Monthly Archives: August 2011

I haven't written much here about late night TV lately because…well, nothing much has happened and I'm not watching much of it. I used to TiVo and watch most of Jay, Dave, Conan and Craig. Nowadays, I TiVo Jay and Craig and even those go largely unviewed for weeks…and when I do watch, I do a lot of skipping-ahead.

Wha' happened? Some of it's me but a lot of it's them. With the possible exception of Craig Ferguson, I don't think any of those gents are doing the best shows of their careers. I think they're doing the same shows every night — same as each always does and pretty much the same shows as each other. I also think they're booking too few guests who are interesting in and of themselves and too many who are interesting only because they have a movie opening this weekend.

In a way, I think the Internet has undone them. It used to be that when something happened in the news, Jay or Dave (or once upon a time, that Carson guy — no, no…not Carson Daly. The one Leno replaced.) would have the first topical joke about it and you turned in to hear that. Now, the first topical joke is on Twitter or Facebook ten minutes after it happens. You also tuned in the late night shows for fear you'd miss something unexpected and wonderful. Now, you can miss those shows and be confident that if something you want to see did transpire, the clip will be on fifty websites tomorrow.

So…what's with the ratings? Leno is pretty consistently in the lead, though not by as wide a margin as he was before he lost The Tonight Show and returned to it. Dave's a close second. Jimmy Fallon's doing well. He usually beats Ferguson, which is something Conan O'Brien couldn't usually do his last six months in that slot. I suspect NBC is pretty happy now that they have Leno on at 11:35 and not O'Brien.

Conan is over on TBS with a show that is watched by about a fourth as many viewers as are watching Jay and less than watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The show is probably profitable for that network, though not as wide a swath as they were presumably hoping. I know they had this idea that it could be an anchor for future expansion of original programming but that ain't happening. They just cancelled Lopez Tonight, which follows it and no "new" show has been announced to take its place.

I tried watching George Lopez a few times and couldn't quite understand what I was watching. You had this high-energy opening with a loud band and a flashing set and a raucous audience…and then out came this quiet, low-energy host whose main goal seemed to be to make sure no one could take any umbrage at anything he said. He was way too deferential to his guests, treating a lot of minor celebs like Show Biz Gods and forever dropping in little token reminders of his Hispanic heritage. I'm told he has a stand-up act that is quite wonderful and edgy…but as a talk show host, he just seemed out of sync with his own program. It was like the real guy hadn't shown up for work so they'd taken a funny stagehand, put him in a suit and shoved him out there to read the TelePrompter.

Rumor has it that TBS wanted to cancel Lopez the minute they got Conan but that O'Brien insisted Lopez be kept on. Conan was out there complaining someone else had stolen his time slot so he couldn't very well commit that same crime to another. I guess enough time has passed where no one's worried about that.

Pretty much everyone in late night is down, though not enough that we're hearing talk of any personality waiting in the wings to displace any of them. Years ago, NBC experimented with various hosts of the Later show that they aired at 1:35 AM. They tried host after host waiting for one to click and eventually came to the conclusion that it didn't really matter; that anyone they put in that time slot would get pretty much the same numbers. That's why Carson Daly has been there forever. One suspects they're starting to view Jay, Dave, Craig, Conan, Jimmy F. and Jimmy K. the same way. Those guys (and their ratings) may just stay right where they are until someone quits or dies.

Caricaturist Supreme Tom Richmond has drawn a terrific art print of six guys who've played James Bond…even George Lazenby. And hey, what's the big deal about George Lazenby? I mean, the guy only played 007 in one more movie than I did.

Anyway, it's a great drawing…great enough that you might want to order a signed print by Mr. Richmond, whose work you know so well from MAD. You can order one from this page of his website…and I'll bet some of you (the smarter ones) are going to do just that.

Hey, remember back in 1996, Dana Carvey briefly had a prime-time sketch comedy show? I barely recall it but I think my reaction to it was on the order of, "Boy, these people are talented and boy, they don't know what this show is about yet." Here's an oral history that makes me want to see those shows again.

Here's a quiz with ten monologue jokes. Your mission? Determine which were told by Letterman and which were told by Leno. You got the premise?

We have here a message from George Wyman that I received yesterday…

Thank you for telling us that today is the 50th anniversary of Fantastic Four #1 going on sale. I'm sure there's a reason for this but could you explain to me why it says November on the cover?

Sure. What you need to understand is that magazines are distributed via a system whereby unpurchased product is returnable. Your local newsstand (assuming you even have a local newsstand) gets in 25 copies of the new issue of Cream Cheese Monthly. Over the course of the month, they sell 11 copies. When the new issue of Cream Cheese Monthly comes in, they ship back the remaining 14 copies and they get credit for them.

When this procedure was devised, it became standard to put the off-sale date (i.e., the date when it would be time to return unsold copies) on the cover. This also, in theory, made the magazine seem more au courant to potential purchasers. Let's say an issue went on sale the third week of May. That meant it would still be the current issue throughout much of June…but publishers feared that if buyers saw May on the cover when it said June on the calendar, they might think, "Oh, this is last month's issue. I probably already bought this." Or maybe they'd figure the contents were out of date — old news, expired coupons, etc.

So they'd put the date of the following issue on the cover for these two reasons. Crafty publishers might decide to try and gain a bit more sales advantage by padding the date even further. In so doing, they hoped newsstands would keep an issue on sale even longer…and comic book publishers pushed this as far as they could. They'd have a bi-monthly comic come out in January, which meant it went off-sale in March…but they'd put April on the cover or even May or June if they thought they could get away with it. More time on the racks could mean more copies sold before the unsold copies were yanked off and returned.

Most newsstands didn't fall for this. In fact, at times when a retailer didn't have enough display space for all the comics that were coming in, he might return unsold copies of, say, Detective Comics well before the printed off-sale month or even before the next issue arrived. One newsstand where I bought comics in the sixties had so little room that nothing stayed on sale for more than a week. When the new comics came in, the operator would clear out and return all his unsold product to make way for the new. But some newsstands were large enough (or their proprietors inattentive enough) that the post-dating kept some books on the racks a little longer. In any case, it didn't hurt the publisher to advance the date like that.

The first issue of Fantastic Four hit the stands on August 8, 1961. It was a bi-monthly so the next issue would come out in or about the first week of October. In the hope that some dealers would not return their copies when that next issue arrived, Marvel then had all their dates advanced a month…ergo, November. This also helped a bit when a comic was cancelled. If no next issue arrived to displace it, the last issue might really stay on the stands until its cover date.

It doesn't matter as much with comics these days since most are sold via non-returnable means but it's still a custom in magazine distribution. The current issue of Newsweek — the one with the glassy-eyed picture of Michele Bachmann on the cover — is cover-dated August 15.

Ten Peanuts characters you've probably forgotten.

Here's a nice profile of Jerry Lewis. I don't guarantee the history but the portrait of him today seems to be reasonably accurate.

Hmm — I think I'll post a message from Joey B. (probably not Joey Bishop) and then respond to it…

I've never been to Comic-Con in San Diego. I keep hearing it's packed and you can't walk down the aisles and it's really noisy and everyone is shoulder to shoulder for four days. I'm claustrophobic and crowds scare me. What do you have to say to someone like me?

I say it's kind of like driving on the freeway. There are times when it is hard to get anywhere except via baby steps…but you put up with it because it's worth the inconvenience to get where you're going. Not every part of the con is that way but a few are and the experience is too often characterized by, for example, the videogaming sections. They're noisy and the exhibitors do things to attract masses to their booths — masses that spill over walkways where you'd like to trod.

Actually this year, the main impediment to getting around seemed to be folks in costumes staging photo ops right where congoers were trying to walk. I appreciate that some people spend a lot of time and money on dressing up as some character but that does not entitle them to stop all traffic so they can pose for attendees with cameras or phones with cameras…which is, of course, everyone these days. The posers all seem to think they are so entitled, especially if they're an attractive woman in a sexy outfit and/or they're brandishing a weapon.

I have to tell you that I don't find it all that hard to get through that maze of humans. Now admittedly, I'm 6'3" and kinda large in other directions as well and I have a badge on that says GUEST…but I don't think that's it. I think I've just decided not to let the mass of humanity stop me from getting to places where I wanna be. In that room, I scan the turf ahead of me and quickly chart alternate routes when the real estate before me seems heavily congested. I have this new G.P.S. feature in my car that tells me when there's slow going ahead and it suggests detours. Apply a little of that strategy to your convention hall navigation and you'll get places faster and with fewer delays.

If crowds scare you…well, maybe you shouldn't come. Or maybe you should try to get over that reticence because you'll miss a lot of great experiences in life…and yes, I know that's easier to say than to do. Increasingly as I get older, I find that some things that annoy me can be best handled by accepting and even embracing them, rather than to bitch and moan about that which is not going to be changed one bit by my bitching and moaning. This of course doesn't work with everything but it works with a lot of things that I used to let stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Often, I can even find a way to appreciate that which I used to complain about. My attitude about the crowds is like: Yes, they make it hard to get places but many of those people are attractions unto themselves and there's also something exhilarating in being among so many folks having such a good time.

One tip: Few conventions are as jammed as the biggie in San Diego. You might try a smaller one before you swan-dive into the deep end of the shark tank. You might also heed the advice a friend once gave me about Disneyland. Understand before you get there that you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to wait in a lot of lines, you're not going to see or do everything you want to see or do, and that the crowds are part of the fun. If you can go into Comic-Con with that mindset, you may be able to have a very good time. The reason it's so packed is that most folks do.

Here's one of the many reasons I do my blog: I ask questions, I get answers. An awful lot of you have pitched in and helped find the address of the Slate Brothers nightclub. It was located at 339 N. La Cienega Blvd. I'll post evidence and more that I've learned about the place later today.