Monthly Archives: October 2019

This is my annual post about why I don't like Halloween. It is an amalgam of several past "Why I Don't Like Halloween" posts with some new thoughts tossed in. Nothing that follows should be taken to suggest that I don't want you to celebrate and enjoy Halloween. It's just to explain why I don't. Here is me explaining…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I've never liked Halloween. For one thing, 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.

When I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked even before I found out I was allergic to them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve went right into the trash can and I felt bad about that. 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. Absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple big sacks of leftover candy myself every year.

That didn't seem healthy so one year, I actually did this: When I was at the market picking out candy to have on hand for the little masked people, I picked a kind I didn't like. So that year when no one came, instead of eating a whole bag of candy, I found myself throwing out a whole bag of candy…and wondering why that had seemed like a good idea. What I now do is that I always have on hand, not for Halloween but for me, little bags of Planter's Peanuts and if any trick-or-treaters ever knock on my door, that's what they'll get.

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."

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 Judge Roy Moore 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.

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ADDENDUM FOR HALLOWEEN, 2019: That's the "traditional" post for this day. Actually, I'm giving the holiday another chance tonight. I'm going to a party disguised as myself. I'll let you know if I find anything redeeming about not staying in and avoiding the festivities.

As I've mentioned here, I'm a Magician member of the Magic Castle, the famous private club in Hollywood for folks who pester you to pick a card, any card. I joined in 1980 and have spent many wondrous hours dining there, watching magic there, studying magic there, etc. It's in a beautiful old mansion built in 1909 by Rollin Lane, a prominent lawyer, banker and real estate investor.

It became the Magic Castle in the early sixties. A TV writer named Milt Larsen, who was then working on the game show Truth or Consequences had an office with a great view of the old Rollin mansion. It had then fallen into disrepair, carved up into a building full of shabby apartments. Milt had the idea that it might be the realization of a dream his late father had talked about. William W. Larsen Sr. was a popular magician who thought it would be great if there was a fancy private clubhouse for magicians.

Milt and his brother, Bill Jr., leased the property, rallied the local magic community, and on January 2, 1963, the Magic Castle opened its doors. To visit, you must be a member or a guest of a member and it's a great place to dine and see the best practitioners of the art from around the world.

It's especially mobbed the week of Halloween. Each year, the Magic Castle is transformed. A crew of dedicated redressers install an overlay to change the architecture for ten days or so. They put up new walls, decorate, install special effects and in a way, the Castle puts on a costume for Halloween. Last year, they made it look like a spaceship overtaken by an alien invasion. This year, it's the "Cursed Temple," resembling a tomb in which Indiana Jones or someone like him might unlock secrets to find mystical treasures.

I went up to see it on Monday and took along my trusty aide, John Plunkett, and a scream queen, the lovely Brinke Stevens. It was an amazing creation…especially impressive to those of us who know what the Castle looks like when it isn't dressed like this. Here's a quick tour of the Cursed Temple…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Trump kept saying that the infamous transcript of his "perfect" telephone conversation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was complete, total, utterly accurate, etc. But folks are starting to notice that Corporal Alexander Vindman was identifying important words and phrases that were left out of it. If Vindman is right, the incriminating document is even more incriminating…and Trump lied about it when he said it was word for word. Lying about material evidence is a lot more serious than most of his other lying.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
A lot of the folks complaining about illegal immigration don't like any immigration at all. They're getting their wish as Trump has quietly cut legal immigration by 65%. Read all about it.

And Trump is becoming more and more obsessive about stealing Syria's oil. Has no one told him this would be a violation of international law? Or does he just not care about those laws any more than he cares about ours?

Nell Scovell, as you may well know, is a fine writer of all things comedic. Once upon a time, she wrote for David Letterman and it wasn't the happiest experience in her life. Ten years ago in this article, she wrote about the experience and how Mr. Letterman's predilection (eventually admitted) for having sex with staff members created an uncomfy and unfair work environment.

There is a sequel. Not long ago, she sat down with Dave after he finally (finally!) read the article and they discussed what it said and what he did. Here is her account of that meeting.

I was once a huge fan of Dave as on-air talent and an admirer of some of the things I knew he'd done off-screen and some of the ethics he embraced. Some (not all) of the admiration in both categories faded due to later actions. Obviously, I've never had anywhere near the hiring/firing power he had but when I worked on staff on TV shows, I learned that sexual involvement within the workplace is usually bad for All Concerned, including the surrounding people not directly involved in the sex. And it's bad in many ways, even beyond the issue of who gets hired and/or fired.

Just to remind you: My favorite local musical group Big Daddy will be performing this Sunday evening, November 3 at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Tickets are right here and not very expensive when you consider how much entertainment they'll buy you. They still have some left for the buying.

These are the guys who take current or recent rock hits and transmogrify them so they sound like they were recorded in the fifties — you know…the last time music was any good. They're very entertaining.

I'm assuming readers of this blog never miss an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver but just in case there's one: In June of 2017, Mr. Oliver devoted much of his show to a story on the coal industry. It's not doing well and he explained some of the reasons and pointed out that Donald Trump's promises to bring it back strong were unachievable campaign-type promises. The "villain" of the piece (more or less) was Bob Murray, the founder of Cleveland-based Murray Energy Corporation and a big Trump supporter.

In the piece, Oliver predicted Murray would sue him, the show, HBO and everyone within suing distance. He was right. He then predicted that the suit would get tossed out of court. He was right again. He then announced that he would soon discuss the whole matter on his show and would bring back Mr. Nutterbutter, a very large squirrel or possibly, if you want to be cynical about such things, a man in a big squirrel costume. Mr. Nutterbutter had delivered some of the comments that sent Bob Murray ringing up his lawyers.

This was all some time ago and John Oliver has not mentioned Murray or the lawsuit on the show since the suit was tossed, nor has he made good on his promise to bring Mr. Nutterbutter back on. Maybe it's time…

The slow death of the American coal industry has forced Murray Energy, the largest private coal miner in the United States, to file for bankruptcy protection Tuesday. Murray Energy's bankruptcy has been telegraphed for years. It recently failed to make payments to lenders, and the company entered into a forbearance agreement that bought it time to negotiate a restructuring. But that grace period came and went, and Murray Energy was unable to pay its bills. S&P Global Ratings downgraded the company's credit rating to "default" earlier this month.

One might assume that the coal miners and other employees of Murray Energy have not fared well through all of this. I await Oliver's follow-up and an encore performance by that very large squirrel or possibly, if you still want to be cynical about such things, a man in a big squirrel costume.

Someone likes Groo.

Back in this post, we had a music video by a barbershop quartet called Midtown. In it, they did their version of the theme from the 60's Spider-Man cartoon show. Well, here they are doing it on a stage…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
I guess the worst news is that the impeachment inquiry will become more of a formal thing with a vote on Thursday. One must assume that if Nancy Pelosi is putting it to a vote, she knows she has the votes to pass it. But the worst news for Trump could also be the testimony of Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council staffer and a US Army lieutenant colonel. Vindman was on the line for the two phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and says he heard Trump demand that Ukraine investigate the Bidens. How many people now have corroborated the Whistleblower's charges? Also, Vindman says the transcript left out a lot of damaging things that were said. ("What? It could be even worse?")

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
The racist sliming of Colonel Vindman is pretty bad but we don't know how much of that was at the dictation by Trump. The continued bragging and fact-distortion of the raid that "got" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is outrageous, especially the stuff Trump says that the generals say didn't happen. But I'm going to go with the decision to admit no more refugees into the country for a while, leaving many stranded without a place to go. So many to choose from.

Well, this is a bit disturbing. When people ask me to name my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world — keeping in mind I've seen less than 1% of the whole wide world — I usually say it's Peter Luger's, the legendary steakhouse in Brooklyn. That's because the times I've eaten there, I was bowled over by the superb steak and sides.

It sounds like a good answer. I mean, I'm not saying my pick is the Wendy's down on Venice Boulevard. What I don't mention is that I haven't dined at Peter Luger's in something like fifteen years.

If there's any truth at all to a new review of the place in The New York Times, maybe I ought to be citing that Wendy's. Read it if you want to see how brutal a reviewer can be to a once-great dining establishment. Or just take a look at the last paragraph which [SPOILER ALERT!] says…

The restaurant will always have its loyalists. They will laugh away the prices, the $16.95 sliced tomatoes that taste like 1979, the $229.80 porterhouse for four. They will say that nobody goes to Luger for the sole, nobody goes to Luger for the wine, nobody goes to Luger for the salad, nobody goes to Luger for the service. The list goes on, and gets harder to swallow, until you start to wonder who really needs to go to Peter Luger, and start to think the answer is nobody.

Yow. And what's disturbing is that it rings true. Others have told me in the last few years they'd suppered there and wondered what the fuss was. "What exactly is it you like about that place, Mark?" I was asked not that long ago. I worried that my love of it might be sadly have past its expiration date. But it's true that I haven't been there for about twenty times as long as they age their filets.

The last two visits to New York, I was with Amber and I wanted to take her there for what I told her many times was the best steak I'd ever had. What stopped us was the hassle of getting out to Brooklyn, waiting for a table, dining, etc. The price always seemed steep and most of my experiences there were when someone else — someone who worked for a big company with a big expense account — was check-grabbing. There was also the matter of time.

The seaters and servers always acted like they knew you wouldn't go anywhere else no matter how long it took to get you to your table and put hot meat on it. It always consumed enough of an evening that I couldn't do anything else so this was my choice: Spend one of my limited nights in New York going to Peter Luger's or going to a great restaurant in the Theater District, perhaps with friends I only see when I'm in Manhattan and then attend a Broadway show.

I always opted for the latter and I probably always will. I didn't even get around to taking Amber to my second-favorite restaurant in New York City, which is (or maybe was) the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. And that doesn't even require shlepping out to Williamsburg; just over to East 42nd Street. I'm thinking now that maybe I avoided both eateries because I'd built them up in my mind to be much more than they could be and I feared being disappointed or, worse, disappointing her.

So I guess there are three questions here, the first being to wonder if Peter Luger's has really gotten as bad as the Times critic says. I'd ordinarily not take one critic's word for anything but I have heard such talk from others.

The second question I suppose would be: "Will this review cause the folks who run Peter Luger's to shape up and return it to its former glory?"

And the third question is: "Even if they do, until I sacrifice the time to get out there and see for myself, assuming I can ever bring myself to do that, what am I going to use for a favorite restaurant?" Because that Wendy's down on Venice sure ain't gonna cut it.

• All of the complaints about the booing and chants at that World Series game pretty much come down to "How dare an anti-Trump crowd act like a pro-Trump crowd?"

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
"A White House official who listened to President Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky will tell House investigators on Tuesday that he was so alarmed by the Ukraine pressure campaign that he twice alerted a top White House lawyer. Lt Col. Alexander Vindman, who has served on the National Security Council since 2018, will recount overhearing U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland — a key player in the pressure campaign — discuss with Ukrainian officials the need for the country to launch investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens in order to secure a Zelensky meeting with Trump." This is…what? The fifth or sixth bit of corroborating testimony that backs up the whistleblower? Fuller details here.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Trump keeps saying he's in favor the U.S. seizing the assets of other countries — Iraq's oil, especially. This is a blatant violation of international law but Trump either doesn't know or doesn't care, probably both. Jonathan Chait has more. And as Will Peischel notes, Trump wants to keep Climate Change off the agenda of topics to be discussed at the next G-7 summit. Lovely.

A Question from Brian Trester…

I know that you are an expert in the history of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and how they ran things there. Can you answer a simple question for me? I noticed much like Sid and Marty Krofft, most of their shows were very short-lived, some only making 16 cartoons or less. Why did they give up or cancel shows so fast? I know it took a lot of time, effort and money to create these shows. This seemed to be a running theme with a lot of cartoons in the 60s and 70s.

Was it that the networks always wanted something new or were they that poorly received by the audiences? I loved cartoons like Hong Kong Phooey and the like but they seemed to come and go before you could really build a strong following. However, cartoons like Scooby Doo seemed to drag on forever to the point I almost dreaded to see the new Scooby Doo offering in the fall.

Can you help shed some light on this?

Sure. There are a few exceptions but very few to this: The show was axed because the folks at the network, wisely or unwisely, thought its ratings were just not high enough to warrant another season. They'd look at how the show was drawing audiences and in particular how it did in reruns. During the years I worked on Saturday morning network shows, the math was that they'd make thirteen episodes and run each one four times.

There were a lot of shows that did well on the first run, a little less well on the second run, a lot less well on the third run and poorly on the fourth run. If yours did, that was a show that was not going to get renewed for another season. Once in a while, a show fared so poorly in reruns that they switched in reruns of something else they thought would do better there. And of course, there were many that didn't do well on the first run, which almost always meant it wouldn't do well on any runs.

But really, that's all there is to it: How are the ratings? I can think of only a few exceptions. The run of the 1973 Addams Family cartoon show was reportedly truncated because of a legal dispute over the ownership of the property. In 1984, I worked on a live-action Saturday morn show for Sid and Marty Krofft, Pryor's Place, that probably would have had more than one season if its star, Richard Pryor, had been willing to do more than the thirteen episodes we did. Another show I worked on, Garfield and Friends, could have had at least one more season than the seven we did if the producers had been willing to lower the price it cost CBS. There are probably a few other cases but not many.

You sometimes hear that a certain show — like yet another series I worked on, Dungeons and Dragons — was canceled because protest groups thought it was too violent or too scary. I know that wasn't why that show went off. It was declining ratings. And I don't think it was ever true with any other program. As with most things in show business, it all comes down to the numbers.

What's on my mind this morning? The awful, awful fires going on around Southern California. I'm not worried for me. Except smokey air for a few days and some traffic closures, they don't affect me particularly but I must know some of the folks who've either lost homes or been evacuated…and others who are worried that will come. They're saying the winds will get more dangerous before this is over. I wish I had something helpful to say about it all.

So I have nothing to say about that and I'm tired of writing about Trump. I'm going to dig into my folder of "ASK me" e-mails and see if I can find something to write about today…

Did you see John Oliver last night? If not, you need to see John Oliver last night. Here is John Oliver last night…

I've been trying to make this blog less about Trump and as you can see, I'm not doing a very good job of it. This week, I resolve to do better.