The reviews of the new production of The Music Man should remind us of the perils of thinking any one review is the final word on whatever is being reviewed. They're all over the place ranging from headlines that say "Hugh Jackman's revival is a huge let-down" (here) to "Hugh Jackman Shines in Smashing Broadway Revival (here). And these reviewers may have been sitting only seats apart at the same performance.

This is something I had to explain to my father when I began writing for television. He'd read one bad review of something I worked on and if it was bad…well, that was that. The show was a disaster…never mind that others liked it. For him, ten positive reviews did not cancel out one negative and saying, "It's just one guy's opinion" didn't shake his feeling that the show was a career-killing disaster. There was this feeling that if the opinion was in a newspaper or magazine, it couldn't possibly be wrong. He certainly didn't feel that way about political opinions in some of those same outlets. But he did about entertainment product.

I suspect this production of The Music Man is pretty much critic-proof and there will not be a lot of empty seats at the Winter Garden Theatre as long as Hugh and Sutton are up there singing about trombones and White Knights. Reading the wide range of notices, it's interesting how to some, "old-fashioned" is a bad thing and to others, it's a plus. And what did the ones who don't like "old-fashioned" think they were going to see at a revival of a 1957 musical set in 1912? A lot of folks in their profession faulted the recent revival of Oklahoma! for not being old-fashioned enough.

If I were back there or traveling, the only thing that might keep me away from it would be the cost of getting good seats. Critics usually don't comment on that, perhaps because they all get in for free. But an awful lot of them were in agreement about that.

This time out, we have the theme from the TV series Hawaii Five-O — the original one, the one with Jack Lord — as performed by The Ventures, a band I always associated with songs about surfing. As I look over their discography, I don't see a lot of that but I think their sound — guitars, bass and drums — more or less defined surf music, a popular genre for about a year and a half, I think.

Their version of the Hawaii Five-O theme was so popular that a lot of people think they recorded it for the TV show. They didn't.  But here they are performing it on some TV show somewhere at some time.  I assume that four of the five guys playing are the four who made up the core of The Ventures: Bob Bogle, Nokie Edwards, Gerry McGee and Don Wilson. But they sometimes added a member or two for certain performances and here, they've added a second drummer…and it's Max Weinberg!

And hey, did you know the song has lyrics? Sammy Davis Jr. recorded them and here's a video that my pal Lee Goldberg once posted to YouTube. It's Sammy's record laid over video from a couple of different title sequences from the original TV series…

The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster has finally opened on Broadway and that, of course, is no small accomplishment when you consider all the problems it had. The reviews, which are being aggregated on this page, are not as ecstatic as one might expect. Most so far seem to wish Mr. Jackman was a bit more treacherous, love almost everything Ms. Foster did, find the sets a bit odd, find the prices for good seats outrageous, say the show revels in its old-fashionedness, and endorse the sheer bankability of the project, no matter what the critics quibble over.

Not that I believe in believing all the critics but I am a bit less frustrated that I probably won't get back to New York to see this show, at least with its opening night cast. It'll probably remain a hot (and costly) ticket as long as Jackman and Foster are there. But it does sound a bit sanitized for our protection. Writing about "the show's treatment of men's casual harassment of women," New York Times critic Jesse Green noted…

You can't really remove it from the main story; Hill's modus operandi involves seducing piano teachers and leaving them flat. (At one point he refers to Marian as his "commission.") In light of that, it seems foolish merely to change a lyric here or there; in the dopey dance tune "Shipoopi," the couplet "the girl who's hard to get…but you can win her yet" has become suddenly enlightened as "the boy who's seen the light…to treat a woman right."

This gets us back to the question of whether a period-piece should reflect current values — an issue I wrestled with for the recent revival of My Fair Lady. I don't have a pat answer for that except that bad behavior should not be endorsed but we should also not pretend that it never existed. And I don't think that line in "Shipoopi" needed changing. Even in the most enlightened of times — which we have yet to reach — there will still be folks eager to mate, trying to win over the person with whom they wish to mate. That's not wrong. It's how one goes about it that might be wrong.

One of my pet political issues is health insurance and, in times of a worldwide pandemic, it's odd that I'm not mentioning it more. Almost no one is. Put simply, I think it will be a grand and glorious day for all — even folks who now view it as a horror to be avoided at all costs — when we have good, single-payer health care in this country. High on my list of reasons to distrust that Trump guy is that he promised many times that he had a much-better-than-Obamacare plan all ready to go…and that was a plain, naked lie.

Did you see any trace of it? I sure didn't.

Here's Paul Krugman talking about how the Biden Administration has done a good job undoing a lot of damage that Trump did to the Affordable Care Act. And warning what will happen if the Republicans take power.

Checking in at #34 — as Casey Kasem might have said and probably did — is "Spinning Wheel" by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears. It was written by their lead vocalist David Clayton-Thomas and it hit the charts in 1968. I liked this song and thought it was interesting how often it turned up on variety shows performed by very mainstream artists. Some time in the seventies, I read an article where some critic who covered shows in Las Vegas cited it as the song he was the most sick of hearing in everyone's stage act.

The lyrics are full of drug references but it's like everyone loved the tune so much, they decided to just ignore that aspect of it. A lot of very popular songs of the day wound up being sorta laundered this way to the point where they even turned up on TV commercials. I have a vague memory that "Spinning Wheel" did for some product…maybe a casino or lottery.

As usual here, I link to a video of the song being performed somewhere. I could have picked several videos of Blood, Sweat and Tears performing it but I was intrigued by this one made by someone matching visuals to the record…with a special emphasis on the Wheel of Fortune game show and some very literal images…

While we're at it, here's the lovely Barbara Eden performing the song on a TV variety program. I posted this here once before and we had a big mystery about what show it appeared on. There were many guesses of either The Sonny & Cher Show or the series Sonny did without Cher, and my pal Mike Clark thought he recognized the camera work as being a Bob Hope Special. It turned out Mike was right. It was from a special Mr. Robert Hope did on March 18, 1970…

Here's what seems like a good "explainer" about what's going on with Russia and Ukraine. Like you, I have no idea what's going to happen there but someone — actually a lot of someones, plural — will be very unhappy.

My prediction for this year's Super Bowl is the same as it is every year even when I don't post it: I ain't watching. We all have things that interest others but do not interest us and I seem to be congenitally incapable of caring even the teensiest bit about football. I don't fault others for their love of the game. I just cannot join them in it.

Most years, I don't even know which teams are playing but you can't live in Los Angeles and not know the Rams are in it to win it. That means a lot of people in my city are going to be wildly exuberant or deeply depressed at the outcome. I do not understand that linkage. I was once in Times Square the moment the Yankees won the World Series and I have never seen so many human beings — a few of them even sober — be so happy. You'd think they had actually won something.

I am rooting for one thing to happen this Sunday…

My favorite pizzeria in town, Vito's, had a fire last Saturday evening. They're closed for they-don't-know-how-long and the timing could not be worse for two reasons. One is that it's a bad time for a great pizzeria in Los Angeles to be outta commission. For Super Bowl Sunday? With an L.A. team in the contest? I think they'd sell pies as fast as they could possibly make them. They could probably quadruple the price and still not be able to make as many as they could sell.

Secondly, the fire fighters were still there mopping up when Dave Portnoy — "the pizza guy" — happened to show up to tape a review. Dave misspeaks at first. Apart from the flashback, this all takes place at the Vito's on La Cienega Boulevard, which is the one I patronize. And Dave says "this place opened a week ago" which is misleading.

Vito has two locations — the one on La Cienega and one in Santa Monica. (He briefly opened one in downtown L.A. but that one seems to have closed.) The Vito's on La Cienega is the one that had the fire and it just moved from one space in a strip mall there (where it's been for years) to a larger space in the same strip mall.

Here is Dave's video of what he found when he showed up there. [CAUTION: Excessive use of the "f" word in the following…]

I don't know if they have a prayer of getting up and running again by Sunday but Vito is a great guy who makes a great pizza. It sure would make me feel good if they could pull it off. I wouldn't dare try to order this weekend but it would make me feel like I'd won something if others could.

Hope you've been enjoying Day #700 of my Coronavirus Life Style — staying home most of the time, going almost nowhere. If you'd told me 700 days ago it would last 700 days with no certain end-date in sight, I would have thought it would be way more unpleasant than it has been. But as I'm sure I've mentioned here more than once, it hasn't been that bad; not for a professional writer who'd be spending a pretty high percentage of those days at home without a worldwide pandemic.

Next week, the great state of California will be lifting the mask mandates in indoor public places for those who are fully-vaccinated. That doesn't mean much here in Los Angeles where the city mask mandate is still in place. The L.A. Times is guesstimating that that mandate could end in late March…

L.A. County is averaging about 9,500 cases a day, according to a Times analysis of state data. Case rates in the county are dropping in half every week, [Public Health Director Barbara] Ferrer said. If this pace continues, the county would fall under the goal of 730 cases a day in early March and could exit the indoor mask order two weeks later, according to a Times analysis.

I'm not sure if the end of such mandates will make me more likely to go to public places (because it's deemed safe) or less likely (because I'd be around mostly-unmasked people) but I don't have to decide that now. Planning that kind of thing in advance hasn't worked out so well for the last 700 days.

I'm getting e-mails and calls asking about WonderCon Anaheim, which takes place April 1-3. Its organizers are pressing ahead with an in-person (albeit sanitized for our protection) event. Details on badges, hotel reservations and other such matters should be on that website shortly. Am I going to be there? Again, I don't have to decide that now. Anaheim is in Orange County, which will have no mask mandate after next week.

Another appearance by Allan Sherman on The Ed Sullivan Show. This one's from February 20, 1966, shortly before he entered his "lose weight, grow your hair out and ditch the glasses" phase of trying to change his life and image…

When you have a moment, you might want to read Aja Romano on the subject of comedians who say their only real goal is to be funny…but who are in some ways competing with news commentators and political pundits and (boldface "and") faulting those folks for spreading misinformation.

As much as I love so much of what Jon Stewart did on The Daily Show, I never fully bought into his claim that since comedy was his main goal, certain standards of journalism did not fully apply to him. That wasn't a huge issue since his program did pretty solid fact-checking and rarely got things wrong. But now you have Joe Rogan offering much the same defense with a lower level of accuracy along with the evasive rationale of "Well, I'm just posing questions." And of course, dispensing faulty medical advice is a lot more serious than misquoting one senator.

Stewart's current show on Apple TV is very good and I really love the podcasts he's doing which are just a bunch of smart, witty people discussing issues with a candor that is rare on Ye Olde Internet. I initially skipped this conversation with NBA Coach Steve Kerr because I have close to zero interest in basketball. But a friend told me a lot of it was about race relations and both men said some smart things about how we, as white people, don't always understand the problems from a non-white perspective.

I'm going to watch all of what Stewart does for Apple but I hope he's not going to try hiding behind "I'm not an activist" when he has moved more clearly into that role. I do like that he's not selling himself as an expert on all the topics he discusses. Too many people think they are one because they have a microphone and a following.

• I'm going to guess that every single person who was outraged that Hillary Clinton didn't preserve all her e-mails is fine with Donald Trump ripping up documents that were supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act.

After a long hiatus from YouTube — he's been touring — Randy Rainbow is back…

• Joe Rogan seems to be busy today so the CEO of Spotify is doing his daily apology for him.

Ten years ago on this blog, we were talking a lot about a stage musical version of the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor, which Jerry himself was directing. He was also making bizarre announcements about how it would open on such-and-such a date at such-and-such a theater…and it would turn out that such-and-such a theater had not been booked or informed.

Finally, the musical — with music by Marvin Hamlisch and a book and lyrics by Rupert Holmes — had its world debut on July 24, 2012 at Nashville's Tennessee Performing Arts Center. Reviews were rather good and Jerry announced that nothing could stop it from moving on to Broadway where it would be a smash hit. But since it closed in Nashville, the show was not been seen — on Broadway or anywhere.

When Jerry died in 2017, it was widely assumed that was the end of the musical. Not so. The Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine has announced a production to start July 1. This is the same theater that in 2018 hosted a production of Grumpy Old Men: The Musical, a show with lyrics by my friend, the late Nick Meglin.

I'm thinking that as it gets around that The Nutty Professor is available for regional productions, it may become one of those shows that is often performed here and there, even if neither here nor there is Broadway. It would be nice to see it some day. And maybe…just maybe Jerry's musical will finally make it to The Great White Way.

Thanks to Galen Fott for telling me about this new chapter in the story of the show. And here are some scenes from the production in Nashville…

As we've been saying here, there's no way to know how many comedy teams popped up in the fifties trying to be "The next Martin and Lewis" even while America was still loving the original duo.  The list of just the match-ups that made it onto Ed Sullivan's show was pretty long and it was probably less than 1% of all the acts that tried to emulate Dean and Jerry.

The team of Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall made it to Ed's stage…and yes, that's the same Peter Marshall who hosted the Hollywood Squares game show for a long time. The clip below is from December 16, 1951 and the show was then called The Toast of the Town. It didn't become The Ed Sullivan Show until 1955.

Noonan and Marshall were related. Tommy's half-brother (the actor John Ireland) was married to Peter's sister (the actress Joanne Dru). The team started in the late forties about the time Martin and Lewis were getting big. Dean and Jerry, by the way, performed on the first episode of Toast of the Town in 1948.

Noonan and Marshall didn't appear together all the time. Both pursued separate careers on and off throughout the fifties and the best surviving example of their work as a pair is probably The Rookie, a 1959 movie directed by George O'Hanlon (the voice of George Jetson). It was supposed to be the first in a string of Noonan and Marshall comedies and the string ended with that one film. If you ever see it, you'll know why…but don't ever see it.  Even the presence in the cast of Julie Newmar and Joe Besser couldn't save it.

Tommy and Peter stopped appearing together a few years later. Marshall continued his singing/acting career and did quite well.  Noonan produced and starred in a couple of B-Movies that got attention because "name" actresses like Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren appeared in them, sans wardrobe. He also became a punch line in a lot of jokes about how many times he was married. The actual number, often inflated for comedic effect, was five.

Noonan passed away in 1968. Marshall is still going strong at the age of 95. Here they are on with Ed…