Dana Snow died a week ago, I'm told. I don't know the cause of death and I don't know his age…but he graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1970 so that should give you some idea. There was a memorial service for him the other night at the most appropriate place to hold a memorial service for Dana Snow…a comedy club. They were his natural habitat. If there is a grave for him, I know what he would have wanted on the headstone. He'd want it to say "Dana Snow, Comedian." Either that or a good joke.
I met Dana sometime in the early seventies at some local comic book mini-con or another. Comic books were Dana's secondary interest and they were a distant second. His first interest, far and away, was comedy, especially stand-up comedy. I had not seen much of Dana the last few decades but I find it hard to imagine that he ever had a third-place interest. He was an enormous fan of just about everyone who ever made an audience laugh and he devoted just about all of his life to trying to join their ranks…and succeeded here and there in his own way. If unrelenting persistence is a virtue — and in some instances, I don't think it is — Dana was the champ.
He could often be found in comedy clubs — usually the smaller ones, sometimes the ones that took him 90 minutes on the bus to get to. He'd sit there, watching other up-and-coming comics, waiting for his chance to go on even if it was at 2 AM in front of four patrons. He was a fierce taker of notes and extremely generous with everything he had. Some comics thought that when he was sitting in the back of the club scribbling, he was writing down their best jokes for purposes of theft. Never. He was studying, jotting down observations and thoughts that he felt might help his performance and his career. If he wrote stuff down about your act, he'd gladly share it all with you. Just trying to be helpful.
At times, he was. He worked for me for a few months — typing, filing, helping me sort the Groo mail, etc. He told some people that it ended when I caught him stealing…and that's not exactly true. What happened was that I found out he was working on his own stuff for too large a part of the time I was paying him by the hour to work on mine. I believe that was the reason he lost several other jobs around that time. He was just incapable of not working on his own stuff for very long.
That was in the nineties. The last decade or two, I ran into him here and there…usually at a tiny theater in West Los Angeles where a couple of different improv comedy troupes performed. When I went to see them, I'd see Dana in the back, taking notes like his life depended on it. I guess in some ways, it did. He was a benevolent presence and I know he helped hundreds of different comedian friends in whatever ways he could. His greatest regret was probably that when they had that memorial for him at the comedy club the other night, he couldn't sit in the back and take notes.
I have a bunch of these…pictures someone sent me or I stole them off the Internet…images I thought I might want to use on this blog and then I never did. I'm going to post a few of them here now and then.
I don't remember if it was at this past year's Comic-Con International in San Diego or the one before but I saw a cosplayer roaming the premises with this clever outfit. If you remember the end credits of the original Star Trek, you remember the credit line for Herbert F. Solow superimposed over an alien face. This is a more-than-reasonable facsimile of that title card. I spotted it, said "I have to get a shot of it and put it on my blog" and then I got distracted…I think by someone approaching me to get a Groo signed or something.
By the time I was undistracted, the cosplayer had gone elsewhere. I never spotted him — I assume it's a "him" — again. I didn't get my photo but I spotted this one on some site and grabbed it. It matters to me not just because it's well done but because Herb Solow was the guy who gave my partner Dennis Palumbo and me our first TV writing job. A lovely man. I think he would have been flattered…
Well, I think I have my streaming service set up properly…and today, I subscribed to Apple TV largely so I could watch The Problem with Jon Stewart. Then about twenty minutes later, I saw headlines on several sites that proclaimed some version of "Jon Stewart's Show on Apple Is Ending." What timing. I assume though that if Mr. Stewart wants to continue with it, Mr. Stewart will find a willing buyer.
Lately, I've seen and heard of an awful lot of damage done by medical advice that did not come from someone who attended medical school, received a diploma, took some modernized version of the Hippocratic Oath and has years of experience in his or her chosen field. To me, everyone else is like Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies who insisted she was a doctor because she knew how to cure leprosy with raccoon sweat or something like that.
The fourth and final issue of the four-issue Groo in the Wild mini-series is either at your local comic book shop or it will be any day now. I don't plug Groo often on this site and it's not because I'm not proud of the comic or don't want you to buy it. It's because I have to be in the right frame of mind to plug something that pays me. I usually get out of that frame by seeing the online offerings of folks who think the Internet was invented just to promote their current products. Today, I feel like telling you that this is out and I think this mini-series is one of the best things Sergio and I have ever done. I won't mention it again.
So my first thought was that Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not should be Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer and election denier who pleaded guilty this morning in a Georgia courtroom. But then I realized: This woman has just done the single intelligent thing I've ever heard of her doing…the thing that will keep her out of prison if she doesn't do something else illegal and foolish. So maybe today's P.I.G.I.N. is Donald Trump who's now had this attorney and close associate flip on him like a cheese omelet.
Sorry I've been away from the blog a bit. It's been a couple of really crowded days but I'll make it up to you.
Recently here, I announced with a heavy heart that I was abandoning my beloved TiVos and my not-beloved cable company. I still believe TiVo makes the best Digital Video Recorders — or at least, the best I've seen. The trouble is that every cable company now has their own DVR and they make it very, very difficult to use their service with any DVR but theirs. Adhering to the old maxim that I wish wasn't true as often as it is — "If you can't beat 'em, surrender" — I've surrendered. So that's why I've stopped using TiVo.
And my reason for getting rid of my cable service is that their service has been really terrible. I have revenge fantasies in which the heads of the company are trapped for all eternity in the company's phone system, trying to get an actual human being on the line.
Well, it looks like my timing was spot-on. Stu Shostak sent me a link to this article about how this very cable company is taking a big step away from offering cable service. It will no longer be available to new subscribers. Can we all see where this is heading?
Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not should probably be Jim Jordan who doesn't look like he's going to get the job of Speaker of the House. He seems to be the only person who wants it but even some members of his own party thinks he'd be a disaster…and these are people who think Trump wouldn't be.
My friend Greg Ehrbar knows just about everything about cartoons and he hosts an audio podcast called "The Funtastic World of Hanna and Barbera" that focuses on that studio. A few weeks ago we sat down in our respective homes and I forget if we used Zoom or Skype or one of the other ninety options but we had a nice conversation about my days working there. Wanna hear it? Go here and click where they tell you to click. You may need to sit through an ad or three to get to us but it's free.
If you're interested in understanding the conflict in the Middle East at the moment — and I sure wouldn't blame anyone for looking away in helpless frustration — you might want to keep an eye on Fred Kaplan's posts on Slate. This man has a good track record as an explainer and for realistic assessments of these kinds of problems. Here's his latest.
I have this lovely friend named Gabriella Muttone. She's a model and a photographer and a designer and she's running to win some sort of online beauty/grace/smarts competition to benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Here — I'll let Gabriella herself tell you about it…
You can vote once a day for free if you either have a Facebook account and use it to verify you're a person or if you give them a credit card number. As I understand it, they will only charge your card if you explicitly agree to donate the amount you specify to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. And for every buck you donate, Gabriella gets another vote…which sounds to me like a WIN/WIN deal for everyone. Here's the link. Use it well and use it often.
Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not would be anyone whose life is being ended or made hellish by what's going on in Israel and especially Gaza — horrible, horrible inhumanity. It's a conflict that cannot end well for anyone and it's sickening to watch even a few seconds of it. I'm not going to talk much about it here because I have nothing to say besides the obvious. That doesn't mean it doesn't horrify me.
Every so often on my blog (like here, here, here and here) I write about places at or near the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The house I grew up in was — and come to think of it, still is — a mile away and for some reason, I have some worth-telling (I think) stories that occurred at or around that corner. Today, the newsfromme time machine is transporting us back to when I was around eight years old and was taken perhaps a dozen times to a place near there called Kiddie Land.
There have probably been many thousands of Kiddie Lands and Kiddielands (without the space) in this great nation of ours — tacky arrangements of cheap rides and things to climb on and maybe even games of skill or chance that promise you might win something neat that no one has ever actually won. My parents took me to this Kiddie Land from time to time, often with my Uncle Aaron and my Aunt Dot in tow. As a general rule of thumb, I rarely enjoyed any place I was taken to because it was built for the sheer purpose of amusing children my age.
In my life — I'm 71 now, especially around the knees — I have somehow never gotten around to making an exhaustive study of all the Kiddie Lands in the world. Still, I feel confident in saying this one had to at least tie for the title of Cheapest, Tackiest Kiddie Land ever. What you're seeing in the only photo I've ever seen of the place is probably about half of it. See anything amusing in this amusement park? I didn't then and I don't now.
Click on the photo to double the size of it.
I have no good memories of this Kiddie Land or any similar one. The rides were never fun and I don't just mean to me. I remember a sense of bonding with other kids my age who were there. We'd exchange looks with one another — looks which said, "Like you, I don't want to be here and pretend I'm having a good time but my folks are making me be here and pretend I'm having a good time." Once or twice, I think we said that aloud to one another.
There were children there who seemed to be happy to be there…who seemed to love riding around on the stupid little trains or on the stupid little horsies or the stupid little tugboats. I could never decide if they were (a) experiencing joyful sensations that were somehow alien to me or (b) much better actors than I was. As I learned later when I was working on TV shows and had to sometimes read opposite someone auditioning for a part in the show, it's pretty easy to be a much better actor than I am.
One time, a boy my age and I started talking while we waited in the line to ride the stupid little horsies that neither of us wanted to ride. He asked me why I was there and I replied, "Because my parents think this is fun for me and I can't convince them it isn't. Why are you here?" This was his answer and I think I'm re-creating it pretty damn close to what he said…
"You're lucky. You have parents who are together. Mine got divorced and every other week, Dad gets custody of me for a day and the only place he can think to take me is here or the Kiddie Land over on La Cienega."
I said, "That's too bad" and he said, "Sometimes, it's not so awful. After we leave here, he'll take me to this restaurant we like and there's a toy store next door and he'll buy me something I really want."
From that point on, I could notice how many of the other kids at Kiddie Land were there with divorced fathers who didn't know where else to take their sons or daughters. It was maybe half the children there. I could even see the divorced fathers chatting with one another, bonding as I did with other kids who didn't want to ride the stupid little trains, horsies or tugboats.
Sometimes as I mentioned, my Uncle Aaron and Aunt Dot were with us. The phrase I most associate with Uncle Aaron is "They're sitting on the land." Here is what that meant…
Uncle Aaron was in the window display business but he was always fantasizing about being…well, I don't know exactly what you'd call it. A Real Estate Investor, maybe. He wanted to be one of those people who buys a piece of property for fifty thousand dollars and sells it years later for ten times that amount.
As far as I know, he never put actual money into any such speculation but wherever he went, he would be evaluating the investment potential of every plot of land he saw as if he was considering buying it. I don't think he ever even had the kind of money it would take to make any of those purchases.
Whenever he saw a little building on some piece of property — a hot dog stand or a gas station, say — he'd announce, "They're sitting on the land," meaning someone bought the property and put up a little business or rented it to someone who did. That was so the little business could generate some income while they waited for the value of the land to go up and a big business could appear at that address. They'd tear down the hot dog stand or the gas station and build a huge shopping center or an immense office building.
Or if he passed a huge, profitable development like a mall or a sprawling apartment complex, he'd shout, "I could have bought that entire lot for twenty-seven thousand dollars!" For years, no large, successful business could be established in this city on acreage that my Uncle Aaron couldn't have bought for a pittance…but didn't.
"Sitting on the land" was, he said, the raison d'etre for the Kiddie Land to which I was dragged. It was probably that for all Kiddie Lands everywhere…and you know what? He was right. Uncle Aaron was absolutely right.
A few years later, that Kiddie Land was razed: There one day, gone the next. It was an empty lot for about a year and on it, a small touring circus was parked for a couple of weeks. Then there was a trampoline park there for a few months. You could pay — I never did this — to play on one for a while. A sign said "More Bounce For Your Buck."
Then the trampolines were gone and that October, there was a business selling pumpkins followed immediately by one selling Christmas Trees. My folks and I went to the Christmas Tree lot and bought an anemic spruce that made Charlie Brown's tree look lush and full by comparison.
Finally, a huge May Company department store went up on the land where we used to ride the stupid trains, the stupid horsies and the stupid tugboats. Uncle Aaron was genetically incapable of passing it without proclaiming, "I could have bought that whole piece of property for thirty thousand dollars!"
The Kiddie Land over on La Cienega was torn down to make way for the Beverly Center which, for about a decade after it was built, was the biggest and most expensive shopping mall in all of Southern California. Uncle Aaron was dead by then but every time I drive by the place, I can hear him shouting, "I could have bought that entire lot for fifty thousand dollars!"
Maybe he could have and maybe he couldn't but I'm glad the Beverly Center displaced that Kiddieland. It means one less place that young, impressionable children can be forced by divorced fathers to ride the stupid trains, the stupid horsies, the stupid tugboats…
My pal Shelly Goldstein linked me to this video of the opening sequences of eighteen (18) short-lived situation comedies of the seventies. My long-ago partner Dennis and I worked briefly on one of them…and come to think of it, everyone who worked on these shows worked briefly on them.
When I see videos like this, I can't help but feel sorry for the performers who are featured in the opening titles…but who then never rose to any similar heights once the show in question was cancelled. For a brief time, they could tell their friends and family, "Hey, I got a series" and they were aware that if it ran as long as M*A*S*H (11 seasons) or Maude (6 seasons), they'd make a heckuva lot of money, be recognized wherever they went for a long time and probably get offers for many other things.
That's if the show lasted long enough to go into syndication. If it was gone at mid-season, they'd have a lot of folks saying, "Hey, what happened to that show you were on?" — which is never a pleasant question to answer. Also, of course, there was the shock of realizing their future income probably wouldn't be what they thought it would be. I heard stories of performers who got a series, made the down payment on a house and/or car and then had to seriously re-plan their lives and wriggle out of some deals.
And when no other acting job turned up quickly, they could get very worried that their careers were somehow tainted by the cancelled series even though it was, to them, either a great show that deserved more of a chance or a poor show that wasn't bad because of them. A lady I knew was on a show not in this montage and when it was quickly axed, she was certain she'd never get another series. And she didn't for about eight weeks.
Watch the video. I never saw some of these programs and odds are neither did you.
Today's Person I'm Glad I'm Not is the judge in the upcoming trial in which the makers of Dominion Voting Machines are suing Mike Lindell for defamation. Lindell says he's going to represent himself.
