Plan D was sitting right under my nose all the time.
I just didn't think to look there.
Over the phone, I lamented my plight to my loyal friend and blogreader, Lee.
He quickly asked "What do I do?"
I responded "You're an archivist".
"Correct," he said.
And where do I do it?"
"At the Brooklyn Public Library", I replied.
"And what do you suppose they might have there?", he asked.
"You think they have the Sondheim Review?" I asked, in anticipation.
"We have EVERYTHING", he replied with pride
Within fifteen minutes, I received PDF files of ALL the puzzles.
Well, ALMOST all the puzzles.
There's a great old joke about an old Jewish woman taking her grandson Irving to the beach at Coney Island,
Irving goes into the ocean, wearing his water wings, because he can't swim without them.
Cue the thunder and lightning.
An enormous downpour fills Coney Island and the ocean.
Little Irving in his little water wings is stuck out in the middle of the ocean, fighting for his life.
Grandma is frantic. She approaches the lifeguard.
"Mister! You've got to save my little Irving!
He's out there in the ocean and he can't swim!
Irving goes under for the first time.
The lifeguard swims out after him.
He catches up to him.
Irving goes under for the second time.
The lifeguard pulls him up, and drags him back to shore, performing mouth to mouth rescusitation on little Irving.
Irving recovers.
Grandma is beside herself with gratitude.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you Mister! You saved my little Irving"
"Just in the line of duty ma'am" responds the lifeguard.
Grandma then adds "Oh......just one more thing. He had a hat".
Lee had not sent the Winter 2010 issue, assuming I had it.
But the complementary issue they sent me was for Spring 2011
I alluded to "He had a hat", he got the reference immediately, which is why I love him, and five minutes later, I had the hat.
The entire ten puzzles. For free.
Speaking of free, this gave me the freedom to send the e-mail that I wanted to send them all along.
For your perusal:
Gentlemen,
Well. it's becoming apparent that I've been dissed, blown off, and left to twist in the wind.
Just because I asked you for some cryptic puzzles at a fair price.
I suppose you have the right to do that.
I suppose you consider yourself above haggling.
Or even responding to haggling.
But you don't seem to be above panhandling: Placing TWO, count'em, TWO solicitations for donations on the front page of your Website.
I guess this means that you consider yourself at least TWICE as worthy of donations as the folks of Darfur, Haiti, Katrina victims, Jerry's Kids, The Salvation Army, Orphans, Food Banks,and the Homeless.
Because, after all, you're doing the world such a noble service: Telling us more about Sondheim than anyone could possibly want to know.
If I was James Lapine (Sondheim's chief collaborator) or Jonathan Tunick (Sondheim's chief orchestrator), and asked for those puzzles, I would already have them, at no cost, with no haggling, with your lips firmly pressed on my ass.
Because they are so much more important than I am.
I guess you only want donations where you don't have to lift a finger.
I originally approached you about these puzzles because the nearest library that had back issues of your magazine is over a hundred miles away from my house. Another example of not cost-effective.
But, as it turns out, I have a friend who works for the Brooklyn Public Library system.
With very little prompting, he sent me all the puzzles.
I now have them.
I also have a very popular blog that has a far larger readership than you do.
And there's probably some overlapping.
I write about Sondheim occasionally.
When someone does a Google search for Sondheim, my articles are often hit.
I now intend to tear your fawning, snooty, sycophantic, elitist, masturbatory magazine a wide one in an upcoming article on my blog called
"Just How Much Reviewing Does Sondheim Need?".
I'm already sharpening my darts.
By rudely ignoring me, you've created a lose-lose situation for yourself: You won't get my money, or my renewed subscription, and you'll get some very negative publicity.
Who knows? Maybe you regard negative publicity as better than no publicity at all.
You've also created a win-win situation for me: I'll have the pleasure of doing the puzzles for free, and I'll have the pleasure of writing and posting this article.
At the moment, I don't know which will give me more pleasure.
It will appear at markrothmansblog.blogspot.com
Coming soon to a computer near you.
This is what happens when you give someone the back of your hand for no reason.
Mark Rothman
If you are a subscriber, I mean no offense. Who knows? Maybe you're in it for the puzzles.
But these are the kind of people you're dealing with.
So whattya think? Did I tear them a wide enough one, too wide a one. or just the right size wide one?
*****
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Just How Much Reviewing Does Sondheim Need? 2.
When Stephen Sondheim's great book, "Finishing The Hat" was published, he'd said it all.
It pretty much negated any reason to read any other articles about him.
Particularly the pedantic, sophomoric, self-indulgent articles that were spewed forth by
The Sondheim Review.
Which was why I indicated to it's publisher that in a perfect world, I had no desire to renew my subscription to it.
Okay. I didn't use "pedantic", "sophomoric", and "self-indulgent" to him in describing
the articles.
But there was an excellent chance that he knew I was thinking it.
So perhaps that was what got his back up.
And that my offer to renew my subscription in exchange for getting the Cryptic Puzzles from the previous ten back issues at three dollars a pop did not elicit an overjoyed reaction.
And maybe that's why I never heard back from anyone from The Sondheim Review.
But, boy, did I want those puzzles.
I alluded yesterday about the old burlesque routine where one character says to another "It's not the money, it's the principle".
At eight dollars a pop, plenty of principle was involved.
The burlesque routine, more elaborately, went "It's not the money, it's the principle! You think I care about the money? I throw money away! That's how little I care about money!"
It builds to everyone on stage tearing up money.
It can be found in the movie "The Night They Raided Minsky's", where it is brilliantly executed.
So I was desperately looking around for a Plan C to get my hands on them puzzles.
I thought I might have found something when I looked at The Sondheim Review website, and noticed that there was a place where they solicited donations to keep
the website going.
Then, I noticed that there were actually two places on the first page of the website where donations were solicited.
This led me to formulate two potential emails: One, at least in my eyes, a far more polite one than the other.
It's the one I sent.
This is it:
Dear Sirs,
As a former subscriber, and as you were kind enough to send me a complimentary copy of the current issue of the Sondheim Review, I was delighted to find that it contained a cryptic puzzle.
I did some checking, and learned that many, if not most of the issues going back to 2008 contain cryptic puzzles. There are about ten of them..
I would like to get copies of these puzzles without having to order back issues at $8 a copy.
I think a fair price for what would be maybe 20 minutes worth of copying and sticking them in an envelope and mailing them to me would be $3 a copy.
That's what I pay for my subscriptions of Games Magazine, which contains one cryptic per issue, and Games World of Puzzles, which contain sometimes as many as six per issue.
I have a subscription to Harper's Magazine, which contains Richard Maltby Jr.'s Cryptic puzzles in each issue. I pay $1.25 an issue for that.
So you can see why $8 a puzzle might stick in my craw a little.
I cancelled my Sondheim Review subscription because I found myself knowing just about everything I wanted to know about Sondheim.
And I just finished reading "Finishing The Hat". And there's tons of information about him on the Internet.
So now, all I'm really interested in are the puzzles.
I briefly spoke to your publisher this past Monday, and presented this proposition, also offering to pay for postage, and renew my subscription, if I could get my hands on these puzzles.
I was told that someone would get back to me about this.
It is now late on Friday, and nobody has.
As you actively solicit donations on the front page of the Website, why not consider what I'm proposing a donation?
One that would require very little effort on your part to earn.
Money that you would not get otherwise
I can be reached at (I gave them my phone number)
email: macchus999@aol.com
Please at least do me the courtesy of responding to this email soon.
Thanks,
Mark Rothman.
This, of course, led to nothing.
Then, almost by accident, Plan D fell into my lap.
This enabled me to turn the threats of negative publicity for them that I had in my other potential email into promises of negative publicity for them.
One of my loyal readers pointed out to me that I had just recently gone over the half-million mark in numbers of hits.
This is in two years.
The Sondheim Review, in seventeen years, has reached about a fifth of that total.
But maybe that's what happens when you devote at least three pages per issue on where each and every production of a Sondheim show that appears in this country is going to happen.
I know that if there's going to be a High School production of "Assassins" coming to my neighborhood, I want to be there.
So maybe I'm shooting a flea with an elephant gun.
But sometimes fleas can be awfully annoying, and it doesn't necessarily matter what weaponry is involved.
Tomorrow: Plan D, how I got the Puzzles, and the somewhat more vicious e-mail that ensued from me.
See ya then!
*****
It pretty much negated any reason to read any other articles about him.
Particularly the pedantic, sophomoric, self-indulgent articles that were spewed forth by
The Sondheim Review.
Which was why I indicated to it's publisher that in a perfect world, I had no desire to renew my subscription to it.
Okay. I didn't use "pedantic", "sophomoric", and "self-indulgent" to him in describing
the articles.
But there was an excellent chance that he knew I was thinking it.
So perhaps that was what got his back up.
And that my offer to renew my subscription in exchange for getting the Cryptic Puzzles from the previous ten back issues at three dollars a pop did not elicit an overjoyed reaction.
And maybe that's why I never heard back from anyone from The Sondheim Review.
But, boy, did I want those puzzles.
I alluded yesterday about the old burlesque routine where one character says to another "It's not the money, it's the principle".
At eight dollars a pop, plenty of principle was involved.
The burlesque routine, more elaborately, went "It's not the money, it's the principle! You think I care about the money? I throw money away! That's how little I care about money!"
It builds to everyone on stage tearing up money.
It can be found in the movie "The Night They Raided Minsky's", where it is brilliantly executed.
So I was desperately looking around for a Plan C to get my hands on them puzzles.
I thought I might have found something when I looked at The Sondheim Review website, and noticed that there was a place where they solicited donations to keep
the website going.
Then, I noticed that there were actually two places on the first page of the website where donations were solicited.
This led me to formulate two potential emails: One, at least in my eyes, a far more polite one than the other.
It's the one I sent.
This is it:
Dear Sirs,
As a former subscriber, and as you were kind enough to send me a complimentary copy of the current issue of the Sondheim Review, I was delighted to find that it contained a cryptic puzzle.
I did some checking, and learned that many, if not most of the issues going back to 2008 contain cryptic puzzles. There are about ten of them..
I would like to get copies of these puzzles without having to order back issues at $8 a copy.
I think a fair price for what would be maybe 20 minutes worth of copying and sticking them in an envelope and mailing them to me would be $3 a copy.
That's what I pay for my subscriptions of Games Magazine, which contains one cryptic per issue, and Games World of Puzzles, which contain sometimes as many as six per issue.
I have a subscription to Harper's Magazine, which contains Richard Maltby Jr.'s Cryptic puzzles in each issue. I pay $1.25 an issue for that.
So you can see why $8 a puzzle might stick in my craw a little.
I cancelled my Sondheim Review subscription because I found myself knowing just about everything I wanted to know about Sondheim.
And I just finished reading "Finishing The Hat". And there's tons of information about him on the Internet.
So now, all I'm really interested in are the puzzles.
I briefly spoke to your publisher this past Monday, and presented this proposition, also offering to pay for postage, and renew my subscription, if I could get my hands on these puzzles.
I was told that someone would get back to me about this.
It is now late on Friday, and nobody has.
As you actively solicit donations on the front page of the Website, why not consider what I'm proposing a donation?
One that would require very little effort on your part to earn.
Money that you would not get otherwise
I can be reached at (I gave them my phone number)
email: macchus999@aol.com
Please at least do me the courtesy of responding to this email soon.
Thanks,
Mark Rothman.
This, of course, led to nothing.
Then, almost by accident, Plan D fell into my lap.
This enabled me to turn the threats of negative publicity for them that I had in my other potential email into promises of negative publicity for them.
One of my loyal readers pointed out to me that I had just recently gone over the half-million mark in numbers of hits.
This is in two years.
The Sondheim Review, in seventeen years, has reached about a fifth of that total.
But maybe that's what happens when you devote at least three pages per issue on where each and every production of a Sondheim show that appears in this country is going to happen.
I know that if there's going to be a High School production of "Assassins" coming to my neighborhood, I want to be there.
So maybe I'm shooting a flea with an elephant gun.
But sometimes fleas can be awfully annoying, and it doesn't necessarily matter what weaponry is involved.
Tomorrow: Plan D, how I got the Puzzles, and the somewhat more vicious e-mail that ensued from me.
See ya then!
*****
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Just How Much Reviewing Does Sondheim Need? 1.
There is a magazine called The Sondheim Review.
It comes out quarterly.
It is about all things Sondheim.
I used to subscribe to this magazine, but stopped several years ago, when I realized that they were telling me far more about Stephen Sondheim than any human being could possibly want to know.
A typical article is them interviewing the surviving Oriental actors from the original production of "Pacific Overtures".
Who would want to read that?
Their relatives, I guess.
There was one, at best two, articles an issue that could possibly hold my interest.
So I cancelled my subscription years ago.
The Sondheim Review has a very limited circulation.
As well it should.
I think next month, they're planning a three part article entitled "Sondheim: Boxers or Briefs?"
So why am I choosing this time to write about this unnecessary waste of paper?
A couple of months ago, the people at the Sondheim Review were kind enough to offer me a complementary issue of their upcoming edition.
They were trying to lure me back into the fold.
Be careful.
That's the last time the word "kind" will be used.
I looked it over and it looked like the same old tedious stuff.
Until I stumbled upon a Variety Cryptic Puzzle in the back of the issue.
I've mentioned previously about my love for Variety Cryptic Puzzles.
I checked the Website.
It seems that the last ten issues or so had Variety Cryptic Puzzles.
My first move was to go to my local library in Detroit.
I was told that the nearest library that had these puzzles on line was in Lansing.
Almost an hour there, and an hour back.
Not particularly cost efficient.
Plan B---I called the Sondheim Review.
On the website, they offered back issues for eight dollars a pop.
I didn't want to spend no eight dollars a pop.
That's eighty bucks.
For ten puzzles.
Games Magazine, Games World of Puzzles, and Harpers each have one of these puzzles per issue.
The average cost for the first two is three dollars a pop.
Harpers can be gotten for a buck and a quarter a pop.
As they used to say in the old burlesque sketch, "It's not the money, it's the principle".
I wasn't asking for complete back issues.
Just for someone to copy the ten puzzles in question for three bucks a pop, put 'em in an envelope, and I'll gladly pay for the postage.
I even offered to renew my subscription.
That would have caused me to spend five bucks a pop.
I needed it like I needed a hole in the head.
But I offered.
I thought three bucks a pop was a very fair price for what I was asking.
The Sondheim Review guy, the publisher no less, couldn't wait to get me off the phone.
He said he'd get back to me.
After two weeks, he never did.
So I was looking around for Plan C.
Only none was staring me in the face.
This is as expansive as I feel like getting today.
But we're a long way from home.
For more, manana will have to be good enough for all of us.
*****
It comes out quarterly.
It is about all things Sondheim.
I used to subscribe to this magazine, but stopped several years ago, when I realized that they were telling me far more about Stephen Sondheim than any human being could possibly want to know.
A typical article is them interviewing the surviving Oriental actors from the original production of "Pacific Overtures".
Who would want to read that?
Their relatives, I guess.
There was one, at best two, articles an issue that could possibly hold my interest.
So I cancelled my subscription years ago.
The Sondheim Review has a very limited circulation.
As well it should.
I think next month, they're planning a three part article entitled "Sondheim: Boxers or Briefs?"
So why am I choosing this time to write about this unnecessary waste of paper?
A couple of months ago, the people at the Sondheim Review were kind enough to offer me a complementary issue of their upcoming edition.
They were trying to lure me back into the fold.
Be careful.
That's the last time the word "kind" will be used.
I looked it over and it looked like the same old tedious stuff.
Until I stumbled upon a Variety Cryptic Puzzle in the back of the issue.
I've mentioned previously about my love for Variety Cryptic Puzzles.
I checked the Website.
It seems that the last ten issues or so had Variety Cryptic Puzzles.
My first move was to go to my local library in Detroit.
I was told that the nearest library that had these puzzles on line was in Lansing.
Almost an hour there, and an hour back.
Not particularly cost efficient.
Plan B---I called the Sondheim Review.
On the website, they offered back issues for eight dollars a pop.
I didn't want to spend no eight dollars a pop.
That's eighty bucks.
For ten puzzles.
Games Magazine, Games World of Puzzles, and Harpers each have one of these puzzles per issue.
The average cost for the first two is three dollars a pop.
Harpers can be gotten for a buck and a quarter a pop.
As they used to say in the old burlesque sketch, "It's not the money, it's the principle".
I wasn't asking for complete back issues.
Just for someone to copy the ten puzzles in question for three bucks a pop, put 'em in an envelope, and I'll gladly pay for the postage.
I even offered to renew my subscription.
That would have caused me to spend five bucks a pop.
I needed it like I needed a hole in the head.
But I offered.
I thought three bucks a pop was a very fair price for what I was asking.
The Sondheim Review guy, the publisher no less, couldn't wait to get me off the phone.
He said he'd get back to me.
After two weeks, he never did.
So I was looking around for Plan C.
Only none was staring me in the face.
This is as expansive as I feel like getting today.
But we're a long way from home.
For more, manana will have to be good enough for all of us.
*****
Thursday, January 13, 2011
One Time I Wish I Wasn't Right.
This article first appeared on this blog on June 16th, 2009, under the title
"The Bum's Rush":
"Okay. So Letterman made another feeble apology to Sarah Palin.
And whattya know?
People are now gathered around his theatre with picket signs calling for him to be fired.
Over a joke that hurt no one.
So it didn't even work.
The irony here is that there are people on the air who have said far worse, and the effects of what they have said are so much worse, that a good case can be made that they should be removed from the airwaves.
I've usually been amused by the notion of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, with their audiences becoming more and more fragmented, causing them to become more and more shrill, if such a thing is possible.
Watching them become a daily embarrassment to the Republican Party has provided even more fun.
But as much as I've enjoyed the Carnival, I'm afraid that it's time for something to be done.
Something that in many peoples eyes might infringe on the First Amendment.
But there's nothing in the First Amendment about the right to be on TV or the radio.
Both Limbaugh and O'Reilly have seriously gotten into what can very reasonably be called "inciting violence".
Limbaugh, with his daily hatespeak about how he hope Obama fails: Limbaugh preaches to the people with the guns.
What better way for Obama to fail than by getting himself assassinated?
Does anyone really think that this is beyond the scope of Limbaugh's more passionate audience members?
O'Reilly providing information on how to find the surviving abortion doctors:I can't imagine why. Can you?
These actions themselves bespeak treason.
I don't know if it goes that far legally, but I know they're walking the tightrope.
So let's give them the benefit of the doubt. It's not treason.
But it's definitely incitement to violence.
So we don't arrest them.And yes, there's freedom of speech, which ends with the classical example of Shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theater when there isn't one.
What Limbaugh and O'Reilly are doing, to me, goes over that line.
Therefore neither of them is owed a place on the public airwaves, no matter how popular they are.
There's such a thing as the FCC.They issue the licenses.
The FCC, if it chose to, could revoke the licenses of any station that carried Limbaugh or O'Reilly on the basis that they are inciting violence.
The two of them could then concentrate their efforts on their websites.
This might cut down on their influence, because it would require their audiences to read.
And go try and build an audience on webcasts alone.
I, for one, do not want to see any more people get shot at Holocaust Museums, or any more abortion doctors get killed.
Limbaugh is offering up the propaganda that this was caused by the liberals, but if you don't think that Limbaugh and O'Reilly, however indirectly, had a hand in those events, I would like to offer up for sale to you my 51% interest in the Brooklyn Bridge.
It would be difficult, and certainly out-of -character for President Obama to commandeer any effort to influence the FCC.
But there are plenty of political types (Senator Schumer?) who can certainly carry this ball and run with it.
Limbaugh and O'Reilly have outlived their dubious entertainment value.
There's nothing "amusing" about them any more.
On any level.
They are no longer "entertainers".They are rabble-rousers.
A responsible society must find a way to at least discourage the rabble from being roused."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah. And those things on Sarah Palin's map weren't Rifle Crosshairs.
Right.
And there's no humility about it. Perfect.
Because SHE was the victim here.
It was all about her. Not the people who got shot.
She's at least as dangerous as Limbaugh and O'Reilly.
Because her followers are that much more rabid about her.
Welcome to hard times.
I hope I'm wrong about this one too.
*****
"The Bum's Rush":
"Okay. So Letterman made another feeble apology to Sarah Palin.
And whattya know?
People are now gathered around his theatre with picket signs calling for him to be fired.
Over a joke that hurt no one.
So it didn't even work.
The irony here is that there are people on the air who have said far worse, and the effects of what they have said are so much worse, that a good case can be made that they should be removed from the airwaves.
I've usually been amused by the notion of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, with their audiences becoming more and more fragmented, causing them to become more and more shrill, if such a thing is possible.
Watching them become a daily embarrassment to the Republican Party has provided even more fun.
But as much as I've enjoyed the Carnival, I'm afraid that it's time for something to be done.
Something that in many peoples eyes might infringe on the First Amendment.
But there's nothing in the First Amendment about the right to be on TV or the radio.
Both Limbaugh and O'Reilly have seriously gotten into what can very reasonably be called "inciting violence".
Limbaugh, with his daily hatespeak about how he hope Obama fails: Limbaugh preaches to the people with the guns.
What better way for Obama to fail than by getting himself assassinated?
Does anyone really think that this is beyond the scope of Limbaugh's more passionate audience members?
O'Reilly providing information on how to find the surviving abortion doctors:I can't imagine why. Can you?
These actions themselves bespeak treason.
I don't know if it goes that far legally, but I know they're walking the tightrope.
So let's give them the benefit of the doubt. It's not treason.
But it's definitely incitement to violence.
So we don't arrest them.And yes, there's freedom of speech, which ends with the classical example of Shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theater when there isn't one.
What Limbaugh and O'Reilly are doing, to me, goes over that line.
Therefore neither of them is owed a place on the public airwaves, no matter how popular they are.
There's such a thing as the FCC.They issue the licenses.
The FCC, if it chose to, could revoke the licenses of any station that carried Limbaugh or O'Reilly on the basis that they are inciting violence.
The two of them could then concentrate their efforts on their websites.
This might cut down on their influence, because it would require their audiences to read.
And go try and build an audience on webcasts alone.
I, for one, do not want to see any more people get shot at Holocaust Museums, or any more abortion doctors get killed.
Limbaugh is offering up the propaganda that this was caused by the liberals, but if you don't think that Limbaugh and O'Reilly, however indirectly, had a hand in those events, I would like to offer up for sale to you my 51% interest in the Brooklyn Bridge.
It would be difficult, and certainly out-of -character for President Obama to commandeer any effort to influence the FCC.
But there are plenty of political types (Senator Schumer?) who can certainly carry this ball and run with it.
Limbaugh and O'Reilly have outlived their dubious entertainment value.
There's nothing "amusing" about them any more.
On any level.
They are no longer "entertainers".They are rabble-rousers.
A responsible society must find a way to at least discourage the rabble from being roused."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah. And those things on Sarah Palin's map weren't Rifle Crosshairs.
Right.
And there's no humility about it. Perfect.
Because SHE was the victim here.
It was all about her. Not the people who got shot.
She's at least as dangerous as Limbaugh and O'Reilly.
Because her followers are that much more rabid about her.
Welcome to hard times.
I hope I'm wrong about this one too.
*****
Monday, January 10, 2011
Remakes.
Ever see "The Defiant Ones"?
Tony Curtis? Sidney Poitier?
Two escaped convicts, handcuffed together? They hate each other?
I never saw it. Until last Friday.
I Tivoed it a couple of weeks ago. For a specific purpose.
It is a tremendous piece of work.
You know how, in my Report Cards, I ask "Is it well cast, well acted, well shot, well written?"
WELL!!!!!
It is all of these. To the nth degree.
When I wrote my Report Card on the remake of "True Grit", it was already on my mind to do a post on the subject of remakes in general.
I suppose there are a couple of instances where they are justified.
Epics like "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur", when done the first time around, there was no sound, color, special effects, or wide-screen to overwhelm you.
Otherwise, they are pointless efforts to cash in on someone else's previous success by someone who can't come up with something original to put on the screen.
Letterman had Matt Damon on last week so he could flog "True Grit".
Letterman was fawning all over it and him.
And the best reason either could come up for why it should have been remade was that it was much more faithful to the novel it was based on than the John Wayne version was.
How many moviegoers do you think have read the novel?
How many of you even knew it was based on a novel?
And based on what I saw, it couldn't have been much of a novel to begin with.
There is this story that I heard many years ago, perhaps apochryphal.
I don't know for sure. I wasn't there.
But I know at least some of it was true.
Here goes: In the early 70's, Marlo Thomas got it into her head that it would be fantastic if she remade "It's A Wonderful Life" as a TV movie, with Marlo in the Jimmy Stewart part..
All those around her, whether they actually believed it or not, agreed that it would be fantastic.
Marlo then said to her troops, "You know what would be even more fantastic?
If we all went over to Frank Capras house and told him about this in person."
So they all piled into Marlo's car and went over to Frank Capras house to deliver him the good news.
Mr. Capra was purported to reply "Not only will I not watch it if you manage to get it on the air, but I'll go to court and get a restraining order if I have to, to prevent you from doing it".
She ended up following through and doing it, so either it was an idle threat on Mr. Capras part, or he simply failed in his efforts.
I saw it. So she did have the idea, and she got it made.
That's the part I know is true.
Marlo wasn't as good as Jimmy Stewart, for what it was worth.
And I know that's true too.
What does all this have to do with "The Defiant Ones"?
In the mid-80's, a TV movie remake of "The Defiant Ones" was made with Robert Urich and Carl Weathers in the leads.
Entertainment Tonight interviewed the producer, or the director, or whomever that putz was that they interviewed, and asked the magic question:
"Why are you remaking "The Defiant Ones"?
He responded with, and I'm not kidding, "Well, the original was so good that we all felt it deserved to be remade".
So good that it deserved to be remade.
That sentence stuns me every time I think about it.
No disrespect to the dead, but with Robert fucking Urich and Carl fucking Weathers?
That's how it deserved to be remade?
Because it was so good?
I never saw this remake, and as I said, I never saw the original until last Friday.
Seeing the original only compounds the felony that ensued.
I looked up the remake on the IMDB.
There was one review.
The tone of it was somewhere between "It doesn't hold a candle to the original and "How dare they?"
Actually, that last part was mine.
If it's a matter of not getting anyone to watch the originals because they are in black-and-white, like "The Defiant Ones", then colorize the damn things and be done with it.
But please, as Jerry Lewis used to say on the Colgate Comedy Hour when he'd say
"DON'T lick it!!!"..........
DON'T remake it!!!!!!
*****
Tony Curtis? Sidney Poitier?
Two escaped convicts, handcuffed together? They hate each other?
I never saw it. Until last Friday.
I Tivoed it a couple of weeks ago. For a specific purpose.
It is a tremendous piece of work.
You know how, in my Report Cards, I ask "Is it well cast, well acted, well shot, well written?"
WELL!!!!!
It is all of these. To the nth degree.
When I wrote my Report Card on the remake of "True Grit", it was already on my mind to do a post on the subject of remakes in general.
I suppose there are a couple of instances where they are justified.
Epics like "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur", when done the first time around, there was no sound, color, special effects, or wide-screen to overwhelm you.
Otherwise, they are pointless efforts to cash in on someone else's previous success by someone who can't come up with something original to put on the screen.
Letterman had Matt Damon on last week so he could flog "True Grit".
Letterman was fawning all over it and him.
And the best reason either could come up for why it should have been remade was that it was much more faithful to the novel it was based on than the John Wayne version was.
How many moviegoers do you think have read the novel?
How many of you even knew it was based on a novel?
And based on what I saw, it couldn't have been much of a novel to begin with.
There is this story that I heard many years ago, perhaps apochryphal.
I don't know for sure. I wasn't there.
But I know at least some of it was true.
Here goes: In the early 70's, Marlo Thomas got it into her head that it would be fantastic if she remade "It's A Wonderful Life" as a TV movie, with Marlo in the Jimmy Stewart part..
All those around her, whether they actually believed it or not, agreed that it would be fantastic.
Marlo then said to her troops, "You know what would be even more fantastic?
If we all went over to Frank Capras house and told him about this in person."
So they all piled into Marlo's car and went over to Frank Capras house to deliver him the good news.
Mr. Capra was purported to reply "Not only will I not watch it if you manage to get it on the air, but I'll go to court and get a restraining order if I have to, to prevent you from doing it".
She ended up following through and doing it, so either it was an idle threat on Mr. Capras part, or he simply failed in his efforts.
I saw it. So she did have the idea, and she got it made.
That's the part I know is true.
Marlo wasn't as good as Jimmy Stewart, for what it was worth.
And I know that's true too.
What does all this have to do with "The Defiant Ones"?
In the mid-80's, a TV movie remake of "The Defiant Ones" was made with Robert Urich and Carl Weathers in the leads.
Entertainment Tonight interviewed the producer, or the director, or whomever that putz was that they interviewed, and asked the magic question:
"Why are you remaking "The Defiant Ones"?
He responded with, and I'm not kidding, "Well, the original was so good that we all felt it deserved to be remade".
So good that it deserved to be remade.
That sentence stuns me every time I think about it.
No disrespect to the dead, but with Robert fucking Urich and Carl fucking Weathers?
That's how it deserved to be remade?
Because it was so good?
I never saw this remake, and as I said, I never saw the original until last Friday.
Seeing the original only compounds the felony that ensued.
I looked up the remake on the IMDB.
There was one review.
The tone of it was somewhere between "It doesn't hold a candle to the original and "How dare they?"
Actually, that last part was mine.
If it's a matter of not getting anyone to watch the originals because they are in black-and-white, like "The Defiant Ones", then colorize the damn things and be done with it.
But please, as Jerry Lewis used to say on the Colgate Comedy Hour when he'd say
"DON'T lick it!!!"..........
DON'T remake it!!!!!!
*****
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
West Side Stories.
The intent here is to emulate the style of column that Larry King used to turn out for USA Today:
run-on thoughts, random thoughts, thoughts seemingly coming out of nowhere,,,,,,,
maybe he still does turn out these columns. It's been a while since I've seen USA Today.........
But there will be a unifying theme, unlike what Larry did, or does.
That theme is the play and movie "West Side Story"..........
There is a strong common thread between "West Side Story" and "A Chorus Line".
Both were primarily dancers shows.
All the prominent performers in both shows were dancers.
Most of the prominent performers in both shows and movies went on to have less than stellar performing careers subsequent to their appearances in these shows and/or movies.
Certainly nowhere as stellar as their work in those shows and/or movies.............
Rita Moreno and Chita Rivera were as close as anyone came to sustaining successful careers.
But even both of them peaked career-wise with "West Side Story"........
The Kennedy Center Honor that has made the least sense so far in its history is the one they handed out to Chita Rivera.
I mean, who, below Exit 9 on the Jersey Turnpike, ever heard of Chita Rivera?
I have a sneaking suspicion that Rita Moreno agrees with me.............
I mentioned that I'd done a pilot with Rita Moreno.
During the time we spent together, she shared anecdotes about the "West Side Story" shoot.
Since the play had been around for a few years by the time they started shooting the film, the cast knew the songs backwards and forwards.
One day on the set, one of the cast members started singing "A boy like that, he'd kill your brother" in the style of Billy Eckstine.
For the unindoctrinated, Billy Eckstine was a very popular black singer who had a deep baritone and a very syrupy style to his voice.
The Billy Eckstine impression caught on, and pretty soon, in their free time, EVERY cast member was singing EVERY song in the score like Billy Eckstine.
If you're not familiar with what Billy Eckstine sounds like, make a trip over to YouTube.
It's a lot funnier if you're familiar with what Billy Eckstine sounds like..............
Most of the performers in "West Side Story" either completely vanished from show business, or died young, or both.
Natalie Wood was only 42 when she fell off the boat.
Larry Kert, the original Tony in the play, died from the AIDS at age 60.
Russ Tamblyn pretty much vanished.
I don't think Richard Beymer was ever heard from again.
Actually, he pretty much wasn't heard from to begin with.
All of his songs were dubbed by someone else.
One of the featured Jets, in both the play and the movie, Tucker Smith, showed up as an extra on a location shoot I was involved with on "Laverne and Shirley".
A lot of us recognized him. We all felt terrible.
He died shortly after that. In his forties.........
"Romeo and Juliet", by William Shakespeare, which "West Side Story" is based on, is a great read...........
Tony Mordente, who played "Action", and was once married to Chita Rivera, became a successful sitcom director.
He worked for me many times.
And I believe that he was a fashion trend setter.
Before him, I had never seen a sitcom director who worked with a sweater draped on his back, with the sleeves tied in front of him.
Pretty soon, EVERY sitcom director comported himself like that.
I don't quite know what message was being sent by it, but the style sure became popular.........
I once had dinner with Carol Lawrence, the original Maria.
She was almost going to do one of my plays.
She was quite gracious and sweet.
Particularly when I told her that I went out of my way to wait until she replaced Chita Rivera in "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" so I could see her in it.
I guess you can tell by now that I'm not a big fan of Chita's...........
Ned Glass, who played Doc, the owner of the candy store in the movie, and was quite good, and was quite good in other things I'd seen him in, was in a pilot I'd written, but let others produce.
So I didn't cast him.
He was unbelievably awful, as was just about everything else about this pilot.
I learned a very good lesson about delegating authority.
The lesson is: Don't delegate authority...............
When I was doing "She's The Sheriff", there was a guest star part that needed to be cast.
They brought in George Chakiris to read for me.
George Chakiris.
The Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor in "West Side Story"
The George Chakiris who apparently had a recent very bad eye job.
The George Chakiris who had much difficulty recognizing a punchline when he saw it.
Maybe it was because of the eye job.
Who can say?
But still, I was reading an Oscar Winner!
I ended up casting someone who was not George Chakiris.............
Anyway, these are my West Side Stories, and I'm sticking to them.............
******
run-on thoughts, random thoughts, thoughts seemingly coming out of nowhere,,,,,,,
maybe he still does turn out these columns. It's been a while since I've seen USA Today.........
But there will be a unifying theme, unlike what Larry did, or does.
That theme is the play and movie "West Side Story"..........
There is a strong common thread between "West Side Story" and "A Chorus Line".
Both were primarily dancers shows.
All the prominent performers in both shows were dancers.
Most of the prominent performers in both shows and movies went on to have less than stellar performing careers subsequent to their appearances in these shows and/or movies.
Certainly nowhere as stellar as their work in those shows and/or movies.............
Rita Moreno and Chita Rivera were as close as anyone came to sustaining successful careers.
But even both of them peaked career-wise with "West Side Story"........
The Kennedy Center Honor that has made the least sense so far in its history is the one they handed out to Chita Rivera.
I mean, who, below Exit 9 on the Jersey Turnpike, ever heard of Chita Rivera?
I have a sneaking suspicion that Rita Moreno agrees with me.............
I mentioned that I'd done a pilot with Rita Moreno.
During the time we spent together, she shared anecdotes about the "West Side Story" shoot.
Since the play had been around for a few years by the time they started shooting the film, the cast knew the songs backwards and forwards.
One day on the set, one of the cast members started singing "A boy like that, he'd kill your brother" in the style of Billy Eckstine.
For the unindoctrinated, Billy Eckstine was a very popular black singer who had a deep baritone and a very syrupy style to his voice.
The Billy Eckstine impression caught on, and pretty soon, in their free time, EVERY cast member was singing EVERY song in the score like Billy Eckstine.
If you're not familiar with what Billy Eckstine sounds like, make a trip over to YouTube.
It's a lot funnier if you're familiar with what Billy Eckstine sounds like..............
Most of the performers in "West Side Story" either completely vanished from show business, or died young, or both.
Natalie Wood was only 42 when she fell off the boat.
Larry Kert, the original Tony in the play, died from the AIDS at age 60.
Russ Tamblyn pretty much vanished.
I don't think Richard Beymer was ever heard from again.
Actually, he pretty much wasn't heard from to begin with.
All of his songs were dubbed by someone else.
One of the featured Jets, in both the play and the movie, Tucker Smith, showed up as an extra on a location shoot I was involved with on "Laverne and Shirley".
A lot of us recognized him. We all felt terrible.
He died shortly after that. In his forties.........
"Romeo and Juliet", by William Shakespeare, which "West Side Story" is based on, is a great read...........
Tony Mordente, who played "Action", and was once married to Chita Rivera, became a successful sitcom director.
He worked for me many times.
And I believe that he was a fashion trend setter.
Before him, I had never seen a sitcom director who worked with a sweater draped on his back, with the sleeves tied in front of him.
Pretty soon, EVERY sitcom director comported himself like that.
I don't quite know what message was being sent by it, but the style sure became popular.........
I once had dinner with Carol Lawrence, the original Maria.
She was almost going to do one of my plays.
She was quite gracious and sweet.
Particularly when I told her that I went out of my way to wait until she replaced Chita Rivera in "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" so I could see her in it.
I guess you can tell by now that I'm not a big fan of Chita's...........
Ned Glass, who played Doc, the owner of the candy store in the movie, and was quite good, and was quite good in other things I'd seen him in, was in a pilot I'd written, but let others produce.
So I didn't cast him.
He was unbelievably awful, as was just about everything else about this pilot.
I learned a very good lesson about delegating authority.
The lesson is: Don't delegate authority...............
When I was doing "She's The Sheriff", there was a guest star part that needed to be cast.
They brought in George Chakiris to read for me.
George Chakiris.
The Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor in "West Side Story"
The George Chakiris who apparently had a recent very bad eye job.
The George Chakiris who had much difficulty recognizing a punchline when he saw it.
Maybe it was because of the eye job.
Who can say?
But still, I was reading an Oscar Winner!
I ended up casting someone who was not George Chakiris.............
Anyway, these are my West Side Stories, and I'm sticking to them.............
******
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Giving "Thenks".
I may have mentioned it before, but my sister Leslie has always been a prime mover when it comes to adding color to the language.
I'm not talking about the kind of accidental drivel that comes out of Sarah Palin's mouth when she invents words like "refudiate".
No, I mean deliberate, intelligent attempts to improve upon and colloquialize the language.
As Readers Digest described it, "Towards More Picturesque Speech".
She has not been without influence.
At some point, in the early 70's, she took it upon herself, at least in private, with me, to eliminate the word "thanks" from the English language.
And replace it with "thenks".
For purely comedic effect.
In public situations, she remains a civilian.
But we essentially have our own code language between us.
So since the 70's, "thanks" has never been uttered between us.
It's always, and often, been "thenks".
Yesterday was my sister's birthday, and I've mentioned before that every year I call her on her birthday as some celebrity imitating our Yiddish grandmother singing "Heppy Boiseday to You".
Continuing with that tradition, this year it was Bob Hope's turn.
In an unusual left turn for me, I decided to write a completely new set of lyrics to "Thanks For The Memories", interspersed with "Heppy Boiseday To You".
And every "thanks" was turned into "thenks".
It did not go unappreciated.
So I've now opened up "thenks" to the general public.
Maybe it's a propos, since today is Thenksgiving.
Feel free to adopt it for your own use if you care to.
It's also gotten me to think about how much thenks I feel I owe my readers.
You've all been very generous to me with your compliments, and your loyalty.
My Stat Counter gives me a pretty good idea of where my readers are, how many of you there are, how often the same ones keep coming back, and how much time they devote to reading me.
I'm flattered, and very pleased that I've apparently given so many of you so much pleasure.
So this is my Thenksgiving shoutout to my most regular readers.
I don't necessarily know whether continual hits from one location means that it is one person reading.
Maybe it's more than one member of the same family.
Anyway, I'd like to single out regular readers from Syracuse New York, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Anniston Alabama, Hawthorne, Calabasas, Lake Elsinore, and Oxnard Calfornia, Roswell New Mexico, Midlothian Virginia, Ocoee Florida, Brevard North Carolina, Cleveland Ohio, North Las Vegas, Nevada, Saugus Massachusetts, and Herrin, Illinois.
You all know who you are, and I, for the most part, don't.
I'd like to.
Anyone of you who would like to make yourselves known to me can e-mail me at macchus999@aol.com
There is also a large Los Angeles and New York contingent whom I would also like to hear from, particularly if you are in show business.
I seem to have a regular reader from the YES Network (The New York Yankees network).
As I am in New York quite frequently, maybe there are press passes or seats for Yankee games to be scored.
Just a thought.
I'd like to once again say thenks to Mark Evanier, Ken Levine, and Leonard Maltin for steering so many of you here in the first place.
And finally, I'd like to say thenks to my beloved Game Players.
The stalwarts who show up every weekend to play the Name Game that I've invented.
The fact that they keep coming back means that there must be something right with the game.
And that I can go four days a week without having to write essays.
I derive huge laughs from observing the game, as I imagine you have too.
And I take some pride at helping to develop their comedy writing skills.
Not that they need much help.
This blog has become quite meaningful to me.
I've already made some lasting friendships from it.
Not necessarily the kind you have on Facebook.
Real friends.
So please communicate with me if you feel the urge.
I know that there are many people who feel that they already have enough friends.
I'm not one of them.
Heppy Thenksgiving, all.
*****
I'm not talking about the kind of accidental drivel that comes out of Sarah Palin's mouth when she invents words like "refudiate".
No, I mean deliberate, intelligent attempts to improve upon and colloquialize the language.
As Readers Digest described it, "Towards More Picturesque Speech".
She has not been without influence.
At some point, in the early 70's, she took it upon herself, at least in private, with me, to eliminate the word "thanks" from the English language.
And replace it with "thenks".
For purely comedic effect.
In public situations, she remains a civilian.
But we essentially have our own code language between us.
So since the 70's, "thanks" has never been uttered between us.
It's always, and often, been "thenks".
Yesterday was my sister's birthday, and I've mentioned before that every year I call her on her birthday as some celebrity imitating our Yiddish grandmother singing "Heppy Boiseday to You".
Continuing with that tradition, this year it was Bob Hope's turn.
In an unusual left turn for me, I decided to write a completely new set of lyrics to "Thanks For The Memories", interspersed with "Heppy Boiseday To You".
And every "thanks" was turned into "thenks".
It did not go unappreciated.
So I've now opened up "thenks" to the general public.
Maybe it's a propos, since today is Thenksgiving.
Feel free to adopt it for your own use if you care to.
It's also gotten me to think about how much thenks I feel I owe my readers.
You've all been very generous to me with your compliments, and your loyalty.
My Stat Counter gives me a pretty good idea of where my readers are, how many of you there are, how often the same ones keep coming back, and how much time they devote to reading me.
I'm flattered, and very pleased that I've apparently given so many of you so much pleasure.
So this is my Thenksgiving shoutout to my most regular readers.
I don't necessarily know whether continual hits from one location means that it is one person reading.
Maybe it's more than one member of the same family.
Anyway, I'd like to single out regular readers from Syracuse New York, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Anniston Alabama, Hawthorne, Calabasas, Lake Elsinore, and Oxnard Calfornia, Roswell New Mexico, Midlothian Virginia, Ocoee Florida, Brevard North Carolina, Cleveland Ohio, North Las Vegas, Nevada, Saugus Massachusetts, and Herrin, Illinois.
You all know who you are, and I, for the most part, don't.
I'd like to.
Anyone of you who would like to make yourselves known to me can e-mail me at macchus999@aol.com
There is also a large Los Angeles and New York contingent whom I would also like to hear from, particularly if you are in show business.
I seem to have a regular reader from the YES Network (The New York Yankees network).
As I am in New York quite frequently, maybe there are press passes or seats for Yankee games to be scored.
Just a thought.
I'd like to once again say thenks to Mark Evanier, Ken Levine, and Leonard Maltin for steering so many of you here in the first place.
And finally, I'd like to say thenks to my beloved Game Players.
The stalwarts who show up every weekend to play the Name Game that I've invented.
The fact that they keep coming back means that there must be something right with the game.
And that I can go four days a week without having to write essays.
I derive huge laughs from observing the game, as I imagine you have too.
And I take some pride at helping to develop their comedy writing skills.
Not that they need much help.
This blog has become quite meaningful to me.
I've already made some lasting friendships from it.
Not necessarily the kind you have on Facebook.
Real friends.
So please communicate with me if you feel the urge.
I know that there are many people who feel that they already have enough friends.
I'm not one of them.
Heppy Thenksgiving, all.
*****
Monday, November 22, 2010
And Then I Wrote....(2)
Please open your hymnals to last Thursday's post, "And Then I Wrote" if you need a refresher course on the setup for "Welcome To Fleckmans", the title song I wrote for a TV pilot I wrote for a show that starred Rita Moreno.
Here are the lyrics, with commentary to follow, explaining the visuals that accompanied it:
Wel-come to Fleck-mans
We want you to have some fun
Wel-come to Fleck-mans
The checkout time is at one.
Stay here at Fleck-mans
If you left, you'd be a fool
Welcome to Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool
We've got a BAR,
We've got some volleyball courts
And we've got GOLF
For all you outdoor sports
Have we got FOOD (yum, yum)
It's tasty and it's fancy
And all of this for thirty dollars a night
Double occu-pancy!
Wel-come to Fleck-mans,
We're awfully glad you can stay
Have fun at Fleck-mans
But please remember to pay
Wel-come to Fleck-mans
Where "Whoopee" is the rule
Welcome to Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered POOL
I love America!
And Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool
Okay. There's the brilliance.
The titles consisted of fast cutting of sequences, mostly shot on location at a resort, actually much nicer
than Fleckmans was depicted as.
The intent was to portay chaos and cheesiness.
Whenever we got to the line "Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool", we cut to a sign that said just that.
The original line was "We've got some handball courts", but this resort didn't have any.
But they had volleyball courts, hence the change.
On "We've got a BAR, we used an overhead shot of a table with a mans legs sticking out from under it.
On "And we've got GOLF" we depicted an old duffer trying to hit out of a sand trap, missing the ball and trying to break his club.
On "Have we got FOOD", we cut to a sign that said in large letters "CHOPPED STEAK, and 'SALISBURY STEAK'
Then we cut to the worlds dirtiest, and hoariest kitchen commandeered by an unshaven Victor Buono as the chef.
"Thirty dollars a night" would certainly have to be adjusted for inflation, even for cheesiness.
Yes, I actually rhymed fancy with Double Occu-pancy.
To my knowledge, no one has ever done it before or since.
For good or ill.
On "but please remember to pay", we see guests checking out, a suitcase opening by accident, revealing stolen silverware and hotel towels.
"Where 'Whoopee' is the rule'"----a fistfight breaking out at the ping pong table.
"I love America"------originally, it was "God Bless America", sung with the same notes as Mr. Berlin intended just before "my home sweet home".
When the legal department at CBS spotted it, they nixed it, on the grounds of potential plagiarism, and/or treason.
I just thought it was homage. I altered the notes, just enough to stay out of trouble.
Anyway, on the line, we briefly cut to the American flag on a flagpole waving in the breeze.
The last visual that matched the lyric was Rita attempting to rescue someone drowning in the pool, only to be pulled into the water herself.
I thought it was all quite effective.
-----------------------
I know that as I write, it is still the anniversary of the JFK assassination, and I wanted to write about that today, but I did have unfinished business to take care of.
It's been 47 years.
I guess it can wait one more day.
Manana (It's good enough for me).
*****
Here are the lyrics, with commentary to follow, explaining the visuals that accompanied it:
Wel-come to Fleck-mans
We want you to have some fun
Wel-come to Fleck-mans
The checkout time is at one.
Stay here at Fleck-mans
If you left, you'd be a fool
Welcome to Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool
We've got a BAR,
We've got some volleyball courts
And we've got GOLF
For all you outdoor sports
Have we got FOOD (yum, yum)
It's tasty and it's fancy
And all of this for thirty dollars a night
Double occu-pancy!
Wel-come to Fleck-mans,
We're awfully glad you can stay
Have fun at Fleck-mans
But please remember to pay
Wel-come to Fleck-mans
Where "Whoopee" is the rule
Welcome to Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered POOL
I love America!
And Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool
Okay. There's the brilliance.
The titles consisted of fast cutting of sequences, mostly shot on location at a resort, actually much nicer
than Fleckmans was depicted as.
The intent was to portay chaos and cheesiness.
Whenever we got to the line "Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool", we cut to a sign that said just that.
The original line was "We've got some handball courts", but this resort didn't have any.
But they had volleyball courts, hence the change.
On "We've got a BAR, we used an overhead shot of a table with a mans legs sticking out from under it.
On "And we've got GOLF" we depicted an old duffer trying to hit out of a sand trap, missing the ball and trying to break his club.
On "Have we got FOOD", we cut to a sign that said in large letters "CHOPPED STEAK, and 'SALISBURY STEAK'
Then we cut to the worlds dirtiest, and hoariest kitchen commandeered by an unshaven Victor Buono as the chef.
"Thirty dollars a night" would certainly have to be adjusted for inflation, even for cheesiness.
Yes, I actually rhymed fancy with Double Occu-pancy.
To my knowledge, no one has ever done it before or since.
For good or ill.
On "but please remember to pay", we see guests checking out, a suitcase opening by accident, revealing stolen silverware and hotel towels.
"Where 'Whoopee' is the rule'"----a fistfight breaking out at the ping pong table.
"I love America"------originally, it was "God Bless America", sung with the same notes as Mr. Berlin intended just before "my home sweet home".
When the legal department at CBS spotted it, they nixed it, on the grounds of potential plagiarism, and/or treason.
I just thought it was homage. I altered the notes, just enough to stay out of trouble.
Anyway, on the line, we briefly cut to the American flag on a flagpole waving in the breeze.
The last visual that matched the lyric was Rita attempting to rescue someone drowning in the pool, only to be pulled into the water herself.
I thought it was all quite effective.
-----------------------
I know that as I write, it is still the anniversary of the JFK assassination, and I wanted to write about that today, but I did have unfinished business to take care of.
It's been 47 years.
I guess it can wait one more day.
Manana (It's good enough for me).
*****
Thursday, November 18, 2010
And Then I Wrote......
For my next and last number, I'd like to introduce you to a little ditty entitled "Welcome To Fleckmans".
A little background: Shortly after "Laverne and Shirley hit the airwaves and became this humongous hit, CBS wanted to get, as they say, "into bed" with Lowell Ganz and myself.
See, we, or at least me, were so young, and so dumb, that we actually thought that the industry finally figured out how talented we were.
They didn't figure out anything.
We were in the aura of an humongous hit.
Somebody figured out that we might have had something to do with it, since we shared "Created by" credit, and produced it.
Little did they know how right they were.
So even when they knew something, they didn't know anything.
CBS treated us like royalty.
We did two unsuccessful series for them, and two other unsold pilots.
After that, they treated us like commoners.
But over lunch in the CBS Executive Dining Room during our Royalty Period, the attitude was essentially "Whatever you want to do, we want to do it with you".
And the question was put to us "What star in the wide world would you guys like to work with?
After only a few moments of hesitation, one of us, I forget who, piped up with "Rita Moreno".
And the other quickly agreed.
Rita Moreno had appeared in one of Garry Marshall's failed pilots, which we helped out on.
Onstage, she simply oozed talent and professionalism.
Offstage, she simply oozed humor and charm.
Then they asked us "What kind of show would you like to do with her?
We, of course, had nothing.
We were not prepared for this line of questioning.
We tapdanced a little until one of us, I forget who, recalled that we had wanted to do a series that took place at a Catskill-type Mountain Resort Hotel.
We ad libbed a pitch where Rita was the social director of the place, a rather run-down version of a Catskill resort hotel.
She inherits it when the owner dies, and is faced with being the boss after spending her whole life as an employee
Was she up to the challenge?
CBS lapped up everything we were saying, and gave the go ahead for a pilot.
We had done a series called "Busting Loose" for CBS, which lasted a year, and along the way, did an episode where the five young guys who comprised the "gang" in "Busting Loose" go on a Singles Weekend at the Hotel Fleckman.
This episode was mentioned in my post "The Kid In The Papoose"
So what we basically wanted to do was spin off the set.
We still had the set, so it was easy to do.
We surrounded Rita with very funny people like Louis Nye and Victor Buono.
And creatively, I thought it was quite successful.
We were going to base the stories on Lowell's actual experiences at his grandparents' Mountain Resort, which was called "Mountain View Hotel and Day Camp".
The sign at the entrance read "Mountain View.Hotel and Day Camp. Filtered Pool."
So of course, that's how everyone referred to the place:
"Mountain View Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool".
This gave me a natural hook to the title song.
We changed the name of the hotel to Fleckmans, were going to call the show "Welcome To Fleckmans", and in the song, I was going to repeatedly refer to it as
"Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool."
Because Rita was a Latin from Manhattan, and a Forty-Second Streeter, I decided to give the song a calypso beat.
With soft guitars in the background.
Because of time constraints, a calypso beat proved to be too slow.
We had to speed it up, to the point where it sounded like a TV or radio jingle.
It worked that way, too.
It wasn't until this point that Rita had actually glommed on to what I was trying to do with it.
But, trouper that she was, she put it over in grand style.
I said that today, I was going to introduce you to "Welcome To Fleckmans".
I believe I have fulfilled my duty in that regard.
But after what might seem to be a rather long-winded but necessary setup, I'm going to postpone putting up the actual lyrics until Tuesday, because I still have too much to say about how the song was put together, and how the visuals matched the lyrics.
So if you're still with me on Tuesday, you might want to harken back to today's article as a refresher course.
I hope to see you then.
Next Tuesday (It's Good Enough For Me).
*****
A little background: Shortly after "Laverne and Shirley hit the airwaves and became this humongous hit, CBS wanted to get, as they say, "into bed" with Lowell Ganz and myself.
See, we, or at least me, were so young, and so dumb, that we actually thought that the industry finally figured out how talented we were.
They didn't figure out anything.
We were in the aura of an humongous hit.
Somebody figured out that we might have had something to do with it, since we shared "Created by" credit, and produced it.
Little did they know how right they were.
So even when they knew something, they didn't know anything.
CBS treated us like royalty.
We did two unsuccessful series for them, and two other unsold pilots.
After that, they treated us like commoners.
But over lunch in the CBS Executive Dining Room during our Royalty Period, the attitude was essentially "Whatever you want to do, we want to do it with you".
And the question was put to us "What star in the wide world would you guys like to work with?
After only a few moments of hesitation, one of us, I forget who, piped up with "Rita Moreno".
And the other quickly agreed.
Rita Moreno had appeared in one of Garry Marshall's failed pilots, which we helped out on.
Onstage, she simply oozed talent and professionalism.
Offstage, she simply oozed humor and charm.
Then they asked us "What kind of show would you like to do with her?
We, of course, had nothing.
We were not prepared for this line of questioning.
We tapdanced a little until one of us, I forget who, recalled that we had wanted to do a series that took place at a Catskill-type Mountain Resort Hotel.
We ad libbed a pitch where Rita was the social director of the place, a rather run-down version of a Catskill resort hotel.
She inherits it when the owner dies, and is faced with being the boss after spending her whole life as an employee
Was she up to the challenge?
CBS lapped up everything we were saying, and gave the go ahead for a pilot.
We had done a series called "Busting Loose" for CBS, which lasted a year, and along the way, did an episode where the five young guys who comprised the "gang" in "Busting Loose" go on a Singles Weekend at the Hotel Fleckman.
This episode was mentioned in my post "The Kid In The Papoose"
So what we basically wanted to do was spin off the set.
We still had the set, so it was easy to do.
We surrounded Rita with very funny people like Louis Nye and Victor Buono.
And creatively, I thought it was quite successful.
We were going to base the stories on Lowell's actual experiences at his grandparents' Mountain Resort, which was called "Mountain View Hotel and Day Camp".
The sign at the entrance read "Mountain View.Hotel and Day Camp. Filtered Pool."
So of course, that's how everyone referred to the place:
"Mountain View Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool".
This gave me a natural hook to the title song.
We changed the name of the hotel to Fleckmans, were going to call the show "Welcome To Fleckmans", and in the song, I was going to repeatedly refer to it as
"Fleckmans Hotel and Day Camp Filtered Pool."
Because Rita was a Latin from Manhattan, and a Forty-Second Streeter, I decided to give the song a calypso beat.
With soft guitars in the background.
Because of time constraints, a calypso beat proved to be too slow.
We had to speed it up, to the point where it sounded like a TV or radio jingle.
It worked that way, too.
It wasn't until this point that Rita had actually glommed on to what I was trying to do with it.
But, trouper that she was, she put it over in grand style.
I said that today, I was going to introduce you to "Welcome To Fleckmans".
I believe I have fulfilled my duty in that regard.
But after what might seem to be a rather long-winded but necessary setup, I'm going to postpone putting up the actual lyrics until Tuesday, because I still have too much to say about how the song was put together, and how the visuals matched the lyrics.
So if you're still with me on Tuesday, you might want to harken back to today's article as a refresher course.
I hope to see you then.
Next Tuesday (It's Good Enough For Me).
*****
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Let's Hear The Brilliance.
I've mentioned before that I have worked with the writer Sheldon Keller.
Sheldon was on Sid Caesars writing staff in the 50's.
The show aired live on Saturday night, and on Monday morning preparations began for next Saturday's show.
And on those Monday mornings, the writers were supposed to be prepared.
To at least have ideas to be tossed out.
And a lot of the times, that's what they were.
Tossed out. By Sid.
According to Sheldon, those meetings would always begin with the writers being assembled in the writers room, Sid then making his grand entrance, sitting down in his throne-like chair, and announcing to one and all:
"Okay, let's hear the brilliance." "Come on, let's shovel out some of that brilliance".
And he expected to be accomodated.
And he usually was.
Recently, I wrote a couple of posts about Stephen Sondheim's new book of his lyrics, in which I patted myself on the back because he agreed with me about several things.
I also mentioned that I myself had dabbled in songwriting for the title songs of some of my TV shows.
This elicited a couple of e-mails, both making the same request, although differing in tone.
One went "I'm very curious about your songwriting. I think it would be nice if you printed the lyrics to the songs you wrote for your TV shows".
The other essentially went "Okay, smarty-pants, if you're such a hotshot, let's see the lyrics that you turned out."
It was a version of "Okay, let's hear the brilliance".
These are two approaches to the same reasonable request.
Quite a while back, I printed the lyrics to a song I wrote that led to winning a college competition when I was 19.
It was called "Horseradish", and can probably be easily found with some Googling.
But by the time I was writing title songs for my TV shows, I had matured.
I'd already reached the ripe old age of 31.
I am going to honor these two requests today and tomorrow by presenting two of my TV title songs for your possible enjoyment.
Presenting lyrics without the music is certainly not the easiest way to accomplish this.
Sondheim had the same problem in his book.
But I will try to be as descriptive as I can to recreate the sense of these songs.
The first is the title song from a pilot I did called "Lovebirds", which was basically an attempt to do an updated version of "The Honeymooners". It involved a blue-collar couple who lived downstairs from a white-collar couple.
It had the tone and the rhythms of "The Honeymooners", and its world famous hostility.
If you do your job conscientiously, you try to match the song to the titles, or the titles to the song.
They are not separate entities.
Unlike "Taxi", for instance, where you saw a taxicab driving over a bridge and heard a piccolo.
That certainly portended what you were going to see.
In the case of "Lovebirds", the song was written first, and the titles were created to match it.
The song has a leisurely up-tempo pace, and was sung by Bobby Van, who is probably best remembered as the host of "Make Me Laugh".
More's the pity. Bobby Van was a great song-and dance man
I thought it was good casting.
I'll try to present the song to approximate its rhythm as accurately as possible, and capitalize words that required particular stress and high notes.
Here goes:
"Lovebirds.....
They call us the lovebirds.....
No one's
More in love than us lovebirds......
When you
See us billin' and cooin'
You won't say "What are they doin'?"
You'll know because
We're the never lonely, the two and only
Lovebirds.....
We'll always be lovebirds.....
We're gonna be lovebirds,
Forever more........
Para-keet, Ca-nary, or Dove,
You won't find no bird that's in love
Like us lovebirds, lovebirds,
We adore.......
EACH other we're the lovebirds,
Lovebirds, how sublime......
IT is 'cause we are lovebirds, lovebirds all the time....."
The titles that we matched to the song began with the blue collar couple's wedding, where the bride tossed the bouquet to her friend, the female in the white-collar couple.
Cut to: the White collar couples wedding,
Cut to; much bickering among the four of them, which served as a nice counterpoint for the song.
It wasn't until weeks later that I realized that I had miscast Bobby Van.
He brought a natural sophistication to the lyric.
A lyric that was very colloquial.
It should have been performed by someone who had a sense of relaxed funkiness that would have matched the lyric better.
Someone like Jack Sheldon.
You know, Jack Sheldon. the trumpet player-vocalist who has turned out some wonderful vocal CD's and is probably best remembered vocally as the voice of the Bill on Capitol Hill on "Schoolhouse Rock"
He would have been spectacular.
I don't know if that would have made the difference in the pilot being sold, but it certainly would have improved the packaging.
When I demonstrated the song to the powers that be, I subconsciously was doing Jack Sheldon.
I wish it had reached the conscious level.
Tomorrow, I'll offer up another song and shovel out more of that brilliance.
*****
Sheldon was on Sid Caesars writing staff in the 50's.
The show aired live on Saturday night, and on Monday morning preparations began for next Saturday's show.
And on those Monday mornings, the writers were supposed to be prepared.
To at least have ideas to be tossed out.
And a lot of the times, that's what they were.
Tossed out. By Sid.
According to Sheldon, those meetings would always begin with the writers being assembled in the writers room, Sid then making his grand entrance, sitting down in his throne-like chair, and announcing to one and all:
"Okay, let's hear the brilliance." "Come on, let's shovel out some of that brilliance".
And he expected to be accomodated.
And he usually was.
Recently, I wrote a couple of posts about Stephen Sondheim's new book of his lyrics, in which I patted myself on the back because he agreed with me about several things.
I also mentioned that I myself had dabbled in songwriting for the title songs of some of my TV shows.
This elicited a couple of e-mails, both making the same request, although differing in tone.
One went "I'm very curious about your songwriting. I think it would be nice if you printed the lyrics to the songs you wrote for your TV shows".
The other essentially went "Okay, smarty-pants, if you're such a hotshot, let's see the lyrics that you turned out."
It was a version of "Okay, let's hear the brilliance".
These are two approaches to the same reasonable request.
Quite a while back, I printed the lyrics to a song I wrote that led to winning a college competition when I was 19.
It was called "Horseradish", and can probably be easily found with some Googling.
But by the time I was writing title songs for my TV shows, I had matured.
I'd already reached the ripe old age of 31.
I am going to honor these two requests today and tomorrow by presenting two of my TV title songs for your possible enjoyment.
Presenting lyrics without the music is certainly not the easiest way to accomplish this.
Sondheim had the same problem in his book.
But I will try to be as descriptive as I can to recreate the sense of these songs.
The first is the title song from a pilot I did called "Lovebirds", which was basically an attempt to do an updated version of "The Honeymooners". It involved a blue-collar couple who lived downstairs from a white-collar couple.
It had the tone and the rhythms of "The Honeymooners", and its world famous hostility.
If you do your job conscientiously, you try to match the song to the titles, or the titles to the song.
They are not separate entities.
Unlike "Taxi", for instance, where you saw a taxicab driving over a bridge and heard a piccolo.
That certainly portended what you were going to see.
In the case of "Lovebirds", the song was written first, and the titles were created to match it.
The song has a leisurely up-tempo pace, and was sung by Bobby Van, who is probably best remembered as the host of "Make Me Laugh".
More's the pity. Bobby Van was a great song-and dance man
I thought it was good casting.
I'll try to present the song to approximate its rhythm as accurately as possible, and capitalize words that required particular stress and high notes.
Here goes:
"Lovebirds.....
They call us the lovebirds.....
No one's
More in love than us lovebirds......
When you
See us billin' and cooin'
You won't say "What are they doin'?"
You'll know because
We're the never lonely, the two and only
Lovebirds.....
We'll always be lovebirds.....
We're gonna be lovebirds,
Forever more........
Para-keet, Ca-nary, or Dove,
You won't find no bird that's in love
Like us lovebirds, lovebirds,
We adore.......
EACH other we're the lovebirds,
Lovebirds, how sublime......
IT is 'cause we are lovebirds, lovebirds all the time....."
The titles that we matched to the song began with the blue collar couple's wedding, where the bride tossed the bouquet to her friend, the female in the white-collar couple.
Cut to: the White collar couples wedding,
Cut to; much bickering among the four of them, which served as a nice counterpoint for the song.
It wasn't until weeks later that I realized that I had miscast Bobby Van.
He brought a natural sophistication to the lyric.
A lyric that was very colloquial.
It should have been performed by someone who had a sense of relaxed funkiness that would have matched the lyric better.
Someone like Jack Sheldon.
You know, Jack Sheldon. the trumpet player-vocalist who has turned out some wonderful vocal CD's and is probably best remembered vocally as the voice of the Bill on Capitol Hill on "Schoolhouse Rock"
He would have been spectacular.
I don't know if that would have made the difference in the pilot being sold, but it certainly would have improved the packaging.
When I demonstrated the song to the powers that be, I subconsciously was doing Jack Sheldon.
I wish it had reached the conscious level.
Tomorrow, I'll offer up another song and shovel out more of that brilliance.
*****
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Why Dick Cavett Should Speak Up Sooner, Then Shut Up Altogether.
I should warn you up front that in todays post, the rant level will be ramped up significantly.
I will be capitalizing words for loud emphasis.
That's the kind of mood I'm in.
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Amazon.com, inviting me to pre-order Dick Cavett's new book, "Talk Show".
Whenever you order a book from Amazon, they e-mail you to inform you that there are books that you might like based on previous books you've ordered from them.
I like when they do this.
I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.
I LIKE WHEN THEY DO THIS.
I have read Dick Cavett's blog on the New York Times website since it began.
He writes very well, even though a lot of what he writes there are things he has written in his other books.
Amazon was offering a very good discount on "Talk Show".
So good that it required me to order something else to get the order over $25 to qualify for free shipping.
There was another book that also offered a good discount that sent the order over $25.
So I took a flyer and placed the order, hoping that Cavett wouldn't be repeating himself too often.
The blurb for Cavett's book was:
"Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets."
Now I like confrontations as well as the next guy.
More, even.
And who doesn't like pointed commentary?
Off-Screen Secrets?
I live for them.
I received the e-mail informing me that the order was on its way.
In the interim, I read Cavett's current entry on his N.Y. Times blog.
It's an entire blog devoted to bellyaching about having to go out to the hinterlands to promote this book.
As someone working on turning my blog into a book, I would kill for the opportunity to go wherever necessary to hawk the shit out of my book.
If I wouldn't, I simply wouldn't make the effort to turn it into a book.
In this current entry, he mentions, virtually in passing, that this book is a compilation of his blog articles.
You know.
The ones that I have already read.
And that I'm now paying more than twenty bucks to have in my possession.
A word to Cavett: an off-screen secret can not still be a secret IF IT HAS ALREADY BEEN PUBLISHED!!
So he's complaining about having to promote a book he didn't even have to WRITE.
Only COMPILE.
From the Motion Picture "Boy, He's Got It Tough".
There was no indication on the Amazon page about the book being a compilation of the blog articles.
Nor is there one now.
Now I must make it clear that I don't blame Amazon for any of this.
For two simple reasons: If I get my book published, I don't want to piss them off.
And I don't want any problems with my customer account.
No, I place the blame purely on the little shoulders of Dick Cavett.
I don't care if I piss him off like crazy.
It behooved him early in the process to place the information on the Amazon Page, and on the Borders Page, and on the Barnes and Noble Page that THIS IS A COMPILATION OF ARTICLES I HAVE READ ALREADY!
That MANY people have read already!
I can't believe that I am alone in this dilemma.
I imagine that many of his potential pre-order readers were culled from the people who read his blog regularly.
His blog appears on the N.Y. Times website, where there are many, many readers.
I have now had to deal with Amazon to try to get a refund. They don't provide a customer service number on the website, and you can't access it from Toll Free Information.
It'd been like trying to follow a buried treasure map to find them.
Finally after several jousts, where conflicting information was offered, I was able to return the package.
And of course, I couldn't open the package to retrieve the other book that was in the same box, so I had to return that too, and have to re-order it.
Somewhat of an inconvenience.
But, again, I' M NOT BLAMING AMAZON!
I DON'T WANT TO PISS OFF AMAZON!
THIS IS PURELY DICK CAVETT'S FAULT!
If and when I get my book published, I feel that it behooves me to relate to the potential readership that these articles were once published in my blog.
Right on the Amazon page.
Anything less than that smells of chicanery.
I undersand that my complaining about what Cavett did might seem as insignificant as Cavett complaining about having to hawk his book in the hinterlands.
The difference being that if I don't get my refund from Amazon, Dick Cavett owes me twenty four bucks.
*****
I will be capitalizing words for loud emphasis.
That's the kind of mood I'm in.
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Amazon.com, inviting me to pre-order Dick Cavett's new book, "Talk Show".
Whenever you order a book from Amazon, they e-mail you to inform you that there are books that you might like based on previous books you've ordered from them.
I like when they do this.
I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.
I LIKE WHEN THEY DO THIS.
I have read Dick Cavett's blog on the New York Times website since it began.
He writes very well, even though a lot of what he writes there are things he has written in his other books.
Amazon was offering a very good discount on "Talk Show".
So good that it required me to order something else to get the order over $25 to qualify for free shipping.
There was another book that also offered a good discount that sent the order over $25.
So I took a flyer and placed the order, hoping that Cavett wouldn't be repeating himself too often.
The blurb for Cavett's book was:
"Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets."
Now I like confrontations as well as the next guy.
More, even.
And who doesn't like pointed commentary?
Off-Screen Secrets?
I live for them.
I received the e-mail informing me that the order was on its way.
In the interim, I read Cavett's current entry on his N.Y. Times blog.
It's an entire blog devoted to bellyaching about having to go out to the hinterlands to promote this book.
As someone working on turning my blog into a book, I would kill for the opportunity to go wherever necessary to hawk the shit out of my book.
If I wouldn't, I simply wouldn't make the effort to turn it into a book.
In this current entry, he mentions, virtually in passing, that this book is a compilation of his blog articles.
You know.
The ones that I have already read.
And that I'm now paying more than twenty bucks to have in my possession.
A word to Cavett: an off-screen secret can not still be a secret IF IT HAS ALREADY BEEN PUBLISHED!!
So he's complaining about having to promote a book he didn't even have to WRITE.
Only COMPILE.
From the Motion Picture "Boy, He's Got It Tough".
There was no indication on the Amazon page about the book being a compilation of the blog articles.
Nor is there one now.
Now I must make it clear that I don't blame Amazon for any of this.
For two simple reasons: If I get my book published, I don't want to piss them off.
And I don't want any problems with my customer account.
No, I place the blame purely on the little shoulders of Dick Cavett.
I don't care if I piss him off like crazy.
It behooved him early in the process to place the information on the Amazon Page, and on the Borders Page, and on the Barnes and Noble Page that THIS IS A COMPILATION OF ARTICLES I HAVE READ ALREADY!
That MANY people have read already!
I can't believe that I am alone in this dilemma.
I imagine that many of his potential pre-order readers were culled from the people who read his blog regularly.
His blog appears on the N.Y. Times website, where there are many, many readers.
I have now had to deal with Amazon to try to get a refund. They don't provide a customer service number on the website, and you can't access it from Toll Free Information.
It'd been like trying to follow a buried treasure map to find them.
Finally after several jousts, where conflicting information was offered, I was able to return the package.
And of course, I couldn't open the package to retrieve the other book that was in the same box, so I had to return that too, and have to re-order it.
Somewhat of an inconvenience.
But, again, I' M NOT BLAMING AMAZON!
I DON'T WANT TO PISS OFF AMAZON!
THIS IS PURELY DICK CAVETT'S FAULT!
If and when I get my book published, I feel that it behooves me to relate to the potential readership that these articles were once published in my blog.
Right on the Amazon page.
Anything less than that smells of chicanery.
I undersand that my complaining about what Cavett did might seem as insignificant as Cavett complaining about having to hawk his book in the hinterlands.
The difference being that if I don't get my refund from Amazon, Dick Cavett owes me twenty four bucks.
*****
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Sometimes I Don't Affect History.
It's the late 70's.
I'm sitting in my office at Paramount, during my tenure working on one of my one-season wonders, and I receive a letter.
It's from a woman I knew in college named Sue Hyatt.
We hung out in the theater department there.
We weren't close.
But we were close enough that she felt comfortable enough to write to me years later, and I was receptive enough to read her letter.
It contained a request not untypical of the kind of requests I was receiving in those days.
She had a younger brother who was trying to make it as an actor.
Would I be willing to meet with him, and offer him whatever advice I deemed appropriate?
Would I perhaps even give him an audition?
Is it okay if he called you?
I thought to myself that all of this was okay with me.
But for whatever reason that I can no longer recall, I didn't feel the need to respond to Sue.
I guess I thought that if her brother called me, I'd talk to him, advise him, and even audition him.
He never called me, and I guess I'd just completely forgotten about it.
Maybe Sue thought I was just blowing her off.
That wasn't my intention.
I guess I just thought that by my not saying "No", that it was all okay with me.
Maybe I just wasn't thinking.
In any case, I never heard from Sue's brother, so I never talked to him, advised him, or auditioned him.
Cut to: about ten years later.
I'm at the McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
A place I'd been to a lot.
I'd just arrived from L.A.
I'm at baggage claim, waiting for my bags.
I see someone I know, waiting for his bags.
Airports are the easiest places in the world to run into someone you know.
It's a guy I knew in college.
Also from the theater department.
Turns out he does a lot of Audio Video work at concerts and shows in Vegas.
He lives there full time.
We cut up old touches, and chat for a while.
We share a cab to my hotel.
We agree to have dinner that night.
He continues on home in the cab.
Over dinner, he tells me that he currently has a houseguest.
Ron Jeremy.
The pornstar.
Now, everyone who does porn is considered or considers him or herself a pornstar.
Nobody considers him or herself a porn actor.
Certainly not a porn supporting actor, or a porn character actor.
But few of them are genuine pornstars in the traditional sense of the word "star".
Ron Jeremy was a genuine Pornstar.
He was and is legendary.
At least parts of him were and are.
I asked my college chum how he happened to know Ron Jeremy well enough that he was hosting him in his house.
He said "Remember Sue Hyatt?'
I said "Sure."
He said "Ron Jeremy is her younger brother."
Now here's an instance where if I had contacted Sue, and said I'd be delighted to meet with her brother, and advise him, and even audition him, it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to history.
Because Ron Jeremy was and is one of the worst actors who ever lived.
I would have discovered this if I had auditioned him, and probably would have advised him, as tactfully as I could muster up, to pursue other career paths.
He basically found that solution without my help.
*****
I'm sitting in my office at Paramount, during my tenure working on one of my one-season wonders, and I receive a letter.
It's from a woman I knew in college named Sue Hyatt.
We hung out in the theater department there.
We weren't close.
But we were close enough that she felt comfortable enough to write to me years later, and I was receptive enough to read her letter.
It contained a request not untypical of the kind of requests I was receiving in those days.
She had a younger brother who was trying to make it as an actor.
Would I be willing to meet with him, and offer him whatever advice I deemed appropriate?
Would I perhaps even give him an audition?
Is it okay if he called you?
I thought to myself that all of this was okay with me.
But for whatever reason that I can no longer recall, I didn't feel the need to respond to Sue.
I guess I thought that if her brother called me, I'd talk to him, advise him, and even audition him.
He never called me, and I guess I'd just completely forgotten about it.
Maybe Sue thought I was just blowing her off.
That wasn't my intention.
I guess I just thought that by my not saying "No", that it was all okay with me.
Maybe I just wasn't thinking.
In any case, I never heard from Sue's brother, so I never talked to him, advised him, or auditioned him.
Cut to: about ten years later.
I'm at the McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.
A place I'd been to a lot.
I'd just arrived from L.A.
I'm at baggage claim, waiting for my bags.
I see someone I know, waiting for his bags.
Airports are the easiest places in the world to run into someone you know.
It's a guy I knew in college.
Also from the theater department.
Turns out he does a lot of Audio Video work at concerts and shows in Vegas.
He lives there full time.
We cut up old touches, and chat for a while.
We share a cab to my hotel.
We agree to have dinner that night.
He continues on home in the cab.
Over dinner, he tells me that he currently has a houseguest.
Ron Jeremy.
The pornstar.
Now, everyone who does porn is considered or considers him or herself a pornstar.
Nobody considers him or herself a porn actor.
Certainly not a porn supporting actor, or a porn character actor.
But few of them are genuine pornstars in the traditional sense of the word "star".
Ron Jeremy was a genuine Pornstar.
He was and is legendary.
At least parts of him were and are.
I asked my college chum how he happened to know Ron Jeremy well enough that he was hosting him in his house.
He said "Remember Sue Hyatt?'
I said "Sure."
He said "Ron Jeremy is her younger brother."
Now here's an instance where if I had contacted Sue, and said I'd be delighted to meet with her brother, and advise him, and even audition him, it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to history.
Because Ron Jeremy was and is one of the worst actors who ever lived.
I would have discovered this if I had auditioned him, and probably would have advised him, as tactfully as I could muster up, to pursue other career paths.
He basically found that solution without my help.
*****
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Finding Gold When You're Not Looking For It.
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from the relative of a friend, telling me that he had a few of my old rare shows on DVD.
"Rare" in this instance, translates to "flop".
"Flop" doesn't necessarily translate to "bad".
He sent them to me, and they were quite good.
At least I thought so.
He asked me if I had any other "rare" shows of mine on DVD.
I told him that all I had were on Betamax tapes, which I probably don't have anymore, because I didn't have a working Betamax Machine.
But if he finds them, I'd love to get my hands on them.
A couple of weeks ago, I was rummaging upstairs in various rooms, looking for early drafts of scripts I had later drafts of, so I could use the clean backs of them to write my bets on.
That's about all they're good for.
I open a cabinet, and a couple of drawers in it, and find the Mother Lode.
All my old Betamax tapes.
With most of my "rare" shows on them.
And two Betamax machines.
These tapes were now over thirty years old, as were the machines.
And the machines didn't work too well thirty years ago.
But something possessed me to shlep all of it downstairs, hook a machine up to one of my new TVs, and hope for the best.
By the way, these Betamax machines each weighed a ton.
We've made some progress in that regard.
The first machine I tried had the same problem it had thirty years ago.
You couldn't extract a tape from it without using the equivalent of forceps.
And there was a tracking problem.
My hopes were getting dim.
I hooked up the other Beta machine.
The problem on that one used to be that it stopped intermittently.
During recording or playback.
Other than that, it worked fine.
This would preclude my being able to use it successfully.
I put in a tape.
The more than thirty year old tape played fine.
And the machine didn't stop intermittently.
It was working fine, although I didn't know for how long.
I hooked it all up to my two year old DVD recorder, got some blank DVDs, and of course, the two year old DVD recorder kept spitting out the blank DVDs.
We've made no progress in this regard.
The thirty year old Betamax worked fine, the two year old DVD recorder, which I used maybe twice before, was a washout.
This problem was solved when I made a trip to Best Buy, where the first salesman tried to sell me another $300 DVD recorder.
Another salesman sized up the problem and cost the first salesman his commission by suggesting that I buy a $50 DVD recording device that hooks right up to my computer.
As my mother would have said, "$50 is a whole lot better than $300".
And it was.
And it worked fine.
All the Beta tapes worked fine.
I never had the stopping problem with the Betamax machine.
How it cured itself over thirty years, I'll never know.
And I now have about 20 episodes of a series I did called "Busting Loose" on DVD, where I can watch them any time I want to, without any shlepping, and without my heart in my mouth.
I have a handful of episodes of other series: One I did with Ted Knight, and one called
"Makin 'It".
We actually only did a handful of those.
Four episodes of "The New Odd Couple".
I also have a couple of wonderful unsold pilots, and a couple of not-so-wonderful unsold pilots.
All on DVD.
I never thought I'd see any of this stuff again.
When I got done, I laughed like a loon, just the way Walter Huston did as he did his crazy dance when he informed his colleagues that they were standing on gold, and too stupid to realize it, in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".
If any of my regular readers are interested in seeing any of this stuff, e-mail me at macchus999@aol.com, and we'll figure out if there's a way to make this happen.
Also, if the actress Barrie Youngfellow, or anyone else connected with a 1979 unsold NBC pilot called "Single Life" wants to get their hands on it, I have that too.
It aired after one of my unsold pilots, and I left the tape rolling.
I Googled it, and there is absolutely no information on it anywhere on the entire Internet.
*****
"Rare" in this instance, translates to "flop".
"Flop" doesn't necessarily translate to "bad".
He sent them to me, and they were quite good.
At least I thought so.
He asked me if I had any other "rare" shows of mine on DVD.
I told him that all I had were on Betamax tapes, which I probably don't have anymore, because I didn't have a working Betamax Machine.
But if he finds them, I'd love to get my hands on them.
A couple of weeks ago, I was rummaging upstairs in various rooms, looking for early drafts of scripts I had later drafts of, so I could use the clean backs of them to write my bets on.
That's about all they're good for.
I open a cabinet, and a couple of drawers in it, and find the Mother Lode.
All my old Betamax tapes.
With most of my "rare" shows on them.
And two Betamax machines.
These tapes were now over thirty years old, as were the machines.
And the machines didn't work too well thirty years ago.
But something possessed me to shlep all of it downstairs, hook a machine up to one of my new TVs, and hope for the best.
By the way, these Betamax machines each weighed a ton.
We've made some progress in that regard.
The first machine I tried had the same problem it had thirty years ago.
You couldn't extract a tape from it without using the equivalent of forceps.
And there was a tracking problem.
My hopes were getting dim.
I hooked up the other Beta machine.
The problem on that one used to be that it stopped intermittently.
During recording or playback.
Other than that, it worked fine.
This would preclude my being able to use it successfully.
I put in a tape.
The more than thirty year old tape played fine.
And the machine didn't stop intermittently.
It was working fine, although I didn't know for how long.
I hooked it all up to my two year old DVD recorder, got some blank DVDs, and of course, the two year old DVD recorder kept spitting out the blank DVDs.
We've made no progress in this regard.
The thirty year old Betamax worked fine, the two year old DVD recorder, which I used maybe twice before, was a washout.
This problem was solved when I made a trip to Best Buy, where the first salesman tried to sell me another $300 DVD recorder.
Another salesman sized up the problem and cost the first salesman his commission by suggesting that I buy a $50 DVD recording device that hooks right up to my computer.
As my mother would have said, "$50 is a whole lot better than $300".
And it was.
And it worked fine.
All the Beta tapes worked fine.
I never had the stopping problem with the Betamax machine.
How it cured itself over thirty years, I'll never know.
And I now have about 20 episodes of a series I did called "Busting Loose" on DVD, where I can watch them any time I want to, without any shlepping, and without my heart in my mouth.
I have a handful of episodes of other series: One I did with Ted Knight, and one called
"Makin 'It".
We actually only did a handful of those.
Four episodes of "The New Odd Couple".
I also have a couple of wonderful unsold pilots, and a couple of not-so-wonderful unsold pilots.
All on DVD.
I never thought I'd see any of this stuff again.
When I got done, I laughed like a loon, just the way Walter Huston did as he did his crazy dance when he informed his colleagues that they were standing on gold, and too stupid to realize it, in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".
If any of my regular readers are interested in seeing any of this stuff, e-mail me at macchus999@aol.com, and we'll figure out if there's a way to make this happen.
Also, if the actress Barrie Youngfellow, or anyone else connected with a 1979 unsold NBC pilot called "Single Life" wants to get their hands on it, I have that too.
It aired after one of my unsold pilots, and I left the tape rolling.
I Googled it, and there is absolutely no information on it anywhere on the entire Internet.
*****
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Why Bud Selig Is Still An Idiot.
There used to be a thing in baseball called real pennant races.
There is no reason why we can't still have them.
Except for the fact that Bud Selig is an unimaginative idiot.
It's not that I'm anti-Wild Card teams.
Au contraire.
Wild Card Teams are good financially for baseball, and for the fans.
But the way they're determined and not proportionally disadvantaged correctly virtually eliminates what could be great pennant races and playoff showdowns.
And only because Bud Selig is an unimaginative idiot.
The Yankees and Tampa Bay could have ended Sunday's play tied.
Because of a stupid rule instituted by Selig, Tampa Bay was awarded the division, based on the head-to-head competition between the two teams during the season before Tampa Bay's game with Kansas City had ended.
The Tampa Bay-KC Royals game on Sunday was rendered meaningless IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME as soon as the Yankees lost to Boston.
All of this is a LOT more exciting than a one-game tiebreaker that could have taken place yesterday.
Isn't it?
Tampa Bay went on to win the game, giving them the division by one game .
What's that you say? It wouldn't have made much difference because they're both easily in the playoffs anyway?
That's the other problem.
It shouldn't be that easy for the Wild Card team to coast into the playoffs. That's what kills the pennant races.
All that's really at stake is home field advantage.
And there are actually situations where the Wild Card team has at least a temporary home field advantage.
The solution, that would actually provide more money for baseball, and be SO much better for the fans, is SO simple that even an idiot like Selig can understand it.
It's this simple: Add another Wild Card team in each league.
The two Wild Card teams play each other in a one-game playoff at the home field of the team with the better record.
The winner advances to the real playoffs.
If there is a tie between Division leaders at the end of the season, there should be a one-game tie breaker at the home field of the team with the better record between the two teams.
If this system was in place Sunday, a WHOLE LOT would be at stake between the Yankees and Tampa Bay.
There could have been a one-game tie breaker yesterday, and the loser would play the RED SOX in a one game playoff to get in the real playoffs.
The Red Sox and the White Sox were only one game apart at the end, so that would have been a battle too.
So those two teams would still have been in the hunt.
That would have been even better for the fans.
If necessary, that could have been a one game tie breaker.
How great would all THAT have been?
Okay, so the playoffs might start a few days later, at worst.
A small price to pay for genuine fan hysteria.
If this system was in place in the National League, Atlanta and San Diego would have both lived on to play at least one more game.
Without it being in place, the Philadelphia Phillies actually had a rooting interest for themselves to lose on Sunday.
They played Atlanta.
If Atlanta won and San Diego won Sunday, there would be a one game playoff between those two teams.
This would possibly have led to San Diego or the Giants (I'm not sure which) being the Wild Card Team, with one day's less rest, with their pitchers more depleted, having to face the Phillies in the first round of the playoffs.
San Diego lost, so it wasn't an issue. But their game took place after the Phillies-Atlanta game.
And the Phillies had absolutely no need to win that game.
They could have rested almost everybody, and used their September callups from the minor leagues to pitch that game.
This situation should never exist, and wouldn't, if each league had another Wild Card team.
Let's have pennant races again. It's so easy to accomplish.
Bud, imagination is funny.
It makes a cloudy day sunny.
*****
There is no reason why we can't still have them.
Except for the fact that Bud Selig is an unimaginative idiot.
It's not that I'm anti-Wild Card teams.
Au contraire.
Wild Card Teams are good financially for baseball, and for the fans.
But the way they're determined and not proportionally disadvantaged correctly virtually eliminates what could be great pennant races and playoff showdowns.
And only because Bud Selig is an unimaginative idiot.
The Yankees and Tampa Bay could have ended Sunday's play tied.
Because of a stupid rule instituted by Selig, Tampa Bay was awarded the division, based on the head-to-head competition between the two teams during the season before Tampa Bay's game with Kansas City had ended.
The Tampa Bay-KC Royals game on Sunday was rendered meaningless IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME as soon as the Yankees lost to Boston.
All of this is a LOT more exciting than a one-game tiebreaker that could have taken place yesterday.
Isn't it?
Tampa Bay went on to win the game, giving them the division by one game .
What's that you say? It wouldn't have made much difference because they're both easily in the playoffs anyway?
That's the other problem.
It shouldn't be that easy for the Wild Card team to coast into the playoffs. That's what kills the pennant races.
All that's really at stake is home field advantage.
And there are actually situations where the Wild Card team has at least a temporary home field advantage.
The solution, that would actually provide more money for baseball, and be SO much better for the fans, is SO simple that even an idiot like Selig can understand it.
It's this simple: Add another Wild Card team in each league.
The two Wild Card teams play each other in a one-game playoff at the home field of the team with the better record.
The winner advances to the real playoffs.
If there is a tie between Division leaders at the end of the season, there should be a one-game tie breaker at the home field of the team with the better record between the two teams.
If this system was in place Sunday, a WHOLE LOT would be at stake between the Yankees and Tampa Bay.
There could have been a one-game tie breaker yesterday, and the loser would play the RED SOX in a one game playoff to get in the real playoffs.
The Red Sox and the White Sox were only one game apart at the end, so that would have been a battle too.
So those two teams would still have been in the hunt.
That would have been even better for the fans.
If necessary, that could have been a one game tie breaker.
How great would all THAT have been?
Okay, so the playoffs might start a few days later, at worst.
A small price to pay for genuine fan hysteria.
If this system was in place in the National League, Atlanta and San Diego would have both lived on to play at least one more game.
Without it being in place, the Philadelphia Phillies actually had a rooting interest for themselves to lose on Sunday.
They played Atlanta.
If Atlanta won and San Diego won Sunday, there would be a one game playoff between those two teams.
This would possibly have led to San Diego or the Giants (I'm not sure which) being the Wild Card Team, with one day's less rest, with their pitchers more depleted, having to face the Phillies in the first round of the playoffs.
San Diego lost, so it wasn't an issue. But their game took place after the Phillies-Atlanta game.
And the Phillies had absolutely no need to win that game.
They could have rested almost everybody, and used their September callups from the minor leagues to pitch that game.
This situation should never exist, and wouldn't, if each league had another Wild Card team.
Let's have pennant races again. It's so easy to accomplish.
Bud, imagination is funny.
It makes a cloudy day sunny.
*****
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
This Generation's Mr. Whipple.
Anybody here not old enough to remember Mr. Whipple?
In this case, I envy you your youth.
Mr. Whipple was the guy who ran the supermarket in the 1960's TV commercials where this really annoying woman, to us, and to him, would squeeze the Charmin toilet paper.
Mr. Whipple would admonish her and say "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!"
The woman was actually far more annoying than Mr. Whipple.
These commercials sold more toilet paper than you would at a Diarrhea Convention.
One of the most successful ad campaigns in history.
And easily the most annoying.
It blatantly tried to be funny, and, as the kids say today, was so not.
"Please don't squeeze the Charmin" became a national catchphrase.
It was a turning point of sorts, where advertisers first realized that the more stupid the commercial, the more successful it would be.
Because it appealed to the lowest common denominator.
Never was there a better example of it's mesmerizing powers than when my mother came home from the supermarket with the cart she wheeled, and sitting on top of it were two eight-packs of Charmin.
Now, you've got to understand, my mother virtually never bought ANYTHING if it wasn't on sale. It's part of our heritage.
And the conversation between me and she went as follows:
Me: Ma, Charmin?
She: Uh huh.
Me: It was on sale, right?
She: No.
Me: No?
She: No.
Me: Was any other toilet paper on sale?
She: I think so.
Me: You THINK so?
She: Uh huh.
Me: Ma, why did you buy this?!
She: (Imitating the commercial perfectly) "Please don't squeeze the Charmin".
I thought, "God, imagine the effect this is having on Gentiles!"
We have a new Mr. Whipple in our midst.
Even though there seems to be far more than the seven channels I had when I was growing up,
she seems to be on all of them.
And even though I watch everything on Tivo now, I can't seem to get rid of her.
I'm speaking of Flo, the Progressive Car Insurance Lady.
In the white smock.
Wearing too much lipstick.
Dealing with people with a mixture of concern and mild contempt.
She's everywhere.
She's even showing up on print ads on the Internet.
The Flo commercials aren't really as bad as the Mr. Whipple commercials.
They aren't completely unfunny.
That makes them even worse.
Because they keep being repeated.
And hearing a fairly lame joke that you've heard more than once gets worse with each re-hearing.
My only hope is that some genius at some network decides that it would be a brilliant idea to give the actress who plays Flo a series.
That would isolate her, and I wouldn't have to look at her any more.
The Geico gecko and his dim-witted boss ARE completely unfunny, and give Mr. Whipple a run for his money with regards to annoying.
But these commercials are both for car insurance.
The audience they are being targeted for has to
A- Know how to drive a car, and
B- Know that they have to have car insurance.
So they can't be going for as low a common denominator as the Charmin people.
All their audience has to know is that they have to wipe their asses.
It's kind of like the Republicans going after the Independent vote.
Why the Independent voters aren't coming out in droves for the Democrats is beyond me.
At least Obama and Nancy Pelosi are trying to get things done.
And they are succeeding, as much as the Republicans will let them.
The Republicans don't want to do ANYTHING.
The only thing they are good at is marketing.
They know what idiots their base is made up of.
And they are catered to with great care.
And the Republicans are apparently doing a great job on the Independent voters.
Maybe these voters are, and are perceived as being, just one measly cut above the Republican base.
So they have to be played to as if they at least know how to drive, and know that they need to have car insurance.
Whereas the Republican base needs only to be played to as if they only know how to wipe their asses.
.......and we're walkin! .........and we're walkin'!
*****
In this case, I envy you your youth.
Mr. Whipple was the guy who ran the supermarket in the 1960's TV commercials where this really annoying woman, to us, and to him, would squeeze the Charmin toilet paper.
Mr. Whipple would admonish her and say "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!"
The woman was actually far more annoying than Mr. Whipple.
These commercials sold more toilet paper than you would at a Diarrhea Convention.
One of the most successful ad campaigns in history.
And easily the most annoying.
It blatantly tried to be funny, and, as the kids say today, was so not.
"Please don't squeeze the Charmin" became a national catchphrase.
It was a turning point of sorts, where advertisers first realized that the more stupid the commercial, the more successful it would be.
Because it appealed to the lowest common denominator.
Never was there a better example of it's mesmerizing powers than when my mother came home from the supermarket with the cart she wheeled, and sitting on top of it were two eight-packs of Charmin.
Now, you've got to understand, my mother virtually never bought ANYTHING if it wasn't on sale. It's part of our heritage.
And the conversation between me and she went as follows:
Me: Ma, Charmin?
She: Uh huh.
Me: It was on sale, right?
She: No.
Me: No?
She: No.
Me: Was any other toilet paper on sale?
She: I think so.
Me: You THINK so?
She: Uh huh.
Me: Ma, why did you buy this?!
She: (Imitating the commercial perfectly) "Please don't squeeze the Charmin".
I thought, "God, imagine the effect this is having on Gentiles!"
We have a new Mr. Whipple in our midst.
Even though there seems to be far more than the seven channels I had when I was growing up,
she seems to be on all of them.
And even though I watch everything on Tivo now, I can't seem to get rid of her.
I'm speaking of Flo, the Progressive Car Insurance Lady.
In the white smock.
Wearing too much lipstick.
Dealing with people with a mixture of concern and mild contempt.
She's everywhere.
She's even showing up on print ads on the Internet.
The Flo commercials aren't really as bad as the Mr. Whipple commercials.
They aren't completely unfunny.
That makes them even worse.
Because they keep being repeated.
And hearing a fairly lame joke that you've heard more than once gets worse with each re-hearing.
My only hope is that some genius at some network decides that it would be a brilliant idea to give the actress who plays Flo a series.
That would isolate her, and I wouldn't have to look at her any more.
The Geico gecko and his dim-witted boss ARE completely unfunny, and give Mr. Whipple a run for his money with regards to annoying.
But these commercials are both for car insurance.
The audience they are being targeted for has to
A- Know how to drive a car, and
B- Know that they have to have car insurance.
So they can't be going for as low a common denominator as the Charmin people.
All their audience has to know is that they have to wipe their asses.
It's kind of like the Republicans going after the Independent vote.
Why the Independent voters aren't coming out in droves for the Democrats is beyond me.
At least Obama and Nancy Pelosi are trying to get things done.
And they are succeeding, as much as the Republicans will let them.
The Republicans don't want to do ANYTHING.
The only thing they are good at is marketing.
They know what idiots their base is made up of.
And they are catered to with great care.
And the Republicans are apparently doing a great job on the Independent voters.
Maybe these voters are, and are perceived as being, just one measly cut above the Republican base.
So they have to be played to as if they at least know how to drive, and know that they need to have car insurance.
Whereas the Republican base needs only to be played to as if they only know how to wipe their asses.
.......and we're walkin! .........and we're walkin'!
*****
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Post That Would Not Die.
A year ago June, I posted an article called "Fine And Danny".
It was essentially a Report Card of "Danny and Sylvia, the Musical".
It is easily the most Googled article I get.
There are apparently a lot of Danny Kaye fans out there.
My review was thoroughly mixed, and fairly long.
But it contained these relatively brief paragraphs:
"What was great about it----They found a guy who simply nailed Danny Kaye.He channeled him. He captured all that was great about him.
It was as if you were seeing Danny Kaye in a great live performance.
Better, in fact.
Because it came without all of the negatives that have since been associated with Danny Kaye, the person.
From all accounts, Danny Kaye in real life was, as my friend Lenny Friefeld would describe him in his intentionally redundant way, as "a shmuck and a putz".
He would always go out of his way to snub autograph seekers.
He would go to nightclubs at dinner shows and sit with his back to the onstage performers.
In the show "Two By Two", he would intentionally wreak havoc on stage.
He would always be bragging about who he was flying around in his private plane.
He apparently treated his wife, Sylvia Fine, abusively, something not covered in the musical I saw.
But then who wanted to see that, anyway?
So watching him on clips on YouTube, or in his old movies, meant accepting his personal baggage along with him.
I find this difficult to do.
It's not like Jerry Lewis, whose professional and personal persona is pretty much that of a shmuck and a putz.
If you like his work, you know what you're getting going in.
But Danny Kaye's public persona was that of an erudite, charming, likeable humanitarian.
And this apparently was not him.
He was entirely a lie."
What I wrote here was pretty much accepted within show business circles as common knowledge, and was hardly the main thrust of the article.
You can check it out in it's entirety if you care to.
But it engendered a brouhaha in the Comments section that lingers to this day.
It is apparently still ongoing.
I'm going to reprint the Comments section of that article to save you the trouble of hunting for it.
Please note that I removed four exchanges that I deemed too personal and/or ugly for public consumption.
Stef said...
"He was entirely a lie."For me, this sort of thing always begs the question: if what I want out of a performer is a good performance, why should I care about how much of a sonovabitch he is? I usually avoid tabloids and such that will take delight in telling me of celebrity pecadillos and foibles. Wouldn't knowing stuff like that undermine my enjoyment of their performance? Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine are now both dead, but his performances of her songs live on, and can still be enjoyed, and maybe discovered by new audiences yet unborn. Unless some spoilsport comes along and says, "See that guy up on the screen? He was shmuck and a putz!" [Not you, dear Mark. Some spoilsport sitting in a movie house revival, I mean.]
June 12, 2009 11:31 PM
Stef said...
[And kicking the seats.]
June 12, 2009 11:32 PM
mark rothman said...
In this case, I am simply cursed with too much knowledge to enjoy him anymore.
Some performers survive this kind of exposure better than others.
To me, he doesn't.
And I'm not the first one to stand up and say that the King is naked.
He did it himself in "The Emperor's New Clothes", in Hans Christian Andersen".
June 13, 2009 3:18 PM
Kirk Jusko said...
In a similar vein, I'm going to have a difficult time listening to any song--no matter how good--that Phil Spector had something to do with.
June 13, 2009 4:26 PM
Joe said...
As much as I'd like to be above-it-all, once someone is revealed to me to be a schmuck and a putz I can't enjoy the performance. Not that it's my particularly noble nature at play, I simply can't rise above how much of a lowlife Person X is.[shrug]I never knew that Danny Kaye was an awful guy, but now I won't be able to see him in any other light.
June 16, 2009 8:49 PM
Anonymous said...
Sad it is to see how years and decades of somebody's life and work turn into rubbish as easy as that, only because of somebody's "wise" remark that they are a schmuck and putz. I wonder how you would react if ever the same sort of thing should be said about you and you find yourselves in a hell of a lot of mess ?
March 5, 2010 10:06 AM
mark rothman said...
This wasn't just somebody's "wise" remark.
This is a consensus of many "wise" remarks from many different sources.
March 5, 2010 1:35 PM
Anonymous said...
OK, but no matter how many - don't you think that much more numerous will be the ones who do not share this opinion (unfortunately the bulk of these - his contemporaries I mean - are dead by now, so that the "wise" remarks somehow keep coming from the much younger smart alecks who hardly knew Danny as a person) ? Don't get me wrong, I respect everybody's freedom of speech, but it seems all the negative arguments featured here totally lack substantiation, and Danny Kaye in fact deserves better treatment and more respect...
March 6, 2010 2:46 PM
mark rothman said...
Specific sources: Martin Gottfried's biography of Danny Kaye, Paul Mazursky's autobiography.
Paul Mazursky worked as a writer on Danny Kaye'sTV variety show, and witnessed shmuck and putz events first hand.
I knew Alan King, who talked about how he was performing in a nightclub and Danny Kaye sat with his back to him as he ate his dinner.
King eventually called him on it, and Kaye had no memory of it.
There is smoke and fire.
I know of no one who knew him who thought he was a doll.
How much more substantiation do you need?
I know you live in Russia, and Kaye made hay singing about Russian composers.
So maybe you hold him in unnecessarily higher regard (He said, jokingly.).
I'm not trying to convert you, but the case I'm making is a legitimate one.
I have no axe to grind about him personally, only about the show about him.
March 8, 2010 9:32 AM
Barbara said...
I have to comment here as one who can see his performances and not be affected by his personal life. One, because his personal life does not affect me. Two, many, many performers are charmers on camera and assholes off camera. I can name MANY.But lastly, I understand that this affected you profoundly, but by repeating the stories, you ruin the performances for many who see them, or have yet to see them. Even if 200 people proved that he was an asshole in real life, that DOES NOT diminish the remarkable talent he PROVED over and over, nor does it diminish his ample humanitarian efforts.To continue to drag a fantastic career in the mud after the man has been dead 24 years does service to no one.Yes, I hold Danny Kaye in higher regard BECAUSE of his talent, not his personal life. I cried when he died, and I cry for no celebrity.As for the show, I saw it and thought it was awful. The actor playing Danny had no personality at all, he just mugged, sang flatly and moved stiffly; they cut the Sylvia part to almost nothing, making her a one-dimensional character. It's a pared down show from the "full length" show he did four years ago, and it got horrible reviews as well. Should you fix it? Hell yes. Get new actors and rewrite the whole damned thing. It was terrible.
March 16, 2010 10:36 PM
mark rothman said...
Well, we half agree about the show.
Maybe most people are like you, and won't have his performances ruined by what I say.
There are far more people who have access to his performances than read my blog.
He was enormously talented, but his public persona simply didn't jive with his private one, and in this case, it got in my way.
It doesn't have to get in anyone else's way.
Al Jolson was, by all reports, a major egotist and asshole, and his radio and movie persona merely enforced this, and it did him no harm.
Yet, "The Jolson Story", a work of complete fiction, portrays him as being completely charming in private.
And I'm a complete sucker for it whenever it's on.
So who knows how people will be affected by anything?
Particularly about what I write.
March 17, 2010 2:59 AM
Barbara said...
The whole point of my post was this: Why does it matter? We pay to see a performance, not a personal life. Your opinion, whether you regard it as far-reaching or not, affected a couple of people in your comments section alone. I found your blog on a random search of Danny Kaye. The internet is endless. Your words are there forever, affecting the judgment of a mans performance based on his personal life.All I require from a performer is a performance. That should be all that is required.
March 17, 2010 1:28 PM
mark rothman said...
I think it depends on what the performer is selling.
But that's only my opinion.
And as you see, it is shared by others.
April 8, 2010 12:38 PM
Barbara said...
Yeah, two people you told this to. Three supported my opinion.
April 26, 2010 4:06 PM
mark rothman said...
Yup. It's a landslide.
April 26, 2010 7:22 PM
Anonymous said...
I am a Danny Kaye fan. I have been for 30 years. I had a bad crash on him and I used to think him a cross between a saint and a hero. Then I read his biography and I went completely off him ... for a while. Soon, I had to admit that, whatever else he was, he was a person who has marked me and will always mean a lot to me. He was not a saint but he was not a monster either. He was complex and difficult and troubled but he was still a genius in many fields and in the course of his stormy life he has offered a lot to his fellow human beings. Something that people with less emotional baggage haven't done. No one has matched, for example, his contribution to UNICEF. I still love Danny Kaye. Not as a hero, but as a human being who has lived his life as fully and as best he could. Someone who struggled with his demons like we all do. And I miss him enormously.
April 30, 2010 2:41 PM
mark rothman said...
You know, I'm not as anti-Danny Kaye as you seem to make me out to be.
And you seem to only know me from this article.
There are more than 200 others on this blog to be read, and I'm getting a little tired of arguing about this one.
Why don't you read some of the others and we can argue about them.
I like arguing in general.
I'm just worn out with this one.
May 10, 2010 7:40 AM
Barbara said...
So basically, you're saying that you're not willing to stand behind your statements? That you're tired of defending your position? Figures.
June 2, 2010 6:24 PM
mark rothman said...
Barbara, you just can't seem to let this go, can you.
There is no reason to be what you accuse me of being, which is judgemental.
And in your case, in a rather snotty way.
There is nothing inconsistent about what I have said.
Danny Kaye was enormously talented.
I never said he wasn't.
Apparently I don't adore him like you do.
The reports on his personal life have affected MY enjoyment of those talents.
Some personas can handle it easier than others.
Some agree with me about this. Some don't.
That was my ONLY point.
I'm not prostheletizing, and yes, I'm tired of defending my position, because I'm not really that adamant about it.
I considered this a very minor point in the article when I first posted it.
Ask yourself honestly which one of us is more objective about this matter.
August 1, 2010 2:28 PM
---------------------------
I don't know when or if this will ever end.
*****
It was essentially a Report Card of "Danny and Sylvia, the Musical".
It is easily the most Googled article I get.
There are apparently a lot of Danny Kaye fans out there.
My review was thoroughly mixed, and fairly long.
But it contained these relatively brief paragraphs:
"What was great about it----They found a guy who simply nailed Danny Kaye.He channeled him. He captured all that was great about him.
It was as if you were seeing Danny Kaye in a great live performance.
Better, in fact.
Because it came without all of the negatives that have since been associated with Danny Kaye, the person.
From all accounts, Danny Kaye in real life was, as my friend Lenny Friefeld would describe him in his intentionally redundant way, as "a shmuck and a putz".
He would always go out of his way to snub autograph seekers.
He would go to nightclubs at dinner shows and sit with his back to the onstage performers.
In the show "Two By Two", he would intentionally wreak havoc on stage.
He would always be bragging about who he was flying around in his private plane.
He apparently treated his wife, Sylvia Fine, abusively, something not covered in the musical I saw.
But then who wanted to see that, anyway?
So watching him on clips on YouTube, or in his old movies, meant accepting his personal baggage along with him.
I find this difficult to do.
It's not like Jerry Lewis, whose professional and personal persona is pretty much that of a shmuck and a putz.
If you like his work, you know what you're getting going in.
But Danny Kaye's public persona was that of an erudite, charming, likeable humanitarian.
And this apparently was not him.
He was entirely a lie."
What I wrote here was pretty much accepted within show business circles as common knowledge, and was hardly the main thrust of the article.
You can check it out in it's entirety if you care to.
But it engendered a brouhaha in the Comments section that lingers to this day.
It is apparently still ongoing.
I'm going to reprint the Comments section of that article to save you the trouble of hunting for it.
Please note that I removed four exchanges that I deemed too personal and/or ugly for public consumption.
Stef said...
"He was entirely a lie."For me, this sort of thing always begs the question: if what I want out of a performer is a good performance, why should I care about how much of a sonovabitch he is? I usually avoid tabloids and such that will take delight in telling me of celebrity pecadillos and foibles. Wouldn't knowing stuff like that undermine my enjoyment of their performance? Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine are now both dead, but his performances of her songs live on, and can still be enjoyed, and maybe discovered by new audiences yet unborn. Unless some spoilsport comes along and says, "See that guy up on the screen? He was shmuck and a putz!" [Not you, dear Mark. Some spoilsport sitting in a movie house revival, I mean.]
June 12, 2009 11:31 PM
Stef said...
[And kicking the seats.]
June 12, 2009 11:32 PM
mark rothman said...
In this case, I am simply cursed with too much knowledge to enjoy him anymore.
Some performers survive this kind of exposure better than others.
To me, he doesn't.
And I'm not the first one to stand up and say that the King is naked.
He did it himself in "The Emperor's New Clothes", in Hans Christian Andersen".
June 13, 2009 3:18 PM
Kirk Jusko said...
In a similar vein, I'm going to have a difficult time listening to any song--no matter how good--that Phil Spector had something to do with.
June 13, 2009 4:26 PM
Joe said...
As much as I'd like to be above-it-all, once someone is revealed to me to be a schmuck and a putz I can't enjoy the performance. Not that it's my particularly noble nature at play, I simply can't rise above how much of a lowlife Person X is.[shrug]I never knew that Danny Kaye was an awful guy, but now I won't be able to see him in any other light.
June 16, 2009 8:49 PM
Anonymous said...
Sad it is to see how years and decades of somebody's life and work turn into rubbish as easy as that, only because of somebody's "wise" remark that they are a schmuck and putz. I wonder how you would react if ever the same sort of thing should be said about you and you find yourselves in a hell of a lot of mess ?
March 5, 2010 10:06 AM
mark rothman said...
This wasn't just somebody's "wise" remark.
This is a consensus of many "wise" remarks from many different sources.
March 5, 2010 1:35 PM
Anonymous said...
OK, but no matter how many - don't you think that much more numerous will be the ones who do not share this opinion (unfortunately the bulk of these - his contemporaries I mean - are dead by now, so that the "wise" remarks somehow keep coming from the much younger smart alecks who hardly knew Danny as a person) ? Don't get me wrong, I respect everybody's freedom of speech, but it seems all the negative arguments featured here totally lack substantiation, and Danny Kaye in fact deserves better treatment and more respect...
March 6, 2010 2:46 PM
mark rothman said...
Specific sources: Martin Gottfried's biography of Danny Kaye, Paul Mazursky's autobiography.
Paul Mazursky worked as a writer on Danny Kaye'sTV variety show, and witnessed shmuck and putz events first hand.
I knew Alan King, who talked about how he was performing in a nightclub and Danny Kaye sat with his back to him as he ate his dinner.
King eventually called him on it, and Kaye had no memory of it.
There is smoke and fire.
I know of no one who knew him who thought he was a doll.
How much more substantiation do you need?
I know you live in Russia, and Kaye made hay singing about Russian composers.
So maybe you hold him in unnecessarily higher regard (He said, jokingly.).
I'm not trying to convert you, but the case I'm making is a legitimate one.
I have no axe to grind about him personally, only about the show about him.
March 8, 2010 9:32 AM
Barbara said...
I have to comment here as one who can see his performances and not be affected by his personal life. One, because his personal life does not affect me. Two, many, many performers are charmers on camera and assholes off camera. I can name MANY.But lastly, I understand that this affected you profoundly, but by repeating the stories, you ruin the performances for many who see them, or have yet to see them. Even if 200 people proved that he was an asshole in real life, that DOES NOT diminish the remarkable talent he PROVED over and over, nor does it diminish his ample humanitarian efforts.To continue to drag a fantastic career in the mud after the man has been dead 24 years does service to no one.Yes, I hold Danny Kaye in higher regard BECAUSE of his talent, not his personal life. I cried when he died, and I cry for no celebrity.As for the show, I saw it and thought it was awful. The actor playing Danny had no personality at all, he just mugged, sang flatly and moved stiffly; they cut the Sylvia part to almost nothing, making her a one-dimensional character. It's a pared down show from the "full length" show he did four years ago, and it got horrible reviews as well. Should you fix it? Hell yes. Get new actors and rewrite the whole damned thing. It was terrible.
March 16, 2010 10:36 PM
mark rothman said...
Well, we half agree about the show.
Maybe most people are like you, and won't have his performances ruined by what I say.
There are far more people who have access to his performances than read my blog.
He was enormously talented, but his public persona simply didn't jive with his private one, and in this case, it got in my way.
It doesn't have to get in anyone else's way.
Al Jolson was, by all reports, a major egotist and asshole, and his radio and movie persona merely enforced this, and it did him no harm.
Yet, "The Jolson Story", a work of complete fiction, portrays him as being completely charming in private.
And I'm a complete sucker for it whenever it's on.
So who knows how people will be affected by anything?
Particularly about what I write.
March 17, 2010 2:59 AM
Barbara said...
The whole point of my post was this: Why does it matter? We pay to see a performance, not a personal life. Your opinion, whether you regard it as far-reaching or not, affected a couple of people in your comments section alone. I found your blog on a random search of Danny Kaye. The internet is endless. Your words are there forever, affecting the judgment of a mans performance based on his personal life.All I require from a performer is a performance. That should be all that is required.
March 17, 2010 1:28 PM
mark rothman said...
I think it depends on what the performer is selling.
But that's only my opinion.
And as you see, it is shared by others.
April 8, 2010 12:38 PM
Barbara said...
Yeah, two people you told this to. Three supported my opinion.
April 26, 2010 4:06 PM
mark rothman said...
Yup. It's a landslide.
April 26, 2010 7:22 PM
Anonymous said...
I am a Danny Kaye fan. I have been for 30 years. I had a bad crash on him and I used to think him a cross between a saint and a hero. Then I read his biography and I went completely off him ... for a while. Soon, I had to admit that, whatever else he was, he was a person who has marked me and will always mean a lot to me. He was not a saint but he was not a monster either. He was complex and difficult and troubled but he was still a genius in many fields and in the course of his stormy life he has offered a lot to his fellow human beings. Something that people with less emotional baggage haven't done. No one has matched, for example, his contribution to UNICEF. I still love Danny Kaye. Not as a hero, but as a human being who has lived his life as fully and as best he could. Someone who struggled with his demons like we all do. And I miss him enormously.
April 30, 2010 2:41 PM
mark rothman said...
You know, I'm not as anti-Danny Kaye as you seem to make me out to be.
And you seem to only know me from this article.
There are more than 200 others on this blog to be read, and I'm getting a little tired of arguing about this one.
Why don't you read some of the others and we can argue about them.
I like arguing in general.
I'm just worn out with this one.
May 10, 2010 7:40 AM
Barbara said...
So basically, you're saying that you're not willing to stand behind your statements? That you're tired of defending your position? Figures.
June 2, 2010 6:24 PM
mark rothman said...
Barbara, you just can't seem to let this go, can you.
There is no reason to be what you accuse me of being, which is judgemental.
And in your case, in a rather snotty way.
There is nothing inconsistent about what I have said.
Danny Kaye was enormously talented.
I never said he wasn't.
Apparently I don't adore him like you do.
The reports on his personal life have affected MY enjoyment of those talents.
Some personas can handle it easier than others.
Some agree with me about this. Some don't.
That was my ONLY point.
I'm not prostheletizing, and yes, I'm tired of defending my position, because I'm not really that adamant about it.
I considered this a very minor point in the article when I first posted it.
Ask yourself honestly which one of us is more objective about this matter.
August 1, 2010 2:28 PM
---------------------------
I don't know when or if this will ever end.
*****
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Observing My First Turf War.
Most people my age observed their first turf war up close in the movie "The Godfather".
But that was fiction.
The first turf war I witnessed close up took place years before "The Godfather", and in reality.
I was in my early teens, and lived in a garden apartment in Bellerose, Queens.
This was the early sixties.
We were a good mile away from the nearest shopping area.
Too far to walk.
Not too far to take a bicycle, as when my mother made me ride my bike to the Cracker Barrel Supermarket in my notorious trek to purchase her boxes of Kotex tampons.when I was 14 and had no idea what they were.
We were mostly one-car families, and the men took the cars to go to work.
The women stayed home.
And the less-creative-women-than-my-mother rightly considered themselves stranded when it came to food shopping. They usually had to wait until the weekend to take the car and go to the supermarket.
Some enterprising companies took advantage of this situation by providing trucks that would come to these neighborhoods offering up baked goods.
In these instances, there were invariably the quality trucks, offered by a company called Dugans. Great cupcakes.
And it's considerably inferior knockoff, Krugs. Great nothing.
The Krugs drivers usually made it their business to get to our street before the Dugans drivers, knowing that they had an inferior product, but looking to satisfy the uncontrollable baked goods Jones of women who couldn't wait for the Dugans truck.
Krugs barely made a dent in Dugans business, and gradually folded it's tent, leaving the field exclusively to Dugans.
So, no turf war there.
Just the other day, passing in front of my house in Michigan, was an ice cream truck.
An old-fashioned ice cream truck.
Where all the ice cream was pulled out of the freezer by the proprietor and sold to kids.
Just like the old Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks when I was a kid.
I didn't know that any ice cream trucks were still in existence.
I don't know if Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks are still in existence.
But again, for kids who had no other access to ice cream during the week, the daily appearance of Hank, our local Good Humor Man, and a man of extremely good humor, ringing them bells, sent kids begging for dimes from their mothers to go get Hank's variety of treats that he pulled from the freezer.
I tended to think of Good Humor as rather ersatz ice cream, preferring to wait for my mother's weekend sojourns so she could bring home the real deal like Breyer's Premium Ice Cream to sit in the freezer.
My sister, having been previously established as having no taste, was somewhat of a slave to Hank.
She adored Hank.
My sister had been in a minor auto accident where she bumped her head on the windshield, due of course by my mother's incompetence behind the wheel.
Hank knew about this and regularly asked my sister how she was doing with her head.
My sister was touched by Hank's attention.
Hank did have some minor competition from a company called Bungalow Bar, which was a cheesy and even more ersatz version of Good Humor.
And the Bungalow Bar driver, much like the Krug's driver, made sure he got there before Hank, to get those kids who just couldn't wait.
Bungalow Bar was not even the slightest threat to Hank.
So no turf war there.
Then one day, in about 1962, it all changed.
Out of the blue, a truck showed up on our street, ringing a large, loud electric bell.
A much bigger truck.
And the driver, aside from driving it, was also inside of it, providing things that you couldn't just pull out of the freezer.
Soft ice cream cones that you actually saw him make, Sundaes, Shakes, Malts, Floats.....
It was a veritable Dairy Queen on wheels.
It was called Mister Softee.
There was nothing ersatz about Mister Softee.
It was the real deal.
It was great.
I onced asked the Mister Softee proprietor what his name was.
He told me it was Irving.
From that moment on, he was known to me, and called by every other kid, "Irving Softee".
A rather unpleasant man, he did not take well to this.
Irving essentially left Hank in the dust.
Hank's business suffered a severe setback, no matter how much good will he had generated.
As much as my sister loved Hank, she also left him in the dust and made the irreversable crossover to Mister Softee.
She had at least enough taste to realize that Mister Softee was a far superior product.
Sometimes food takes precedence over caring.
It all culminated one afternoon when Hank and Irving showed up simultaneously on our street.
Hank, a burly, large gentile, looked at Irving, a short, shrimpy Jew, thought he had the measure of him, and I guess out of frustration, challenged him to a fistfight.
In front of all of the kids.
This certainly upset the kids.
It was kind of like watching two clowns beating each other up at the circus.
The fight began, and Irving, quickly, and with dispatch, summarily beat the crap, the living daylights, out of Hank.
I would have taken odds that it would have gone the other way, and I would have lost my shirt.
Apparently Hank was losing his shirt trying to compete with Irving, and pretty soon, Hank was just a memory.
Poor Hank.
Even if he would have won the battle, he was going to lose the war.
This, perhaps more than anything else I've experienced, prepared me for adulthood.
*****
But that was fiction.
The first turf war I witnessed close up took place years before "The Godfather", and in reality.
I was in my early teens, and lived in a garden apartment in Bellerose, Queens.
This was the early sixties.
We were a good mile away from the nearest shopping area.
Too far to walk.
Not too far to take a bicycle, as when my mother made me ride my bike to the Cracker Barrel Supermarket in my notorious trek to purchase her boxes of Kotex tampons.when I was 14 and had no idea what they were.
We were mostly one-car families, and the men took the cars to go to work.
The women stayed home.
And the less-creative-women-than-my-mother rightly considered themselves stranded when it came to food shopping. They usually had to wait until the weekend to take the car and go to the supermarket.
Some enterprising companies took advantage of this situation by providing trucks that would come to these neighborhoods offering up baked goods.
In these instances, there were invariably the quality trucks, offered by a company called Dugans. Great cupcakes.
And it's considerably inferior knockoff, Krugs. Great nothing.
The Krugs drivers usually made it their business to get to our street before the Dugans drivers, knowing that they had an inferior product, but looking to satisfy the uncontrollable baked goods Jones of women who couldn't wait for the Dugans truck.
Krugs barely made a dent in Dugans business, and gradually folded it's tent, leaving the field exclusively to Dugans.
So, no turf war there.
Just the other day, passing in front of my house in Michigan, was an ice cream truck.
An old-fashioned ice cream truck.
Where all the ice cream was pulled out of the freezer by the proprietor and sold to kids.
Just like the old Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks when I was a kid.
I didn't know that any ice cream trucks were still in existence.
I don't know if Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks are still in existence.
But again, for kids who had no other access to ice cream during the week, the daily appearance of Hank, our local Good Humor Man, and a man of extremely good humor, ringing them bells, sent kids begging for dimes from their mothers to go get Hank's variety of treats that he pulled from the freezer.
I tended to think of Good Humor as rather ersatz ice cream, preferring to wait for my mother's weekend sojourns so she could bring home the real deal like Breyer's Premium Ice Cream to sit in the freezer.
My sister, having been previously established as having no taste, was somewhat of a slave to Hank.
She adored Hank.
My sister had been in a minor auto accident where she bumped her head on the windshield, due of course by my mother's incompetence behind the wheel.
Hank knew about this and regularly asked my sister how she was doing with her head.
My sister was touched by Hank's attention.
Hank did have some minor competition from a company called Bungalow Bar, which was a cheesy and even more ersatz version of Good Humor.
And the Bungalow Bar driver, much like the Krug's driver, made sure he got there before Hank, to get those kids who just couldn't wait.
Bungalow Bar was not even the slightest threat to Hank.
So no turf war there.
Then one day, in about 1962, it all changed.
Out of the blue, a truck showed up on our street, ringing a large, loud electric bell.
A much bigger truck.
And the driver, aside from driving it, was also inside of it, providing things that you couldn't just pull out of the freezer.
Soft ice cream cones that you actually saw him make, Sundaes, Shakes, Malts, Floats.....
It was a veritable Dairy Queen on wheels.
It was called Mister Softee.
There was nothing ersatz about Mister Softee.
It was the real deal.
It was great.
I onced asked the Mister Softee proprietor what his name was.
He told me it was Irving.
From that moment on, he was known to me, and called by every other kid, "Irving Softee".
A rather unpleasant man, he did not take well to this.
Irving essentially left Hank in the dust.
Hank's business suffered a severe setback, no matter how much good will he had generated.
As much as my sister loved Hank, she also left him in the dust and made the irreversable crossover to Mister Softee.
She had at least enough taste to realize that Mister Softee was a far superior product.
Sometimes food takes precedence over caring.
It all culminated one afternoon when Hank and Irving showed up simultaneously on our street.
Hank, a burly, large gentile, looked at Irving, a short, shrimpy Jew, thought he had the measure of him, and I guess out of frustration, challenged him to a fistfight.
In front of all of the kids.
This certainly upset the kids.
It was kind of like watching two clowns beating each other up at the circus.
The fight began, and Irving, quickly, and with dispatch, summarily beat the crap, the living daylights, out of Hank.
I would have taken odds that it would have gone the other way, and I would have lost my shirt.
Apparently Hank was losing his shirt trying to compete with Irving, and pretty soon, Hank was just a memory.
Poor Hank.
Even if he would have won the battle, he was going to lose the war.
This, perhaps more than anything else I've experienced, prepared me for adulthood.
*****
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Helen Thomas And Her Mouth.
I think I'm going to be as alone on this one as I probably am about yesterday's post about Garralaga's perfect game.
What I say might even alienate people.
Even my loyal readers.
But it's what I believe.
Here goes:
I think Helen Thomas had no right to say what she said about how the Jews should leave Israel, and that it was inexcusable for her to say it.
There.
I said it, and I'm glad.
It's now out in the open.
What? This isn't so shocking?
How about this?
I think what she said was right.
Not the part about them moving back to Germany, but the rest of it.
I just think that she had no right to say it.
I have the right to say it.
Why me, and not she?
Simple.
Because I am a Jew, and she is not.
She is of Lebanese extraction, and that colors what she says.
It's very much akin to the fact that it's okay for black people to use the "N" word with each other, but not okay for white people to use it under any circumstances.
I get that.
So from now on I'll simply refer to my people as the "J" word.
Or Doctor "J".
A lot of us are doctors anyway.
Why do I think that what she said was right?
Because I, myself, have been saying it for years and years.
To anyone who would listen.
And I've been very specific about it.
I've said "You know what would solve the Middle East Problems? If we moved Israel.
We've always been very supportive of Israel, but with all our support, we haven't been able to help them very much.
As long as we're in a continual Helping Mode, why don't we do something that will really help them?
Why don't we offer all Israelis the opportunity to establish their homeland on the West Coast of Florida, to form their own country on land approximately the same size as Israel?
Who's going to bother them there?
Besides, there are already a whole lot of "J"s there already.
They won't even have to assimilate.
Give them each a First Class ticket to come here, which they could cash in for a coach ticket.
We'd all be way ahead of the game."
The plan still looks good to me, except I'd probably change the location, what with the oil spilling and all down there.
All right then, maybe Jersey.
How about Jersey?
There's lots of "J"s there too.
So the ocean will be on the other side.
A lot of "J"s who moved from New York to L.A. had the same problem about the ocean.
And they were able to deal with it.
To get to the beach in Jersey, you just make a right instead of a left .
How about just below Route 9 on the Jersey Turnpike?
Lovely farmland.
We can even let them collect the tolls.
That ought to seal the deal.
See? I think I can do these ethnic slur jokes because I am Doctor "J".
Not like Helen Thomas.
I know that there's a problem with this scenario.
You think I don't know?
I know.
Israel, where it is, is considered the Holy Land.
It's where the Wailing Wall is.
You know what?
You build a new one.
Where you can wail in peace.
How do we really know if it is, in fact, the Holy Land?
Just because it says so in the Old Testament?
To quote Mr. Mercer, to illustrate my last remark----
Jonah in the whale.
Noah and the Ark.
It says that too.
Who believes it?
Who's to say we're not just cherry-picking about what to believe from the Old Testament?
This is worth risking life and limb over?
Mister?
Excuse me. I just lapsed into my Jackie Mason impression.
To me, there was only one place that I know was Holy.
I didn't have to look it up.
The old Yankee Stadium.
Now THAT was hallowed ground.
After having it for about twenty five years more than the Jews had Israel, they tore it down.
And you know what?
After about six months, I got over it.
This new Yankee Stadium is just as Holy to me now as the old one was.
You just have to be willing to adjust.
You just have to not be a slave to your religion.
It's the classic example of how Religion leads to nothing but War.
And how more wars are started more by Religion, and Oil, than anything else.
And that's what all the entire Middle East wars have been about.
And will always be about.
It's those two things.
Religion and Oil.
And it's been unsolvable.
This solves both problems in one fell swoop.
That's why you give them the land below Route 9.
Away from the refineries around Route 13.
See? I've applied a lot of serious thought to this.
I'm just offering what I consider a reasonable way towards peace in our time.
At least in the Middle East.
Now, obviously, I'm not your hardcore orthodox regular synagogue attendee.
Maybe if I was, what I'm saying might hit me as sacrilege.
I'm sure it hits some of you as sacrilege.
But I'm the kind of "J" who is very proud of my heritage, and have absolutely no use for any of it's religious rules.
I attribute this, as I do most things, to my upbringing.
I had a mother who preached abstinence from bread during Passover, leaving us no choice but matzoh, yet she kept a fresh loaf of Wonder Bread stashed in the breadbox.
There used to be a thing called a breadbox.
And that loaf of Wonder Bread kept dwindling throughout Passover, without my sister or I touching it.
I had a mother who forced my sister and I to sing Chanukah songs every year when we lit the Menorah.
And she'd want them sung "Out loud, and with expression!"
She actually had the lyrics to all of them mimeographed.
One year, knowing where they were stashed, we hid them.
She found them.
She had radar, or something.
And we ended up singing, as usual.
This tradition ended the year my sister's hair caught on fire from the lit Menorah candles.
As we were singing "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel".
My mother made me start Hebrew School a year earlier than all of my contemporaries.
Just to please my grandmother.
Not to please me.
The Hebrew School was ill-prepared to deal with this.
They didn't know what to do with me the second year.
So I took the first year over again.
That was the best they were able to come up with.
Perhaps that was the beginning of my ongoing low-boredom threshold.
So, as you can see, it was forced down our throats.
Hypocritically.
My sister and I have had a grand total of three marriages.
All to non-"J"s.
Coincidence?
So those are my thoughts, and I think I'm free to express them, as foul as you might think they are..
Because I'm still Doctor "J".
And Helen Thomas is not.
*****
What I say might even alienate people.
Even my loyal readers.
But it's what I believe.
Here goes:
I think Helen Thomas had no right to say what she said about how the Jews should leave Israel, and that it was inexcusable for her to say it.
There.
I said it, and I'm glad.
It's now out in the open.
What? This isn't so shocking?
How about this?
I think what she said was right.
Not the part about them moving back to Germany, but the rest of it.
I just think that she had no right to say it.
I have the right to say it.
Why me, and not she?
Simple.
Because I am a Jew, and she is not.
She is of Lebanese extraction, and that colors what she says.
It's very much akin to the fact that it's okay for black people to use the "N" word with each other, but not okay for white people to use it under any circumstances.
I get that.
So from now on I'll simply refer to my people as the "J" word.
Or Doctor "J".
A lot of us are doctors anyway.
Why do I think that what she said was right?
Because I, myself, have been saying it for years and years.
To anyone who would listen.
And I've been very specific about it.
I've said "You know what would solve the Middle East Problems? If we moved Israel.
We've always been very supportive of Israel, but with all our support, we haven't been able to help them very much.
As long as we're in a continual Helping Mode, why don't we do something that will really help them?
Why don't we offer all Israelis the opportunity to establish their homeland on the West Coast of Florida, to form their own country on land approximately the same size as Israel?
Who's going to bother them there?
Besides, there are already a whole lot of "J"s there already.
They won't even have to assimilate.
Give them each a First Class ticket to come here, which they could cash in for a coach ticket.
We'd all be way ahead of the game."
The plan still looks good to me, except I'd probably change the location, what with the oil spilling and all down there.
All right then, maybe Jersey.
How about Jersey?
There's lots of "J"s there too.
So the ocean will be on the other side.
A lot of "J"s who moved from New York to L.A. had the same problem about the ocean.
And they were able to deal with it.
To get to the beach in Jersey, you just make a right instead of a left .
How about just below Route 9 on the Jersey Turnpike?
Lovely farmland.
We can even let them collect the tolls.
That ought to seal the deal.
See? I think I can do these ethnic slur jokes because I am Doctor "J".
Not like Helen Thomas.
I know that there's a problem with this scenario.
You think I don't know?
I know.
Israel, where it is, is considered the Holy Land.
It's where the Wailing Wall is.
You know what?
You build a new one.
Where you can wail in peace.
How do we really know if it is, in fact, the Holy Land?
Just because it says so in the Old Testament?
To quote Mr. Mercer, to illustrate my last remark----
Jonah in the whale.
Noah and the Ark.
It says that too.
Who believes it?
Who's to say we're not just cherry-picking about what to believe from the Old Testament?
This is worth risking life and limb over?
Mister?
Excuse me. I just lapsed into my Jackie Mason impression.
To me, there was only one place that I know was Holy.
I didn't have to look it up.
The old Yankee Stadium.
Now THAT was hallowed ground.
After having it for about twenty five years more than the Jews had Israel, they tore it down.
And you know what?
After about six months, I got over it.
This new Yankee Stadium is just as Holy to me now as the old one was.
You just have to be willing to adjust.
You just have to not be a slave to your religion.
It's the classic example of how Religion leads to nothing but War.
And how more wars are started more by Religion, and Oil, than anything else.
And that's what all the entire Middle East wars have been about.
And will always be about.
It's those two things.
Religion and Oil.
And it's been unsolvable.
This solves both problems in one fell swoop.
That's why you give them the land below Route 9.
Away from the refineries around Route 13.
See? I've applied a lot of serious thought to this.
I'm just offering what I consider a reasonable way towards peace in our time.
At least in the Middle East.
Now, obviously, I'm not your hardcore orthodox regular synagogue attendee.
Maybe if I was, what I'm saying might hit me as sacrilege.
I'm sure it hits some of you as sacrilege.
But I'm the kind of "J" who is very proud of my heritage, and have absolutely no use for any of it's religious rules.
I attribute this, as I do most things, to my upbringing.
I had a mother who preached abstinence from bread during Passover, leaving us no choice but matzoh, yet she kept a fresh loaf of Wonder Bread stashed in the breadbox.
There used to be a thing called a breadbox.
And that loaf of Wonder Bread kept dwindling throughout Passover, without my sister or I touching it.
I had a mother who forced my sister and I to sing Chanukah songs every year when we lit the Menorah.
And she'd want them sung "Out loud, and with expression!"
She actually had the lyrics to all of them mimeographed.
One year, knowing where they were stashed, we hid them.
She found them.
She had radar, or something.
And we ended up singing, as usual.
This tradition ended the year my sister's hair caught on fire from the lit Menorah candles.
As we were singing "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel".
My mother made me start Hebrew School a year earlier than all of my contemporaries.
Just to please my grandmother.
Not to please me.
The Hebrew School was ill-prepared to deal with this.
They didn't know what to do with me the second year.
So I took the first year over again.
That was the best they were able to come up with.
Perhaps that was the beginning of my ongoing low-boredom threshold.
So, as you can see, it was forced down our throats.
Hypocritically.
My sister and I have had a grand total of three marriages.
All to non-"J"s.
Coincidence?
So those are my thoughts, and I think I'm free to express them, as foul as you might think they are..
Because I'm still Doctor "J".
And Helen Thomas is not.
*****
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments