Category Archives: To Be Filed

I was always a big admirer of Danny Kaye, an amazing entertainer. I'm sure he was in something bad at some point but I can't recall what it might have been. He was funny. He could dance. He could sing. A lot of folks who worked with him didn't get along with the guy on a personal basis but even they acknowledged his talent and watched him as fans.

When I was around ten or so, my parents took me to see him perform one evening at the Hollywood Bowl. The place seats more than 17,000 people, it was pretty full that night…and from the seats we were in, Danny Kaye was about the size of a Rice Krispie. Still, he managed to make a personal connection with every single person in that amphitheater as he told stories and sang every single song for which he was ever known. We all came away dazzled.

In the sixties, he did four seasons of a variety show for CBS that I remember fondly. Some of them are coming out on DVD and the first release, which features two Christmas episodes, is now out. Click here to order one from Amazon.

The debut was celebrated tonight with an event at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills and I was there, courtesy of panel moderator Leonard Maltin. The panel consisted of Tony Charmoli (choreographer on Danny's CBS series), George Schlatter (producer of Laugh-In and other shows on which Danny appeared), Michele Lee (two-time guest on the series), Carl Reiner (occasional co-star) and Deena Kaye (Danny's daughter). Deena is spearheading and guiding the DVD project and others related to her father's legacy.

Good chat, followed by a nice party. My favorite moment of the party was congratulating Michele Lee on getting a better intro than she got the last time I saw her and us discussing what I wrote here about that night. I hope I made clear how good she was in that film. It was about as good as she's been in everything she's ever done, which is a pretty high bar. I also got to talk briefly to Julie Newmar and Vin Scully who were there and like Ms. Lee, handily defying age.

Also spoke with Karen and Kat Kramer. Karen is the widow of the great Stanley Kramer and we talked about a forthcoming deluxe DVD of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It's still being assembled and I've volunteered to help in any way I can. Kat is her daughter, a very talented singer who I raved about back in this message and this one. And I went there with a superb comedy writer friend, Ron Friedman, who among his many other credits was a writer on Danny's CBS series. I'm leaving a few other people out.

Getting back to the program, they showed some wonderful clips, including a powerful scene with Mr. Reiner and Mr. Kaye in the TV-Movie, Skokie. The closer was a duet with Louis Armstrong from the CBS series which I believe was so popular that they had Armstrong back on a season or two later so they could do it again.

I think what they showed at the museum last night was the first time they performed it and what I've embedded below is the second but it's still great. If you don't love this number, you'll never "get" Danny Kaye and there's no point in trying. If you enjoy it like I do, you're going to want the DVDs…

I enjoy posting a link to a video, then hearing from someone who was involved in the creation of that video. Here's a message from Steve Winer…

My partner and I were the two writers for Robert Klein Time and I can tell you for a fact that, thanks to hardball negotiations by our agent, the budget for the show was actually more like fourteen dollars.

You picked a clip that means a lot to me. I know you've written often here about Soupy Sales and your devotion to his work. Well, I was a great fan as well and that night I finally got the chance to talk to him and tell him of, among other things, how I was in the audience on the day he re-opened the Paramount Theater. He was gracious and charming and full of wonderful stories.

I told him how it always seemed as if he were talking directly to us on his show, and he explained that was very deliberate. He talked of the artificial distance a performer is supposed to keep from the television camera. He made a point of breaking that distance at the beginning of each show by walking directly up to the camera and' kissing the lens. Then he would step back, but not as far as tradition called for. Thus he created an intimacy between himself and the viewers.

He was with his then new wife and as my compliments continued he turned to her, and with his trademark chuckle, said "See? And you thought you married a flop!" She in turn prompted him to tell me other stories. "Tell him about Hippy!" she said. "Do you know what Hippy was?" he asked. "Hippy is just Pookie turned inside out!"

And so it went — an evening I treasured and I'm glad to see it here. Of course, since it's posted without consent, my partner and I make nothing from it, so perhaps you could suggest to your readers that they go into their parents' rooms late at night, reach into their wallets and…

Thanks, Steve, and I apologize for underestimating your budget. (Note to self: Tell the story here soon about the budget on The Stanley Siegel Show.)

As I said, that talk show of Mr. Klein's was enormously entertaining. I recall one episode with Robin Williams in which Klein apparently decided to treat Robin the way Robin treated other comedians when he was on stage with them, stepping on their punch lines and not letting them say much. Wish someone was rerunning things like this…or some of the really odd specials that graced HBO and Showtime in the first year or three of their existence.

Back in the early days of Basic Cable, Robert Klein hosted a weekly talk show that looked like it was done on a budget of about eleven dollars…but it was as entertaining as any talk show I've seen. Here's eighteen minutes he spent one evening with Soupy Sales. It's in two parts which should play one after the other in the player I've embedded below.

Soupy starts the festivities by telling the tale of the time on his New York kids' show when he was suspended for asking his young viewers to take currency from their parents' wallets and mail it in to him. I heard him tell this story about nine different ways over the years — sometimes, he said they got no money; sometimes, he said it was all Monopoly money, etc. — so I don't know what the truth was. Later in the chat, he tells one of the many and varied stories of how he got his stage name…but it's a good conversation between two funny men so it may be worth eighteen minutes of your life.

There was a second chapter to the story of Soupy asking kids to send in the contents of daddy's wallet. On a convention panel a year or two ago, I got Chuck McCann to tell that tale. Here's a link to the last few minutes of that panel when he told that part.

In light of our Fiscal Cliff problems in Washington, a number of Congressfolks are putting together new "Flat Tax" proposals. We see these from time to time and I thought it would be a good idea to come up with my own Flat Tax proposal. Here it is…

People like me pay less taxes or if possible, no taxes. People not like me pay more to make up the difference.

That's it. It's the same Flat Tax proposal as everyone else's but stated more honestly.

The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012. Warning: Some of them are pretty sad.

Steve Kornacki has a good overview of the last few decades of tax hikes and tax cuts and what they meant for the economy. I think we're seeing the demise of the theory that if you lower taxes for rich people, all will benefit. Not that some folks will ever turn loose of it. I suspect if I asked Steve Forbes what I should do about the sewage leak in my garage, he'd insist that it could be solved by eliminating all taxes on capital gains, inheritances and people who never blink.

Carolyn and I were in a store the other day and they were playing Christmas music. I think it was November 29th which is at least within a month of the holiday. They played some odd arrangement of "Jingle Bell Rock" and they played that Andy Williams recording of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and then they played "Linus and Lucy." You know "Linus and Lucy," though perhaps not by name. It's the song that goes something — no, make that exactly like this…

I find it interesting that this is a Christmas song and I'm not saying it isn't. It definitely is. But it's a Christmas song for a different reason than all other Christmas songs. Most Christmas songs are about Christmas for one of three reasons….

1. Its lyrics are about Christmas. I mean, if they're singing about Christmas, that makes it a Christmas song, right?
2. It's an instrumental but it's such a familiar song that you know and mentally supply the lyrics…and in your head it becomes a Christmas song since those lyrics are, after all, about Christmas.
3. It's full of jingle bell sounds.

Simple enough. The unique thing about "Linus and Lucy" is that it's a Christmas song for a reason all its own…

4. You recognize it as being in that great TV cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

That's its sole relevance to Christmas. It reminds you a TV special you love and that special is about Christmas. There's no other connection. You don't know the lyrics because they're aren't any lyrics. There's nothing about the tune that says "Christmas" because it wasn't even written for a Christmas project. Vince Guaraldi wrote the tune for a documentary about Charles Schulz and Peanuts that was done some time before A Charlie Brown Christmas. There are also no jingle bells in it.

This is the only point I wanted to make here about it. I said it on a special feature on one of the DVD releases and I thought it was an intriguing thing so I wanted to mention it here. I make so few wise observations that I have to rerun the ones I do have from time to time.

I admire a lot of things about Bill Clinton. Frank Bruni reminds us (and him) about one thing that is not to be admired.

From the 2010 Sondheim Birthday Concert: Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin perform "Move On" from Sunday in the Park With George…

There is no one Gilda's Club. There are many all over the place and they all have the same mission. They're support groups where people battling cancer can supplement their medical efforts with social ones, lending a shoulder or advice to one another. They were named for the late comedienne Gilda Radner, who died from the Big "C" back in 1989. In her last years as she dealt with the disease, she demonstrated uncommon good humor and honesty, confronting her problems with optimism but not of the unrealistic kind. She was and still is a much-loved individual.

Recently, a couple of Gilda's Club outlets said something about changing their name because "nobody knows who Gilda Radner is." This prompted an outcry from folks who did know…and I gather those who considered the change are now unconsidering it. In any case, Gilda's longtime collaborator Alan Zweibel wrote this Facebook post about how he views the whole matter.

Peter Travers ranks all 24 James Bond films. I haven't seen the last few yet but many friends are telling me I'd be a ninny to miss seeing Skyfall in a theater…so if I get time, I will. I haven't seen all of these but I more or less agree with his rankings, though I might put the Roger Moore ones even lower.

C.S. Pearce makes The Christian Case for Gay Marriage…and a pretty solid case it is.

If you haven't seen this, watch it all the way through. It's under three minutes…

A "friend" has been inundating me with links to sites that reveal how Barack Obama, crazed for power as he is, has all these plans to stay in office for a third term, if not forever. Seems to me that each of our last few White House residents has been the subject of this rumor. Didn't Bill Clinton have this top secret scheme to create a phony Civil War in the U.S., then use that as an excuse to declare Martial Law and suspend elections indefinitely? George W. Bush I think had one, too.

In an odd way, I kinda like the Obama Conspiracy Theories that come out of Absolute Nowhere. There are plenty that at least start in reality…like someone finding something in the Affordable Care Act and going, "Oh…we'll claim this part sets up Death Panels!" You almost have to deal with those claims like they have some basis. But the ones that don't even pretend to touch reality are fun on some level, plus they do a lot to distract from possibly legitimate criticisms. Insane concepts are not always without value…to someone.

Back in the seventies, I worked briefly for a rather dishonest man who was forever starting new, unsuccessful business ventures. Each time one tanked, as they all did, he'd sneak away from it leaving a phalanx of angry creditors, and start two more. Each was based on a premise not unlike this…

He'd read a statistic somewhere like, "Twelve million people a week eat Butterscotch Pudding." Instantly, his mind would do the math: "Why, if I could get two dollars from everyone who eats Butterscotch Pudding, I'd make $24,000,000 a week!" And that would be his new business. He'd invent something like the Send-Me-Two-Dollars-Every-Time-You-Eat-Butterscotch-Pudding Club…and by the time it became obvious that enough people weren't going to do that, no matter. He'd have heard somewhere that six million people each week do a bad impression of Jimmy Stewart and, why, if you could get three dollars from every bad Jimmy Stewart impressionist…

During the brief time I knew him, not one of his plans succeeded the way he wanted them to but a few yielded enough money that he could pay rent for a while off them. They'd all collapse and he'd disappear into the night leaving stacks of unpaid bills. But some were financially worth doing in a small way. There actually were a few people out there stupid enough to send him money every time they ate Butterscotch Pudding or did an impression of Jimmy Stewart. I hate to think what he'd have made off someone who did an impersonation of Jimmy Stewart eating Butterscotch Pudding.

Stupid people often have money and the great thing about them is that when they do, they spend it like stupid people. You know those e-mail scams we all get from a stranger someplace who has $32,000,000 US due them and so badly needs our help to claim the loot that they're willing to share it with us? I used to wonder why those messages were so lame and obviously bogus…until not long ago, I discussed it with someone I knew who was wiser than I in the ways of the Internet. I said, "Those things are so badly written, they wouldn't fool anyone with an I.Q. over 30."

"That's the point," he replied. "The idea is to get you to give them access to your credit card and bank account. Someone with an I.Q. over 30 is not going to give them that. It's a waste of time to start a correspondence with someone who isn't really, really stupid. A guy sends out a million — literally — of those messages. 999,970 of them will get instantly deleted by spam filters if not by the addressees. The guy who sent them will get thirty responses and he'll write back and forth to those thirty…and maybe two or three will be dumb enough to fall for the whole routine and send their banking info.

"If the initial come-on message was more credible, he might get 200 responses and they'd write back and forth to them…but there'd still be only two or three who would be stupid enough to send the banking info. It saves time to make the initial pitch so incredible. It filters out the ones who are just plain not stupid enough."

I think there's something to that. I also think I see a lot of it in similar scams disguised as political action come-ons. I have a couple of special "junk mail" e-mail addresses and years ago, one got signed up for all sorts of ultra-conservative mailings. They never cease and most do not seem to offer unsubscription. Among the debris that address receives two or three times a month is an Urgent Call To Action from some fellow who claims to have hard, undeniable evidence that will put Hillary Clinton (and Bill, while they're at it) in prison for the rest of their lives. Each message describes how one or both of them is planning to destroy the U.S., abolish all religion and make it mandatory that we all star in gay porn videos…or something like that. Pretty much, the sales pitch comes down to, "You hate Hillary Clinton, right? Send me money and I'll destroy her for you!"

I've been getting these for fifteen years now, during which he somehow did not use his undeniable evidence to stop her from becoming a U.S. Senator and then our Secretary of State, let alone continue walking the planet as a free woman. If you did think it was worth your money to try and stop Hillary, there are better places you could spend it. But I guess it's worth his while to compose a new, hysterical e-mail every ten days or so. He probably always reaches someone stupid enough to PayPal him some bucks.

I think an awful lot of what passes for political discourse in this country these days works off that principle: There's money in making stupid people mad.

I'm surprised and a bit saddened to hear that the Stage Delicatessen in New York is closing down. I haven't been in that city for a while but I never went into that place without it being crowded, generally with a line outside.

Often, there were two lines — one for customers seeking tables, one for homeless folks seeking handouts. A sandwich at the Stage is too large for most folks to finish in one sitting so what you usually do there is eat one half and take one half home…but what do you do if you're not going home for a while? Or if you're staying in a hotel room with no refrigerator? A lot of patrons chose to take the other half "to go" and offer it to someone outside who was looking sadly for money or a meal.

At some point, the staff at the Stage made it simpler. Last time I was there, I had a brisket sandwich on a Kaiser roll and barely made it through half. The server offered to wrap the balance for me to take along but I was heading off to a meeting and then to another meeting and then to dinner and then to the theater so I said no. "Okay if I give to the homeless?" he asked. I said, "Fine."

Outside the door as we left, there was a line of unfortunates and the server came out with my half-a-brisket-sandwich nicely wrapped in foil and then bagged. He offered it to a shabby-dressed man who was first in that line: "Brisket sandwich?"

The man said, "Haven't you got corned beef?"

I'll miss the Stage.