Here's one of the most useless lists you'll ever come across: A list of fifty great places to eat a specific food item. Like, it's real handy for me to know that if I ever decide I want to try suckling pig — and I've somehow made it to age 57 without having such an urge — the place to go for it is the Montimar in Estellencs, Mallorca. I'm sure whoever designated that as the best suckling pig in the world has tried suckling pig in every other eatery that serves it. (Note that they also seem to love the suckling pig at the Lighthouse Restaurant in Cebu, Philippines. The two restaurants cannot both have the best suckling pig in the world. I sense a duel-to-the-death looming...)
I've been to exactly one of the restaurants listed here — Katz's Deli in New York where, the list says, one can get the best pastrami sandwich in the world. And when I have been to Katz's, I've always had brisket or corned beef which, by the way, were terrific.
So it's a useless list but an entertaining one. You can even fantasize about the perfect meal: Oysters as an appetizer from Strangfor Lough in Northern Ireland...then a "surf 'n' turf" composed of the steak at El Carpicho in Jimenez de Jamuz, Spain plus prawns from Casa Bigote in nearby Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain. Add in the fried potatoes from the Bomba Bar Cova in Fumada, Barcelona and finish off your meal with chocolate cake from Pierre Hermé in Paris. Or if that's too much trouble, you can go grab an In-n-Out Burger, which is what I may do. Yum.
Just came across a photo I took at the same party where someone took that photo of me with Henry Gibson. Here are three men who played judges on Boston Legal — Henry, Shelley Berman and Chuck McCann. The gent at right is Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles. This was taken at Gladstone's in Malibu, a seafood restaurant that Mayor Riordan owns. Henry lived in Malibu and he told us he hadn't been well lately and wouldn't have come if the party hadn't been so close to his home. This was taken on June 9.
This article claims — and I don't see anyone rushing to correct it — that as many as 45,000 people die each year in this country due to a lack of health insurance. I would think that number's low...and of course, it doesn't take into account people who have health insurance but it doesn't sufficiently cover the treatment they need. It also probably doesn't measure folks who don't directly die from not being insured but whose lives merely get wiped out by hospital bills.
I've had to post a lot of obits on this site for folks I know. I can think of several where I could have listed the cause of death as "couldn't afford to see a doctor." Seriously. If you want to know why I'm so militant on this topic, there you go.
Here's a link to some excerpts from what's being billed as the last in-depth interview of Larry Gelbart.
Note that in it Larry confirms that he never was a writer on Your Show of Shows. Sid Caesar had a succession of different TV series and Gelbart worked on the one Sid did after Your Show of Shows. It was called Caesar's Hour...but folks have a way of lumping all the Caesar programs together under the general umbrella of Your Show of Shows and often say that Larry (and Woody Allen and Sheldon Keller and Gary Belkin and a couple of others) worked on that series. Not so.
Also, here's a speech that Larry prepared and apparently never delivered anywhere.
Recently here, I posted an item about comic book dealer-historian Bob Beerbohm, who's having a big sale to raise money for a desperately-needed dual hip joint replacement.
Intersecting with a constant topic here, Bob is a classic example of the failings of our present health care system. He had health insurance but just when he reached the point where this surgery was mandatory — to alleviate constant pain and to keep him able to walk — his HMO dropped him. It was one of those "undisclosed prior condition" deals. If there's any humanity in Washington, we will soon see the day when human beings will not be in this horrible situation...but that will not help Bob. He needs money now.
He was originally going to have the surgery next week but his doctors have delayed it for two weeks. This is fortunate for Bob because to get the "deal" he's going to get on the procedure (a substantial discount from what it usually costs), he has to pay cash up front...and he doesn't quite have all the money. So this would be a great time to go to this page or this page and find some treasure to purchase. You'll get a bargain and you'll be doing a good deed at the same time.
When I was a kid, I loved Danny Kaye. My parents once took me to see him do "An Evening With..." at the Hollywood Bowl and he was just enchanting. He sang all his famous numbers...and he had a lot of famous numbers. This was before the Bowl had the big jumbotron video screens so if you were sitting in the cheap seats, as we were, you couldn't see the face of a performer on the stage...but with him, it almost didn't matter. Even from row ZZZ in the eleventh mezzanine or wherever we were, you could sense the sheer joy in his performance.
I still love Danny Kaye, I guess, but it got harder as a couple of books came out that said, in effect, that he was not a very nice human being. And it became even harder to love him when I started meeting performers who'd worked with the man and did not have good things to say. This kind of thing shouldn't make a difference with your enjoyment of a performer but I'm afraid that with me, it does.
Still, I can enjoy what he does...like this clip from his 1963-1967 variety show on CBS. Harvey Korman is the interviewer in the sketch. Mr. Korman was a regular on the series and when it was cancelled, he was hired by Carol Burnett for her new variety show, which taped in the same studio. So Harvey didn't even have to change parking spaces...
September 20, 2009
