a lot of people including lawyers to determine any unforeseen legal complications. It would usually take a day or three…unless some execs there had already asked the musical question "What do we do if Roseanne returns to her old antics?"

Like I said, it's a guess. But a lot of people anticipated this kind of thing might happen. I linked to Stu Shostak but Ken Levine also saw it coming and, I'm sure, many folks at the network. (Ken, by the way, has a terrific guest on his podcast this week. It drops this evening over on his website.)

I should also have mentioned I see both sides of an argument here: I don't like the idea of someone being fired because of a joke, even a bad joke, even a joke in terrible taste. I assume we'll hear Bill Maher make a strong defense of Roseanne on his show this Friday night. But it's not endangering your Freedom of Speech if I exercise mine to not want to be associated with you. And there's nothing wrong with a network deciding they don't want to support the fame and fortune of someone who says something like that and is likely to do even worse before long.

If the remark had been tweeted by someone without her history, maybe we could see it as an outlier or even buy her excuse that it was the Ambien talking. Some stars possibly could have apologized more effectively and kept their shows. But this is Roseanne with a long history of acting like Roseanne. If you point your ear towards the ABC building and listen hard, I bet you can hear an awful lot of "I told you so"s.

• That Ambien is a great drug. It not only gives you a good night's sleep but also an excuse when you do something really, really stupid.

I guess I should write about the whole Roseanne matter. I'm an absolute First Amendment champion but I've scoured that fine piece of legislation and nowhere in it do I see a Constitutional Right to have your own TV show. Nothing in there about getting paid millions of dollars to do that show, either.

I never argue "funny" with anyone. If you laugh, he or she or it is funny to you. Roseanne, with or without her various last names and on TV or stage, has never been funny to me, which is why I haven't watched her new show and only briefly watched her old show…I think only when Stan Freberg was on.

I saw her at comedy clubs a few times before her first series was a hit. Didn't laugh and neither did most of those audiences. Obviously though, other audiences did. Her appeal escapes me but so does the appeal of a lot of shows and performers who are quite popular. That does not bother me one bit.

Once after her first series was a hit, I was backstage at the Comedy Store with a friend who was about to go on with an act, much of which I had written. Roseanne walked in and demanded that whoever was on stage at that moment get off because she wanted to go on, do a new hunk of material she was breaking in and then get the hell outta there, A.S.A.P. There and at other clubs, I had seen Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Garry Shandling, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and others show up and ask if they could go on when there was an opening. None of them demanded, none insisted on bumping another comic but Roseanne had to go on immediately.

She was accommodated. The comic on stage — I think it was Dennis Wolfberg — was given a signal to cut his set short. Roseanne went on.

You ever see a cat throw up? You know how hilarious that is? That's about as hilarious as Roseanne was that night. She left, cursing the crappy writer who'd sold her those jokes. I thought the performance was at least as much to blame but, hey, she's done well for herself so what do I know?

Her new series was a big hit upon its debut but with diminishing popularity since. As I understand, it was picked up for another season but because of her Twitter remarks, the pick-up was rescinded yesterday. In a way, I think ABC shouldn't have put it on in the first place if they were going to yank it off because of some racist thing its star said.

It's not like anyone couldn't have imagined she'd do such a thing. My pal Stu Shostak even predicted it on his podcast. So far, the best argument I've heard that ABC was wrong to yank her show is a pretty weak one: That they knew what they were buying. It would be like canceling an appearance by Willie Nelson because it came out that he was smoking pot.

The most surprising thing about this to me was the swiftness of what happened. Up went the tweet, down came the hammer. ABC didn't even wait a day or two so they could claim, true or not, that they heard from a lot of advertisers who said they'd no longer buy time in Roseanne. I'm guessing there were execs at ABC who for whatever reason already wanted to dump the show and the tweet put the vote to do that over the top.

This story may not be over. Roseanne will probably do something to portray herself as a victim…and as I write this, Trump has yet to weigh in. By the time I awake, he probably will and there will be some new twist to this whole matter. See you in the morning.

• Outraged about ABC canceling Roseanne because of what she said? I'll believe you'e standing on principle if you said the same thing when the same network canceled Bill Maher.

It just dawned on me that last Saturday marked twelve years since I had Gastric Bypass Surgery and lost…well, it's hard to say how much weight I lost. I lost a large amount between the time I decided to have the surgery and 5/26/06 when I actually went under the knife or the laparoscopic tools or however you'd phrase it. That was because I began to change my eating habits including the abandonment of all carbonated beverages.

After the surgery, I ate almost nothing for a few weeks without the slightest craving or ill effects. The rate at which pounds evaporated slowed as I began eating again and various after-effects of the surgery settled down. At one point though, I realized I'd lost 72 pounds in 72 days — or maybe it was 75 pounds in 75 days. Something around that. In the morning, Carolyn would wake up, look over at me and ask, "Who are you and why are you in Mark Evanier's bed?"

My weight went up and down as is the norm with everyone…and I guess the best answer to the "How much did you lose?" question is just to say I'm now 90 pounds under my top weight and five or six waist sizes.

What I'm remembering today is something that was said to me before the surgery by the doctor who helped me through the process. I was in pretty good health back then. I was just too large to fit into the world in which I was trying to live. He said, "If you have this surgery now, you'll breeze through it because all your vital signs are great. If you have it in ten or twelve years, you'll be doing it to save your life and you'll have a much rougher time of it."

He was right. I didn't exactly "breeze" through it. It was more like a stiff wind with gusts up to 40 MPH. But it was a lot easier than if I'd waited until, say, now. That doctor no longer practices and doesn't want me mentioning his name but he reads this blog and I want him to know how grateful I am to him for all the wisdom and caring he bestowed on me. May you all have a doctor who's that good at what he does.

As I get older, I find myself more and more starting sentences with the phrase "As I get older," as in "As I get older, I find myself more and more starting sentences with the phrase "As I get older…"

One thing I hope I never do is something a friend of mine started doing around the time he hit 75. Almost every sentence that came out of his mouth contained a phrase like…

• "Well, speaking on behalf of us old farts…"
• "Well, you won't have me around much longer…"
• "We dinosaurs have to stick together…"

You can't avoid getting old but you don't have to surrender to it the minute simple math passes some arguable date that you think is old. For one thing, I believe that thinking you're old will age you. For another, anyone who cares about you is really sick of heaing how you'll be kicking the bucket any day now.

I'm 66 and I'm not ruling out the possibility, slim though it could be, that I have some good years ahead of me. Don't give up before you have to.

We continue our parade of soup cans today, expressing our usual amazement at the slippery stylings of the guy who says he's president but sure doesn't act like one.  I suppose you've heard about this one…

Matt Pottinger, who serves on the National Security Council, gave a "background briefing" to a large number of reporters.  It was about the state of U.S. relations with North Korea and the possibility of rescheduling the canceled peace talks.

A background briefing is where some government official gives info to members of the press and they can report it but are not supposed to release his or her name.  I'm not entirely certain where this practice started and the ethics of it might be arguable but it is certainly not new or rare.  In this case, Pottinger initiated this briefing, gave it from the podium of the White House briefing room and many audio recordings of it exist.

Reporters reported what was said without naming Pottinger. Trump's tweet on those stories read as follows…

The Failing @nytimes quotes "a senior White House official," who doesn't exist, as saying "even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed." WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

Lately as I read this kind of thing, I imagine a guy who's been relentlessly cheating on his wife, maybe even with a porn star. He knows that the lady next door is about to tell his wife about it and all he can think to do is to go to his wife and say, "That neighbor lady! She's insane! She's a pathological liar! You can't believe a word she says!"

Because Trump knows there's a lot of very bad stuff coming…

I've set the TiVo to record John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls, a new HBO documentary that debuts on Memorial Day because…well, he almost got killed in the war.

Sounds like it'll be of great interest to those of us who've blown both hot and cold (and hot again and cold again and hot again…) about the very-senior senator from the great state of Arizona. I'm oddly encouraged by Matt Taibbi writing "I hope my editors boil in oil in the afterlife for asking me to review [it]."

If you don't watch the show, at least read Taibbi's take on it. He hits on a lot of the reasons why some of feel as we do about the guy. I think this nails it…

McCain's tragedy as a politician is that he is forever torn between his intense desire to pander to the bomb-humping, deregulating right and the fact that he so obviously thought most Republican voters – particularly the religious ones – were dipshits.

This schizophrenic brand of politics has left McCain marooned between two electorates that could never quite embrace him, and have since drifted apart at light speed.

Once upon a time, McCain had some friendly and honest chats with Jon Stewart on the old Daily Show. The last time he was on, Stewart seemed well aware it was the last time because McCain was about to begin seriously pursuing the Republican nomination for president. The host knew there'd be no more friendly chats because McCain was about to do what he felt he had to do to secure that nomination and it included pissing-off (and on) most of Stewart's demographic.

I remember Stewart pleading with McCain not to go over to "Crazy Base World" (that's the term Jon used) but that's where that candidacy took McCain — especially with his selection of a running mate. And look where it got him. I still don't think he would have been a good Chief Exec but of all the hawks who got us into the Iraq War, he still seems to be the only one who has the common decency to be ashamed of it.

As you've probably heard, hyphenate Harvey Weinstein (I believe he's a mogul-swine) turned himself in today and was charged with rape in the first degree, rape in the third degree, committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree, and doing a very bad imitation of a human being. He is currently developing a new movie — a jailbreak caper film to star himself, Bill Cosby and Jared from the Subway commercials. And featuring a score produced by Phil Spector.

Bail for Weinstein was set at one million dollars. When the amount was announced, Weinstein was heard to shriek, "Jesus Christ! A whole week's salary?"

Weinsten's attorney Benjamin Braffman said — and the rest of this is real, not me being silly — that his client would plead Not Guilty and that any sex acts which transpired were consensual…

"Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood," Braffman said. "And to the extent that there is bad behavior in that industry, that is not what this is about. Bad behavior is not on trial in this case. It's only if you intentionally committed a criminal act, and Mr. Weinstein vigorously denies that."

Weinstein's in that much trouble.

Aren't all criminal trials about someone's bad behavior? And no, Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood; no more than O.J. Simpson invented the idea of stabbing people to death. "A lot other people did this and got away with it" is a pretty lame defense.

And what all this "consensual" stuff is about is that Weinstein not only pressured women into having sex with him, he also pressured some of them into pretending they wanted to. He will not have to do that with anyone where he'll be going.

• This morning, Harvey Weinstein demonstrated why he was such a successful Hollywood producer. Once again, he gave the public what they wanted to see.

I am still on a reduced schedule here, posting not as often as I usually do.  I'm also not looking at the news as much as I usually do, though my iPhone and iPad each screamed at me from a dozen different websites that the North Korea summit has been canceled.  We can debate whether it was ever truly on and if so, if there was a chance in Hades it would ever result in anything positive.

As much as I dislike Trump and think he's a mega-fraud, it would be nice to see him accomplish one thing he promised to try and convince people he was a moderate.  I guess one of the reasons some of his fans love him is that they know he'll never betray them by keeping any of those pledges.  Because that's just the way a Man of Integrity operates these days.

In other news: The great documentary on Rose Marie, Wait For Your Laugh, runs on MeTV, the TV network named for me, this Sunday evening.  I've already told you how good it is.

And while I've got your attention here, here's another Allan Sherman clip.  In it, he sings his biggest-ever hit…