Sunday, January 16, 2005

Remembering Will

Here's a pretty good newspaper article about Will Eisner. It's written by my longtime buddy, Gary Brown...a reporter who really knows the comic book business. And I'm not just saying that because he often quotes me. I'm saying it because he always quotes me.

Also: Another old pal, Ken Gale, is devoting the next broadcast of his radio show, 'Nuff Said, to Eisner. It can be heard in the New York area and some nearby states, this coming Tuesday night (actually, Wednesday morning) from 3:30 AM to 6:00 AM, Eastern time. Over at the show's website, you can learn where to hear it on your radio or how to get it on the Internet. I'll be a guest (via phone) early in the proceedings.

• Posted at 3:36 PM · LINK

The Cat Comes Back

The second volume of Garfield and Friends (that show I wrote years ago) was released on DVD last month. I was told some time back that the third volume would follow in May of 2005, that the fourth will follow in October, and that the fifth and final would be in March of 2006. (That will cover all 121 half-hours that were produced, including the 48 that have never been syndicated.) But several of you have written me to note that Amazon is now taking advance orders for Volume 3, to be released April 19...so you now know as much about this as I do. I don't think we're going to see any extras.

• Posted at 11:22 AM · LINK

Gene Baylos, R.I.P.

I can't find a photo of him but I wanted to note the passing of comedian Gene Baylos at age 98. I never met Mr. Baylos but he was one of the first comedians I ever saw perform live. Around 1958 or so, my parents took me to a "Disney night" at the Hollywood Bowl, and I still have a vivid memory of Mr. Baylos dressed in a striped, Gay 90's outfit, coming out and doing a very funny act with a banjo. Here's the New York Times obit for the guy and as you'll see, he had a long career in comedy, though he never quite managed to become a household name. (The one appearance of his that readers of this weblog will probably remember was on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He played the bum who found a lost script and tried to extort money from the writing staff for its return.)

Unmentioned in the Times obit is that Mr. Baylos was famed among other comedians for being cheap and pushy, though in a lovable way. Every time I've been with comics of his generation and his name has come up, there's been a story — told, almost admiringly — of Gene's ability to get someone else to pay the check or drive him to the Catskills. One technique for the latter would be that Gene would get booked in one of the hotels up there and would find out that, say, Corbett Monica was booked nearby and would be driving up from Manhattan around Noon. A little before Noon, Baylos would park his car near where he knew Monica would be turning onto the parkway, put up the hood and wait. When he saw Monica's car, he'd flag it down, plead engine trouble and ask if Corbett could drive him. At least, that's the way I heard Monica tell the story at a Friar's Club tableful of comedians, all of whom nodded that he'd done that to them, as well.

The character Billy Crystal played in Mr. Saturday Night has been identified as an amalgam of Alan King, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett and Sid Caesar...but there was a lot of Baylos in there. Throughout, Crystal's old comedian keeps using the story about how he walked into the house one day, found his wife in bed with his best friend and said, "Murray...I have to. But you?" That was a famous joke from the act of Mr. Gene Baylos.

There was a period in the seventies when Baylos became notorious around Johnny Carson's Tonight Show staff for lobbying to get on the show. Johnny didn't want him or that style of comedy any longer, but Baylos wouldn't take "no" for an answer, and began turning up in the Tonight Show offices or phoning up employees there, acting as if he'd been booked and they just needed to decide on the date. Fred DeCordova told me that Baylos would just walk into his office and say, "I ran into Johnny in the hall and he said to check with you if next Wednesday could work." DeCordova never fell for the trick, and Baylos never got on the show then...but he did become quite notorious around the office.

There was a large bulletin board there where cards were pinned-up to list upcoming guests. One day, a planned Guest Host fell out and just to be silly, one of the writers — Eric Cohen — stuck the name of Gene Baylos up there when no one was looking. An NBC publicist came by later to jot down a list of who was scheduled for upcoming shows and, not getting the joke, copied down everything on the board and put that information into a press release. Sure enough, TV Guide printed a listing for The Tonight Show with "Guest host, Gene Baylos." (This is a true story. If it sounds familiar to anyone who's read my comic books, I used the situation once in an issue of Crossfire.)

Mr. Baylos, of course, was ecstatic to find that not only had he finally been booked for the Carson show but that he'd be sitting in for Johnny. He bombarded the office with calls to make plans but was repeatedly told that it was a mistake; that he was not going to appear as host or guest, and that Bill Cosby would be behind the desk that evening. Legend has it — I'm not sure I believe this part — that Baylos showed up at NBC on the day in question, waving a copy of TV Guide at the security guards who had been alerted not to let him in. I'm sorry they didn't at least give him a few minutes on the broadcast. I'd have liked to see that act again.

• Posted at 11:09 AM · LINK

Investigation?

As you may recall, on the New Year's Eve edition of The Tonight Show, broadcast live to the East Coast, singer Vince Neil uttered the "f" word. According to this article which ran a week or so ago, the F.C.C. will launch an investigation into the matter.

Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that it's absurd for our government, which has more important concerns, to waste time and money over a concern that people who were up at 12:25 in the morning heard that word coming out of their TV sets. (The F.C.C. says it has "received complaints" but doesn't say how many. I'm guessing five. NBC says they had zero.) But like I said, leave that aside. Here's the question I want to ask...

What exactly is there to "investigate" here? He said it. Obviously, no one planned it. If they haul Vince Neil before some committee and ask him why it happened, he's going to say, "It just slipped out" and no one can really argue that point. The F.C.C. knows how many complaints came in. (Come to think of it, five is probably high. Make it three.) They also know just what NBC did to bleep the word from the West Coast replay of the program.

The word "investigation" means someone's going to expend effort to learn something or ascertain the facts. What is there about this incident that is not known or has yet to be discovered?

Obviously, I don't think any fine or discipline is warranted. Frankly, the concept that an arm of the United States Government would or could spend more than five minutes on this offends me more than what Vince Neil said.

• Posted at 2:17 AM · LINK