Monthly Archives: November 2019

I was talking about Las Vegas a few days ago here. For many years, there was a terrific balancing act that worked there…Murillo and Ulysses. I believe they were in a show called Splash! at the Riviera when I saw them and they may have played other venues, as well. I just did some searching of the Internet and I cannot find one word about them anywhere…just this video of them on the Jerry Lewis Telethon in 1989. Watch it and then I'll tell you something interesting about them apart from the fact that Jerry didn't know how to pronounce Murillo's name…

Okay now. That's a pretty good act, wouldn't you say? I mean, could you imagine yourself doing either part at any age? Their whole act ran about twenty minutes, as I recall, and featured some interesting variations on what was basically the same trick. But it was a good trick.

I first became aware of them in the early eighties when I worked on That's Incredible! on ABC. They were brought in for a taping and did about eight separate feats which we then edited into about eight different shows. We got a number of acts from Vegas and often, we had a limited time to tape them in the mid-afternoon because they had to speed back through the desert to perform two shows that night.

Later on, I'd go to Las Vegas myself for a few days at a time and I'd use that connection to get backstage. I loved Vegas backstage, especially at the revues where you would usually find showgirls and dancers wandering about naked. Call me shallow or lecherous or whatever you like but I was a big fan of showgirls and dancers wandering about naked. And I also liked hanging out with comedians and acrobats and other "show folks," especially ones that had great stories.

In those days (roughly 1985-1995), you could still meet hotel employees who'd worked there since the days of the Rat Pack; old guys who had endless anecdotes about Frank and Dino and Sammy and The Mob or what passed for it in Vegas then.

Every one of these people had a tale about Shecky Greene doing something insane while drunk. Every one of them had some story about Sinatra doing something really, really nice for one person and really, really awful to someone else. Every one of them had a story where the punchline was "…and it turned out, she was a hooker who'd been working The Strip for years!"

Every one could and would tell you about some guy getting "whacked." "Whacked" was always the term for it. "Murdered" would have sounded as illegal as hell but "whacked" made it seem like some perfectly-acceptable Vegas tradition: "While we were in Vegas, Harry and I saw Wayne Newton and I hit a slot machine for three hundred bucks and we saw some guy get whacked and oh, you should have seen the buffet at the Flamingo!"

So I went backstage to say hello to Murillo and Ulysses…and then as now, I had no idea which one was Murillo and which one was Ulysses, but only the one on the bottom talked much. It was all very show-businessy backstage, more so than at any TV studio where I ever worked in Hollywood.

The one who talked was…well, it wasn't so much that he was thrilled to meet me. He was thrilled for the opportunity to take me around and introduce me to everyone — including the showgirls and dancers wandering about naked — as a big-shot in network television (which I wasn't) and as "the producer of That's Incredible!" (which I wasn't) and as the man who saw him and his partner perform and insisted on paying them huge sums of money (which we didn't) to be on ABC. It was a fun evening.

A few years later, Murrilo and Ulysses stopped playing Vegas or, as far as I could see, anywhere. I had no idea what happened to them and I may still not know. But on one later trip, I was backstage at another hotel and I got to talking with their Entertainment Director, which is what they call the guy who books performers to perform. I asked him if he'd heard anything about them and he told me the following story which he didn't seem too sure about…

Yeah, what I heard was that one of them, I don't know which, got real concerned about how much longer they could continue to do that act. You know, it took a lot of physical training and practice and what happens if one of them sprains something or gets sick? So he went to someone he knew at some hotel and they offered him a job in the company…a real job, not a performing job. A desk job or something. It paid real well and it had a health plan and you didn't have to go on stage or practice balancing all day and worry about your back giving out…and he took it. Then he went to this partner and said, "I've got some good news for you! I'm giving you 100% ownership of the act! I'm quitting and you can have my share! Bye!"

It wasn't much of an act after that. But at least the guy owned 100% of it!

I'm not sure about that story either. I'm thinking that maybe if I post it here, I'll hear from Murillo or Ulysses or someone who knew them. It was a great act and I'd hate to think that's how it ended. Pity the poor guy who practiced for years learning how to do that and now he's on his own…

Robert Rose wrote in response to this posting here…

Referring to the question someone asked you about stand-up comics, one that came to me was: Was there ever someone you saw for whom the reverse was true — you saw them do five minutes on a talk show and thought they were great, but then saw them live for forty minutes and realized that five minutes was about all they had? Possibly not, since they probably wouldn't have been booked on TV in the first place without at least one full set they could do in clubs — though of course you might have been seeing them try out a new routine that flopped. Of course, even if you have examples, I would completely understand that you might not want to name names.

(Also slightly curious if you like Jim Gaffigan, whose work I enjoy — don't recall you ever mentioning him one way or the other. One kind of nice thing about him is that his material is pretty family-friendly and non-political. Not that I don't love some guys who are more raunchy and/or topical — though I have to admit I've been kind of avoiding Lewis Black in the Trump era; as angry as Trump makes me, I think I'd be worried Black was going to spontaneously combust — but I can occasionally do with a break…)

Taking the second part first, I like what I've seen of Jim Gaffigan, which has not been enough to become a big fan of his. I just looked up his touring schedule on his website and I don't see him coming anywhere near Los Angeles for a while. He occasionally plays Las Vegas where I occasionally go…but comics of his stature only play that town on weekends and I'm not as fond of Vegas on weekends. I took Amber there on a weekend a year or so ago to see Jim Jefferies and he was fine but everything else cost too much and/or was too crowded.

I'd like to see Mr. Gaffigan but right now, he's too big to do a full show at the Comedy Store here in town or the Comedy & Magic Club in nearby Hermosa Beach…and not big enough to play the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood or Vegas on a school night. I may just have to wait until his career goes way up or way down.

You answered your first question yourself. No one gets on The Tonight Show or any program like that to do five minutes unless they could come back the next week with another five-minute set and the week after with yet another. When I was a more regular presence at the Comedy Store and the Improv, I did see a number of comics break in new material that flopped. I once saw Bill Maher do something up on stage that flopped and after five minutes of insufficient laughter, he told the audience to go screw and walked off.

I saw Richard Pryor and, at the other end of the Comedy Food Chain, I saw Roseanne Barr do that too. I also saw Andy Kaufman flop spectacularly once with a bit I doubt he ever did again. To Mr. Kaufman's credit, he stuck it out to the end though he clearly thought it was all the fault of the audience refusing to play along with with a not-very-clever routine.

I also saw a lot of bombing by comedians I never heard of again. I won't name them because I can't remember any of their names.

By the way: In my list of great stand-up performances I've seen, I should have mentioned Chris Rock and David Brenner. Brenner struck me as a lightweight when I saw him do five minutes with Carson…and maybe he was in those days. But a few years before he passed away, I saw him get up on a stage and breeze through 75 minutes of solid, brilliant comedy material to non-stop laughter. Like Kinison and a few others, you'd never have known how good he was just from seeing him on some TV talk show.

It's been raining here in Los Angeles. It's raining in the above photo though you may not be able to see it.  But what you can see is Lydia, impatiently waiting the storm out in her little house in my backyard.  The house has been in that yard longer than she has.

I bought it because I had other feral cats living on and around my property and I worried for them when it was storming out there.  80% of the time, I had no idea where they went when it was raining.  The other 20%, I saw them huddling under some bush or overhang that did a poor job of keeping them dry.

So I got this little house and put it out there.  Some of them would go into it once in a while, some wouldn't. No one took up residence.  When Lydia showed up in my yard and life around 2007, it would have been easier to get her into my microwave oven than into the little house.  I put food in there.  I put her in there.  Neither worked.  She avoided the place like it was on fire.

I tried moving it to different places in the yard.  Didn't make a difference.  It was leaking a bit so I had my handyman do some serious caulking and while he was at it, I had him take the door off it.  I always left it open but it could have been closed and latched and I thought maybe that was scaring Lydia away from it.  None of this made a difference.

So I gave up and was surprised — "shocked" would be a better word — a few weeks ago when she moved into it. I'm assuming this had something to do with her getting older. According to this article, "…the numbers [for outdoor cats] are generally not good, and cat lifespan ranges…widely, anywhere from three to 10 years. The average cat lifespan outdoors is 5.625 years."

Lydia was at least six months old when I first noticed her here and it's been a little more than twelve years since then. So she's getting up there, feline-wise.

I like seeing her in the house. Yesterday when there was a break in the rain, I went down and put some food out for her on my back porch…Friskies Turkey Dinner in honor of Thanksgiving. She sprinted out of the little house, dined and was back in there before the rain resumed. This makes me quite happy and I expect her to live in there for most of the rest of her life.

When she goes — which will not be soon — I'll probably rent the place out. In this neighborhood, houses that size are selling for upwards of $400,000 so I oughta be able to get $3000 a month for it. And that's without utilities.

Are you a frequent/constant listener to Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast? If not, you should be…and you have a lot of catching-up to do, fella! There are plenty of great episodes you should hear and I don't just mean the one I was on. And you can do it now because starting Monday, the entire back archive will be available for free via the many online sources that exist for this show. Start here.

I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to think of Trumpian things today, especially if you're dining with relatives. But when you have the time/stomach, read Josh Marshall about the grimy dealings of "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani. All of this may be key to what happens to this country in the coming months and the irony is thicker than any gravy you'll pour onto your potatoes today.

Rudy has been going around pointing to the large fee that Joe Biden's son collected for some sort of "consulting job" in one country and saying it has to be dirty money. In the meantime, Donald Trump's lawyer (i.e., Rudy) has been collecting much larger fees from many companies in many countries for "consulting jobs" that seem even dirtier.

And as I read it, the "we don't care what he's done" pass that Trump supporters give Trump doesn't extend to his attorneys. Matter of fact, the rumblings I'm seeing suggest that they're mad at Rudy for betraying their beloved Donald and getting him into this impeachment thing. Giuliani may have achieved the impossible: Trump supporters and Trump detractors all calling for his scalp at the same time.

If you think there are some absurd photos around of the ex-Mayor/ex-Saint looking shocked and horrified, wait'll you see the ones that are coming.

On this day, many thoughts turn to home and family and parades and drumsticks. Some of us make a little room for the famous "Turkey's Away!" episode of the sitcom, WKRP in Cincinnati. It's remembered as a Thanksgiving episode but it actually aired on October 30, 1978, several weeks before Thanksgiving as the seventh episode of the series.

Do you know how unusual it is for any show to have its most memorable episode that early in its run? Not only that but they had theirs before the show was on the air. Folks in the audience were recruited to attend a taping of a new program they'd never seen or probably even heard of.

That fact is not clear in this brief interview with the show's creator and runner, Hugh Wilson. In it, he talks about that famous episode…

William Saletan blows a gaping hole in Trump's defense. His defenders have been pointing to two conversations he's been reported to have had, both stating that he wanted no quid pro quo for releasing the money to Ukraine. "See?" they say. "He told his associates the opposite of what you're charging him with wanting!" Okay…but as Saletan points out, those statements were both made after Trump learned that the Whistleblower had blown his whistle and reported Trump was demanding the quid pro quo. It's like Charlie Manson, after he learned he'd been fingered for the Tate-LaBianca killings, telling everyone, "I told Tex not to murder anyone in that house!"

This will matter a lot to the Trump backers who are willing to accept evidence he committed a crime. I'm guessing that in this great country of ours, there must be at least ten or eleven such people.

This revelation by the press of when Trump knew the jig was up and it was time to start lying about his orders would qualify as the latest Bad News for Donald Trump. I would guess our latest Donald Trump Outrage would be his new insistence that there's a plot among Liberals to rename Thanksgiving. Actually, there is such a plot but it's among Big Retail Companies to rechristen it "The Opening Day of Christmas Shopping."

Well, at least Trump can take comfort in one thing. He may not be in as much trouble as Rudy Giuliani. But then Rudy must need the money. Have you any idea what it costs these days to live under a bus?

Back in this message, we told you about a restaurant out in Canoga Park that was on the verge of closing but which was most deserving of being saved. We urged anyone who was in the vicinity to go there, dine there and show their support. Similar pleas went viral across the Internet and I heard from a number of you who went, loved the food there and told me that the place was packed. The Eater LA website is now reporting that plans to close the Grand Italiani have been suspended. Thanks to all of you who turned out.

That's the Grand Italiani at 21730 Sherman Way in Canoga Park, CA. Here's a link to their website with its menu, directions, hours, etc.

For a few years of my life in the late eighties/early nineties, I could often be found in Las Vegas. A hotel room there seemed like a better place to do binge writing when I had a lotta scripts to finish. I had a lady friend who was dancing there, usually in Lance Burton's show at the Hacienda, and I had a lot of "comps" for free hotel rooms and sometimes food because I was playing a lot of Blackjack.

With the aid of several different books, I taught myself how to count cards in that game. In over fifty trips to that city (and a few to Laughlin or Reno), I never once played Roulette or Keno or Poker and I honest-to-God still do not know how to play Craps. I pulled a few slot machine levers and would occasionally do a little Video Poker but 95% of my gambling was Blackjack because, thanks to card-counting, I could usually win.

I did not win a lot. Only once did a casino ever ask me to take my "action" elsewhere…and that was a time when I was winning due to sheer luck and not because I was counting. It was just one of those wonderful streaks that can and does happen to anyone occasionally. The dealer lady was just dealing good cards to me and bad cards to herself.

At the level I played, I was probably earning more-per-hour for the time I spent up in my room on the laptop than when I was in the casino. Counting cards was just something I did to see if I could do it and once I mastered the skill, I didn't have to do it anymore. I have been to Vegas a lot since then but I have not played Blackjack in this century. I doubt I could do it today without a lot of study and practice, practice, practice.

It's not easy. You have to do a lot of math in your head and not get distracted. My brain tends to roam wildly from topic to topic so I needed a lot of focus. You also have to look at everyone's cards without making it too obvious that you're looking at everyone's cards…and when the count goes way up and you raise your bets way up, you have to act very casual about it, like it's a whim and not a calculated strategy. Since I quit, I've had zero desire to subject myself to that anymore.

And like I said, I don't fully remember how to do it. Ah, but I just came across this video which in five-and-a-half minutes, explains the basics of the particular counting system I employed. There are others but the way this guy does it is pretty much the way I did it, except that back then, I could usually find a good double-deck game, meaning that the dealer dealt from a double-deck (104 cards) instead of like today when they employ a five or six-deck shoe — 260 cards or 312. Counting is more effective with the smaller number, especially when you could find — as you can't anymore — dealers who dealt almost all the way down, close to the end of the deck before they shuffled.

You may not be able to follow this and there's much more to learn than this, but here's the method that worked best for me…

Jess Wainwright wrote to ask me this:

I can't find it on your blog now but I know I read it somewhere that one should never judge a comedian by five minutes on some talk show. You said you need to see them live and in person doing a long set. Can you tell us some of the comedians you've been impressed with seeing them live like that and maybe some who were less than impressive?

Sure. I can't find where I said that either just now but the example I probably gave was Sam Kinison. I thought he was awful on TV, even on HBO where he could cuss as much as he liked. A couple times though, my buddy Len Wein and I went to see Sam at the Comedy Store. He had an impact live that simply did not come through over television and he needed to take his time and not try to get a laugh every thirty seconds. He would tell these long, rambling stories that were always worth the wait to get to the part where he was riotously funny.

But it always had to be in something of an intimate room. The last time I saw him in person was in the big showroom at Bally's. The room was too big for him and the crowd was too drunk. A lot of his on-time stage was taken up with the crowd imitating his famous screams and Sam screaming back at them. It made me think of one time when Steve Martin was asked why he'd given up performing stand-up. He said something like — this is not an exact quote — "My act turned into forty minutes of the audience yelling my catch-phrases at me!"

I never saw Martin perform on a stage but here's a partial list of comics I have seen in long, live sets: Jay Leno, George Carlin, Robert Klein, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Jim Jefferies, Lewis Black, Ricky Gervais, Paula Poundstone, Bill Maher, Marc Maron, Richard Lewis, Richard Jeni, Dennis Miller, Jackie Mason, Rita Rudner, Bill Kirchenbauer, Jeff Altman, Louis Anderson, Mike Birbiglia, Roseanne Barr, Louis C.K., Robin Williams, Paul Rodriguez, Paul Mooney, Gallagher, Don Rickles, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, David Spade, Richard Belzer and at least another twenty I'm forgetting.

Less than impressive? Roseanne Barr didn't get a laugh the time I saw her and it was, of course, all our fault. Dennis Miller (and this was before he got political) rattled off a lot of old hunks I knew from his HBO specials with the attitude of "Can I get my check and get outta here?" Jackie Mason was brilliantly funny the first time I saw him. He was dreadful — and filled with a lot of hate for certain people he talked about — the second time.

Rickles was awful the first time I saw him. It was during a period of his life when he was trying to put insult comedy behind him and to do mostly song and dance. He also spent much of his time on stage scolding us like children for not understanding that Frank Sinatra was the greatest human being who ever walked the Earth with Jesus Christ a distant second. The second time I saw him, he was back to Classic Rickles and it was much better but still not quite up to the legend.

Mr. Belzer left me untickled, as did Mr. Spade. Maybe those were just off nights. I saw Maher being not too impressive when he was new and I saw him be much, much better later.

My two favorites who are touring these days are Jim Jefferies and Lewis Black. And I didn't put him on the list above but the most I ever laughed in my life was one night in the mid-seventies at (I think) the Troubadour over on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was one of the last times Albert Brooks ever did stand-up and I can still make myself laugh by repeating a few well-remembered lines from that show to myself. If I think of some more, I'll post a follow-up to this answer.

• If God had really appointed our current president, He would have made certain by getting him more votes than Hillary.

From 1979, Dick Cavett chats with John Cleese, mostly about religion and Life of Brian…

• I don't quite get all the talk about Mike Bloomberg's candidacy. At the moment, he's at 2% in polls that have a 3 point margin-of-error. So he's pretty much tied with all of us.

In the midst of the current impeachment activity, it might be helpful to keep in mind a past one…the Watergate one which drove Richard M. Nixon from the White House. Dylan Matthews has prepared a little summary which may help those of you who are so old your memories of it have faded…or so young that you never had any in the first place.

Rod Hull was this funny man I got to know and work with in the eighties. I wrote about him here in one of the most-read articles on this blog. I described a hilarious appearance he made on The Tonight Show back when it was hosted by someone named Johnny Carson and more recently, I put up this piece via which you can view most of that Tonight Show appearance.

Rod died in a bizarre accident in 1997. So where has his pet/partner/puppet Emu been all this time? Apparently in storage but he's about to go on the auction block where he's expected to fetch between £8,000 and £10,000. I briefly got to operate Emu for a sketch on the show where I worked with Rod but the sketch never got on the air. Despite that, I still will not be bidding. That bird can be real mean.