That's my pal Randy West on the left. Randy is a professional announcer and warm-up wizard specializing in game shows. He recently lent his talents to the new Newlywed Game for episodes yet to air, then returned to his regular gig in Las Vegas. There, he announces for the live version of The Price is Right (the one I wrote about here) and follows in the footsteps of the King of Game Show Announcers, the late Johnny Olson.
Somehow, Randy also found the time to write a book about his friend and idol — Johnny Olson, A Voice in Time. It's the story of a pioneer of early television. Johnny did zillions of hours of shows, good and bad, sometimes hosting but usually announcing. He was so facile at audience warm-ups that Jackie Gleason insisted on having his every show preceded by a Johnny Olson warm-up. That was relatively simple when Mr. Gleason did his shows from New York since that was where Johnny was then based. But then Gleason relocated to Miami Beach, Florida...and the show paid to fly Olson down each week to do the honors.
I've yet to read Randy's book on Johnny but he's an expert on the topic with a good understanding of how the job goes, so I'm eager to get a copy. If you're similarly eager, Randy's selling them over on this page of his website. You can also order your copy from the publisher or from Amazon. I get a little commission if you order from Amazon but if you order from Randy, you can get your copy autographed by him. Randy's site accepts PayPal or Plinko chips.
I don't know how many of you are familiar with a very silly man named Dayton Allen. Dayton was a member of Steve Allen's little stock company of funny people and he was one of the main performers (voicing puppets and playing characters) on Howdy Doody. He also did a lot of cartoon voice work including all or almost all of the voices on Deputy Dawg and was heard in a lot of commercials.
Around 1960, he did a whole series of little 5-minute TV shows that looked like they were shot for about a dollar each. The more elaborate ones may have cost two dollars. They also sold for very little money and a lot of TV stations around the country bought them, figuring it would be handy to have that kind of "filler" material around. If a movie ran 75 minutes, you could drop in a couple of Dayton Allen shows to pad out the time and start the next show on the half-hour. They were easy to watch and the canned laughter sure enjoyed them a lot. Needless to say, we have an example of one here...
The Washington Post, once so despised by Richard Nixon, has morphed into a (somewhat) right-wing newspaper. It's also becoming damn sloppy with facts. Yesterday, trying to argue that President Obama was undeserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, they offered an alternative. It should have gone, they insisted, to the late Neda Agha-Soltan, who died a publicized, defiant death during the Iranian uprising. You could certainly make the case for her to have gotten the award instead...except for the fact that, as James Fallows notes, the Nobel Prize rules prohibit posthumous honors. Why is an editorial about the Nobel Prize being written by someone who didn't do the five minutes of research necessary to find that out?
Frank Rich reminds us — and boy, do we need to keep this in mind — that in matters relating to Afghanistan and Iraq and where we should deploy our military — John McCain has been wrong an amazing 100% of the time. So have a lot of Republicans, neo-con or otherwise, but McCain is in permanent residence on the Sunday talk shows where he does a good job of sounding reasonable and moderate and prudent as he tells us how best to get our troops killed and to make things worse overseas.
My initial reaction to Barack Obama's Nobel Prize was probably a lot like yours: "Uh, isn't this a little premature?" And I do think on some level, it was bestowed because the Nobel committee wasn't allowed to give out a negative award to the Bush administration for achieving the precise opposite of what this award was intended to honor.
But as I read all the different op-eds and viewpoints, I'm drifting to the view of folks like Joan Walsh and Juan Cole who think it makes sense. I also don't think it's a huge deal if the Nobel Prize is given to the undeserving. The world didn't end when Kissinger got one and that was like giving a humanitarian award to Hannibal Lector. The Nobel Prize is just the opinion of a bunch of people whose names we don't know and whose actions we don't care about the other 364 days of the year.
Last week, Turner Classic Movies ran (and I TiVoed) There's a Girl in My Soup, a 1970 movie starring Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn. It was one of those "romantic comedies" where two people who seem like they don't belong together meet and eventually fall in love, then fight, then fall in love some more, etc. The only unique thing about this one was that...
...they don't wind up together at the end. I saw it when it first came out and all I could remember was that Peter Sellers played an arrogant putz, that Goldie Hawn walked around naked for about four seconds, and that the opening titles were kinda bouncy and cute. I couldn't even remember if, apart from the four seconds and the titles, I even liked it.
So I watched it again last night. I liked the four seconds, the titles and not much else. Here's everything I liked except for the four seconds...
A couple of e-mails this morn remind me that I never mentioned here that Kirby: King of Comics also received an Eisner Award in San Diego in the category, "Best Comics-Related Book." But I was present at that convention and made the awkward, overlong acceptance speech there.
My book Kirby: King of Comics won two Harvey Awards last evening in a ceremony held at the Baltimore Comic-Con. One was in the category, "Best biographical, historical or journalistic presentation." The other was the "Special Award for Excellence in Presentation." Had I been present, I would have made two awkward, overlong acceptance speeches, much like the one I made in San Diego, thanking the family and many friends of Jack Kirby, Charlie Kochman and his fine crew at Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Neil Gaiman and all the folks who voted. And I would have added that it's pretty damn easy to put together a good-looking book of Jack Kirby art.
October 12, 2009
