Monthly Archives: August 2011

Yes, I am aware that I promised you more info on the Slate Brothers night club. I also promised you more reporting on the Comic-Con. I've been insanely busy lately and I'm not getting to do a lot of things I want to do. The Slate Brothers stuff will be along in a few days. The Comic-Con report will be here before the convention is officially history…which it isn't until I fully unpack. Haven't had the time to do that yet, either.

What it's like to work for Trader Joe's. Apparently, there's more to it than wearing a Hawaiian shirt and answering every question that I ask, "I'm sorry but I don't think they make that anymore."

You know, that company could save a lot of money. All they have to do is send me one of every item they're considering for their stores and letting me sample it. Then if I like it and would want to buy it again and again, they could just not carry it in the first place. That would save them introducing those products at all instead of discontinuing each one after I've bought it once.

What's more insulting to a screenwriter than having nobody want to buy his or her script? How about when the police blow it up?

There are a couple of online petitions circulating to urge the folks over at Sesame Street to have Bert and Ernie marry. This is a very silly idea. As readers of this site know, I believe it is barbaric and bigoted to stop two consenting adults of any persuasion to wed…and really none of the state's business to decree that they can't. I also think it is not only inevitable that gay marriage will become legal everywhere but that eventually, those who opposed will be like those who once fought against racially-mixed marriages in this country: Ashamed to the point of, in most cases, denying they ever did that.

But Bert and Ernie? Come on. They're Muppets. They have no genitalia and no sexuality…and you know, a character is really only what its creators decide it is. The writer part of me is offended at the whole notion of outside forces with a political agenda — even a political agenda I might share — coming in and pressuring for creative changes. If Jim Henson and Frank Oz had decided Bert and Ernie were gay…okay, that would be the decision of folks with a moral right to make it.

Obviously, they did not. We've had more than 40 years of Bert and Ernie adventures without a trace of homosexual (or for that matter, heterosexual) subtext. It's not that anything sexual is right or wrong here…it's just not a part of this world. Sesame Street doesn't have to teach kids about everything. And I really don't think its target audience — kids — needs to be taught that two men can love each other. I think kids need not to be taught otherwise. For those of you who are unafraid to admit an appreciation of show tunes, there's a song in South Pacific about this. It's narrow-minded adults who need the lesson here.

One could also argue, as I would if I could stand to devote five more minutes to this whole ridiculous matter, that there's a nice lesson in Bert and Ernie not being retrofitted as gay lovers. It is possible for two men or two women to be close friends and live together and sleep in adjoining beds without their sexuality being an issue or someone saying, "They must be gay!" I don't think same-sex wedlock threatens so-called "traditional" marriages in any way. I don't think the idea that two males might just be really close friends (and nothing more) threatens gay marriages.

And what I really, really long for is the day when no one cares about or pays any attention to the straightness or gayness of other human beings. Or puppets.

As a grand wallower in Watergate — I read everything in print about that most scandalous of political scandals — I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Richard Nixon's heretofore sealed/secret grand jury testimony. It was given after he'd received his pardon from Gerald Ford…but the pardon stipulated that it did not cover perjury in connection with subsequent trials. Nixon stalled as long as possible but finally had to answer questions under oath…the one time he faced any interrogation more dangerous to him than that of David Frost.

The intriguing question for Nixon Watchers is: Did he tell the truth? That is, did he own up to any breaking of the law? He could no longer be prosecuted for anything he admitted but he was still desperate to rehabilitate his image and to shape the way history would view him. So there are two possible ways his mind could have worked…

He could have thought: There are still zealous, Liberal/Democratic prosecutors out there who are angry and frustrated that the pardon prevents them from nailing me to the wall. If I say anything they can argue is perjury, they'll seize upon that to try and reopen the matter, which will mean more prosecution and more testimony and more jeopardy.

Or he could have thought: I've beaten the big charge…gotten out of this without confessing to breaking the law. I'm not going to concede that now.

Actually, this being Nixon, his mind could have worked in a lot more than two possible ways but those are the biggies. I'd bet on the second. Given how much in the Watergate matter leaked or was made public despite his expectations, he couldn't have assumed the secret grand jury testimony would remain secret for long. It did but he couldn't have expected that at the time. Rick Perlstein thinks that when it comes out, which it will shortly, Nixon will again shock those who "thought they had finally sounded the depths of the president's paranoid venality." I'm sure he will because he always does. But I wouldn't bet he said, "On second thought, I guess I am a crook."

A new production of Porgy and Bess is heading for Massachusetts with plans to wind up on Broadway. The director has brought in a playwright to make some major revisions in a show that some folks think works just fine without improvements. One person who is vocally objecting, if not to the modernization then to the arguments for it, is Stephen Sondheim. Go read what he has to say on the subject.

And now that you've seen today's great photo of Buster Keaton, go look at one of his friend, Ed Wynn.