Monthly Archives: March 2005

I awoke this morning to the news that — and I quote from the AP story — "…America's spy agencies were 'dead wrong' in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows 'disturbingly little' about the threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries." Also, Terri Schiavo died. Guess which one the news channels are giving almost non-stop coverage. (Hint: It's the one that will be the subject of a live 3-hour CNN special tonight hosted by Larry King.)

I'm sorry about Ms. Schiavo, just as I'm sorry when anyone dies. I felt there was something wrong with allowing her to go the way she did, though I was at a loss to explain why she mattered any more than anyone else, nor could I disagree that the real tragedy in that life occurred fifteen years ago. I just heard someone on one of the news channels say that it "demeans the concept of life" to not have done everything humanly possible to save Terri's life. I wish the interviewer had asked — not to be argumentative but because I would have liked to hear the explanation — why folks who feel that way seem so unconcerned about all the other preventable deaths that occur every day in this country. I'd sure be on the side of the so-called "Culture of Life" if I saw more being done under its auspices to help more people. I also think it demeans the concept of life to define it down to merely having a pulse.

In the meantime, we're learning more and more that the entities that led us into war and which continue to lead the War on Terror were and continue to be largely inept and uninformed. I think, if we're going to care about the sanctity of human life, that ought to be the bigger story. I'll bet most people think that. But Larry's still doing the 3-hour special on the Schiavo matter.

Guess I'm on a kick of recalling near-defunct restaurant chains. I was thinking today about Piece O' Pizza, a string of eateries that once decorated the Southern California landscape…an amazing reach considering the awfulness of their signature product. Do you like pizza where the crust tastes like matzo, the toppings have the thickness of carbon paper and you can't decide whether to eat the pizza or the box it came in?

If you do, you'd have loved Piece O' Pizza pizza. Just awful. What kept them in business, it seemed to me, was their great, racy slogan ("Had a piece lately?") and the fact that there then weren't a lot of other places where one could grab a fast pizza to take home.

Also, they served a decent meatball sandwich and a more-than-decent (and very cheap) spaghetti plate. Many of the Piece O' Pizza stands were in "Skid Row" style areas, and I bet that spaghetti plate kept a lot of homeless people alive.

Like I said, they were all over L.A. There was one on Pico just east of Sepulveda. The building's still there but now it's a Numero Uno. All the other ones I know of were torn down completely. There was one at Beverly and Fairfax, another on La Brea just south of Hollywood, another on La Cienega near Airdrome…and (I'm guessing) at least 200 more.

As far as I know, there's only one remaining. It's down on Venice Boulevard about a half-mile west of Sepulveda. A year or two ago, I was in the neighborhood and in need of rapid lunch, so I decided to go in and have the spaghetti plate, just to see if it was still the same. I also shot the photos you see here. Since there is no parent company now to supply the preparations, I was expecting totally different cuisine…but the meat sauce was more or less what I recalled, or at least it seemed to have evolved from the same recipe.

I probably won't go back since I now have better places to eat. I suspect that's what killed off the Piece O' Pizza chain in or around the late eighties. As Numero Uno and Pizza Hut and even Domino's spread, everyone had a better place to get a quick pizza or to have one brought to their door.

Speculating further, I'd guess that too many of their stands were located in depressed areas, which made it difficult for them to upgrade their product. It would have been awkward to simultaneously improve their menu (making most items more expensive), advertise that they'd done this…but still service the crowd that just wanted the cheapest-possible plate of pasta.

I don't exactly miss the places since they weren't that good. On the other hand, I've been to fancy Italian restaurants where I enjoyed a $20 entree a lot less than I liked the Piece O' Pizza spaghetti plate. Even in the early eighties, it didn't cost much over two dollars…and that included garlic bread.

I wasn't going to discuss the Terri Schiavo case any more, largely on the grounds that everyone's sick of it, and the amount of disinformation on the Internet has reached critical mass. But Andrew Sullivan has what seems to me an incisive article on what it all means to the future of the Republican Party. And if you can stand an overdose of sarcasm, you might like to read what Robert Friedman has to say.

Well, as you may remember, I mentioned the other day here that the chain of Love's Barbecue Restaurants seemed to be down to one in Chula Vista and one in Lakewood (both in California) and the one in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am now informed that the Lakewood one recently closed and I'm guessing that since half of Indonesia ain't there no more, that Love's is probably gone, as well.

The Chula Vista Love's is still open — or, at least it was as of an hour ago when I phoned to check. When I'm down in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International, I may swing by for a meal. It's a little less than nine miles from the convention center, and this could be my last chance to taste Love's beans. That is, if the place is still there come July.

Meanwhile, another of my favorite restaurant chains is now completely extinct. The last outpost of Woody's Smorgasburger, which was down on Sepulveda just South of LAX, is currently being turned into an International House of Pancakes. In the sixties, there were a number of Woody's around Southern California, including a wonderful one in Westwood Village, a block or three from UCLA. I could often be found there between (and once in a while, even during) classes.

Woody's was the first chain I know of where you could get a hamburger and then carry it over to a little self-service counter stocked with ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, salsa, barbecue sauce, etc., and do what you wanted to it. Today, there are chains aplenty like Fuddrucker's that offer this but at the time, it was something rather special.

Woody's burgers were pretty darn good, too…and they also had a "make your own sundae" bar: You could buy an empty dish at the counter, fill it full of soft-serve vanilla ice cream, then slather it in a diverse selection of syrups and sprinkles and crushed nuts and such. My old comic club buddies and I would practically have a contest to see how much sundae we could get in one dish, building structurally-unsafe vertical arrays, then having to walk them back to the table and eat them before they collapsed.

One of the guys once asked if he was allowed to put the toppings from the sundae bar on his burger and when they told him yes, he began speculating on what hot fudge or whipped cream would do to a hamburger, and whether the maraschino cherries would blend with the mustard or if he should leave the mustard off. Each visit to Woody's, he'd say, "Next time, I'm going to try it," but he never worked up the courage. Or wanted to spoil a good smorgasburger.

It no longer exists but Once Upon a Time, there was an institution of learning known as the Hollywood Professional School. It graduated hundreds of students who went on to become well-known performers including — this is a random, very-partial list — Barbara Parkins, Lance Kerwin, Melanie Griffith, Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal, Peggy Lipton, Connie Stevens, former SAG president Barry Gordon, Sue Lyon, Patty McCormack, Peggy Fleming, Annette O'Toole, Jill St. John, Donald O'Connor, Yvette Mimieux, Tuesday Weld and many, many more.

On June 25, an "all-years reunion" is being held at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City. No contact lists exist for the school's many former students so the organizers are having a bit of trouble locating and notifying them all. Click here for more info, especially if you went there.

Commencing April 1, Turner Classic Movies is offering a month of terrific comedy classics, many of them rarely seen. Here's the entire schedule and as you can see, Friday is Laurel and Hardy Day and next Monday belongs to Charley Chase and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. That's just for starters. It's really an outstanding month for movies on TCM.

Ever since I posted about the upcoming DVD releases of The Yogi Bear Show and The Huckleberry Hound Show, I've received a slew of e-mails from folks asking me if this or that classic series will be coming out on DVD. The answer to that question is that darn near everything will be coming out on DVD until such time as it starts to look unprofitable.

At most companies, there is a "wishful thinking" kind of master plan to keep putting stuff out until the vaults are empty. I've seen some pretty long lists of planned releases…but it would be wrong to say that any particular show or film is definitely coming out on DVD in the near future until it's formally announced. Up to that point, and occasionally even after, it's always subject to changes and postponements, usually based on the way the market seems to be skewing at any given moment. The sales on the Huck and Yogi DVD sets will in some way determine how swiftly we see the rest of the other early Hanna-Barbera shows released…but we will probably see them. In most cases, these decisions are not a matter of "if" but "when." And of course, two other questions are what kind of special features will be included and what source materials can be located and used.

Lately, I've found myself talking with various folks about how some DVDs are full of extras and deleted scenes and wonderful commentary tracks and "making of" documentaries, whereas on others, you just get a trailer or two…if you're lucky. The forthcoming DVD of the 1959 Li'l Abner movie has, like most Paramount Home Video releases, almost nada in the way of bonus material. This may be laziness but it's more likely a matter of "price-point" strategy. By not investing in adding material to the DVD, the Paramount folks are able to price it very cheap. The Abner DVD is ten and half bucks at Amazon, and I'm guessing someone figured that would be more profitable than adding features and having to sell the item for a few dollars more.

But there may also be another strategy involved, which is the notion of getting us all to buy the same movies again. As anyone who has collected comic books in the last few decades knows, companies spend a lot of time trying to figure how to get us to buy variant and upgraded editions. First, they put it out on cheap paper and we buy it…and maybe they also put out an edition with an alternate cover — and we buy that, too. Then they collect a bunch of issues into a deluxe paperback and we buy that. Then they reissue the same stuff that was in the paperback, only in hardcover and we buy that and…well, you see how this goes. I must have twenty publications in my collection that reprint the first Green Lantern-Green Arrow story by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, ranging from the first (which cost 15 cents, I think) to the fancy deluxe hardcover for seventy-five smackers. DVD companies are already starting to employ the same tactics.

I've ordered the Li'l Abner DVD. And a couple years from now, when they put out a Silver Medal Edition or a Collectors' Series or whatever they'll call it with interviews and extra footage, I'll buy it again and so will a lot of you. Don't think we won't. That's above and beyond the fact that we may have to buy it again when the DVD format becomes outmoded and we all have something better in our video rooms. As I explained here, I think the entire science of improving home equipment is just a sneaky plan to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger. (Which reminds me: There hasn't been a new, upgraded release of that in over a month. What the hell is wrong with these people?)

If this is anyone's conscious plan — and I know it is in some cases — they're being both farsighted and nearsighted at the same time. It's shrewd to figure on doing these extras and special features a few years from now…but they're forgetting that potential interviewees get older and die. The folks putting together a lot of the material for animation DVDs lately have had to cope with the fact that in some cases, everyone who worked on the original cartoons is deceased or too ill. There's also the unpleasant realities that a lot of material that one might like to put on a DVD was thrown away or allowed to rot because someone, years ago, did not see an immediately financial benefit to its preservation. In some cases, a release date is selected and then the hunt for negatives and prints commences, often with insufficient time or funding. With the general exception of Disney, most studios have not been good about spending money to preserve and catalogue their library unless there was a specific and immediate market for the material.

The home video revolution has taught us that just about every movie or TV show ever made has some value. If it doesn't now, wait a year or three. In 1985 when the Writers Guild went on strike over revenues from videocassettes, several industry figures loudly predicted that there would never be a market for old episodes of shows like M*A*S*H and I Love Lucy because anyone who wanted them would just tape them off the air. That has not proven true. In fact, I've heard very few predictions that included the phrase, "no one will ever pay good money for that" which haven't been disproven, insofar as home video is concerned. You'd think companies would spend more money to preserve their old TV shows and films, and to prepare commentary tracks and interviews with the performers and creative personnel who are still available to be interviewed. Yeah, you'd really think that.

Over at the fine Cartoon Brew site, Amid Amidi has put up what he calls his monthly "things-could-be-so-much-better" post. This one waxes longingly for the days when Leon Schlesinger ran the Warner Brothers cartoon operation. Here's an excerpt…

Schlesinger recognized talent. He had the good sense of hiring Avery away from Walter Lantz. And then he built a team, partnering Avery with like-minded individuals such as Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. But then he did one more thing that today's execs don't — he trusted his talent. He created the environment in which his talent could flourish; Avery, Clampett and Jones were willing to work all night because they knew their work wouldn't be trashed the following morning by Schlesinger. Sure, Leon may have spent his weekday afternoons playing eighteen holes or chasing the pretty secretaries around his yacht, but he'd already laid the foundation for the creation of great animated entertainment. The results of Schlesinger's business acumen? Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and some of the finest cartoons ever made.

I agree, natch, with the concept that good creative talents should be left alone to create. No argument there. But Amid has left out one other thing Schlesinger did. He allowed Jones and Clampett and Avery to make cartoons their way but he also paid them rotten money. And not only were the directors poorly compensated…so were the animators and inkers and background painters and storymen and everyone. Like many people who joined the work force during or around the Great Depression, they were all willing to work long hours for lousy pay and to not demand a piece of their creations, just to have any kind of job. They even, for a time, went along with the fiction that Leon Schlesinger — who couldn't draw or animate or write gags — was the head cartoonist there. Someone had to sign his name, a la Walt Disney, on the covers of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comic books.

So I'm not sure I'd salute Mr. Schlesinger under a heading of "Animation's Greatest Executives." The freedom he afforded his people was great…but couple it with the niggardly compensation, and you couldn't get anyone good to work for you for very long today. (And even back then, Schlesinger lost two of the three directors Amidi mentions. Avery left for MGM and slightly better pay before he did his best work. Clampett left at or around his creative peak and pretty much stopped making cartoons altogether. He instead went looking for a similar work situation, except with himself in the Schlesinger role.)

Ol' Leon enjoyed a position not available to most (any?) Animation Executives today: He owned his studio and had a sweetheart deal with his distributor so he couldn't be fired. As long as he kept his costs down (i.e., paid his people poorly enough), he couldn't not make a ton of money every month. Give any "boss" those terms today and, sure, he'd let the directors have all the freedom in the world, especially if they were handing him billion-dollar properties in exchange for minimal pay. Unfortunately, these days, creative types usually wind up working not for one Animation Exec but for many layers of them, all piled one atop the other in corporate America, all looking to climb over one another's body to higher positions. I concur that they micro-manage to an unhealthy degree but perhaps that's in large part because they get micro-managed…and tossed out if they don't get quick results.

This is not so much a disagreement with Amid as an add-on. Yeah, Schlesinger got wonderful results from his management style but I'm a little leery of holding him up as a great role model for today. For one thing, I'm afraid the people who now run the animation companies would learn the wrong thing from his example: Just the part about paying your staff poorly.

I almost didn't attend the premiere last night of Frank Miller's Sin City, the new movie based on the graphic novel of the same name by the same guy. I like Frank and I like his comic book. What I don't like is violence and bloodshed in my movies, and a faithful adaptation promised to have oodles of shootings, busted limbs and even decapitations. I'm also leery when someone says, as they did of this one, "We're going to put a comic book on the screen."

Never seems worth the effort to me, and usually results in a lot of bad acting and phony special effects. But Sergio and I went to the premiere, which meant standing in endless lines, fighting our way through crowds of photographers and autograph seekers, and eating popcorn that seemed to have been popped back when Frank was just starting on Daredevil. And despite all that, it was worth it. I enjoyed the film for any number of reasons, not the least of which was the uncanny cinematography and the perfect transfer of Miller artwork to the screen. It really is the comic brought to life…and done so convincingly that about five minutes in, you forget how much of it is CGI and matte paintings, and just accept that it's all happening for real before your eyes. The violence is a bit numbing in places, but most of it's done with style and even, in some cases, extraordinary humor. When you live in Sin City, you can get shot fifty times, stabbed through the thorax and have a few body parts chopped off. And then, if you're not careful, someone might try to kill you.

I won't go into the plot. If you've read the graphic novel, you know it. If you haven't, so much the better because the surprises are the best part. Besides, I'm sick of reviewers who tell you the storyline instead of letting you discover it for yourself. One of the reasons I had a good time was that I haven't read reviews, seen clips, heard the actors discuss their roles on talk shows, etc. It's film noir to the nth degree, it's an anthology, and the blood and testosterone flow freely. That's all you need to know.

So was there anything I disliked? Yeah, and it probably bothered me more than it should have. The second the end credits started, everyone was applauding and about 90% of the audience was in the aisles, heading off for the post-screening party. They were not watching those credits and they made it impossible for those of us who did to sit and watch them.

Now, I'll agree that in this era when the assistant secretary to the insurance underwriter gets her name up there, end credits in movies can be hard to sit through…but this audience didn't even linger through the actors' names. And besides, this was the premiere. Some of the credits they walked out on were for people who were in the room. That's doubly rude. I wanted to yell at all the people streaming into the lobby, "Hey! You got in free! You got free Sierra Mist and free antique popcorn, and most of us are invited to a party after. The least you can do is to watch all of the movie and show respect for the folks who made it!"

Since they left, most of them missed one nice touch. At the end, Frank acknowledged the contribution of many comic creators whose work inspired him — Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Frank Robbins, Wally Wood and several others. In fact, Jack got a better credit on Sin City than he did on the first X-Men movie. I suspect he would have been prouder of the former, as well.

Those of you interested in the squabble between the Writers Guilds East and West, which I discussed here, might like to read an article by Walter Bernstein [Los Angeles Times, they make you register]. Bernstein is a fine screenwriter — he wrote The Front, chronicling a tumultuous era in his own life — and a member of the WGAe leadership.

I agree with him that the most recent WGA deal was insufficient, though I'm not sure he's realistic about what it would have taken to get a better one. The little suggestion he makes about linking arms with directors and actors in negotiation strikes me as pure, never-gonna-happen fantasy. In any case, the arbitration is going forward and Mr. Bernstein's op-ed piece reads like he does not expect the WGAe to emerge unscathed. Note his statement that "…one union is more interested in fighting and even taking over the other." I told you that's what this was all about.

Several times here, I've complained about the term "support the troops," as in the accusation, "You're not supporting the troops." I think that charge is usually a bunch of emotion-loaded hooey…but there are those out there who literally are not supporting our fighting men and women. They include those who have cut back on pay, pensions, health insurance, etc. — but also, it turns out, finance companies looking to foreclose on their homes. I'll quote the first part of this article in the New York Times…

Sgt. John J. Savage III, an Army reservist, was about to climb onto a troop transport plane for a flight to Iraq from Fayetteville, N.C., when his wife called with alarming news: "They're foreclosing on our house."

Sergeant Savage recalled, "There was not a thing I could do; I had to jump on the plane and boil for 22 hours." He had reason to be angry. A longstanding federal law strictly limits the ability of his mortgage company and other lenders to foreclose against active-duty service members.

But Sergeant Savage's experience was not unusual. Though statistics are scarce, court records and interviews with military and civilian lawyers suggest that Americans heading off to war are sometimes facing distracting and demoralizing demands from financial companies trying to collect on obligations that, by law, they cannot enforce.

I'm quoting this because it makes me angry but also because I couldn't help noting: How many comic book characters have there been now named Sgt. Savage or Captain Savage or darn near any first name or title plus the surname of Savage? No disrespect at all to the gentleman in the above piece, but I did have to check the article's byline and make sure it wasn't by Stan Lee.

As I explained in an article that's no longer posted on this site, I am/was a big fan of a chain of almost-defunct barbecue restaurants called Love's. There used to be a lot of them, at least throughout California, and we're now down to just three, one of which is in Jakarta, Indonesia. I like their ribs but not enough to make that trip.

The other two are in Chula Vista and Lakewood, both in my home state, though they seem about as far as Jakarta. So I pretty much have to be content with Love's barbecue sauce, which I order from their website and employ in my expert gourmet cooking…which means I sometimes pour a little on a chicken or beef sandwich. I use the mild, and I should warn you that it's rather sweet. I usually prefer a smokier, less sweet sauce but for some reason, I really like theirs and why am I telling you this? This is not an ad for Love's restaurants, or what remains of them. This is a posting about a little mystery that just occurred in my life.

I recently installed the 2005 edition of Microsoft Streets & Trips, which is a map program, especially handy because it notes hotels, points of interests, restaurants and so forth. Sergio and I are going to an event tomorrow night in the Westwood part of Los Angeles and I thought I'd look up the area, even though I know it well, and select a place to maybe get a bite to eat beforehand. Here's a piece of a screen shot of the map that came up for me…

As you can see, one of the dining establishments they pinpoint on Westwood Boulevard is a "Love's Wood Pit Bar-B-Que," just north of Olympic. This is a shameful lie. I have studied Love's restaurants for years. I also know Westwood very well, having grown up in that area. (The little label that gives the name is right over Westwood Elementary School, which is where I learned to play Dodgeball.) There has never been a Love's on Westwood Boulevard or anywhere close by. There once was one on Pico about two miles away, but that went out of business long ago and is now a Ford dealership. There was also one on Olympic, a mile the other way, but the building has been empty since the Love's in there closed more than five years ago.

Microsoft Streets & Trips…you are so full of it.

The program gives an address and a phone number for the hypothetical Love's on Westwood. I called the number and got the voice mail system for a company that I'm pretty sure has nothing to do with Love's. I cross-checked the address via a search engine and it seems to be that of a large office building…and no, the corporate offices of Love's are not in that building. I thought of that. They're in Diamond Bar and before that, they were in Beverly Hills. Further experimentation shows that if you ask Microsoft Streets & Trips 2005 to map all the Love's restaurants in the nation, it shows you five — the two which still exist, two that closed long ago (at least five years) and the wholly imaginary one. I can understand a map program being way out of date about something…but how does it pinpoint a restaurant that never existed?

Maybe this isn't a big deal to you but for one brief second there, I thought Divine Intervention had occurred. I was looking for a place to eat and cosmic forces had suddenly placed an outlet of my favorite, long-lost restaurant chain in the perfect place. But it was not so. It was just Microsoft Streets & Trips screwing with my emotions. That dirty, lying program.

If anything positive comes out of the Terri Schiavo case, it may be that it's prompting a vast amount of Americans to draw up Living Wills or other documents that will specify what they want done with their bodies when they can no longer decide. I was amused to see my pal Daniel Frank say, "I want tubes; I want machines; I want Definitely Resuscitate orders; I want heroic efforts; I want Superman to make the world spin backwards on its axis and save me in time."

Which is, of course, his right. I have a somewhat different wish. I don't recall exactly what I signed a few years ago, but my Business Manager is getting it out of the safe deposit box and I'm going to make sure it declares the following: That I don't want to be kept "alive" by a biological technicality. If I can't have thoughts and communicate them, it's over, insofar as I'm concerned. Pull the plug, yank the tubes, put me in the largest-size Hefty Bag and leave me out on the curb.

One of the reasons most of us don't want to be kept alive by artificial means or in the much-discussed Persistent Vegetative State is that we don't want to be a burden to our loved ones. Even a level slightly above P.V.S. would horrify me. I once watched a beloved neighbor go so utterly senile that his spouse of 50+ years had to dress him, feed him, carry him to the bathroom, wipe him…and at least five times a day, pick him up off the floor when he fell. Some nights, she was so exhausted that she had to call me to come over and help her, often because he'd slipped off the toilet and was wedged between it and the sink.

For the last year or so of his life, he never uttered one intelligible word or showed the slightest sign of knowing who or where he was. If he'd had a second of awareness, I'm sure he'd have killed himself on the spot, the same way he'd have taken a bullet for his wife. He loved her dearly, and caring for him was occupying her every waking moment, destroying her health…and because of expenses not covered by their medical insurance, driving her towards poverty. When he finally stopped breathing, every single person who knew them said, "Thank God." Sadly, she did not live much longer after that, and I'm sure the main reason was all she'd gone through to take care of him.

When I hear people say that life by any definition must be maintained as long as possible, I think of that couple and disagree. In at least that case, the "pro-life" position would have been for the rest of him to die when his brain did. If his heart had stopped beating a year sooner than it finally did, the woman he loved might have lived another ten.

If you'd rather define your life like my friend Daniel, fine. I can certainly understand that, and you should have it the way you want it. But I wanted to throw one other thought out there…

All the talk about Ms. Schiavo seems to go to the issue of What She Wanted and to the extent that's been reasonably determined, that's what should be done. But your decision as to when you wish your life declared over doesn't have to just be about you. For instance, if I wind up revising my instructions, I'm going to try to put something in there about what's best for my loved ones. If and when they have to decide to discontinue life support, I don't want them thinking only about What Mark Wanted. I'm going to order them to turn me off when I become a threat to their health and their lives. If I can't feel anything, don't worry about making me comfy. Do what's best for the living.

I'll tell them if I ever reach Persistent Vegetative State — and some who read Groo have sensed that may not be long — I won't matter anymore, so discontinue feeding. Or if you prefer, keep feeding me, dress me up as Elvis and sell tickets to people who'll think that's where he's been all these years. If it would make you feel better, have me stuffed and put on display in the foyer. I think I'd make a nice fountain…posed on one foot, with a continuous stream of water trickling out of mouth. Whatever. I just don't want someone obligated to wipe drool from my chin because I can't, or to pick me up every day when I get wedged between the crapper and the bathroom sink. So my Living Will says (or will say) that I want the wires pulled, and not just because that's what I want. I also want my guardians to be able to decide when it's time for them to be rid of me, and to be able to avoid legal problems or even anyone accusing them of murder. I want them to be able to say, "This is what he wanted," even if it's what they also want.

I don't know if Michael Schiavo is an unfairly vilified man or if any of the denunciations of his morals and motives have some truth to them. What I do know is that I'm appointing people I trust and care about to make that decision about me. And should it someday be necessary for them to do that, I don't want anyone else getting involved or even having an opening to express an opinion.

Here's a question from Rick Mohr…

I was just wondering something. Is it just me, or have Jay Leno's monologues become meaner as of late? Calling people stupid and idiots, making fat jokes, and attacking Robert Blake and Michael Jackson in what are to me, very mean spirited jokes, not social commentary. Do you think his involvement in the Jackson mess has made him more cynical?

I don't think it's cynicism so much as a decision, not necessarily incorrect, that it's what works with the viewers. Leno is darn good at monologues and in connecting with his live audience, maybe even better than Mr. Carson. Which is not to say Johnny was not better at any number of other things. One suspects Jay may also be reacting to the criticism of him that he's lost his "edge" as a comedian and that, as host of The Tonight Show, he became too puppy-dog nice.

Some of Leno's Robert Blake material did strike me as unfair, and I said so a few times on this page. Blake may well be guilty but it struck me that an awful lot of people — and not just Leno — leaped too quickly to that position, not because they'd examined the evidence but because it was too irresistible a position for joke writers to assume. At one point, there was something almost tragic about Blake; like, innocent or not, we were starting to see him crack up way beyond what seemed usual for him. I love a lot of what some would call Bad Taste Humor, but there's occasionally a point where I feel like it's picking on someone who's on their way down and can't stand up for themselves. I don't feel that's true of Blake now but for a while there, I did.

In the case of Michael Jackson, he may not be guilty of the crimes alleged in his current trial but he sure seems reponsible for his image as a pedophile, and that's Jay's main point of attack. He's also a very public figure with the means, if necessary, to defend himself.

Back in the Carson era of Tonight, there was a period where Johnny was doing a lot of jokes about the sleaziness of The Gong Show and its producer-host, Chuck Barris. Mr. Barris was a nice, likeable guy if you met him, but he wanted it both ways: He wanted the large sums of cash that were his for creating shows like The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, but he didn't want the King of Schlock reputation that came with those offerings. At one point, he got very vocal within the industry, and I believe he even authored an article for National Lampoon on his thesis, which was that Johnny Carson was a bully, using his monologues to slander people who couldn't fight back. Barris did not get much sympathy because, first of all, most felt that he had access to the airwaves and to the press, and more than enough loot to hire an attorney if he'd been genuinely slandered. In other words, he could fight back. More to the point, he was to a large extent the architect of his own reputation. A member of his staff I knew once said, "Chuck doesn't know it but he really isn't mad at Johnny for telling those jokes. He's mad because the audience recognizes enough truth in them to laugh."

I don't think comedians are always blameless in what they do to popular images. There have been personal vendettas pursued that way, though they are rare. It is also possible to help spread false news that way and to give rumors more credibility than they deserve. But quite apart from Leno, Michael Jackson has done a superlative job of convincing the world that there's something creepy about him and especially about his interactions with young boys. I might wish that Jay seized a bit less often on the topic but I can't blame him for exploiting it.

The weekend late night Saturday Night Live reruns have begun jumping around from season to season again. Last week, they had one with Charlton Heston from the 1993-1994 season. This weekend, they hop back to the tenth season, which was the one with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest and (briefly) Harry Shearer. The scheduled episode is from 11/17/84 with guest host Ed Asner. I seem to vaguely recall that Bill Murray was originally announced to topline that episode but that at the last minute, Mr. Asner appeared. The musical guest was The Kinks and the most memorable sketch was the 60 Minutes parody where Shearer did his uncanny replica of Mike Wallace looking into a potential scandal in the area of novelties and party tricks. Martin Short played a nervous lawyer named Nathan Thurm.

The following weekend, the scheduled rerun is Show #4 from 11/8/75 with Candice Bergen. This was the episode a lot of folks around NBC thought was the first real good one — so much so that some of the network execs wanted to sign Ms. Bergen as permanent star of the series. The show included the first "land shark" sketch and a very funny film by Albert Brooks previewing alleged new NBC shows. Also, Andy Kaufman did his "foreign man" character doing bad impressions. It's probably worth TiVoing just for those three segments.