As mentioned here a week or so ago, The Chicago Reader has published a nice excerpt from a book by my pal, Kim "Howard" Johnson. The book's about the late Del Close, a legend in the world of improv comedy. The excerpt is on this page and as an added bonus, they have video up of Del's last birthday party.
My favorite supermarket chain in Southern California is Gelson's, which is aka as Mayfair's in a few locales. They're very clean, well-stocked markets staffed with bright, friendly people. I go to other markets occasionally because there are a couple of items I need/crave that Gelson's doesn't have on its shelves and that's when I really appreciate the difference.
Our favorite chanteuse Shelly Goldstein informs me that Gelson's is currently running a "welcome back" special for members of the Writers Guild of America. Now through the end of April, show your WGA card at the checkout counter and they'll take a big 15% off your tab. I can think of a couple of friends who'll be very, very happy at this news. Heck, I'm even happy about it.
Okay, I'm going out for a brunch-type meeting and I don't want to leave the trap set when I'm not here. So I'm going to unset it. Looks like Operation Spay will be delayed 'til tomorrow. I hope The Kitten doesn't have an Internet connection so she can read all this.
Someone wrote to ask what kind of trap I was using. It's a Havahart (that's the brand name) model #1045. You can read all about it on this page. As you can see, there are doors on either side. You fold them upwards and then the door is held open by a little rod that connects to another rod that connects to the floor panel. When the cat (even the wrong cat) steps on the floor panel, the rods move, the one holding the door open disengages and the door slams shut, trapping the critter within. It reminds me a lot of how I wound up working for Hanna-Barbera all those years.
And the trap worked to perfection! It caught a feral cat!
Unfortunately, it caught the wrong feral cat...another neighborhood stray who apparently isn't as smart as the one I'm trying to snare. The Kitten, the one I want to take in for repairs, inspected the trap for half an hour before wandering off, untrapped. This cat, the one I just let out, got herself penned in just a few minutes. (I'd consider taking this cat in to be spayed too, but I see it already has been. They mark one ear with a little notch when they do it.)
Okay, so wrong cat released, trap rebaited. I'm hoping The Kitten didn't observe any of this and learn just how the trap works.
In the meantime, I sit here...appropriately working on a script for the new Garfield cartoon series. Maybe I should have baited the trap with lasagna.
The Kitten was waiting at the back door this morning to be fed...waiting right next to where I'd left the (unset) trap. The folks who told me how to use it said to leave it outside so the animals can get used to its presence and I did that. The Kitten seems used to its presence, which is not to say she's prepared to walk into it under her own power. The trap is a long, metal cage with spring-release doors on either end. You can set both entrances or one. I set one. At the center of the cage, there's a little floor panel and when any weight at all is put on it, it releases the door(s). I took a small amount of cat food in a paper bowl and placed it so she'd have to get all the way into the trap and stand on the floor panel to eat it.
And that's the way it's supposed to work. It hasn't yet.
She's been sniffing the trap and walking all around it and looking at me with a "What the hell is this?" look. But she was looking about as eager to step inside as I'd be to attend a
Hold on. You'll have to make up your own punch line because I think I just heard the trap spring. Gotta go check.
Young Frankenstein had its public debut in Seattle in August of '07. (Obviously, I'm talking here about the musical version which has since moved to Broadway.) Here's a news story that ran on some local channel there at the time, previewing the show.
Yes, yes...the doomsday scenario in Omega Man was biological warfare not nuclear holocaust. It was still a scenery-chewing performance from Mr. Heston.
I haven't seen it since 1970 but I remember that at the end, Heston died — he died in a lot of his films, it seems to me — and with his arms extended to suggest a Christ-on-the-cross pose. There was a line of dialogue where someone said something like, "Was he Jesus Christ?" And throughout the Criterion Theater in Santa Monica — and, I'm guessing in other movie houses around the country — you could hear everyone yell back at the screen, "No, you idiot! He's Moses!"
One other thing I recall. When Heston was playing in Detective Story down at the Ahmanson, I was dating a lady who was madly in love with him. She asked me not just to get tickets for the play but to get them as close as possible to the stage. I think she said, "If they sell tickets where I can sit on his lap during the play, I want those."
At the time, I had a friend who could get tickets to anything. You had to give him many, many pictures of deceased presidents but he could get you tickets to anything. If I'd spent enough, he probably could have gotten her onto Charlton Heston's lap but I settled for Front Row Center. The tix were not cheap so I felt entitled to play a little joke. I didn't tell her where our seats were and when we got to the Ahmanson, I led her to the last row of the top balcony, all the way on the end. The worst seats in the place. She made a comment about never having sex with me again and making sure I never had it with anyone else...whereupon I checked the stubs and announced, "Oh, wait! I had the tickets upside down," and I led her down to the front row.
She loved the seats up until the end. You'll never see this play so I'll ruin it for you and explain that Heston's character gets shot and dies at the conclusion. This involved much agonizing and screaming and final words and overacted dying gasps. It also involved some pretty realistic pyrotechnics and way too much stage blood. A lot of the bogus blood spurted out of Mr. Heston and onto the luckless folks at Front Row Center, and we went home looking like survivors of a medium-sized train wreck. A few years later, Gallagher would do the same closing bit except that his version involved a sledge hammer and a watermelon. And it was almost as funny.
April 7, 2008
