I have a strange affinity for cooking videos…and what's strange about that is that I would never consider even attempting almost anything I see anyone make online. This even applies to things that look like I'd enjoy eating them. The Chefs of YouTube always convince me that it's too much trouble and/or that it requires experience which I simply don't have. I'll see someone prepare Beef Stroganoff and I'll think, "Wow, that's how you make Beef Stroganoff? I'm glad I watched this because now I know to never try preparing Beef Stroganoff!"
And sometimes, I just find the videos amusing. Today, I watched a video of Bob Hope delivering a monologue and another one of a gent named Sonny Hurrell making a pasta dish I've seen in the thumbnails of several cooking videos. It involves wrapping ground beef around a handful of uncooked spaghetti. I shall now embed the video that of the two, I found funnier…
Busy day here. This first ran on this site on March 31, 2005. The last time I drove by, the restaurant described below was still there and I still haven't been back for a meal…
Guess I'm on a kick of recalling near-defunct restaurant chains. I was thinking today about Piece O' Pizza, a string of eateries that once decorated the Southern California landscape…an amazing reach considering the awfulness of their signature product. Do you like pizza where the crust tastes like matzo, the toppings have the thickness of carbon paper and you can't decide whether to eat the pizza or the box it came in?
If you do, you'd have loved Piece O' Pizza pizza. Just awful. What kept them in business, it seemed to me, was their great, racy slogan ("Had a piece lately?") and the fact that there then weren't a lot of other places where one could grab a fast pizza to take home.
Also, they served a decent meatball sandwich and a more-than-decent (and very cheap) spaghetti plate. Many of the Piece O' Pizza stands were in "Skid Row" style areas, and I bet that spaghetti plate kept a lot of homeless people alive.
Photo by me
Like I said, they were all over L.A. There was one on Pico just east of Sepulveda. The building's still there but now it's a Numero Uno. All the other ones I know of were torn down completely. There was one at Beverly and Fairfax, another on La Brea just south of Hollywood, another on La Cienega near Airdrome…and (I'm guessing) at least 200 more.
As far as I know, there's only one remaining. It's down on Venice Boulevard about a half-mile west of Sepulveda. A year or two ago, I was in the neighborhood and in need of rapid lunch, so I decided to go in and have the spaghetti plate, just to see if it was still the same. I also shot the photos you see here. Since there is no parent company now to supply the preparations, I was expecting totally different cuisine…but the meat sauce was more or less what I recalled, or at least it seemed to have evolved from the same recipe.
Photo also by me
I probably won't go back since I now have better places to eat. I suspect that's what killed off the Piece O' Pizza chain in or around the late eighties. As Numero Uno and Pizza Hut and even Domino's spread, everyone had a better place to get a quick pizza or to have one brought to their door.
Speculating further, I'd guess that too many of their stands were located in depressed areas, which made it difficult for them to upgrade their product. It would have been awkward to simultaneously improve their menu (making most items more expensive), advertise that they'd done this…but still service the crowd that just wanted the cheapest-possible plate of pasta.
I don't exactly miss the places since they weren't that good. On the other hand, I've been to fancy Italian restaurants where I enjoyed a $20 entree a lot less than I liked the Piece O' Pizza spaghetti plate. Even in the early eighties, it didn't cost much over two dollars…and that included garlic bread.
We're about two weeks from the 23rd anniversary of this blog and I'm amazed to find that I have stories I still haven't told here. Here's one of them and before I start it, I'd like to thank Follower-Of-This-Blog Michael Kilgore for digging up the news clipping that acts as the punch line to this story. Now then…
Kuda Bux (born Khudah Bukhsh in 1905) was one of the first celebrity magicians and even briefly starred in his own TV show in 1950. He did many kinds of amazing feats but was famous for two. One was walking across hot coals while barefoot, which he did all across the country before astonished spectators and newsreel cameras.
The other was the one that caused him to be billed as "The Man With X-Ray Eyes." He would be blindfolded…and not just with the simple kind. He would invite people to cover his eyes and often his whole head with coins, bandages, dough, cloths, etc. — you'll see in the video below how extensive this could be — and then he'd drive a car or read a book or do something else that proved he could somehow see. It was a magic trick but such a good one that a lot of people were convinced something mystical was happening there.
One of the places he performed his feats was on a TV show called You Asked For It which aired from 1950 until 1959, returning later in various versions. The premise of the show was simple: People would write in and suggest things they'd like to see on the show — amazing stunts, celebrity reunions, acts they'd heard about and so forth. They had Kuda Bux on many times and the clip below is from one of those times. But first, this story…
The exclusive private club in Hollywood called The Magic Castle proved they weren't that exclusive by admitting me into membership in 1980. It was and still is a great place to go, eat fine food and see some of the world's greatest magicians perform. In fact, I was there last Sunday evening with friends and among the performers we saw were Javi Benitez (proudly displaying his Penn & Teller: Fool Us trophy) and Larry Wilmore — yes, the guy from The Daily Show. But let me tell you about another evening at the Castle.
The date, I believe, was Wednesday, February 4, 1981. I was there with my friend Shary Flenniken, who most of you know from National Lampoon and her strip, "Trots n' Bonnie." Very fine cartoonist. We'd dined and seen some great magic and were just about to depart when a magician I knew saw us heading for the exit and said, "You're not leaving, are you?" We said we were both pretty exhausted. He said, "You're going to miss Kuda Bux?"
I knew who Kuda Bux was. Shary didn't but I did and I knew that he had retired, in part because The Man With X-Ray Eyes was, of all possible ironies in this world, almost blind due to Glaucoma. He had not performed anywhere for a while but he was doing a special one-time performance in the Parlor of Prestidigitation, which is one of the showrooms in the Magic Castle.
It had not been advertised. He'd agreed to do it because a lot of magician members wanted to see him and most of the seats, we were told, had been filled via word-o'-mouth among those members. It was starting in fifteen minutes.
Shary was dead-tired but she was nice enough to indulge me. We made a dash for the Parlor and managed to get the last two open seats. I recognized almost everyone else in the room as a working magician and some of them were pretty danged famous.
Kuda Bux started his show with a new magic trick he'd invented in retirement. He said it was the first time he'd performed it before an audience and probably the last. He had an empty metal frame on a stand. He daubed rubber cement all around the rim, then displayed a piece of brown paper, the kind used to make grocery bags.
He affixed the paper to the frame so the frame was covered with the paper and there was obviously nothing behind it. Then he brought out a faucet, stuck it through the brown paper, turned it on and began filling glasses of wine which he passed out to folks in the front row.
The audience applauded mightily and a few of them — these were mostly very experienced magicians, remember — looked like they weren't sure how he'd done that. Seeing that look is one of the joys sometimes of going to the Magic Castle: Magicians fooling not only the audiences but each other.
Then Kuda Bux did the x-ray eyes trick. The set-up — putting coins and dough over his eyes, then wrapping his head with many bandages — was pretty much the same as in this video, which I've just decided I should embed right here so you can watch it before I finish this story. Here it is from an old episode of You Asked For It…
What Kuda Bux did in the Parlor that night was the same trick except there were no guns, no glasses of acid, no cigarette-lighting. They wrapped his head and he invited members of the audience to come up, write on a blackboard and then he'd replicate what they wrote. That was mystifying enough to evoke more of those uncertain looks from seasoned magicians.
He closed with a brief Q-and-A with the audience with a lot of them telling him how privileged they felt to see him perform. Pointedly, no one asked him anything about how he'd done either trick but I'd bet cash-money that some of them were soon at the Magic Castle Library, reading up on how he'd done the x-ray eyes feat. Most of the great magic tricks of the world are explained in that collection.
Now, here's where the story gets a little chilling…
At the time, I was a writer on the TV show, That's Incredible!, which was kind of a successor-in-interest to You Asked For It. After Kuda Bux concluded his presentation, everyone present gathered around to shake his hand and fawn. I made my way to him and asked if he'd like to do his act on our show.
I didn't really have the authority to make that offer but I knew our producers would go for it. He said he'd love to do it and he gave me his contact info. He seemed pretty happy as did the friends around him who overheard our discussion. The next day, I told the folks at the show about him and everyone who had to approve the booking approved the booking.
I gave his contact info to our Talent Coordinator who attempted to reach him to arrange his appearance on the next episode we taped. She was unable to reach him but she kept trying and trying — and finally, a week or so later, there was an item in the trade paper Variety about him. It was wrong about him appearing frequently at the Castle in recent years but sadly right as to why we hadn't been able to reach him…
A company called Brightline has been saying for some time now they would "break ground in the second half of 2023" on a high-speed rail project that will connect Southern California with Las Vegas. Today, we enter the last twelfth of 2023 and I haven't heard or read anything to indicate that this has started. Assuming it happens as announced…
Brightline West will be America's first true high-speed passenger rail system. The modern, eco-friendly system will redefine train travel in America and connect two of our most iconic destinations: Las Vegas and Southern California. This 218-mile passenger rail service will be operated by Brightline West from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, California, with 96% of its alignment within the median of the I-15 highway.
Sounds exciting, right? I hope they can pull it off but…well, even if my now-low enthusiasm for Vegas were to regenerate, I don't think I'd use it. For one thing, to get to the train station they intend to build in Rancho Cucamonga would not be easy. Rancho Cucamonga is around 44 miles from me. I just consulted Waze and it says that if I were to leave right now for the Rancho Cucamonga station, it would take 1 hour and 13 minutes in "typical traffic."
Since they probably won't be running a lot of trains to and from Vegas, at least at first, it would probably be a matter of arriving on time for my train or waiting many hours for the next one. "Typical traffic" in my city can get atypical without notice so I'd have to build a lot of pad into that drive to Rancho Cucamonga along with time to park. So add an hour to that 1:13. The Brightline train (they say) will travel at speeds up to 186+ miles per hour, delivering me to a station on the Las Vegas Strip in two hours and ten minutes.
So total time from my garage to the Las Vegas strip would be around four and a half hours…or about the time that Waze tells me if would take me to drive right now from my house to Caesars Palace. I just looked that up too.
I also tried figuring it if I drove or took an Uber to Union Station downtown to take a Metrolink train to Rancho Cucamonga. Union Station is nine miles and again, you have to allow pad time…and if I drove there, parking time as well. It works out to even longer.
Meanwhile, in addition to driving, there's another way I could get to Vegas and it's available to me right now: Drive or take an Uber the 45 minutes to LAX Airport. Add in an hour pad for traffic on the way or in the TSA line plus maybe parking, then take a nonstop Southwest Airlines flight (60-75 minutes) to the airport in Vegas. Figure a fifteen minute cab ride to the Strip…and that's probably well under four hours.
Going Brightline to Vegas may be way faster for people who live near Rancho Cucamonga but for me, it's not gonna be faster and given how many zillions they're spending to build this super-charged choo-choo business, I doubt it will be cheaper. If you book a flight in advance, you can find $44 fees on Southwest so when they talk about Brightline serving Southern California and a projected "11 million one-way passengers annually," I dunno. Most of Southern California lives farther from Rancho Cucamonga than I do.
Don't get me wrong: I love the idea. On the project's website, they talk about all the jobs it would create and all the environmental advantages and that all sounds peachy. And I'd love to see the day when a high-speed train would whisk me from my neighborhood to Las Vegas or even to Rancho Cucamonga for the transfer but I just don't see that happening. Here's hoping I'm wrong.
Basically, he asks the question why is Kissinger loathed so much more than Richard Nixon when whatever damage Kissinger caused, it was endorsed and implemented by Nixon. And the answer has a lot to do with Kissinger living a long life and remaining a celebrity, whereas Nixon at least had the decency to get himself almost impeached and lose his office and then die. Those are my words, not Mr. Marshall's. If you're a subscribed to TPM, go read what he had to say.
A lot of folks think that it was indecent that Dr. Henry Kissinger lived as long as he did and, worse, that he was regarded by some as an elder statesman of worthwhile accomplishment. This article on Slate by Fred Kaplan explains why they felt that way.
And if Kaplan's piece doesn't strike you as nasty enough, Slate also offers us an old article by the late Christopher Hitchens that oughta do the job.
Following-up on the previous post here, my old pal Pat O'Neill wrote to ask…
How do you feel about the practice in TV shows and movies based on comics where they name locations after people who were involved in the creation of the source material, such as "Infantino St." in The Flash, or "Finger Plaza" in a Batman-related piece?
It seems generally harmless to me but it also seems like a pretty minor nod to folks who are owed a greater debt. I suspect that those who are so recognized and are still around, as well as the families of those who have passed, would prefer that the creative-type person receive a real credit and some real money. Then again, the folks who inserted those names into scripts probably didn't have the power to grant a formal credit or have a check sent.
Posted on Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 10:26 AM
I'm going to omit the name of this questioner because I'm not sure if the following message I received is a joke or not. I don't want to embarrass him if it isn't…
Mr. Evanier, there is a character in Spider-Woman #8 named Marcus Evanier. Is that a coincidence?
Yes, it's a sheer coincidence that the writer of that story — my longtime friend Marv Wolfman — named a character that. And boy, was he shocked when I pointed it out to him. He said, "Oh, my God, Mark! I forgot that was your name!" And he even got it wrong because my given name is Mark, not Marcus. You'd think that someone in the Marvel offices, or at least my friend Al Gordon who inked that story, would have pointed out that Marv had accidentally used my name for a character.
Seriously: This is a practice that is sometimes referred to as "Tuckerizing," named for the science-fiction writer Wilson Tucker, who liked to insert his friends' names into stories. I'm sure he wasn't the first writer in history to do this. It probably went back to cave paintings. But just as he used others' names in his story, someone decided to use his name in their vocabulary by referring to it as "Tuckerization" and the term caught on in some circles.
Writers have been known to argue about whether it's distracting and therefore injurious to a story. Me, I think it depends if your friend's name is Bob Johnson or E. Sneed Entwhistle. I often come across a character name in fiction and think, "That's the author Tuckerizing!" I've done it in a few things I've written but I try not to do it when it's likely to make readers or viewers react that way.
This was not the first time I found myself in a comic book. Julius Schwartz, then the editor of The Flash, once stuck my name into a story. In that case though, readers were supposed to recognize my name from his letter columns. By coincidence, both stories were lettered by John Costanza. It's kind of fun at times but I think it's often overdone and, like some others believe, distracting.
Home movies from Disneyland in 1956. Gee, this looked like a fun place to be back then. And some of the people you'll see lining up for rides have probably gotten on them by now. In two parts…
WonderCon Anaheim will happen March 29-31 of 2024 where it usually happens: At the Anaheim Convention Center, just a hop, skip and jump from Disneyland. It's kind of like Comic-Con Lite, run by the same folks — a smaller gathering but big enough that you probably won't see all of it and there'll be too many panels and events for you to attend. So smaller isn't worse…just different.
Another good thing about WonderCon is that badges are a lot easier to get. If it sells out, it won't for a while but if you wanna go, don't wait. Three-day badges go on sale at a bargain rate on Thursday, November 30 — otherwise known as "The Day After Tomorrow." Here's the link to find out how to order them and pay special attention to the part about getting a Comic-Con Member ID.
I am planning to attend and I'll be hosting panels and I don't know which ones yet. Single day badges will be available at a later date.
I can't find a way to embed it here without crashing this site but go watch this short documentary by Judd Apatow. It's about the unlikely — in some ways, not in others — friendship between Bob Newhart and Don Rickles.
UPDATE, THAT EVENING: They posted it on YouTube so now I can embed it here. Thank you, Bruce Reznick…
Can't believe it been several years since I posted a Linda Eder video here. Among the folks who sing show-type music, she's one of my favorites. What an incredible voice. She's famous for belting out vocals that can be heard not only in the back row but also in the theater down the block…but here, she sings "Wouldn't it be Loverly?" from My Fair Lady with some charming visuals. And stay tuned after because she talks a little about her relationship with Julie Andrews who, of course, introduced that song to the world.
In case you don't know, when Ms. Eder mentions "Frank," she's referring to Frank Wildhorn, the composer of many great shows but most notably, the musical version of Jekyll & Hyde.. He was her husband but is no longer that.
