This blog may be offline and unreachable for short periods of time over the next few days. Someone along the path between me and you is upgrading some things and fixing others. Any outages you experience should not last long.

Randy Rainbow is back with a new musical lament and it's one of his best…

Here's another great song from the musical, Camelot by Lerner and Loewe.

In the late seventies, I had a brief pen-pal relationship with Alan Jay Lerner which surprised me in that he spent a fair amount of time writing replies to a total stranger thousands of miles away. I have no idea what became of those letters but I recall that in one, he told me that Camelot had been a complete disaster in its out-of-town tryouts. It was an hour too long and audiences walked out on it every night.

Closing the show was out of the question. Since it was the first musical this creative team — him, Loewe and Moss Hart — had done since My Fair Lady, they had a huge advance sale. Its backers (CBS, I believe) had no intention of refunding all that money.

The one life-giving moment in the proceedings, he wrote, was this song, sung by a then-largely-unknown Robert Goulet. Mr. Lerner wrote that for most of the out-of-town run, he would watch that number and wish the rest if the show worked as well as that few minutes did. Here it is sung by Jordan Donica…

A reader of this blog named Mark Crowther wrote to ask me, "If The Floor is filmed in Ardmore in Ireland, where are the contestants from? Are they Irish, are they Americans flown in for the recording or, worst of all, are they Irish pretending to be American?"

I really don't know. But I'll bet there's someone reading this who does and they can write and tell me and I can pass it on to everyone.

Here's another show tune by Lerner and Loewe that I like — and not just because it decrees that Winter ends each year on my birthday. It's the title tune from Camelot, which is one of those musicals where I love certain moments but perhaps not the totality. It doesn't get produced often, in part because it's a pretty expensive show to stage properly…

The Price is Right was one of the zillion-and-eight beloved TV shows that taped at what an announcer often announced was "Television City in Hollywood." It was actually more like "Television City, Hollywood Adjacent."

This was when it was the L.A. home of the CBS TV network. Among the shows I saw taped there were The Red Skelton Hour, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, All in the Family (before it moved elsewhere), The Carol Burnett Show and…well, many others. I worked oh a couple of shows there including one with Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan.

Not long ago, CBS sold the whole place to a firm that wanted to build a big, giant multi-use mall there. I thought and still think we're talking about an area that didn't/doesn't need a big, giant multi-use mall and the gridlocked traffic that will come with it. The streets in that area are already too difficult to get through without a big, giant multi-use mall there. It'll be worse with all the additional people who will be going to work there each day.

My cynical side has a theory which goes something like this: If they'd applied to build a huge shopping mall and office complex there, they'd never have gotten the necessary permits from the city. So they decided to make it a shopping/office/TV production facility and they convinced enough people that it would keep TV production in Hollywood — well, close to Hollywood — and continue the grand tradition of that real estate.

And that cynical side further suspects that it will wind up being just a huge shopping mall and office complex with little or no TV production on the premises. That may even have been the plan from Day One. I hope I'm wrong.

It looks pretty definite that The Price is Right is never coming back there. It now tapes at Haven Studios out in Glendale and there are rumors that it may leave the state (Family Feud now tapes in Georgia) or even the country (The game show The Floor and some others tape at Ardmore Studios in Bray, Ireland.)

If you've watched The Price is Right since it moved to Glendale, you've seen it get cheaper-looking and they've lately cut down to one prize model and sometimes, when a car is won, they don't bring a car into the studio for the winner to touch and sit in. They show a photo of a car. Clearly, the current producers are trying hard to lower the cost of production to keep the show profitable for CBS.  That isn't easy when you're doing a show that folks tune in to watch people like themselves win expensive cars, highly-priced trips and large sums of cash.

And a number of folks, including a former producer, are making noise that the show could/should save money by replacing its host Drew Carey with someone a lot cheaper. Seems to me these are some of the same people who, back in 2007, predicted that the show would die a quick death with Carey as its star…which it didn't. Personally — and yes, I know this is blasphemy to some — I thought it was a better show without Bob Barker, at least the way Barker was the last dozen seasons.

Carey isn't trying to make it The Drew Carey Show the way Barker tried to make it The Bob Barker Show. Carey also seems to really be rooting for the contestants to win. If he doesn't seem to be making as much of a contribution, I think it's because there was an obvious decision to trim the chit-chat, along with the mini-commercials for the products being bid upon, and make the show move at a faster pace.

I'm not a watch-every-day kind of Price is Right fan but it never disappoints me when I tune it in. I'm genuinely impressed with how they keep it moving, keep it moving, keep it moving. There may be something to the argument that it would do just fine with a host who was paid less but I don't think Drew Carey isn't earning his money. I just think the show has lasted this long because whoever was in charge at any given time knew when to pick up the pace.

The latest from Our Man in Great Britain, Jonathan Pie…

That's all this is: A funny Letterman bit…

Jesse Jackson (not that Jesse Jackson) wrote the following…

I've been following the blog for years, I always appreciate your perspective on Comics, Politics, Entertainment and our mutal hate of Kandy Corn (though when you mix it with Spanish Peanuts, it is not horrible).

One of the things I love reading about is your Brushes with Greatness. Mel Torme during Christmas, Groucho at a Restaurant (I think), etc, etc. Has there been someone in the entertainment world that you would have liked to meet and didn't or someone where it was very close to meeting and you didn't?

Yes. I'm still kicking myself that I missed a chance to go visit this man…

I was with Groucho on three occasions. The first was at the brunch buffet table at Hillcrest Country Club. The second was several years later on the second day of my employment — and my first tape day — on Welcome Back, Kotter. The third was a few weeks later at an party at his home on N. Hillcrest Road. He was only really Groucho (mentally) on the first of these.

(That second day of Kotter was really one of the most amazing days of my life but I can't write a blog post to explain all that happened that day…a book maybe but not a blog post.)

By then, I had overcome a fear I'd had of meeting famous people.  When I was twelve, I missed my chance to meet the man in the above photo. Stan Laurel was, to me at the time, about as famous as famous people got.  Back in 1997, I wrote an article about how I did not meet Stan Laurel.  If you want to read about how dumb/cowardly I was when I was twelve, you can read that article here.

Who else would I have liked to have met?  I can think of plenty of people who were alive and who stopped being that way before I could have met them: Buster Keaton, Walt Disney, the other Marx Brothers, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Lemmon, Stephen Sondheim, et al.  A more interesting list might be of people I met but not for very long: Jack Benny, Neil Simon, Chuck Jones, Bob Newhart, Moe Howard, William Gaines, Soupy Sales, Bud Abbott, Johnny Carson…I could go on and on.

I can also think of a few I wanted to meet, did and wish I hadn't.  But that didn't happen often.  You know the saying about never meeting your heroes?  Not many disappointed me but a few did.

Before I get off this topic, here's a repost of a piece of advice I gave on this blog a few years ago…

If you ever get to meet someone you've admired who has had a long career, try to ask them about something they did that not everyone asks them about. When I was introduced to Robert Morse, he was so happy that I knew of things he'd done besides How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, including projects that were relatively recent. When I met Billy Wilder, he was pleased that I wanted to know about Ace in the Hole instead of Some Like It Hot.

Thank you for the question, Jesse. I hope this is the kind of answer you wanted.

The Los Angeles Times has an article about the second coming of Souplantation and it confirms that they'll be reactivating the old, vacant-since-all-the-Souplantations-closed location in Fountain Valley. It's at 11179 Talbert Ave. — which is right near a Costco, as I recall — and the Times says that building is 7,800 square feet.

This is cause for hope because while I dined at a great many Souplantations, the most convenient for me was the location on La Cienega Boulevard in the Beverly Connection shopping mall. And that old location is 8,663 square feet and it's been empty all this time and is listed as available for lease.

Meanwhile, the fine writer of comedy Arnie Kogen wrote me to say…

I'm retired. Live a quiet life now. No more pressures, no more deadlines. Then, this week in your blog, I saw this…

EXCITING SOUP NEWS

My world was rocked forever. My blood pressure spiked to 249/120. An ambo rushed me to Cedars. Damn you, Mark!

Hang in there, Arnie. The La Cienega location is within walking distance — even for me — from the Cedars-Sinai hospital. If you can last until they reopen it (assuming they reopen it), I'll bring you soup from there. And a couple of their cornbread muffins.

When I was very young and very small, one of my favorite people to see on television was Paul Winchell.  He was a ventriloquist with (primarily) two dummies — Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smif.  He and his wooden pals were on TV a lot and my most treasured toy might have been a kid-sized Jerry Mahoney I had.  Today, I own full-sized, working replicas of Jerry and Knuck.  They're in my living room and every time I look at them, I smile and every time my cleaning lady walks in there and sees them seated on the couch, she screams.

As you may be aware if you've read much of this blog, much of my career has involving getting to know and/or work with as many people as possible who entertained me when my age was in single digits. Above is a photo from a recording session for the Garfield and Friends TV show I worked on. The lady in the doorway is my great friend, Jewel Shepard. The man seated is Jim Davis. I'm the guy with suspenders and the man at right is Paul.

Most of the folks in this "got to know and/or work with them" category turned out to be very nice but Paul was…well, kind of strange.  If you read his hard-to-find autobiography, Winch, you know what I mean. Another great ventriloquist I worked with, Shari Lewis, described Paul as "a ventriloquist with Tourette Syndrome."

He was also an inventor and you may know how he made a significant contribution to the invention of the Artificial Heart. Paul developed a lot of things, some of which he used in his act. One of them was Ozwald. Who, you might wonder, was Ozwald? Well, this was Ozwald…

Paul used Ozwald in a lot of his TV appearances, usually by having the director flip the image upside-down. In 1965 when Paul launched a popular syndicated kids' show, Ozwald was featured though by then, his name had been changed to Mr. Goody-Good. You also didn't see a lot of Oswald the Rabbit in comic books after the Kennedy Assassination.

I doubt the home version of Paul's Ozwald sold very well. It looks like something you'd play with for about ten minutes and then never open the box again. A close relative of his turned up in the 1964 beach party movie, For Those Who Think Young with Bob Denver supplying the mouth and chin. Winchell told me he got money for that but I'm not sure if they paid him before the film came out or he sued afterwards. My thanks to my pal Mike Clark for helping us all remember Ozwald…

Forty years ago today, my friend Frank Ferrante got into the Groucho business with both feet and a painted-on 'stache. It was the debut of Groucho: A Life in Revue, an off-Broadway play written by Arthur Marx and Bob Fisher. It wasn't the first time he'd played the man but it was when he really turned pro and he's been doing it — along with some other things — ever since.

I've seen him perform as Groucho more than a dozen times and he never fails to delight audiences that often span a wide range of ages. An awful lot of people have thanked me for sending them his way…and I've also seen him perform not as Groucho. In fact, he's currently playing his other identity, Caesar, in a show called The Soiled Dove in Alameda, California. But don't worry: He'll be back to Grouchoing soon, doing it all over Arizona in November. Check out where to see him in some identity on this page. One of the most talented performers I know.

Here's another video of the "bows" at the end of Boop! The Musical when it was on Broadway. This is from a different performance than this one. I am not as obsessed with this show as it may appear.

The folks who now own the Souplantation business have revealed that the one they're going to open in California will be in Fountain Valley. That's a town about 45 miles south of Los Angeles.

They used to have one at 11179 Talbert Ave. in that city and that building has been vacant ever since the chain closed all its eateries. Online Souplantation fans are therefore assuming that they'll be reopening there. Since it's just off the 405 freeway, that would be a convenient place for me to stop on my way to or from San Diego next Comic-Con. Actually, no spot in Fountain Valley is that far from the 405 freeway.

In the window below, I've embedded a video of an episode of The Red Skelton Show from sixty (60) years ago but I've set it to start playing in the middle of the episode when Red introduces his musical guests, Simon and Garfunkel.  This has to be one of their first TV appearances, perhaps the first ever on a primetime network show.

You will rarely see video of performers who so clearly are rooted in different generations.  And you can see Paul and Art thinking, "Do we really have to do this to become famous?"

The window will show you the rest of that show from that point on.  You can quit after the Simon and Garfunkel number or you can keep watching and see a jazzy dance number from Red's house dancers and then a Silent Spot pantomime sketch with Red.

Or you can even move the little slider all the way to the left and watch the entire episode.  You'll see Red do his monologue, then there's a sketch which has him running around the studio audience.  That's Studio 33 at CBS Television City where, among hundreds of other programs, The Price is Right taped for many years.  So did Carol Burnett.

That's followed by a sketch with Red and his guest Mickey Rooney.  And in all the sketches, you'll see Henry Corden, a busy actor you might know best as the second voice of Fred Flintstone.  Take your pick.