I'm forever plugging Frank Ferrante's uncanny Groucho show here and with good reason. This guy Ferrante really does transform himself into Julius "Groucho" Marx for two hours of gaiety, frivolity and the good kind of Marxism. The only thing wrong with the show is that he never seems to do it in or around Los Angeles.
A week from today, March 19, he'll be about as close to L.A. as he's been in years. He'll be in San Bernardino at the Sturges Center for the Fine Arts. I just Mapquested it and from the corner of Hollywood and Highland, just to pick an arbitrary starting point, it's 60 miles. They say "1 hour, 15 minutes" or "2 hours in traffic." I've driven farther and longer for worse entertainment.
The following weekend, he'll be in Easton, Pennsylvania and then Hampton, Virginia...and then in early April, he does a whole week near Syracuse, New York, followed by gigs in San Rafael, California and Newton. Massachusetts. Get the details here. I don't know anyone who's seen this show who hasn't loved it...and I know a lot of people who've seen it.
Chadwick Matlin discusses the current financial health of the TiVo company, which is losing money selling TiVos but making money suing those who infringe its patents. I have no idea what the future holds for the company — it may have everything to do with how judges rule — but I sure don't want to see it go away, even though almost-comparable products are available from others. I've had a TiVo since the days when I had to explain to every single person I knew what the hell that thing was and why they'd want one.
Those of you interested in a career as a professional writer would do well to keep an eye on the blog of my one-time partner, Dennis Palumbo. Dennis is a writer but he's also a therapist who specializes in the problems of creative people such as writers. He's smart and sane about a field which is not always either of those things. This blog post will give you a good introduction to the guy and then you can find your way around from there.
I can't think of a man, woman, child or animal alive today who's funnier than Tim Conway. Okay, you all know that. What some folks don't know is that Mr. Conway has a thriving business, playing all over the country with a wonderful live show. He used to do it with Harvey Korman or sometimes with Don Knotts. Now, he tours with the equally-mirthful Chuck McCann...and the only downside to that is that whenever Chuck and I talk about getting together for lunch, he says, "I'd love to...but I have to go to Jerkwater, Alabama [or wherever] with Tim and do two shows." My loss is your gain, Jerkwater.
Also touring with them is Louise DuArt, a terrific impressionist I met whilst working for Sid and Marty Krofft. Louise was our all-purpose actress/impressionist. She was amazing. We'd go to her and say, "We have an idea for a sketch — you as Cher and Billy Barty (another member of the Krofft Repertory Company) as Sonny Bono." And Louise, who at the time had never tried to impersonate Cher, would say, "Okay, I'll work on it." She'd go home and then the next day, Cher would walk into my office. I always thought we could have asked her to learn to do Billy Barty and the next day, Louise would have figured out some way to make herself three-foot-nine.
She appears with Tim and Chuck, doing her own stand-up and playing what one might call the "Carol Burnett" roles in some of their sketches...and it's really a wonderful evening in the theater. You might want to check this schedule to see if they're coming your way soon. You have to watch carefully because when they're there, they're only there for a night or two and those tend to sell out rapidly. Tomorrow night, they're at the Pechanga Casino in Temecula and then late in April, they hit Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri and Mississippi. Here's a little commercial that Tim recorded that various cities use to promote their appearances...
I dunno if you've all been following this moronic argument, voiced most loudly by Dick Cheney's daughter, that lawyers who represent those accused of terrorism are doing so because, deep down, they want to see terrorists free to roam our boulevards and kill more Americans. I have no great love for lawyers as a whole but I like and respect certain ones and, you know, some of them do have something to do with the law functioning properly. When the law functions as intended, we all benefit. Even the sickest, most reprehensible ax murderer is entitled to counsel and that doesn't mean the attorney who represents him is in favor of ax-murdering. The attorney is just in favor of our justice system functioning as it's supposed to.
I no longer remember enough about the case to give the specifics but back in the early seventies, there apeared to be a serial-type killer in some town in Northern California. A man was accused of — I think it was — nine murders. There was pretty solid evidence against him on one or two and enough similarities to the other cases that he was charged with all nine and it looked like he'd be easily convicted of them all. A court-appointed lawyer stepped in and took a lot of heat for even representing the man. People protested outside the attorney's office with the predictable arguments: The accused is guilty as sin. A monster who did what he did doesn't deserve a trial, let alone a lawyer. Let's string him up and not waste our tax dollars. Et cetera.
Well, obviously, I'm bringing this up because that "conventional" wisdom was wrong. The lawyer proved that the defendant was innocent in six of the cases. He did hard time for the other three — he may still be doing it for all I know — but he had nothing to do with the other six. I recall some suggestion that the cops and prosecutors knew or suspected as much but they had these unsolved murder cases on their hands and it seemed convenient to just blame this guy so those cases could be marked "closed." Later, there were actually some arrests made in those six cases — arrests that probably would not have been made if the first guy had been convicted of all nine.
It was to our advantage — society's, that is — that the defendant had a fair trial with actual legal representation. It helps us to make certain that the guilty are truly guilty and that the precise nature of their guilt is accurately determined.
One of the troubling things for some people about Guantanamo has been the number of detainees who, by the Bush administration's admissions and actions, should never have been there at all. Some were there for years and that doesn't help us one bit. It hurts us, in fact. But Dick "we never made mistakes" Cheney is angry (I guess) that some lawyers participated in a process that pointed some of that out. Fouad al-Rabiah was kept in prison for seven years after authorities had determined he had done nothing to warrant arrest and that there was no crime with which they could charge him. The lawyers who helped free him didn't "help the enemy." This guy wasn't the enemy. But they did point out where the Bush-Cheney policies had done enormous damage to an innocent man.
After I wrote the above, I noticed that my BBQ-dining buddy Kevin Drum wrote on the same topic yesterday. He links to this piece by Orin Kerr that makes a major point: There is this anger against lawyers for arguing that certain detainees be freed. Why is there no anger directed at the judges who said in response, "Yeah, you're right," and freed them? I guess lawyers are an easier target...and I suspect some of those lawyers were Bush appointees and the Cheney forces can't very well admit/argue that they put terrorist sympathizers on the bench, can they?
Hey, you know who that is? That's a rather old photo of my friend and hero, Stan Freberg. Stan is an actor (on camera and voice), a writer, a director, a producer, a composer, a puppeteer and an all-around satirist. As a kid, I got a lot of my sense of funny from listening to funny records he made and watching funny cartoons in which he did funny voices and later, watching all those funny commercials he made. And the thing about Stan was never just that he was funny. He was always smart funny.
Our friends over at Shokus Internet Radio will be saluting (and welcoming) that smart funny guy next week. Commencing Monday, two of their shows will feature Freberg-intensive programming. In the descriptions I'm about to give you, I'm using West Coast times...so add hours or subtract depending on your time zone.
Crazy College, heard at 2 PM each day, will look at Stan's United States of America records. Volume One has been called either the funniest historical work ever or the most historical comedy album...or something like that. Anyway, it's a grand and silly look at the founding and evolution of this nation.
Joe Bev's Cartoon Carnival, which follows at 3 PM, will cover some of Stan's other great recordings as well as his 1957 radio series in which he appeared with Daws Butler, June Foray and Peter Leeds...and Joe tells me he's also including a few of Stan's great commercials.
Then! On Wednesday, and rerunning for six days after that, Stu's Show (4 PM to 6 PM) will welcome as its guest...Stan Freberg! I'll tell you more about that as the day draws near but I figured you might want to plan your week accordingly. In fact, you might want to practice listening to this fine, free radio station. Point your browser to Shokus Internet Radio and click where they tell you to click. Lots of folks tell me they've given it a try and gotten hooked.
March 11, 2010
