Monthly Archives: October 2012

Attention, Laraine Newman! You're in this…briefly. It's a segment you and the other original Saturday Night Live cast did on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder just before your first broadcast — so it's pretty much the television debut of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. (I seem to recall, by the way, that George Coe and Michael O'Donoghue were billed as part of that group on the first show. Interesting that they were not included in the Snyder program.)

And speaking of tomorrow, Laraine…I'll see you tomorrow. If I get this script done.

William Saletan makes an interesting point about politics these days, most notably as demonstrated in the Vice-Presidential debate. Both parties believe in personal responsibility. They just differ on whether it's important here or overseas.

About 17 minutes before the deadline, Big Daddy's Kickstarter pledges went over $35,000, thereby funding their new project. Matter of fact, they're over $36,000 and climbing. I am delighted…and for that thrill, I thank all of you who went over there to become backers. I also thank my pal Neil Gaiman who backed and then rallied his own, formidable troops. Now I know how Jerry Lewis used to feel watching that tote board.

I saw many of you down in Long Beach today for Frank Ferrante's Groucho show, as well. It was a great afternoon. The Carpenter Center seats around 1200 and they must have had a thousand people there, which is a lot for any show that's just one performer and a piano player. It was a superb performance…probably the best of the eight-or-so times I've seen Frank at work. I thought at the end I'd try to lead a standing ovation but by the time I got up, everyone else in the place had beaten me to it.

I have to get back to battling a deadline. I'm finishing a cartoon script that records in about 15 hours and I'd like to be able to sleep for at least a small portion of that time. But having seen a great show today and watched people rally to support talented performers…it just kinda makes me feel like writing.

Off to see this guy. If you're there, say hello. Better still, say "Hello, I must be going…"

Here's one more urging to go and back the proposed CD (or album or whatever they call them these days) by Big Daddy. As of this moment, they have $29,015 pledged and they need to get to $35,000 in the next six hours or it's all for naught. They're funny guys and if you pledge at the $25 level, the worst you'll get out of it is a great CD of funny, witty tunes. If you pledge higher, you'll get that and certain bonuses along with the pride that you are one reason that great CD exists. I've backed them as much as my wallet will allow at this time and I'd sure hate to see them fall short.

So go to their Kickstarter page, read all about them and make a pledge. I know you. You've spent money on much stupider stuff than this. I see an awful lot of familiar names on their Backers List. I'd like to see yours there.

But not that comic convention in San Diego…this comic convention in San Diego.

We all know what a wonderful, monstrous event the Comic-Con International has become. We have also heard some folks complaining — and I am not among them — about its length and breadth. I love Comic-Con for what it is.

But I'm also aware, as you probably are, that there's something to be said for smaller, more intimate conventions. I like a lot of those, too. Next weekend, October 19-21, there's one of those in San Diego — the San Diego Comic Fest, which is being run by a couple of the folks who helped establish the entity now known as Comic-Con and ran things in its earlier days.

This is not an attempt to compete with Comic-Con (as if anything could) or to offer anything comparable. If anything, it's the opposite: An attempt to resurrect some of the aspects of Comic-Con as it got larger…and also to reminisce about The Old Days. Most of the guest speakers are folks who were there for The Old Days and I am one of them.

It would be grand if they could hold this bit of time-travelling at the El Cortez Hotel, scene of many a great early con down there. Alas, the El Cortez has gone all condo on us and we'll instead be at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center. All the pertinent data is over at that website I just linked to but here's that link again for the benefit of you people who are too lazy to move your mouse up four paragraphs. Among other things you'll find there, along with where it is and how to attend, is the Programming Schedule. Read it over and you'll get a good idea of the kind of convention this will be. I'm on six panels, I believe.

I want to emphasize this is not Comic-Con off-season. There's a dealers room but it will not be vast and huge. The programming rooms do not seat thousands. Very few movie and TV stars will be in attendance. And this will probably disappoint many of you: You probably won't have to wait in line for anything except maybe the autograph of Murphy Anderson, the Guest of Honor in the Professional category. I am the Guest of Honor in the Fan category and that designation pleases me more than you might imagine.

If this all sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, you might want to sign up quickly. I believe they're capping attendance at a level that will keep the event uncrowded and manageable. If you ever wanted to walk easily down an aisle of a comic book convention in San Diego, this could be your chance.

And now here's another, longer, earlier tour of CBS Television City in (or around) Hollywood. This is from November of 1953 and it's narrated by the venerated CBS newsman, Edward R. Murrow. It's in two parts (30 minutes total) which should play one after the other in the little window I've configured below. Great stuff…

Brad Plummer discusses how the cost of an airline ticket has dropped since around the time of deregulation. The chart there raises all sorts of questions for me, two being…

1. How much of the drop can be attributed to the fact that folks are now largely bypassing travel agents and booking themselves over the Internet? That sure makes it easier to shop for a cheaper fare. I get e-mails every day from this airline or that ticket broker telling me I can fly from Shreveport to Anchorage next Tuesday for nine dollars if I'm willing to leave at 4 AM. We never had those kinds of offers back when I booked with Brenda the Travel Agent.
2. How much of the drop is due to airlines just plain losing money? I mean, most industries could charge a lot less for whatever they offer if they were willing to lose a billion a year.

I find air travel a much less pleasant experience these days compared to, say, in the eighties. Flights are packed. Delays are common. The plane you get on often doesn't seem to have been cleaned much if at all since its previous journey. Most of all, it's the reduced service. If something's wrong, there's usually not anyone around interested in helping you. And all of this is above and beyond anything relating to heightened security. I remember when you used to be able to just go to the airport, get on a plane and go somewhere.

It took me a while to fully understand it — or at least I think I fully understand it — but Josh Barro has done a pretty comprehensive job of debunking the "studies" Mitt Romney cites in support of his economic proposals. They aren't really studies and since his plan is so vague, they make a lot of assumptions of how things might happen…but Barro pretty convincingly knocks 'em all down anyway. Not that this will matter to the people who've been convinced Romney is one of them and Obama is a Kenyan Commie.

Bill Maher has a pretty good end segment this week about how Obama's enemies made dozens of predictions in 2008 about how the nation would be destroyed this way and that way if he was elected. Not one has come true. Most of them are evil programs that they were sure Obama would institute but which he hasn't lifted a finger to enact. But all the same people who were scared of him then are scared again for all the same reasons. No, he didn't ban your religion, nationalize all industry and kick every white male in the nuts during his first term…but he sure as hell will do all that and more in his second. Oh — and you know about sending big black men around to impregnate your daughters, right?

This is probably my last pitch to get you to back the Kickstarter of one of my favorite musical groups, Big Daddy. They're clever guys with an uncanny knack of sounding like not just one or two of the great bands of the fifties but at various times, all of them. Do yourself a favor and go to their website, click the tab for "audio" and listen to some of their incredible mash-ups. They take recent hit records and fiddle with this and rearrange that and somehow make them sound like fifites' tunes…and usually better.

They want to make a new album and will if they can raise $35,000 by 7 PM Sunday evening, Pacific Time. At the moment, despite many pledges from readers of this site and many friends plugging them (thank you, Neil Gaiman), they're still way short. That's a shame because I'll bet it would be/will be a great CD, well worth the $25 that's the lowest backer level that would earn you a copy.

If you've been considering sending a gratuity to this website, do us both a favor and instead go right this minute to become a backer of Big Daddy's proposed CD. If they don't make the 35K level, your credit card will not be charged. If they do, it will be charged and you'll be very happy with what that money accomplished. And either way, thanks to all the readers of this site whose names I see on their Backers list.

The other day, I linked you to a great site about CBS Television City in Hollywood, a wonderful complex that is arguably in Hollywood. During my career in television — and before it, back when I found ways to roam the halls of big TV studios — I got to extensively prowl NBC in Burbank and ABC over in Los Feliz. But even though it was the one closest to my home, I never got enough time at CBS. I wrote a lot of shows for CBS but all but one either taped elsewhere or were animated…so I never quite learned my way around the place and often got lost.

Here's a 10 minute history/tour and I'm not sure where it's from but I can guess. The host is a lovely gent named George Kirgo who had a wonderful career as a writer-producer of films and TV shows, a stint as President of the Writers Guild of America, West during its nasty 1988 strike, and an occasional career as a TV panelist or critic. He reviewed films and covered TV for a while for The CBS Morning Program and I'm guessing this is from that…or some related endeavor. Here's a piece I wrote about him after we lost him in 2004 and here he is showing us around that big building at Beverly and Fairfax…

The Paris Review has placed online dozens of its interviews with literary figures and others active in The Arts. There will probably be many you'll find of interest but I'll start you off with direct links to conversations with Woody Allen, William F. Buckley, Billy Wilder, Hunter S. Thompson, James Thurber, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, P.L. Travers, Stephen Sondheim and Neil Simon.

Interesting thing about the Neil Simon interview. It was published in 1992 (James Lipton was the interviewer) and in it, Simon talks about being stuck on a play he was trying to write about his days working for Sid Caesar. Maybe this conversation spurred him on to finish it because that play — Laughter on the 23rd Floor — debuted on Broadway in November of 1993.

Also: As you may know, one of our recurring points of correction here is when people say that Larry Gelbart, Woody Allen and certain other folks who never worked on Your Show of Shows worked on Your Show of Shows. The late Mr. Gelbart spent much of his life, it seemed, correcting people who thought he'd worked on Your Show of Shows and occasionally suggesting that anyone who thought that didn't know the first thing about Your Show of Shows. And now here's Neil Simon, who did work on Your Show of Shows, talking about working with Gelbart on it and making it sound like Woody and the others who didn't were there, too.

Here are two articles about the debate last night. Over in Esquire, Charles P. Pierce tells you what a miserable human being Paul Ryan is.

And at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi says much the same and emphasizes that the Romney-Ryan plan is basically to promise everything to everyone, get elected, then worry about how they're going to pay for it then, if ever.

You can kinda tell Republicans got clobbered last night. All they can talk about this morning is how Joe Biden was cranky and he laughed a lot. At worst, that makes Biden rude. It doesn't make him wrong.

I could only spare a small amount of time to watch the Vice-Presidential debate. I thought Joe Biden, at least in the parts I saw, mopped the linoleum with Paul Ryan and made him look like an amateur who couldn't even explain his own proposals. Then again, I'm sure out there are at least a couple of Romney-Ryan boosters reading this who thought Ryan did the mopping. So let's just wait a few days and see if the polls budge enough to assume the debate was the cause. That's really all that matters in these things.

The parts I saw dovetailed with Fred Kaplan has to say about Ryan's view of foreign policy. I sure don't get that the Republican ticket connects a lot with reality…or that the folks who desperately want Obama out really care what Romney and Ryan say they'll do as long as it at least sounds like expunging the current administration.