It was Bob Williams who had the act with the dog that didn't do anything. See? I remembered the "Bob" part. Thanks to Bruce Reznick, Stu Shostak, Kevin Greenlee and Dan Varner, who all e-mailed me within ten minutes of each other. Two of them also suggested this video link to a clip from Hollywood Palace. The first minute or so is a montage of novelty performers and the last few are Bob Williams with his dog, Louie. I think he had a couple of different dogs over the years, including one named Red Dust.
It's odd...I remember thinking this was the funniest act in the world when I was younger. Now, I'm a little more conscious of the fact that some animal acts are not very good to the animals and I can't help wondering how this pooch was treated. Maybe Louie was well fed and very happy but wondering about it gets in the way of enjoying the act for me.
I worked on a show once where they tried to book Bob Williams. As I recall, he wanted a sum of money that our producer thought was excessive and some agent had an imitation act that was priced more reasonably...so they hired this other guy, who wasn't nearly as funny. He treated his dogs (he used two) quite well and we even had a Humane Society rep on the set who concurred. So I tell myself Williams did likewise. Here's the clip. Bob Williams and Louie turn up for the second half of it.
There used to be a performer with a "dog act" where the dog did nothing. He'd trained (or maybe doped) the dog to just sit there and do nothing while he delivered a monologue that started with making excuses for the dog. It then segued to talking about his wife and his mother-in-law and the usual stand-up topics, and every so often, he'd turn to the dog and say, "Not going to do anything, huh?" A very funny act.
I remember seeing the guy on Ed Sullivan's show and on Hollywood Palace and all the expected venues. I remember reading that he made less money doing the act than he earned suing others who ripped off his act. What I don't remember — and someone just asked me — is the guy's name. Can anyone out there supply it? I'm thinking Bob Something.
On Friday, a couple of stops after the D.M.V., I went to Costco, intending to buy one particular piece of electronic equipment and then leave. Yeah, like there's a chance of that happening. The way things turned out, I found the item I'd come in for and put it in my basket. Then, since I hadn't eaten all day, I went to the rear of the store for some of what I call Costco Dim Sum. Those are the wonderful little free samples of food that the ladies in the shower caps dispense, in and around the refrigeration cases and at the ends of some aisles. Since Gastric Bypass Surgery reduced the length 'n' breadth of my stomach, I can just about make a meal out of free samples and, of course, the price is ideal.
Except, of course, that Costco employs the same principle via which one suckers one's self in Las Vegas casinos. They offer you something free but you have to go all the way to the rear of the building to collect it. In Vegas, they know that on your way to and/or from the back, you'll be tempted to drop a few bucks in a slot machine or at a Blackjack table. At Costco, you'll probably pick up a case or two of Chips Ahoy or Kikkoman Soy Sauce — a particularly tasty combination, I hear. I ended up selecting a lot of stuff I didn't go in for...and to top off my own foolishness, I decided against purchasing that piece of electronic equipment I'd come in for. Feeling just as sheepish as you'd imagine, I returned it to the shelf and just bought all the stuff I didn't stop in for.
Some of what I hauled home were food items. I bought a fresh, just-cooked rotisserie chicken and it was very good. I bought a tub of their rotisserie chicken noodle soup (made, I suppose, from the chickens that are cooked at the store but not purchased within X hours) and it was not very good. But the real find was packaged corned beef from the Carnegie Deli.
I love the Carnegie in New York. I also like the Stage, which is a block away, and a place called the Ben Ash, which is across the street. I don't know which of them has the best corned beef but any of 'em are better than any corned beef you can buy in a market out here. I also like the corned beef at Canter's and several delis in my native Los Angeles but when you buy it at the counter and take it home, it doesn't keep for long. I wind up eating it when I feel like having something else.
The local Costcos now sell Carnegie Corned Beef...or you can buy Pastrami if that's your preference. What you get is 1.5 pounds of meat for about ten bucks, which ain't a bad price at all. It comes divided up into two plastic containers so you can eat three-fourths of a pound now and three-fourths of a pound next week. (The package I bought on 2/29 was dated as good 'til 3/25.) Eat it cold or stick it in the microwave for 60 seconds and eat it hot. I just did this and it's pretty good...a little tougher than what you get at a real deli but pretty darned good for the convenience of having it at home to feast upon when the mood strikes.
Meanwhile, in other food news: Last year on this site, I made a ridiculous pest of myself asking you all to lobby the Souplantation chain (aka in some states, Sweet Tomatoes) to make their creamy tomato soup a regular selection. Many of you wrote that you went in, tried it, agreed with me it was dee-lish and so informed the Souplantation Customer Relations people. Some of you didn't try it but you acted on faith and phoned in for my cause. Thank you all...but I'm sad to report my favorite soup is still not a constant at the chain. It's probably another one of those Antonin Scalia decisions, subverting the will of the masses.
On the other hand, I'm happy to report that the creamy tomato soup is back for the month of March. In fact, it starts today so I'm going to pretend they brought it back in honor of my birthday...and gee, that was thoughtful of them, don't you think? I'm going to go often this month and at some point, I'll get a big "to go" container, bring it back here and enjoy it with my Carnegie corned beef. This will probably be my favorite meal for all of March, not counting the dim sum at Costco if I go there again or Carolyn's chicken pot roast if she makes it.
I don't know if I've mentioned it — probably have — but I'm very much against the idea of granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that may have violated laws in cooperating with the Bush surveillance programs. The only argument I've seen for granting that immunity is along the lines of "If we don't grant them immunity, they won't participate in the program and we need that," which is kind of an admission that what they've been doing is probably illegal. So if we need what they're doing and it was illegal, someone ought to be candid enough to just admit that and we can move on from there. Not that there's much chance of that happening.
Over on his weblog, Kevin Drum offers the interesting speculation — which sure sounds logical — that the reason the telecommunications companies aren't lobbying hard for this protection is that they've already been indemnified by the government; that our beloved treasury is on the hook to pay any fines which are levied against them. That makes sense considering that it's George W. Bush who's getting hysterical about retroactive immunity, not Ma Bell. Apparently, immunity for government officials who ordered the (probably illegal) surveillance is also being snuck in, and that obviously matters a lot to the Bush administration.
Perhaps the thing that depressed me most about the Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore (and its subsequent defense) was that it kind of killed off the idea that that august deliberative body stood above the partisan fray; that the bulk of nine justices put principle over seeing their "team" prevail. Even if you think they came to the proper conclusion, the way they did it — saying it was non-precedential, stopping the vote count as rapidly as possible, plus some of the statements made in justifying it — really made it look like five out of nine justices had worked backwards from the idea that they wanted Bush to win, and had figured out how to support that conclusion.
Before that, you always had the idea — and perhaps it wasn't true even then but it wasn't as hollow as it is now — that the Supreme Court would keep the Executive Branch in check. Even justices who were hailed as right-wingers and who had been appointed by Richard Nixon ruled against Nixon in his big "I'm above the law" case before them. Does anyone think Bush would lose any major case now with the Scalia mob on the bench? That it isn't his ace-in-the-hole on this whole matter of illegal surveillance?
And believe me...I'd be just as horrified at a High Court that wouldn't slap down a Democratic president who decided he had absolute power. I don't trust any politician enough to give them that latitude and I never will.
Got a goodie for you today, folks. One of my favorite comedic performers is a gentleman named Eddie Lawrence. Eddie has had an amazing and varied career. He starred on Broadway (He was in the original Bells Are Ringing). He wrote for Broadway. He's been an actor (He was in The Night They Raided Minsky's, to name one of many credits). He's an acclaimed painter. He did tons of cartoon voices and commercials. And all that pales in comparison to a series of oft-plagiarized comedy records he made in the fifties, many of which featured him as The Old Philosopher.
I first became aware of him when I was a tot watching Soupy Sales. Soupy used to have the lion puppet Pookie mime to Eddie Lawrence records and they were hilarious. I ran out, bought all I could and enjoyed the heck outta them. Years later, I had the pleasure of working briefly with Mr. Lawrence and it was so wonderful to meet him.
Here's a clip of him performing at some sort of Dr. Demento concert in, I'm guessing, the late eighties or early nineties. You may know the bit but you may not know the name of the guy who originated and performed it. It's Eddie Lawrence and here he is...
March 3, 2008
