Saturday Evening

It's National Gorilla Suit Day and I just have a few moments before I have to start going door-to-door in my gorilla suit.  (Yeah, I know.  You've all been out in yours for hours.  Well, I overslept.)  Anyway, I felt I should mention that I thought last night's Jimmy Kimmel Live! showed a solid glimmer of progress.  He still doesn't look like a talk show host to me but at least he doesn't look like a deer caught in someone's headlights.  If they can get some decent guests, and a co-host with something to say, this crate might fly.  Ratings were up a bit last night, too.  I'll bet ABC's wishing they'd hired Kimmel while Politically Incorrect was still on, and let him get the bugs out in the time slot following Bill Maher.

The Rockies have crumbled, Gibraltar just tumbled (They're only made of clay) and Amazon.Com now lists Mad Art as more-or-less in stock.  It usually ships in "2-3 days," they say, which is a big step up from not coming out until some time in the distant past.  So rush over and order hundreds of copies.

By the way, I had a great time last night chatting and plugging said book with Garry Lee Wright on WGN radio out of Chicago.  Thanks, Garry!

Theater Talk

A musical based on the movie Tootsie opened on Broadway last night and it got the kind of reviews that suggest it'll be there for a long time. Almost all the critics called it hilarious and crowd-pleasing…and an even better indicator is that Rex Reed said it was a mess. It would not necessarily be a foolish policy to make your theatergoing selections by going to everything Rex Reed said was bad and avoiding the shows he's liked.

Anyway, here's a page with links to many of the reviews of Tootsie. I wonder how many (if any) of the lines they said were so wonderful were written by Larry Gelbart.

I have three days in New York coming up and I've got to figure out what I'm going to see while I'm there. I kinda want to see the King Kong musical. I've heard mixed things about the plot/music part but everyone's saying the 20-foot King Kong puppet alone is worth the price of admission. I'm also spending way too much time wondering what's going to become of that massive monkey marionette when this show closes. It weighs a ton (literally)…so where do you put it? Do you store it? If so, why and where and for what future usage?

For that matter, might this be the only opportunity ever to see this show? I mean, it's not like they can do a national tour with a star who takes weeks to set up and take down. And the little 99 and 300 seat theaters around are unlikely to do this musical. They could just put a guy in some costume that's not being used for National Gorilla Suit Day.

I'm going to guess they're going to try and find a permanent home for this show and its title star, perhaps at a theme park or someplace. Las Vegas is probably out. It hasn't had much luck with musicals.

I'd just hate to see Kong wind up with a talk show on basic cable or sitting behind a table at an autograph show. Maybe he can go on Jeopardy! He could win easily. All he has to do is step on James Holzhauer

Important-Type Announcement

The past few years, this weblog has celebrated the work of a brilliant cartoonist named Don Martin by noting his very funny holiday, National Gorilla Suit Day. I've encouraged you to remember the late Mr. Martin and his work and now I'm in the odd position of…well, not discouraging you but just announcing that Don's widow has asked me not to mention him or his holiday and to delete all past mentions of both. I don't fully understand why but I still have (and will always have) the greatest respect for the man…so I've done as she asks. I don't think I would do this for anyone else so Mrs. George W. Bush and Mrs. Dick Cheney, don't bother asking.