Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Beat

Carolyn and I went out to hear jazz this evening...the legendary Charles Lloyd has a new quartet, playing with much younger musicians. One of them — a drummer named Eric Harland — was outstanding. I once watched Buddy Rich rehearsing and showing off with the Tonight Show band and that was the last time I heard a drummer this good. Mr. Lloyd was great, too...but that wasn't a surprise. That drummer was.

• Posted at 10:50 PM · LINK

Public Appeal

Okay, here's what I'm looking to buy and this is for my mother. I want one of those "pay as you go" cell phones where you put a few bucks of calling time on it and then you can use it whenever you want — this week, next month, the month after, etc. This is so she has a way of reaching me if her regular phone is out. But I also need one with large buttons. All the ones I've seen have tiny, dainty little buttons that won't do for someone with weak vision. Can anyone point me towards what I seek? Gracias.

• Posted at 10:45 PM · LINK

me on the radio

Gary Shapiro's radio program From The Bookshelf is heard each and every Sunday night at 9 PM on Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz California. Recently, I chatted with him about my new book, Kirby: King of Comics, and you can hear that chat — it runs a little less than half an hour — over on this page.

• Posted at 4:08 PM · LINK

Close Encounters

Our pal Kim "Howard" Johnson has been slaving away on a book I must have...a biography of Del Close, a man who was to improv comedy what Antonio Stradivari was to fiddle-making. (Come on, Evanier. You can come up with a better analogy than that.) (Not today, I can't.) Here's an article about this forthcoming volume.

• Posted at 3:30 PM · LINK

Losing It

It's been a long time since I've written about my waistline. I get lots of e-mailed inquiries about it but I never seem to be in the mood to write about something like that. Today, I'm in that mood.

My girth has been fluctuating over about a ten pound variance with no logical connection to how much I eat or how much I exercise. My doctor says this is not uncommon and that I should not pay it a lot of attention. I go up, I go down...but even up, I'm more than a hundred below where I was two years ago so I'm still happy with me.

One of the things I find amazing is that I had so little trouble breaking food addictions. I have certain faves, including the Creamy Tomato Soup that's available for the next day or so at Souplantation. But I don't actually feel the need to eat anything in particular...or, some days, anything at all.

There was a time I would have bet you serious money that I couldn't kick my habit of drinking a half-dozen carbonated, non-diet beverages per day...and if I could cut back, it would be by chug-a-lugging orange juice or something else with high sugar content. Even before I had Gastric Bypass Surgery, I gave up the Pepsis and in the 18 months after G.B.S., I slowly gave up o.j., lemonade and everything else liquid but for tomato juice and plain, old-fashioned water. I occasionally flavor the H2O with True Lemon or True Orange but otherwise, it's that or the occasional Campbell's Tomato Juice and I don't miss other drinks one bit.

Then one day close to three months ago, my "sweet tooth" completely disappeared...and I can tell you where it happened. It happened in Las Vegas during this trip. On Saturday morning, I brunched at a $7.77 buffet...and yes, I could have gone to somewhere fancier. But given my reduced stomach capacity, I didn't figure to eat enough to make a better place cost-effective and assumed even at a cheapo spread, there'd be enough tasty/edible choices to satisfy my meager dining needs.

There was...and there was also a wonderful dessert. They had a soft-serve frozen custard that was quite delightful and I made a mental Post-It™ note to return before I left to have more of that custard. Monday morn, before heading for the airport, I went to the buffet, ate my fill of fish and rice...and then realized I had no craving for the custard or any of other available desserts. You know those great little one-bite eclairs they always have in Vegas buffets? Didn't want one of them, either.

So I didn't have dessert. It was free and I didn't have dessert. Apart from one recent visit to a Chinese restaurant where I ate a fortune cookie without thinking, I haven't had a cookie, piece of cake or candy, lick of ice cream, slice of pie, doughnut or anything "desserty" since. Obviously, I get a certain amount of sugar or high fructose corn syrup in some non-dessert food items but I am in no way tempted to taste something because it's sweet. I never would have thought this possible.

I sleep better. I walk better. I have occasional odd muscle aches which my doctor says are normal and will subside. I still don't recommend Gastric Bypass Surgery to everyone because I don't think my experiences are typical. But I do recommend losing weight. It has all sorts of unexpected benefits...and every so often, you can surprise yourself with how you can do what you didn't think you could do.

• Posted at 1:26 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This is the trailer for what I think was the best Deanless movie Jerry Lewis ever made, The Bellboy. As the announcer (who I think is Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed) says, it was all shot on location at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. If I recall the history on this correctly: Jerry had finished shooting Cinderfella and Paramount had it scheduled as their summer Jerry Lewis release of 1960. Then Jerry or someone had the thought that because of that film's fairy tale nature, it would do better business as a Christmas release. Everyone at the studio agreed...but they'd promised exhibitors a summer Lewis pic. "No problem," Jerry said. "We'll make another movie in time for summer release."

The boys at Paramount said that sounded great but pointed out that Jerry was committed to play the Fountainbleu for a month and couldn't do that and make a movie in the allotted time. Again, Jerry said it was no problem: "We'll make the movie at the Fontainebleau during the day, and I'll play their showroom at night." The hotel, well aware of the publicity value, made some big financial concessions so the film could be shot very inexpensively...so that made the whole proposition sound very good to the studio.

All they needed now was a script and a director. Jerry said, "I'll handle those." He had not written and directed a film before but he'd been edging in that direction so it was a small leap. Quickly, he came up with the idea of doing a largely plotless movie with himself as a bellhop, wrote a very long script and then — at the hotel — threw out most of it in favor of freshly-improvised scenes based on what was going on there. The majority of the other actors were either members of his crew or, like Milton Berle and Joe E. Ross, performers who were playing Miami at the same time.

Some of the jokes worked and others didn't but the whole thing had a nice, friendly energy and at 71 minutes, you sure couldn't get bored. The same cannot be said for this trailer...

• Posted at 12:36 AM · LINK