Thursday, July 13, 2006

Another Endorsement

Hey, remember I said that Red Buttons was brilliant performing at Stan Freberg's anniversary party? Well, I think that's the same party Harry Shearer is talking about in this piece.

• Posted at 11:49 PM · LINK

Absolute Zero

Last Saturday, I gave a rave review 'n' recommendation to Zero Hour, the new one-man show in which actor-playwright Jim Brochu portrays the late, great Zero Mostel. Now, you might say, "Yeah, sure you praised it, Evanier...but you're a longtime friend of this Brochu guy. How can we trust you on this?" Fair question. And the answer is that you should go read what the Los Angeles Times reviewer had to say about it...which you can do by clicking here.

• Posted at 11:38 PM · LINK

Red Buttons, R.I.P.

Our acute shortage of older comedians grows ever worse with the passing of Red Buttons, who died this morning at the age of 87.

If you never got to see Red in person, you missed a wonderful experience. I was fortunate to be present perhaps a half-dozen times at local events — once at a tribute to his former writer, Larry Gelbart; another time at Stan Freberg's anniversary party — when Red got up and launched into a monologue that, as the saying goes, brought the house down. He performed with a devilish twinkle and a spot-on sense of timing, always pausing the precise number of micro-seconds before delivering a punch line. The guy was just plain funny.

For many years, he was a frequent performer at roasts where he employed his "Never got a dinner" routine to great success. He was very fussy about that material. He had piles of lines but he always wanted fresh ones. When I worked with him on a variety show in the seventies, he said he'd do the bit if we, the writing staff, wrote some new material for it. I think we wrote around a hundred jokes to get the five or six he thought were up to his standards...and we didn't mind it at all. Because Red knew what worked for him and you had to admire the devotion to delivering the best possible routine.

Most of the obits (like this one) will probably emphasize Red's 1957 Academy Award for his work in Sayonara — and the man was a very fine actor. I thought he was especially good in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? But there are plenty of great dramatic actors around. We're running out of great old comedians...and at an alarming pace.

• Posted at 1:06 PM · LINK

A Comic Book Mystery

An author-friend of mine is writing a book with and about a rather famous celebrity. In discussing his formative years, the celebrity recalled a comic book strip he followed when he was young, and the author-friend has asked me to try and identify it. Here's how the celebrity described his childhood fave...

I've always had, I guess, what most people would think of as the kindest reading of it, a much wider concept of what a family is than most people have. I remember I got busted for reading a comic book. It was my favorite comic book with a flashlight under my blanket, about a group of various orphaned kids who had somehow found each other and all joined together to live on a ranch together and survive and they came under, there was some adult who took over the father figure part and the mother figure, and I remember thinking that that was all how it should be.

The celeb was born in 1941 and lived at home until around 1959 or 1960. His comic book reading years therefore might have been as early as, say, 1948 or as late as the mid-fifties. He recalls the feature in question as one that never earned its own book and appeared instead in an anthology comic or as a back-up strip.

I'm stumped. It doesn't sound like the Simon-Kirby Boys Ranch to me and while I can think of a couple of other candidates, not one of them fits exactly. Anyone else got an idea?

• Posted at 1:14 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

It's a blooper reel from the original Dick Van Dyke Show. What more do you need to know?

• Posted at 12:43 AM · LINK

Tech Puzzler

Well, the embedded videos don't seem to be the problem so I've put them back. For reasons I cannot fathom, a number of people are reporting that connecting to this website causes their computer to lock up. Nothing has changed in our configuration so I'm at a loss as to what's causing it. If anyone has an idea of what's causing it, please let me know.

• Posted at 12:38 AM · LINK

July 14, 2006 • Current • July 12, 2006