Sunday, August 27, 2006

Recommended Reading

Curtains, a new musical from the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, recently debuted despite the fact that Mr. Ebb passed away two years ago. This article in The New York Times discusses what Mr. Kander has been going through since the loss of his collaborator, and what it took to get this musical up and running without him.

• Posted at 10:58 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Jonathan Alter says that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush dropped the ball with regard to helping the poor.

This is one of those areas where I'm honestly baffled as to what to think. Is it that he wanted to make good on all those promises and then incompetence (his or someone else's) or some other obstacle prevented it? Or was there a deliberate attempt to pledge one thing and deliver another? I don't know which is the case...or even which would be worse.

• Posted at 10:11 PM · LINK

Sunday Evening Emmy Blogging

In this message a few days ago, we discussed the dilemma of whoever had to decide who to include and exclude for this year's Emmy Award "In Memoriam" montage. I posted fifty names and said they'd probably feature 20 or 25. The montage aired this evening had 29 people in it, seven of whom were not on my list. Here's who they had in it...

Dennis Weaver, Barnard Hughes, Mrs. Philo T. Farnsworth, Don Adams, Dan Curtis, Lew Anderson, Ralph Edwards, Curt Gowdy, Robert Sterling, Michael Piller, Red Buttons, Mike Douglas, Scott Brazil, Tony Franciosa, Phyllis Huffman, Darren McGavin, Gloria Monty, Jan Murray, Pat Morita, Al Lewis, Maureen Stapleton, Buck Owens, Jack Warden, Don Knotts, Robert Wise, John Spencer, Louis Nye, Shelley Winters and Richard Pryor.

And there was a separate tribute to Aaron Spelling. To save you comparing lists, here's the roster of those who didn't make the cut...

June Allyson, Lloyd Bochner, Harvey Bullock, Jean Byron, Hamilton Camp, Franklin Cover, Robert Donner, Marty Farrell, Bud Freeman, Skitch Henderson, Douglas Hines, Bruce Johnson, Jerry Juhl, Pat McCormick, Sheree North, Lou Rawls, Charles Rocket, Rick Rhodes, Nipsey Russell, Vincent Schiavelli, Richard Snell, Wendie Jo Sperber, Mickey Spillane, Harold J. Stone, Amzie Strickland, Lennie Weinrib and Jack Wild.

I had Bob Denver in the list of possibles but I think he was covered last year. Beyond that, a couple of omissions surprised me. Nipsey Russell, Pat McCormick and Skitch Henderson did an awful lot of television. Jerry Juhl was a mainstay of The Muppets. Rick Rhodes had an awful lot of Emmys. But I suppose they had to draw the line somewhere and wherever they draw it, you could say, "Hey, what about So-and-So?" I was also surprised that they closed with Richard Pryor instead of Don Knotts.

This may all sound morbid, and I suppose it is. But I've lately known a few folks who were terribly hurt that their loved one, recently departed, was not deemed of sufficient import to make the "In Memoriam" montage. The suggestion has been made that the Emmys and Oscars should do away with such segments completely, and there's a good argument for that. Trouble is, when a Johnny Carson or a Bob Hope dies, you have to say something...and then the door is wide open. If you can mention Carson, why can't you mention this other guy who was almost as important? Or someone will argue that someone else was as important as Carson...and so on.

I haven't watched the whole show yet. I may or may not be back later with more comments on the telecast.

• Posted at 8:26 PM · LINK

Roast Beef

Speaking of William Shatner, as we must: I took time out the other day to watch Comedy Central's William Shatner Roast. Why did I do this when it would have been much simpler to shove a sharpened, #2 Dixon-Ticonderoga pencil up my nose...and the result would have been approximately the same? Beats the heck outta me.

I don't even fault the show. I fault me for not knowing better. The appeal of a roast when done properly is that (a) it's entertaining and (b) there's some genuine affection and camaraderie displayed towards the roastee. Neither occurs much on these roasts because — taking the latter first — the roasters rarely seem to have that much to do with the roastee. Jeffrey Ross, who probably knows Shatner about as well as my gardener does, is becoming the groundhog of Comedy Central. He puts in these annual appearances. showing up to insult total strangers and casting a shadow that signals we're going to have six more weeks of Bea Arthur penis jokes.

Yeah, they had a few folks present who'd worked with Shatner, like George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. But neither turned into a comedian at the rostrum and neither convinced me they had any particular affection for the honoree. Takei's presence seemed like it was because one of the producers said, "Hey, gay jokes are easy and we can't make any about Shatner. Has anyone who was on that show become a flaming spectacle? Sulu? Great. Book him at once!"

As for the humor content, it's tough for a show to make you laugh when the average punch line goes something like this...

No, but people all over Hollywood know William Shatner is a great actor. Of course, these are the same people who [BLEEP] that [BLEEP] put his [BLEEP]ing sh[BLEEP] in a bowl of Sugar Frosted [BLEEP]s."

I made that one up but you get the point. Half the time, you know what they said because of context and maybe even because they deliberately bleeped the "f" word in a way that made sure you heard a fraction of the "f" at the beginning and a strong "k" sound at the end. It's kind of a fake bleep designed to pretend they complied with rules. ("What do you mean you heard it? I definitely had them bleep that word. It's not my fault if the engineer was a thousandth of a second late.")

But then the other half the time, you don't know what was said and it's like some sick Sudoku game where you sit there, mentally plugging each of Mr. Carlin's Seven Dirty Words into the blanks to see if the sentence makes any sense. If it doesn't and you still care, you can either go to the Comedy Central website where there are online, unbleeped clips...or you can pay good money for the DVD. I'm guessing they hope for the second option.

There are, of course, some very funny, pithy lines here and there — how many hours did they tape to get the hour they aired? Three? Five? — but there are an awful lot where the joke, such as it is, is just crude and the laugh, if any, is over the fact that someone had the gall to dive that deep in search of a line. A friend who almost worked on the Shatner Roast was told that the only "taboo" subject was Mr. Shatner finding his wife dead in their swimming pool...and you know, it's almost a shame to close off such a fertile topic for humor. It's especially sad because the really, really painful insult that's "edgy" without being funny is what it's all about on these programs. It's when you get to see the acting abilities of target, dais and audience put to their fullest test as, knowing full well cameras are on them, they pretend to laugh. (Anyone remember the Chevy Chase Roast when most of those in the room couldn't even pretend?)

I like roasts when they're full of funny people who have a genuine respect or warmth for one another. Those usually flow from pre-existing relationships with speakers performing for each other, as opposed to playing to a mass TV audience. Televised roasts are generally packaged affairs based on who's available and who's willing to appear for scale. When Dean Martin did them, they were just as bogus but at least most of those performers knew one another before Tape Day and the lines weren't as nasty...which made it seem less phony when the speaker did the usual switch at the conclusion of their speech, abruptly going from calling the person an anal sphincter to saying, "I've always loved you and it's an honor to appear here to honor you."

With Dino's roasts, you weren't sitting there wondering why the "honoree" subjected himself to them, and almost wishing he'd leap up and tell everyone off for real, then storm from the set. Why did Shatner agree? He must have known it would mean sitting there for hours of taping, grinning like a demented ventriloquist as people he barely knew read quips based on the (arguable) premise that everyone agrees he's a terrible actor with no humility, no hair, no respect for his co-workers and not enough intregrity to decline any offer that gets him in front of a camera and pays...

...and maybe I just answered my own question. Okay, fine. Now I can work on the question of why I watched the thing. I suspect it has something to do with being stupid...

• Posted at 3:26 PM · LINK

Zero Tolerance

National Public Radio has a feature up on the life of Samuel Joel Mostel, AKA "Zero." It spotlights Jim Brochu and his one-man show...which have now actually been mentioned on this site more times than George W. Bush, Jack Kirby, orange snack food, and me combined. In fact, one more mention of Mostel on this page and I'm renaming the whole damn weblog, jews from me. But it's a good piece of about eight minutes so go listen to it over here.

• Posted at 11:28 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I should warn you: This will run twelve minutes and there's a strong possibility that William Shatner is in it. I'm not saying he is and I'm not saying he isn't...just that you should be ever vigilant and on the alert.

Some weeks ago, I linked to a batch of clips (here and here) from an installment of Night of 100 Stars. These were specials that ran on ABC in the eighties, each of which featured well more than a hundred stars, even if you adopted a more realistic definition of the word "star" than the producers did. Most of the celebs didn't do much more than show up and walk out on stage but if you just wanted to look at familiar faces, you were probably in ecstasy.

Here, from one of those specials, is a salute to whatever was then on television (1985). It has Hal Linden, Michele Lee and Nancy Dussault singing a song that must have taken a month to pre-record, thanks to rhymes that probably gave the lyricist a hernia. I'll caution you one more time it's long...so long that it exceeded You Tube's ten minute time limit and had to be split into two pieces. And of course, I already told you that Shatner might be in it. If you're comfortable with all that, proceed at your own risk and click away.

And then, here's part two of the presentation...

• Posted at 1:33 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Molly Ivins on "activist judges." Roughly speaking these days, an Activist Judge is anyone who for any reason doesn't decide a case the way you want to see it decided.

• Posted at 1:30 AM · LINK