Friday Afternoon

It's another good day to not be Chris Christie. David Wildstein, the former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive who directed the George Washington Bridge lane closures, says Christie knew about the closures while they were happening and that there's proof. If there is, you wonder why Christie thought it wouldn't come out.

In other news, a Republican candidate for Congress in Montana is saying Hillary Clinton is the anti-Christ. I'm confused. I thought most Republicans were convinced Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Are things so bad in the world that there are now two of them? And remember the good old days when to become the anti-Christ, you had to enslave the entire world and make fire come down from Heaven to Earth in the sight of all? These days, you can apparently earn the title by helping poor people get health insurance.

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Leno Stuff

Dave Berg — not the late MAD Magazine cartoonist — worked with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show for 18 years and has a "backstage" book coming out shortly. In this article, he makes the case for Jay's accomplishments not being sufficiently appreciated. I'm a big fan of Jay's but I think this piece may be overstating a few things.

And I am curious about these statistics…

Leno will have done 4,610 episodes when his show, which has aired 22 years, wraps. That's 79 more episodes than Johnny did in 30 years.

First off, I'd love to know the source of the exact number of shows Johnny did. Years ago, I remember a lot of TV historians wondering how many he'd done and there was a belief that while it could be estimated, there were no records that would yield a precise answer. Then one day, the number 4,531 suddenly was out there. Who calculated that and how?

Secondly, does anyone know how many times Jay hosted The Tonight Show as a guest host? Add that number to the 4,610 and it's even more impressive.

Thirdly, isn't it worth noting that all of Jay's shows have been an hour in length and that a lot of Johnny's were 90 or even 105 minutes? If you figured who'd done the most hours of The Tonight Show during their tenures, Johnny would surely be ahead. Then again, if you added in the hours of Leno guest-hosting for him…well, I think Johnny would still be ahead but it would be closer. Not that it matters a lot.

I don't mean to trivialize Jay's accomplishment. Assembling and delivering 4,610 topical monologues is all by itself an incredible feat and you just know he could have hung in there for another thousand or two. I just think Johnny was Johnny and Jay was Jay and there are so many differences between the situations in which the two men worked that a comparison is kinda pointless.

The LAY-Dee's Man

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Speaking of old comedians: Jerry Lewis will be 88 on March 16. On March 15, he's doing two shows at the La Mirada Theater for the Performing Arts here in Southern California. Tickets are still available here.

I'm not going for two reasons. One is that I have tickets to see Lewis Black that evening in Beverly Hills…and while I could conceivably catch Jerry's matinee in La Mirada and make it to Mr. Black's show in time, I fear the whiplash between the two Lewises' approaches to comedy, experienced on the same day, could be lethal.

Also, I've seen Jerry live about a half-dozen times and he doesn't make me laugh anymore. He just makes me uncomfortable. I respect the accomplishments and there's something admirable about him still performing at his age. It's great that people who love him and his work will be able to go and applaud him and forever say, "I saw Jerry in person." All well and good. But it's like being around Mickey Rooney. He rambles and he gets his own history all wrong and he lashes out at the darnedest people for the darnedest reasons and sometimes, it's like watching an exposed raw nerve, waiting for someone to touch it and…

Well, I've stopped finding it interesting or amusing. If you love the guy and you're anywhere near La Mirada, by all means go. That's a great theater, by the way, even if the traffic between there and L.A. can sometimes get a bit gnarly. I guess that's a third reason I don't want to try and make a double feature that day. And if you go, let me know if he wedges a drinking glass into his mouth and/or does the typewriter bit. Who would have thought that routine would outlive the typewriter?

Old Banana

Did you ever hear of burlesque? It was a great style of comedy…very broad and a wee bit naughty. Alas, burlesque died out and so did all the great comics who worked for Minsky's Burlesque and other purveyors of the Art Form.

Well, not quite. There's still Irv Benson.

Benson was one of the best and after burlesque became extinct, he went to Las Vegas and began doing…burlesque. He and the (eventual) last remaining straight man from burley-q, Dexter Maitland, often appeared in revues there and in Reno. I saw them many times in the eighties and got to eat with them a few times and hear anecdotes. Oh, those anecdotes.

Irv also appeared on television a lot, mostly with Johnny Carson and Milton Berle. Carson loved him and would have him on often and play straight man to him. Berle used Irv on many shows, often as an irascible character named Sidney Spritzer. The snide Mr. Spritzer would sit in a box and heckle Berle on stage. We have a clip here of them in one of their many encounters. Watch and you'll see how good Irv was at delivering a line…and how bad Uncle Miltie was at reading cue cards without looking like he was reading cue cards.

And why am I featuring this clip today? Well, today Irv Benson is one hundred years old. He's retired now and still married to his wife, Lillian after 77 years. That's amazing, especially when you consider how much of Irv's material was about how horrible his unnamed wife was.

Here's the main event: Berle vs. Spritzer. My money's on Spritzer…

And I should mention that there's an award-winning documentary about Irv called The Last First Comic. I ordered one and have received my copy but have been too busy to watch it yet. But hey, if it's full of clips of Irv, how could it not be wonderful? Here's the website to order one and here's a preview of it…

Recommended Reading

Chris Cillizza says — and I agree with him — that current polls for who might be our next president should not be regarded as anything more than snapshots of a given moment. Note the line…

If polling done at this point in the 2008 race was right, we would have had a general election fight between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. And, we didn't.

And no one disagrees the current polls are largely meaningless. They just don't act like they think they're largely meaningless.

Another Good Day to Not Be Chris Christie

Today, Rudy Giuliani said, "I like Chris [Christie] very much and he's being unfairly treated, and he's a good friend." He also said of the decision to close the George Washington Bridge to create an unnecessary traffic jam and the question of whether Christie was involved, "It's fifty-fifty, it leaves you with no possible way of knowing did she discuss it with him or didn't she discuss it with him."

In other words, there's a 50-50 chance that "my good friend" who's "being unfairly treated" did it and is lying when he says he didn't.

If that's what Christie's good friends are saying about him…

Let's Put on a Show!

I continue to be mightily impressed by the segment last Monday night on The Daily Show. I'm talking about the one with Nathan Lane, Tim Gunn, a bunch of street people and the cast of the Broadway show Jersey Boys urging Fox News's Sean Hannity to stay in New York and not move away. If you didn't see it, you can watch it here…

Even if you don't find its politics amusing, I hope you're impressed by the fact that they did it at all. Hannity made his statement on a radio show on Monday, January 20. If you were a writer on The Daily Show and you walked in on Tuesday morning, described the segment and said, "Let's shoot that and have in on the air next Monday," a rational Production Manager would have told you you were out of your ever-lovin' mind. Not humanly possible.

The scenes on the street with Lane, Gunn and various New Yorkers were not difficult…probably a very long one-day shoot for a good camera crew and producer. But the mind boggles at the problems involved in getting that musical number written, produced and shot. It would be beastly expensive to pay all those singers and on-stage musicians so you'd have to work out some special accommodations with Actors Equity, the Musicians' Union and SAG-Aftra. That's after you got the producers of the musical to agree and all the performers to say yes.

The end credits listed the song as by Matthew Loren Cohen and D.J. Javerbaum. Mr. Cohen is an L.A.-based specialist in improvisational music and David Javerbaum is a former head writer of The Daily Show. He's lately been writing for Broadway and has done a lot of special musical material for folks like Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Colbert. They wrote the song and then I believe some band somewhere had to pre-record a music track because they probably couldn't use the musicians for Jersey Boys except as on-camera performers miming to the track.

So then when did they shoot the number? The cast of Jersey Boys does eight shows a week and to further complicate matters, Jersey Boys was undergoing a major cast change at the time. Dominic Scaglione Jr., who's been playing Frankie Valli, played his final performance on January 26 and his replacement, Joseph Leo Bwarie, returned to the role on the 28th. I'm not sure which gent, if either, is in the video but there were probably rehearsals going on at the same time. So the cast had to learn, rehearse and shoot the Daily Show song while that was occurring. That's after someone choreographed and staged the thing.

It looks to me like they had three cameras there, at least one of which was on a crane of some sort. Perhaps they got lucky and Jersey Boys was shooting something else that week but if The Daily Show had to bring in all that equipment and a crew, that could get expensive. Maybe someone involved in the process was so outraged at Hannity's position that they donated a lot of time and money.

I really thought it was quite funny and clever. The only thing wrong with it, of course, is that Sean Hannity probably loved it. He's made millions stoking the anger and paranoia of a certain segment of the population. It sure won't hurt him with that segment that he's such a potent voice for their side that the Evil Left is singing insults to him.

Fast Food Follies, Part 7

Three more of these…

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For years, whenever I mentioned Five Guys to someone from the mid-west, they'd counter with Steak n' Shake, telling me that chain had the best burgers, the best fries and especially the best milk shakes. And I'll say this for the shakes: I gave up ice cream and other sweets a few years ago, not for health reasons but because I suddenly lost my taste for that kind of food. Things I loved years ago are now just too, too sweet for me. But if I was attracted to a milk shake, it would be the ones I've seen served in this chain. Boy, they look delicious by my old standards of "delicious."

The hamburgers (they call them "steakburgers") are pretty good and the fries are, well, okay. I like that most of their locations seem to be open 24 hours and the two I've been to, both of which looked like the malt shop in a 50's teen sitcom, were fun, friendly places. They were both in Indiana, by the way, which is where the company is based. Unlike a certain chain I could mention after I cover Quiznos, Steak n' Shake is now venturing out of its native area. There's one in Las Vegas and another is about to open out on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. I have friends from the mid-west who can't wait…and if I'm in the neighborhood and there's no Five Guys around, you might even see me there.

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I get the idea that Quiznos was supposed to be the go-to place for folks who felt there was something a bit tacky about getting your sandwich at a Subway outlet. First time I went to one, I found the place comfier and classier…but I didn't like what I ate as much. I'm not head over heels about Subway but I actually liked Quiznos less. Of course, I'm not their target customer because I don't like a lot of cheese and garnishes and lettuce and tomato on my sandwiches. So I'll just tell my one silly Quiznos story…

It was in San Francisco during a WonderCon. I ducked out between panels for lunch and a Quiznos seemed like my quickest option. I ordered a tuna sandwich with nothing on it and as is my custom, made the words "nothing on it" very distinct and forceful. The sandwich maker repeated, "Tuna sandwich with nothing on it" and proceeded to make me one with cheese, tomato, lettuce and some sort of special dressing.

I pointed out his error and he apologized and began picking ingredients off it. But since he wasn't going to get the dressing off, I asked him to make me a new one from scratch, which he grudgingly did. He dutifully made me a tuna sandwich with cheese, tomato, lettuce and the same special dressing.

"With nothing on it," I repeated loudly. He winced, slapped himself and commenced making a third one. "Force of habit," he muttered as he made the new sandwich. I kept repeating, "Nothing on it" as he reached for the lettuce, reached for the tomato, etc. I finally got what I wanted…and by the way, I don't know how the sandwich would have been with all those things on it but it was pretty bland without them.

Just before he handed it to me, he said, "Sorry…you get in a rhythm of doing things a certain way and sometimes, your muscles just do those things before the brain can stop them." I told him I understood and asked him just how long he'd been making tuna sandwiches here at Quiznos. He thought for a second and told me, "Next Monday will be two weeks."

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In an odd way, I like the fact that the White Castle folks stubbornly refuse to venture outside their home turf: Illinois, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin. They've reportedly been offered zillions and always refused.

Years ago, I met a man who was putting together the food court for a new Las Vegas mega-resort. He told me that among its offerings would be White Castle and I asked him, "Gee, how'd you convince them to open one out here?" He grinned and with a soupçon of Godfather in his manner, told me he hadn't convinced them yet but they were going to comply. I'm not sure he meant they were going to make them a financial offer they couldn't refuse or if he had threats in mind.

"Mark my words," he told me. "When we open, there will be a White Castle there." When they opened, there wasn't. There still isn't.

When I'm in a state that does have White Castles, I drop by for what some people wrongly call hamburgers. "Slider" is a much better term. I order a couple of the Double Original Sliders, toss the middle piece of bun and the pickle, then apply ketchup.

I also usually get one of their chicken sliders, also sans cheese, and they always act like I'm the first person in a long time to order one of those. One time, the way the counterperson talked, I was afraid they were going to go out back and kill an entire chicken just to make me my one Slider.

And in the morning, I like the Breakfast Sliders with Bacon, Egg and Cheese, except I ask for them without the cheese. Getting a couple of them made that way is a lot like getting the guy at Quiznos to leave the extra stuff off your tuna sandwich.

I'm not sure what I like about White Castle but it's not the food. Their sliders aren't as wonderful as the burgers at that Steak n' Shake a few blocks away. The fries are eh. I think what I like is that the stores are unique. No other place I ever go to get anything vaguely resembling a burger resembles a White Castle. It's like being part of a special club that features different but completely familiar cuisine. Also, eating a White Castle Slider, I always feel like I'm ten years old and I'm playing with my food.

I should probably wish they had a couple in Los Angeles but like I said, I like the fact that no one can make the company do what it doesn't want to do. Not even Don Corleone.

Next time we do this: Del Taco, Krispy Kreme and El Pollo Loco. Guess which is the only one of the three I'll patronize.

Stuff I'm Doing

As I've mentioned here, I'm writing a four-issue mini-series of Rocky and Bullwinkle for the folks at IDW Publishing. It's being drawn and drawn well by Roger Langridge. Here's a news story about it.

Wednesday Afternoon

The State of the Union address seemed fine to me. If you hate the guy who delivered it, you can quibble with every comma but it seemed very reasonable and non-confrontational to me. My friend Roger described it in an e-mail as Obama declaring war on Congress and vowing to use executive orders to enact his agenda without their consent. But the only such actions I heard him announce was that he would raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour, and enact this new kind of savings accounts for retirees — a plan which many Republicans have backed. Everything else being categorized today as tyranny was to either continue an existing program, some of which were started under Bush, or enact some studies of different problems.

On Facebook, a few right-wing "friends" of mine sent me a graphic that condemned Obama for reading his speech off a TelePrompter. Yeah, like every president before him — and everyone doing a rebuttal to him — didn't use a TelePrompter of some sort. Some of these people might just as well be screaming we need to impeach the guy because he was wearing a necktie.

I tweeted the other day, "If you need to kill a few hours, just go to your bank and tell them you need a cashier's check in Euros." In truth, it took about forty minutes but why should that take forty minutes? I got a teller who looked at me like I was asking her to turn Crystal Geyser water into Manischewitz wine. When I assured her that it could be done, she wandered off to find some other employee who knew how to do it. Turned out, there were none…but the Assistant Manager said, "I'll handle this." He then spent the next half-hour or so on the phone to other divisions of the bank, locating someone who could teach him.

Finally, he figured it out. The amount I needed the check to be in Euros turned out to be about $24 in American money…and there was a $30 fee for issuing the check. Somehow, the fee would have felt more unreasonable if it had taken them two minutes to issue me the check, as opposed to forty.

Lastly for now, folks keep writing to ask if I'm still feeding feral cats in my backyard. Yes, two of them: Lydia and Sylvia, both of whom have been around for years. You may remember how in 2008, I spent many days and nights trying to trap an animal I called The Kitten…a stray who seemed pregnant and, at the very least, in need of being fixed. (The tale started here and continued through many subsequent postings.) That was Lydia and she still spends most evenings in my yard and sometimes appears during the day. She's learned to trust me but Sylvia, after as many years, still acts like I'm just putting out all those bowls of food to fatten her up for a Cat Pot Pie I intend to make someday. Next time I see the two of them together, I'll try to snap a current photo and post it here…along with a good recipe for Cat Pot Pie.

Today on Stu's Show!

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Today (Wednesday), the topic on Stu's Show is The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  Your genial host Stu Shostak welcomes author-historian Vince Waldron for a lively discussion of one of the most popular situation comedies of all time.  It was one of those shows that changed television forever and Stu and Vince will discuss why that was.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes top three.

Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.

Today's Video Link

Here's two more of these. As I explained here, these are songs that Mel Blanc recorded in, I would guess, the mid-to-late fifties. He did one song for each month, wishing kids born in that month a Happy Birthday…all except for April, which is Ollie Owl (not your most famous Warner Brothers character) which was sung by someone else. Who is it? Beats me. The backup vocals are credited to the Sandpiper Chorus and Orchestra and my thought is that it was one of those folks.

But this does get me to wondering and maybe someone reading this (i.e., Greg Ehrbar) can clear something up. I'm familiar with the Sandpipers, a group consisting of Mike Stewart, Ralph Nyland, Dick Byron and Bob Miller. We wrote about them here and here and here.

Now, I always heard these Happy Birthday songs were recorded for Capitol Records and wound up being released instead by Golden Records…but I also thought Capitol and Mel Blanc recorded in Hollywood, so why is Mel being backed by a New York-based group? Also, the chorus on all of these seems to include one or two female voices…so is that the same four male Sandpipers plus friends? Anyone?

Here are Daffy and Ollie. The Daffy tune is especially good…

More Jay Watching

Another interview with Jay Leno.

There are a lot of articles around about his departure from The Tonight Show and many of them seem to me to be missing an important point. Yeah, I think Jay would have liked to have stayed on indefinitely but I think he's okay with leaving. Somehow, this is getting translated into either, "He's upset about leaving" or "He thinks it's a great idea to leave now." Speaking for myself, I've never felt either way about a job I enjoyed and did for any significant length of time.

In this world, there are folks who think of a job as one place where you try to work until the day you're ready for retirement. And then there are those of us who go from job to job our whole lives, sometimes juggling several at a time, treating each one just as something they're doing for a while. I'm in the latter group: I've been a freelancer since 1969. I've never worked for one publisher or producer at a time, nor have I ever worked on anything that I felt I'd be doing for more than a few years…or in many cases, a few months. If I get hired to write a TV show or a comic book or a movie script or anything, it's just what I'm doing at the moment.

I have friends in the first category who can't understand how a person could live like that. Their lives seem to require the order and security that comes from an occupation where you can describe what you do in a simple sentence: "I do [job description] for [name of employer]" and they can expect that, apart from promotions, that sentence won't change in five or ten years. I have one acquaintance from high school who worked for the phone company from age 18 until he retired and to him, I'm just a guy who can't hold a job.

Leno is at heart a stand-up comic. It's about as "freelance" an occupation as exists in the world today. Even when you work the same club over and over, you go in, tell your jokes and leave. No office. No sense of being part of a staff. Jay got that from doing The Tonight Show but he never even did that exclusively, playing two or three stand-up appearances per week. He has a stand-up date the day after he does his last Tonight Show. I'm sure he'll miss the nightly gig but he's not losing his career or something he expected to last forever. And I suspect he doesn't need the money.