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I mentioned Sam Yorty on my weblog and found myself engaged in e-mail discussions with others who recall the flamboyant (and largely inept) mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Yorty was mayor from 1961 to 1973 and darn near proved that L.A. could function just fine without anyone in that office. He spent most of his time in power either (a) travelling, ostensibly to promote trade with our fair city or (b) running for higher offices, among them the presidency.

The last of these was the more amazing since there was never any evidence that anyone anywhere wanted him to win any of these positions, except maybe for Angelenos who wished to be rid of the guy. Republican leaders didn't like him because even though the office of mayor is constitutionally non-partisan, Yorty had let it be known that he was a Democrat. Democratic leaders didn't like him because on every single issue that came along, you could count on him siding with the Republicans. His insistence that he was destined for bigger and better things almost seemed delusional. In fact, in '68 L.A. Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad began drawing Yorty in a Napoleon suit, being taken away to an insane asylum. This occurred when Yorty began claiming that he would soon be offered an important post in the cabinet of the newly-elected President Nixon. When he wasn't, Yorty hit Conrad and the Times with a lawsuit that, of course, went nowhere and made its plaintiff look even stupider.

How Sam Yorty got elected in the first place, I cannot say but I recall how he got re-elected in '69. In the primary that year, he came in second with 26 percent of the vote, trailing Councilman Tom Bradley who had 42. That looked like the end of Yorty but long before people talked about "playing the race card," he had one up his sleeve. Bradley was black, so the credo of the Yorty campaign became that if Tom Bradley got into office, he would take his marching orders directly from the Afro-American militants known as the Black Panthers. Yorty aides combed through photos of Bradley, found every one in which the Councilman's fist was clenched (including pictures of him jogging) and published them with captions that claimed Bradley was giving a covert "Black Power" signal to his true masters.

It was an enormously dirty, racist campaign. At one point, it was alleged that Yorty's backers had recruited and paid young black males to ride around key precincts in Cadillac convertibles with Bradley campaign signs on them. They were to play the radio at deafening levels and yell at old white ladies, "You'll be cleaning my house when Mayor Tom takes over!" I'm not sure they actually went that far, but they sure came close. It was an especially ludicrous line of attack if you recall how non-militant Tom Bradley turned out to be when he did finally did get into office and how groups like the Panthers all but disappeared. Yorty's racial fear campaign actually worked in '69 and he squeaked by. The next time around, the same line of attack got nowhere and Bradley easily won what turned out to be the first of five terms.

One of my favorite incidents in a lifetime of election-watching occurred during that election. Yorty, in a rare instance of doing something besides travelling and campaigning, had rammed through the City Council a number of proposals that enriched Occidental Petroleum. One was a controversial land swap deal where the city got some worthless acres and Occidental got some land which turned out to be quite rich in oil. During the campaign, Bradley charged that Yorty had a personal financial interest in Occidental and Yorty responded that Bradley was a lying fool and categorically denied any such interest. As it does more and more these days, the press stayed out of an election issue and didn't start looking into Bradley's charge until after Election Day when, of course, it meant so much less.

Turned out, Yorty himself might not have had a financial interest in Occidental but his wife did. The moment I loved came in one of Yorty's last press conferences when he was asked about this. He said something like, "I never denied that I had any financial interest in Occidental and anyone who says I did is a damn liar." One of the local news channels ran that footage, then ran a clip of Yorty saying, "Neither I nor anyone in my family has ever owned one share of Occidental Petroleum and anyone who says I have is a damn liar." I wish the media would do more of that kind of thing, and do it when it matters. (Later, I believe Yorty actually tried claiming that his wife had purchased more than a million dollars worth of petroleum stock without telling him…)

Sam Yorty died in 1998 without ever again holding public office. I have to say that I smell some of his tactics in the attempts to portray Cruz Bustamante as some sort of Chicano militant. Mr. Bustamante has not impressed me as anything more than the least offensive of a lot of bad choices I find on my ballot, but I think the attempts to tie him to extreme racial groups seem very strained. The same applies to any possible connection Mr. Schwarzenegger may have or have had to former Nazis. Come on. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for either of those men without resorting to that kind of nonsense.

September 8, 2003

Before you read this, you might want to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Two weeks ago, I reported on an ugly encounter that a group of us had with a tow truck driver. As I noted at the time, a lot of this seemed to be in violation of the vehicle code and the whole thing smelled of extortion. I have since spent some time talking to law enforcement officials — all of whom, by the way, were uncommonly polite and helpful and difficult to get on the phone because they have to juggle so many cases at once. I think I now have a better understanding of the situation…and why these guys have a racket that is difficult to combat. The bottom line is that, yes, the driver in this case probably violated the law but that there's nothing the law can do. Prior to 1995, they could. One of the detectives to whom I spoke said, "If this had happened in '94, we'd be able to go out and arrest him for car theft and several other things, except that back in '94, he probably wouldn't have tried it."

What happened in 1995 was a massive deregulation of the towing industry as part of the Federal Aviation Administration Act of'95. The main part of the act, of course, had to do with airlines but they tossed in interstate trucking as part of the bargain and somehow,thanks to the fine lobbying efforts of the tow truck industry, towing snuck in there. The California state laws are still on the books and going by them, what our friend the tow truck driver did is probably illegal. But what has happened is that the courts have ruled that the federal law supersedes the state laws, and the federal law changes the offense to a civil matter. In other words, the state cannot prosecute the guy but I can sue him. If I sue him, the most I can collect is quadruple damages…in other words, $600.

To win, I would have to show he had violated the California Vehicle Code, which I believe he did, but proving that would not be easy. There is no doubt in my mind that the guy lied to us, claiming the cost would be $250 when in fact, that amount is still regulated and it would have been more like $137. But doubtlessly, that would come down to his word against mine and anyway, it's not a clear violation of the law to lie. More relevant is the fact that the posted sign was apparently not the right size or wording…but one of the detectives with whom I spoke cautioned me that judges sometimes regard that as a technicality, and one that represents wrongdoing by the property owner and not the tow truck. It is not something you want to hang your whole case upon.

The biggest violation I could prove might be if, as I suspect, the tow truck driver could not show that a property owner (i.e., someone with legal responsibility for the private road) had directly authorized the tow. My suspicion is that no one phoned; that this driver merely cruises areas where he knows he may find cars parked in apparent violation of posted signs. When he finds them, he starts towing…and of course, he hopes he can get people to pay him $125 to not impound their cars, rather than the higher fee if he does. There are three possible scenarios here…

One is if he had no authorization whatsoever from the property owner. Regulation or deregulation, that would be a pretty clear violation of the law, and would likely land the guy in jail, above and beyond any monetary damages to those he had fleeced. As one detective told me, this is possible but not probable.

The second would be if he had received a specific call from the property owner to remove my car. According to the California Vehicle Code, this has to be done in writing and the property owner must be present…but the federal deregulation largely gutted those conditions. Now, there merely has to be a specific call. The problem with pursuing this possible violation is that until I got the guy into court, I would have no way of knowing if any of the homeowners on the street had called him. He doesn't have to give me that information.

The third scenario is the most likely. A lot of the companies that tow cars off private property are now operating under what they call "blanket authorizations," meaning that the property owner has authorized them to patrol the area and remove any vehicle they find parked in violation of the posted signs without a specific call. This is contrary to the Vehicle Code but several towing companies are still fighting in court, on matters ongoing, claiming that that provision has been voided by the federal deregulation and that blanket authorizations are now legal. In fact, the tow truck company for which our friend works is one of the main firms fighting for that interpretation.

If the guy was operating under a blanket authorization, it probably would not come down to discussing the legality of that. More likely, the driver would claim he had a specific complaint from a homeowner on that street. He would have to give the name to the judge and then someone would check to see if that person would back that up. The judge might put the burden on me to go up there and knock on that person's door and say to them, "Listen, I was parked out front where I know you don't want anyone to park, but would you sign an affidavit that you didn't call the tow truck to remove my car?" Or the judge might have some officer of the court check. Either way, the named homeowner would probably back the tow truck driver and I'd have to go back to court a second time and pin my hopes on the technicality of the sign being wrong.

So it sounds like a tough case to win. One person I spoke to said my best chance would be if the tow truck driver just defaulted and paid the $600, rather than go to court. Considering how much loot he's probably clearing when he's out towing cars, that sounds financially plausible, but I'm also told most tow truck companies do fight such matters. They thrive on the idea that you'll decide it's not worth your trouble to go to court. They like that even if I win, I'm going to go back and tell the other folks who got towed that it was a huge hassle and that it took a lot of my time, so they have to make sure it's a huge hassle that takes a lot of my time. The last time I went to court— back when a speeding motorist ran into my house — I had to get up very early and sit in court most of a day before I learned that the case was being postponed to another day. The wheels of justice don't just grind slowly; sometimes, they turn like the cap on an old tube of Krazy Glue.

One of the gents I talked to said, approximately, "The problem is the deregulation. It allowed hundreds and hundreds of new towing companies to get into the business. The theory was that more competition would drive down the rates but in fact, the rates have all gone up, not down. What has gone down are the ethics of the business and our ability to police them. I cannot go out and arrest them like we used to do. You have to decide you want to go to court, and you have a much harder time of it than you should." Another detective said, "It might not have been so bad if they'd really deregulated…if a judge could fine them ten thousand dollars or lift their licenses. But they kept the part of the regulation that limits the punishment to quadruple damages."

Quadruple damages don't equal a lot of justice. I'll bet not one in ten people who are subjected to this even bother to look into their rights, let alone go to court. One detective said less than one in a hundred take any action at all, and he also confirmed my hunch that the truckers prey primarily on expensive cars in upscale neighborhoods. That increases the chance that (a) someone is going to come up with $125 cash to reclaim their car and (b) the victim is going to decide it's not worth his time to go to court. It sounds to me like the odds are wildly in the towing company's favor: Tow 100 cars @ $125 each. An average of one will drag you to court and you may have to pay $600. Total profit: $11,900.

As you may have guessed by now, I don't think I'm going to be the one in a hundred who goes before His Honor. I have been toying with the notion of using contacts I have with newspapers and magazines to see if I can write up this tale for a larger audience than the one that visits this website. That might do a lot more good, though I may not even do that. It might cut into my new occupation as a crooked tow truck driver.

Well, I'm finding out more about the little towing scam that was pulled on me yesterday afternoon. I just had a nice chat with a gent who works for the Van Nuys Police who among other things, told me that this particular towing company was one that has had a long, long list of complaints against it. An Internet search I just did turned up some news stories that bear this out. One in particular said that the company was being sued because its drivers were operating under "blanket authorizations." That is, they would obtain the okay of a property owner to tow any car they found parked on that owner's private property. As I read Section 22658 of the Vehicle Code (thank you, Internet), you can't do this. A towing must be done in response to a specific complaint from the property owner. Here's the relevant section of the Vehicle Code…

A towing company shall not remove or commence the removal of a vehicle from private property without first obtaining written authorization from the property owner or lessee, or an employee or agent thereof, who shall be present at the time of removal. General authorization to remove or commence removal of a vehicle at the towing company's discretion shall not be delegated to a towing company or its affiliates except in the case of a vehicle unlawfully parked within 15 feet of a fire hydrant or in a fire lane, or in a manner which interferes with any entrance to, or exit from, the private property.

As far as I could see, no property owner was "present at the time of removal," and I'm skeptical that there was any written complaint. In fact, it's possible there was no specific verbal one, either. Perhaps the tow truck driver just went out cruising areas where his firm had these blanket authorizations, saw our cars there and started towing.

Here's another little squib of interest from Section 22658…

A charge for towing or storage, or both, of a vehicle under this section is excessive if the charge is greater than that which would have been charged for towing or storage, or both, made at the request of a law enforcement agency under an agreement between the law enforcement agency and a towing company in the city or county in which is located the private property from which the vehicle was, or was attempted to be, removed.

In other words, a private towing company impounding a car cannot charge more than the police towing service would charge. According to the guy I spoke to on the phone (who works for the police towing division), there are two charges involved here — towing and storage. Towing is $110, regardless of distance. Once the vehicle's wheels leave the street, it's considered "towed," whether it gets moved twenty miles or twenty inches. Then there's storage, which is $27.50 per day or for any portion of a day. So if my car had been towed all the way into the yard in Van Nuys and I picked it up the next morning, the company would not be legally allowed to charge more than $137.50.

If you'll recall, the driver said it would be $250 and then he suggested that if we gave him $125, he wouldn't tow it in to Van Nuys. So he lied to us about the higher fee to get us to cough up the cash there, rather than force him to make several trips to tow cars to Van Nuys. We were in a wealthy neighborhood and he was towing expensive autos, so he probably figured we'd have the money.

This is all quite interesting. The gent at the Van Nuys P.D. gave me some phone numbers I'll be calling. I'll let you know what happens.

Every so often, I cross paths with someone who causes me to say, "Boy, I'm glad I don't have to do that for a living." I have just added the following job description to the list: Driving a tow truck that impounds cars that are sort of illegally parked.

This afternoon, Carolyn and I went to a surprise birthday party up in Laurel Canyon and so that the birthday boy wouldn't spot and recognize my car on the way in, I parked as directed off on a side street. It turned out this is a street that looks like a normal public road but some of the residents there have managed to have it classified as private. There's a sign that says, in effect, "No parking here or we'll have you towed," but it's not a city sign. It looks more like it was put up by a realtor, and it's about the size of a business card (I'm exaggerating) and half-covered with tree limbs (I'm not exaggerating). Anyway, I didn't notice it and I parked in what looked like a perfectly normal place to park.

An hour or so later, the host of the party announced that towing was going on outside. We all ran out and my green Lexus was nowhere to be seen. A tow truck was removing another auto from near where mine had been parked. I asked him where mine was and he handed me the business card of his company which was way out in Van Nuys and told me I could pick mine up tomorrow between 9 and 5, and it would cost $250 — cash, no checks. Well, you can just imagine how delighted I was with this.

I did a fast replotting of my life: Carolyn and I would have to take a cab home tonight, then I'd have to take a cab out to Van Nuys in the morning, plus pay the fee. So we're looking at maybe $325 plus at least two hours tomorrow, plus the loss of transportation this evening. Even if I could get a ride home or to Van Nuys tomorrow, the punishment seemed disproportionate to the crime. Given the concealment of what wasn't even a city "no parking" sign, I could make a case that we were entrapped or at least not given fair warning. But let's put that aside and say I was culpable. Does this penalty make sense, either monetarily or in terms of aggravation and time? We were not blocking driveways or access. I don't think our cars were even occupying spaces that the homeowners along that street might have needed since it didn't say "parking by permit only" or anything. I think the people there simply don't want anyone parking on "their" street.

Now, there are "no parking" signs (real ones) on my street — much more clearly displayed, plus they actually look like "no parking" signs. They apply to specific hours when the street cleaners need to burnish the gutters and at other times, they limit parking to two hours on one side of the street and to folks with permits on the other. This is because otherwise, people who work in nearby businesses would occupy all the spaces all day, and there would be no place for our visitors, cleaning women, gardeners, etc. to park. If you violate these restrictions, the fine is around $40 and they leave your car right where it is. No towing. That seems fair to me…or at least, fairer than $250 and an impound.

In some cases — like, if you come running out while the tow guy's still there as we did today in Studio City, there's a lesser (but still outrageous) alternative. As we were all fuming and fretting that our cars had been towed away, the driver returned and informed us that he hadn't yet taken them to Van Nuys. Our cars were "impounded" down the street and he'd "do us a favor" and release them then and therefor only $125 in cash.

You can smell the scam. First, they tell you that it'll cost more than twice that and that it'll be a huge pain in the ass. Then after putting you in despair, they act like they're doing you a favor by "only" charging you half. It's extortion but you realize, as we all realized, that fighting is going to cost a lot more time and money, and there's probably some statute that makes it perfectly legal. I think that's what bothered me the most about it — knowing that contesting it can only be aggravating and time-consuming and a probable dead-end. The way to minimize damage is, alas, to fork over the cash and accept it.

The tow truck driver kept saying, "Hey, I'm sorry about this, but they [meaning some nearby homeowner] made the call." And he was right on one level, I guess. To the extent there's a master villain in this episode, it's the folks who got their street posted like that and who called in the tow truck, and I'd also fault whatever laws and regulations allow this. (In case I haven't made it clear, this is a residential area, nowhere near business. On my street, those who park illegally are usually folks working in or patronizing businesses a few blocks away. On the street where today's towing was done, anyone parked is visiting a neighbor.)

The tow truck operators sure have a lovely racket here. A normal transport from there to Van Nuys would be around $75 and they probably make a decent profit doing that. In this situation, they charge $250 to tow you, or $125 if they don't. And let's remember: These guys aren't the police. Your car has been grabbed by some guy without a badge and none of the money you fork over goes to the city. In this case, they also ruined a party, embarrassed the host and risked causing other damage. There were two prominent heart specialists at the gathering and while they didn't get towed, what would happen if they got beeped that they were needed in surgery, ran out and found that their cars were en route to Van Nuys? What if someone was actually stranded in a strange neighborhood with no way to get home? We can all imagine all sorts of unpleasant scenarios and I'm sure that most of them have happened. It's a real sleazy way to earn money.

The driver kept saying, "Hey, sorry, but it's my job" and I've never believed that's an excuse for anything. There are legal ways to earn money that people ought to be ashamed to do and that probably should not be legal. I sure hope I never sink that low to make a buck. I came close with one show that I wrote for ABC but thank God, it wasn't quite that bad.

I'm going to look into this further and I'm sure I'll write more.

Apparently, a number of comic book discussion boards are simultaneously discussing the fact that when Jack Kirby drew the Jimmy Olsen comic book in the early seventies, the company retouched his work. I am suddenly receiving a flurry of e-mails asking me to clarify what was done, who did it, etc. Here's the answer to the best of my knowledge. If you're immersed in one of these discussions, please enter the following into evidence or link folks to this page…

The first five stories Jack wrote and drew for DC were, in this order, Forever People #1, New Gods #1, Mister Miracle #1, Jimmy Olsen #133, and Jimmy Olsen #134. Superman appeared in the Forever People, and Superman and Jimmy Olsen appeared in the last two. When Jack delivered the material in pencil, some folks up at DC said, in effect, "We can't have Superman and Jimmy Olsen looking like that." The company went through periods when they felt it was essential to their merchandising plans for certain trademarked characters to not deviate from the approved company model.

I happen to think they were too fussy about this, and I'm sure that other management at other times wouldn't have cared. But at the time, that was the policy. (Retouching was also being done occasionally to other artists. Superman heads were redrawn in one or two of the Supergirl stories that Mike Sekowsky was then drawing for DC, even though Sekowsky's interpretation of The Man of Steel had appeared, usually unexpurgated, for years in the Justice League of America comic. Alex Toth drew a new story and new front and back covers for a 1975 Super-Friends special. Toth's version of Superman was left "as is" on the story and the back cover, and of course was appearing on TV every week. But for the front cover, the head of his Superman figure was replaced with an old Curt Swan photostat.)

So that's one reason they made the changes they made.  Another, perhaps lesser one, was that DC was then very into cultivating a "DC look," with some there taking a certain pride in the fact that the art in their books didn't resemble the inferior (to them) artwork in the Marvel titles.  So along comes Jack Kirby and what he does, almost by definition, is a "Marvel version" of the jewel in the DC crown, Superman…and to some in the office, that just didn't look right.

Anyway, Vince Colletta had been assigned to ink Kirby's DC work and he was asked to try and bring the Kirby drawings more into line with the "official" versions of Superman and young Olsen. A few other hands pitched in but after they'd done a few pages, it became apparent that they hadn't been improved. Some there felt they were worse with impersonal, frozen faces.  Mr. Colletta has his defenders but I don't think any of them would claim he was as skilled a pencil artist as Jack Kirby.

Whatever, Kirby's DC debut was highly touted and it was decided that the books could not go to press with those drawings of Superman and Jimmy Olsen. (The Jimmy Olsen issues were scheduled to be published first, then Forever People would be the first of the new "Fourth World" books.) So they had veteran Superman artist Al Plastino take care of all the Superman figures and most of the Olsen heads.

Thereafter, except for two issues, Jack drew Superman and Jimmy Olsen his way, and Murphy Anderson did the adjustments. Sometimes, Anderson would re-pencil and then Colletta would ink the entire page. More often, Colletta would ink the pages and leave the Olsen and Superman drawings for Anderson to finish.  The above panels represent a "before and after" of a panel that Jack pencilled and then Colletta inked the cape while Anderson inked the face.  There were two issues of Jimmy Olsen that were inked by Mike Royer and on those, Mike did some "correction" of the Superman and Olsen drawings as he inked. Many of Jack's covers were inked by Neal Adams who brought the drawings more in line with accepted company policy.

Jack hated that they were doing this, though he was such a "good sport" about it that he apparently convinced some at the office that he thought he was fine with it. But he thought it was insulting, and he also thought that it was just bad business. If you're selling the fans a Superman by Kirby, you ought to give them a Superman by Kirby. Moreover, he was never that wild about drawing other folks' characters anyway, and he felt that if DC didn't want to publish a Kirby Superman, they shouldn't have him on a comic that featured Superman.  He also thought it was odd that they were constantly talking about "modernizing" Superman and bringing him into the seventies…but confronted with a new approach, they immediately called in a guy (Plastino) who'd been drawing Superman since 1948.  Plastino was not even being given work on the Superman comics at the time because his style was regarded as "old-fashioned."

My own opinion — and that of several folks like Marv Wolfman who saw Jack's untouched pencils — was that DC overreacted.  Yeah, Jack couldn't draw Superman's chest emblem.  (It was the one thing in the world I drew better than Jack Kirby and he had me draw it for him in some issues.)  And yes, he often did not get that distinctive forehead curl right.  But I thought his Superman was otherwise just fine and by retouching, they wound up with a jarring clash of styles and a lot of puzzled readers.  I also think there would have been no problem if Colletta had been replaced with a better inker — say, Frank Giacoia or Wally Wood, both of whom were turned down for the assignment.  I believe either of them could have made minor adjustments that would have made Jack's Superman acceptable to all.  Even having Murphy Anderson ink the book would have lessened the awkwardness of two opposing styles in the same panel.

DC recently issued the first of two volumes reprinting Jack's Jimmy Olsen stories, just as they were originally published. There is no way to actually restore what Jack did — only a few stats of a few panels have survived — but there was once talk of having someone (probably Steve Rude) redraw the redraws into more of a Kirby style. In fact, I somewhat instigated such discussions before finally becoming convinced that it was impractical.  You really wouldn't be resurrecting what Jack did since those drawings are lost and gone forever.  You'd just be trading one set of non-Kirby drawings for another.  It might have a certain commercial appeal but it wouldn't exactly undo what was done to the work in the first place.

Rude did take an unused Kirby cover sketch and turn it into the cover of one of the Olsen reprint volumes. That's Jack's sketch that I've posted as an illustration above. If you click on it, you can see a larger version and get a little better idea of how Kirby drew Superman and Jimmy Olsen, even though this is a rough sketch and not a finished drawing.

As you can tell, I think DC made a colossal mistake in how they handled this.  One exec over in the licensing division at the time argued that it would seriously damage the value of the property to have Superman drawn "off-model."  I think hindsight has shown that far more harm was done to the character by putting out a bland, uninteresting product…even if it did stick to some official corporate interpretation.  One of the significant evolutions since then in the field of Creator Rights is that this kind of thing is never done to an artist's work now.

My Fair Lady was the first real musical comedy I ever saw performed live on a stage. This is discounting a couple of "kiddy theater" productions I saw at an earlier age which failed to entertain me or, insofar as I could tell, anyone else on the premises. I remember a probably-unauthorized musical version of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins I saw when I was around seven that was so low-budget, they were short 499 pieces of head gear. A lady was playing Bartholomew and she kept doing inept sleight-of-hand to make it appear as if new chapeaus were magically appearing on her head, but she didn't fool anyone. We all knew she wasn't a boy and that it was the same hat, over and over and over.

A few other such plays failed to get me interested in theater. Fortunately though in 1961 when I was nine, my mother took me to see the touring company of My Fair Lady at the Biltmore Theater in downtown Los Angeles. A gentleman named Michael Evans — who spent much of his career playing Henry Higgins in various productions — played Henry Higgins, while research has suggested that Liza was played by either Caroline Dixon or Anne Rogers.

Anyway, I'll tell you what I remember of the experience. I remember my mother briefing me for days about what I was going to see, explaining and perhaps over-explaining the story. I also remember going there with a certain familiarity with the songs, inasmuch as my folks played the cast album over and over and over. I still own their copy of that record and it's a wonder you can even get a sound out of the thing today, so worn down are the grooves. I remember getting dressed up for the event and I remember my father, for God knows what reason, dropping us off at the theater and picking us up later, rather than coming in with us. Most of all though, I remember The Orange Drink.

At the time, it was apparently quite customary for legit theaters to sell orange drink at intermission. I assume they had alcohol and soft drinks but one could also purchase a certain orange-hued beverage that they all sold — or at least, they sold it at the Biltmore. For days before we attended, my mother not only told me about the show but explained that at intermission, she would buy me this terrific orange drink. I realize now she was very worried that I would find My Fair Lady an utter bore but she figured, I guess, that I would at least enjoy the orange drink. I heard so much about it that I began thinking, "This must be some orange drink" and presuming that it was so special, you could only get it if you sat through an entire musical comedy.

Our seats were high in a balcony, several kilometers from the stage and all the way on the left. I sat there in my suit and tie all through the first act, trading off with my mother on using a pair of very old binoculars she owned. I enjoyed the show a lot but my mind kept drifting to thoughts of the wonderful orange drink I would be savoring at intermission. When the moment finally came, my mother took me out to the lobby and bought me a small carton, like a milk carton, of what turned out to be a pretty mediocre orange drink. It was very much like Kool-Aid — sugared water with artificial coloring and flavor, and I didn't particularly want to drink it but figuring it was part of the ritual of the theater, I did. For all I knew, the second act couldn't start until every child in the place finished his or her orange drink.

As it turned out, I liked the show a lot more than the orange drink. And it's funny what you remember from an experience like that. I remember the "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" number with the buskers pushing Liza around stage on a flower cart and whistling. I remember Alfred Doolittle and three other characters singing, "With a Little Bit of Luck." I remember Doolittle doing, "Get Me to the Church on Time" and in it, I vividly recall Doolittle in his tuxedo saying goodbye to someone. He did an elaborate gesture of removing one of his gloves so he could shake hands. Then he shook with the still-gloved hand. Then he put the glove back on the hand from which he'd removed it. Big laugh.

It all added up to my first real memory of the theater. It was many years after that I began attending on an even semi-regular basis but when I did, something connected with that first experience. First time I took in a show on Broadway, I found myself flashing back to that balcony at the Biltmore and thinking, "This is the same wonderful experience." Maybe it was even better. On Broadway, they don't make you drink the rotten orange drink.

The right man for the job! After all, he knows how how turn a profit. He'll make sure that California's books show pink instead of red! Larry Flynt, yeah!

This recall election is going to be such a circus, the state will have to pay royalties to Ringling Brothers.

People always ask me, "Mark, you're so amazingly in-touch with all things show-businessy. You know everything that's happening before it happens and sometimes even when it doesn't. Where on God's green earth do you manage to get your insider view of the oft-angry business called Show?"

And I tell them the truth; that it all comes from Dateline: Hollywood. the website with its finger up the butt of the entertainment industry. Check it out. And believe every word you read.

[UPDATE, added in April of 2013:  I have removed the link above.  It led to a gossip column parody that is no longer online.]

Browsing through upcoming program listings at the TiVo website, I just found this one…

Showgirls (1995) A dancer becomes understudy in a Las Vegas show, sleeps with the boss and pushes the star down a flight of stairs.

…and I thought, Yeah, that's just about all there is to it.

Fans used to complain that DC Comics had misleading covers but this one sure was accurate: "America's Favorite Funnyman." Bob Hope was that, and he held the title far longer than anyone else ever has or will. I haven't really cruised the Internet much since I awoke to the news that he's passed away but I'd wager every current events/news website is making that point, probably under a banner that says "Thanks for the Memories."The obits were prepared long ago, and about all I can add to them is to recall a few times I had the honor — and he sure made you feel like it was one — of being in the presence of Mr. Robert Hope. He also made you feel like he excelled at being Bob Hope; that he knew precisely who and what he was, and that it was who and what he wanted to be: A very big, very busy star but eminently approachable in spite of the fact that you couldn't get near him. I felt this instantly the first time I met him…in, believe it or not, the bargain basement area of a May Company department store.

It was the one at the corner of Pico and Overland in West Los Angeles, a few blocks from where I then lived. It was January of '75 and Hope had just published The Last Christmas Show, a book about his overseas tours to entertain the troops. He was appearing at the store to sign copies and I was thinking of going, not so much to see him in person as to get an autographed book. But I figured the line would extend to around Bakersfield and I didn't want one that badly. As it happened, it was pouring rain that morning and it suddenly let up around a half-hour before the time of Mr. Hope's signing. "Aha," I thought wrongly, "There'll be a very low turnout."

So I threw on my raincoat and walked up to the May Company, all the time pondering what Bob "Mr. Topical Monologue" Hope might say or do.  At the time, Olympic swim champ Mark Spitz seemed to be the punchline to every joke so I imagined Hope saying something like, "I wouldn't say it's wet out there but on the escalator up, I passed a halibut, three salmon and Mark Spitz."

When I got there, I went up to the third level, where the line snaked all around the floor — hundreds and hundreds of people waiting for him. I decided not to wait in it. The signs said he was appearing for an hour and there was no way even "Rapid Robert," as some called him, could sign books for all those folks in that time. (Some people had already purchased and were holding three or four copies.)  He was due in twenty minutes so I decided to wander the store and return when he arrived to catch a glimpse of the man and — and this interested me more — see how he'd handle that huge crowd.

I went down to the store's basement where they sold cheap art supplies.  I'd been there about two minutes when some doors behind me flew open and an entourage of men stormed in from the parking garage. In the center of the group, flawlessly attired in a pale blue-grey suit, was Bob Hope. And by dumb luck, I was standing between him and the elevator to which they were leading him.

As if I mattered in the least, he walked up to me and shook my hand.  Then he took note of my damp raincoat and said, "Hey, looks like it's wet outside."  How had he not noticed that on his drive there?  In reply to him, I threw my line: "I wouldn't say it's wet out there but on the escalator up, I passed a halibut, three salmon and Mark Spitz."  He laughed…and I guess I thought, "Hey, I just made Bob Hope laugh."

Before I could grasp the significance (if any) of that, Hope's men swept him into the elevator and he was gone. I wasn't entirely sure he'd ever been there.  So I sprinted for the escalator and managed to make it up to the book-signing area just as he was arriving. The line of buyers broke into applause as he strode effortlessly to the front table and picked up a little microphone. "Hey, I wanna thank you all for coming," he said, and everyone laughed because he sounded just like Bob Hope. "Boy, it's wet around here," he continued. "On the escalator up, I passed a halibut, three salmon and Mark Spitz."  Everyone laughed again. Even I laughed a half-second before I realized: Hey, that's my line.

(It is perhaps worth noting that we all laughed in spite of the fact that we all knew he hadn't taken the escalator. It worked in the joke, and that was what mattered. There's an oft-quoted story about Hope appearing once in England and telling a joke where the punchline was something like, "They went to a motel." The audience howled even though at the time the word "motel" was largely unknown in England. An American journalist who was present asked one of the people who'd laughed if they knew what a motel was. The person said they didn't. The journalist asked them why they'd laughed then. The reply was, "Because we know he's funny and it seemed like the end of the joke.")

At the May Company, Hope sat down and began signing books and I suddenly decided that no matter how long I had to wait, I was going to get one. It took about ninety minutes — longer than the announced time of his appearance but still a lot less than I'd have guessed, given how many people were ahead of me.

They had it down to a science: One of Hope's helpers gave you a slip of paper on which you were to write what you wanted Bob to write.The helper would then look at it and edit it down or make you rewrite it to keep it brief or to remove things that Bob didn't want to write. They'd then pass your book to Bob with it open to the signing page and your slip placed just above where he signed, and he'd sign. The assistants were in control and they kept it moving so swiftly, you were almost afraid to try and say something to Hope. It disappointed a lot of people who'd come, hoping to exchange a few words or perhaps get a photo ("No pictures," the aides scolded) but you had to marvel at the efficiency: A ton of books were sold and signed, and Bob didn't look like the bad guy for not engaging you in a leisurely chat.

When it was my turn, I tried to remind him of our basement encounter, hoping he'd thank me for the joke or something.  He grinned and said thanks but I'm not sure he had any idea what either of us was talking about.  He just had to keep the line moving.  I went home, pleased to have an inscribed first edition, proud that I'd gotten even those few seconds of individual attention in the basement…and proud that I'd "written" something that fit Bob Hope so well, Bob Hope had used it.  I tried telling some of my friends about it but I wasn't a professional comedy writer back then and they obviously didn't believe me.

Back then, I was occasionally spending afternoons at NBC studios in Burbank where I had an almost-legal way to get in. Once you were in, if you acted like you belonged there and knew where you were going, no one ever stopped you from visiting tapings and rehearsals. In earlier years, I'd spent most of my time watching Laugh-In tape but that show was over by '75, so I'd go watch The Dean Martin Show rehearse (without Dean Martin) or watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (which sometimes even starred Johnny Carson). If Hope was there when I was, I'd watch from afar as he taped a sketch for one of his specials. My most vivid memories of those moments are of him yelling at his eternal cue card man, Barney McNulty, when the cards weren't in the right order or properly legible. Shortly after that day at the May Company, I was present when he was on with Johnny. I think it was a Friday show and he was plugging his latest special, which was to air Monday.

Poaching on the set, I managed to see how it was done: About thirty seconds before Johnny introduced him, Hope strode into Stage 1 with the inevitable entourage, perhaps even the same one. He was still reviewing a piece of paper with a couple of jokes on it as the band struck up his theme song. Then he handed the page to an aide, walked out to tumultuous applause, and sat down next to Carson, who expertly fed him the questions that elicited the just-studied jokes. The segment went about as well as such segments ever do, and my overall admiration was not so much at the wit but at the sheer expertise in the delivery. Bob and Johnny were both utterly in control and things went precisely the way both wanted them to.

At the first commercial break, Hope stepped out and told Johnny's studio audience that they were so good, he had decided to ask them to stick around after The Tonight Show was finished so that he could use them to tape the monologue for his special. The crowd almost gasped with delight. Hope explained that the rest of the special had been recorded a week or two back but he always did the monologue at the last minute so it could be more topical. He also explained that the stage we were in — Stage 1 — was his design. The steep rake was because when he was performing, he liked to be able to look up and see as many laughing faces as possible.

Sure enough, not one person budged from their seats as the Carson show concluded. A different curtain was flown in for Bob to perform in front of, and he took a few minutes to run through his cue cards with Barney McNulty. When all was in readiness, Hope stepped into position and did the monologue three times. The first time through, everyone laughed a lot. The second time through, they laughed a little less. And the third time through, they laughed more than the second time, because Hope began screwing with the wording and muttering things like, "We'll cut that one." Johnny Carson was just off-camera throughout and at one point in the middle of the third take, Bob stepped over to him and whispered something that I suspect was very dirty, and Carson got hysterical. Then Hope thanked everyone for sticking around — like they'd all done him a favor —and he and the entourage disappeared. Again, my overwhelming impression was of efficiency more than inspiration. The following Monday night, what aired was most of the first take with maybe five jokes cut, and perhaps one or two inserted from Take Two.

I met him one other time and actually got to talk to him when he appeared on The Barbara Mandrell Show when he did a guest appearance and one of the producers, Marty Krofft, introduced us. Among the things we discussed were that I told him I'd just been reading a book about Walter Winchell and asked him if he was ever going to make the long-rumored movie in which he would play the gossip columnist. He said, "Oh, definitely," though he never did. He started telling me what a fascinating son-of-a-bitch Winchell had been — though he chuckled when he told the following story, which I'd already heard.

One of his first screen appearances was in a dreadful short comedy called Going Spanish. Shortly after viewing it, Hope ran into Winchell who asked him how it was. "When they catch Dillinger, they're going to make him sit through it twice," the legend-to-be replied. Winchell printed the remark in his column and the movie studio dropped Hope's contract, proclaiming they had enough trouble selling his films without him knocking them in the press. I said to Hope, "Well, that sure hurt your career" and he grinned. He could grin because, I suspect, that was the last mistake he ever made.

Box office grosses for the movie of The Hulk seem to be plunging this weekend. This alone will probably do nothing to diminish the number of movies based on comic books. The prevailing belief will merely be that audiences wanted desperately to see a movie based on a favored comic book character…but that they just heard that this particular one didn't do justice to the property. It will probably also become conventional wisdom that the main thing that went wrong with the film was that the C.G.I. Hulk looked too much like a special effect. (I am basing this on Industry Buzz. I haven't seen the movie.) Some day, a couple of these films will tank almost immediately and that will greatly diminish the studios' interest in doing them…but not if they're going to keep opening strong and then dropping.

Folks keep asking me how I think Jack Kirby would have felt about the movie. Some presume that he would have been thrilled to see "his vision" reproduced so faithfully on the screen, especially since it's been acknowledged as such in so many reviews. Speculating on what Jack would have thought about something is risky since his thought process was often three steps ahead of reality. There were times I would have assumed Jack would react one way to a given situation and he would actually react in another, owing to the fact that he was looking at a much bigger picture than I could ever envision. I know I sometimes sound like the proverbial scratched record on this, but I continue to be amazed at how adept Kirby was at foreseeing the future. A lot of his statements that seemed unreal and off-center twenty years ago now seem a lot closer to actually occurring…and many already have. The Comic-Con in San Diego, for instance, has turned into exactly what Jack predicted back when it was attracting 3000 people and was only about comics.

All that said, I think I can say with some certainty that Jack would have resented the hell out of all these movies if they meant a lot of people making tons of money off Kirby work…with little or none of it going to anyone named Kirby. Jack was a Depression-era kid who believed that nothing was more important than providing for your family. When others spoke of doing work in the Kirby tradition and/or incorporated little mentions of his name in tribute, he was usually moved by the gesture but quite resentful when the project in question sent no bucks his way but megabucks to those retooling his work. If Jack were still with us and everything else was the same, he would be justifiably furious that the Hulk movie and allied merchandising are making millions for so many people who had nothing to do with the concept, design, creation, etc.

But if we're going to play "What If?" here, we need to remember that if Jack hadn't died in 1994 — My God, it's been that long — everything else would not be the same. Someone at Marvel, I'd like to think, would have seen both the moral and financial sense in offering Jack real money as a consultant of some sort. If they hadn't, someone else would have. Stan Lee has been quite skilled — and I mean this only as a compliment — at turning his status as co-creator of the key Marvel properties into both an active participation in film projects and a credit that gets him other, non-Marvel deals. I'd like to think something similar would have befallen Kirby, and he certainly saw that as a possibility. His battles with Marvel over credit were at least in part because he knew that being hailed as "co-creator of the Hulk" (or Fantastic Four or Thor or any of a few dozen others) had a financial value and that it could serve as the pension he never received directly from them. Alas,the company he helped build rarely acknowledged this during his lifetime — not on the Hulk live-action TV show, not on the Hulk cartoon show, not even in the Hulk comic books.

He gets, I'm told, a credit on the movie and I think that's great. But one of the many reasons I don't want to see the movie is that I don't want to find myself leaping to my feet and yelling at the screen, "Why couldn't you have given him that when it could have done him some good?"

Just back from a lovely evening at the Hollywood Bowl. It was "Hall of Fame" night as they inducted Roger Daltrey, The Smothers Brothers, Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane and Leopold Stokowski. All but Mssrs. Lane and Stokowski were present and performing. Nathan appeared via a pre-tape to explain that he was off to England to do a movie. Leopold would probably have been there except for the fact that he died in 1977.

But Daltrey (introduced by Brian Wilson) was great, LuPone (introduced by Joe Mantegna) was great, and the Smotherses (introduced by Michael McKean, Annette O'Toole and Fred Willard) were really great. Also appearing (and also great) were singing sensation Josh Groban and, of course, The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under the able baton of John Mauceri. Oh, yeah — and at the end, they had fireworks.

The Hollywood Bowl is one of those places I always enjoy being but it's a huge pain to get there and only a slightly smaller pain to get out. I remember several trips with my parents when I was a tot — once for Disney Night. They had the costumed characters from Disneyland dancing all over the place, and performances by Disney-related performers.

I remember comedian Gene Sheldon playing a banjo, doing an act that struck me as way too small for the stage. I also remember Henry Calvin coming out in his Sgt. Garcia character from the Zorro show, bragging to the audience about how Zorro was scared of him: "He would not dare come within five miles of me because he knows I would instantly spot him and conquer him with my expert sword work." And of course as he was saying this, Zorro (i.e., a stuntman in the costume) could be seen sneaking over the top of the Hollywood Bowl and climbing down a rope to the stage to sneak up on the unsuspecting Sgt. Garcia. Every kid in the place was screaming"Zorro" and Garcia kept saying things like, "Yes, I am talking about Zorro who is probably a hundred miles from me…" They milked this for about five minutes and it was very funny.

At the end, a lady dressed as Tinker Bell "flew" (slid down a wire) from a back row of the Bowl, all the way down to the stage. Then all the walk around characters wheeled out huge boxes, opened them and released hundreds of multi-color helium balloons. It was all a lot of fun, and I still recall it vividly, even though I was probably about nine at the time.

I remember a few other childhood trips to the Bowl — once to see Danny Kaye perform. The moment I recall best from that was that he had every adult in the place light a match or lighter (this was back when everyone smoked) and then he sang "Happy Birthday." I remember seeing the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey Circus there and it seemed all wrong to do a circus in that configuration. And my parents took me to see Allan Sherman in two consecutive summers. One must have been 1963 because he performed almost everything that was on his just-released album, My Son, the Nut, including "Hello, Muddah…Hello, Fadduh." Then in 1964, he used the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra to perform Peter and the Commissar, the album he did with the Boston Pops.

Then I didn't go the Hollywood Bowl for a long time. I think the ordeal — parking, walking, sitting on hard seats — got to be too much for my father. When I was old enough to go on my own, I didn't. Not until September of 1980. The Monty Python boys did a four-night stand and I took a small posse to the final night. It was an odd crowd, packed as it was with Python fans, a surprising percentage of them in costume as Mr. Gumby. At a performance by a rock group that's had a lot of hits, audiences seem to want to hear the familiar tunes and they zone out when the lead singer says, "Here's something off the new album…" The Python attendees were the same way — less interested in the unfamiliar material than they were in seeing the Parrot Sketch, the Crunchy Frog routine, "Nudge, Nudge" and other classics they knew by heart. During a promo interview, John Cleese commented that about 90% of the folks in the audience were just as qualified as he was to perform any sketch in the repertoire. He was exaggerating but not by much.

Then again we have a lapse of two decades or so. The last few years, my friend Carolyn and I have gone to the Bowl…not often, but a lot more often than I did in the first 45 years of my life in Los Angeles. As I said, it's a huge pain to get there and a slightly smaller one to get home. But while you're there, it's pretty damn good.

Back in the sixties, Western Publishing Company (Gold Key Comics) began to have increasing problems getting their comics distributed. All the publishers were having this problem but it was most acute for Western. DC and Charlton owned their own distribution companies so they were able to push a little harder and at least they were paying their distribution fees to themselves. Marvel was distributed by DC until they jumped to a company owned by the same conglomerate that owned Marvel. The other companies, like Archie and Harvey, were hurt…but they (like DC and Marvel) were largely using their comic book publishing as a loss leader for the merchandising of the properties depicted in their comics. DC didn't consider it fatal when sales on the Batman comic went down since they were making money off Batman t-shirts and games and spatulas and such.

Western, however, did not control their own distribution, nor did they make any money off the merchandising of most of the characters in their comics. They had the Disney properties, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, etc. — all properties owned by others. The few comics Western did own did not yield any real licensing money.

So they began hustling to find a way to sell comics in other venues — bookstores, toy stores, anywhere. They explored other forms of distribution and to this end began experimenting with different sizes and shapes of comics. Long before anyone at DC or Marvel was ready to break from the conventional funny book format, Western tried oversize comics, paperback comics, comics bundled in plastic bags and a few other ideas. Some received limited test marketings or never made it that far. Others came out and were widely ignored. The one thing that did well for a time was the digest comic — a little paperback about 6 and 3/4" tall with (usually) a little under 200 pages. Today, the Archie people have done quite well with their digests and the rumor is that other companies are gearing up to try them — especially for "funny" comics, whose less-detailed pages suffer less when reduced in size.

I don't believe this format will ever catch on big. Archie's success with it has largely been a matter of skillful (and expensive) marketing. They've managed to get excellent display in airports and at supermarket checkout counters. It often costs a lot of money to get your wares into those locations…which can accept very limited amounts of product. I also think there's a fundamental problem with the format in that its very size makes comics look cheap and unimportant.

One thing that some publishers seem to have missed is a lesson that Western learned when they were the only publisher doing them. When the digests were successful, they were only successful in stores that were completely isolated from regular-size comics. If a store had both sizes, no one bought the digests. If a store didn't carry regular-size comics but the one across the street did, no one bought the digests. I forget the actual sales numbers I was shown but it was something like this: When no regular-sized comics could be purchased nearby, a store that carried the digests might expect a 75% sale, which was very good. If the same store had regular comics, the digests would sell 10%. Therefore, Western was in the odd position of trying very hard not to distribute one of their products to some outlets. This they did until the digests died out in the early-seventies — about the time DC and Marvel were both enjoying some success with larger-than-normal comics. Western's distribution was crashing anyway by then but I've often wondered if the appearance of the tabloid "super-size" comics made the digests just look so puny that they helped finish them off.

Someone wrote to ask me about the best night I can recall spending at the Comedy Store.  There were a lot of them, backstage as well as onstage.  One night, Garry Shandling was on, and he wouldn't get off.  Just wouldn't stop.  The audience was loving him but he was way over his time and the next comic up — Arsenio Hall — was backstage fuming.  Arsenio finally turned to me (because, I guess, I was the biggest guy around) and said, "Come on.  Help me get this guy off."  And before I knew it, he and I were on the stage, physically carrying Mr. Shandling off…as Garry continued to clutch the mike and talk about his hair.  Never saw an audience laugh so hard in my life.

Another night that comes to mind was one evening when Sam Kinison was in fine form.  This was when he was still something of a cult figure — the private "discovery" of a select group of Kinison fans.  A guy in the audience made the mistake of heckling Sam, and Sam turned on him.  He began calling the guy names and like a really demented high school kid, describing graphic sexual perversions that (Sam claimed) he'd performed on the guy's mother.  You instantly realized that Kinison had decided he was not going to be satisfied to merely get the heckler to shut up.  He wanted to see if he could drive the fellow out of the room in tears.  On and on he went, making up deviant sex fantasies about the heckler's mother, each lewder than the one before.  After three or four, the heckler had not only stopped heckling but was muttering, "Come on, I'm sorry.  I won't interrupt again." That was not enough.  Kinison kept after him until the guy finally threw down some bills to cover his check and stormed out of the club.  Sam ran down to the table, counted the money and looked at the check, then ran after the fellow screaming, "You didn't tip, you cheap [multiple expletives deleted]!  You're just like your mother!"  Sam was on a wireless mike so we were sitting there in the Comedy Store, listening to him out on Sunset Boulevard yelling at his victim for about three minutes, apparently as the guy got into his car and drove off.  Finally, Sam returned to the stage, calmed down and said, "So…anyone else wanna fuck with me?"  Then he went right back into the story he was telling when the heckler first heckled.  Needless to say, no one interrupted him again.

Maybe the best night — and there are many from which to choose — was one evening when a comedienne friend of mine, Louise DuArt, was the closing act in the big room.  That meant five comics would each do 15 minutes, then Louise would close by doing thirty.  The first comic was Argus Hamilton, who would hang around and serve as m.c. for the others.  Louise called and suggested I come that evening because (she'd heard) certain "surprises" were likely — and she somehow arranged for my date and me to get Mitzi's table in the otherwise sold-out show, Mitzi being Mitzi Shore, owner-operator of the place.  Sure enough, the announced line-up was strong enough on its own — but added to it were impromptu sets by Yakov Smirnoff and Roseanne Barr, both of whom were unadvertised.  I didn't think either was that great but there's still something kind of thrilling about a surprise guest star.

It was the same way after Louise finished her very successful set.  The evening could have ended there, as it was scheduled to, and everyone would have left very happy.  Instead, Argus Hamilton returned to the stage and everyone thought he was going to say, "Thanks for coming."  Instead, he said, "Have you got time to see one more comedian?"  The audience, of course, yelled "Yes!"  Hamilton asked, "If you could see anyone in the world, who would you like to see walk out here?"  One black woman screamed out, louder than anyone else, "Eddie Murphy!"  Argus glared at her: "Do you think I can just snap my fingers and Eddie Murphy will walk out here?"  And sure enough, as he snapped his fingers, You-Know-Who walked out.  The audience went crazy, and Murphy — who was practicing for a concert film or HBO special he was about to do — stayed out there for a full hour, talking to the audience and delivering one of the funniest stand-up routines I've ever seen in my life.  A lot of it was about how he'd just been asked to play Little Richard in a biographical movie.  He got a copy of Little Richard's autobiography, he said, flipped it open and found a description of Little Richard receiving anal sex on his piano.  Eddie went on and on wondering aloud how they'd film such a scene…maybe bring in a stunt butt or something.  Much of his time was spent chatting with the lady who'd hollered his name out to Argus, and who was unabashed about announcing that she was ready and eager to engage in any kind of sex act with Mr.  Murphy — right there on the stage, if necessary.  I think she was even suggesting some of the things Kinison had claimed to have done with that heckler's mother.

Now, I need to explain that this was the early show on a Saturday night.  It was supposed to end around 10:30 and then the Comedy Store staff would do a fast clean-up of the place and begin seating for the 11:00 show.  Because of the addition of Yakov and Roseanne, it was already 10:45 by the time Eddie walked out.  Throughout, you could see personnel fretting and hear the griping of people who were lined up outside on Sunset…but no one was about to cut off Eddie Murphy's mike or carry him off the stage.  Finally, a little before Midnight, he finished — to a tremendous ovation, of course.  Immediately, waiters begin shoving us out the door and as we exited, we all had to walk past the folks who had been waiting more than an hour longer than they'd expected.  They were mad about that, and even madder at reports that we'd gotten to see Eddie Murphy and they wouldn't.  I believe the biggest name on the line-up they'd be viewing was Charlie Fleischer.

Walking past the line, pedestrian traffic jammed-up and a bunch of us found ourselves face-to-face with some angry ticket holders for the 11:00 show.  One woman was yelling at us, "Liars!  You're lying!  You did not see Eddie Murphy! Eddie Murphy was not in there!"  Her theory, I guess, was that we'd all decided to play a trick on the folks outside: "Listen, let's all wait in here an extra hour and we'll make raucous laughing sounds.  Then when you leave, tell everyone in the line outside that Eddie Murphy was doing a set."  Something like that.  Anyway, she was screaming this when suddenly, a black stretch limousine pulled up at the curb. Everyone could see the Artists' Entrance (i.e., back door of the club) swing open and then an entourage of black men in dark glasses marched out and into the limo, with E. Murphy clearly visible in the center.  In ten seconds, the limo, Eddie and the entourage were gone…and the hysterical lady was just standing there with her mouth open and her chin scraping the pavement.

Those were the golden nights of the Comedy Store.  They don't make 'em like that anymore.

With no real explanation beyond that he wants to take some nights off, David Letterman decided to do four shows this past week instead of five. Usually, he does five, taping two shows on Thursday so he can have Friday off. This week, Tom Arnold did the Friday night show.

This has prompted speculation — among Letterman fans on the Internet and elsewhere — that Dave is somehow packing it in, giving up, whatever. There's no real evidence for that but the assumption goes something like this: Letterman and his people have long complained that they'd be more competitive with Leno if CBS would give them more promotion and better lead-ins. Now, they have as much promotion as they could ever expect, and CBS's prime-time ratings are substantially up…and not only is Leno as far ahead as ever but Nightline is even up. So the presumption, fueled somewhat by his recent on-air performance, is that Dave's disheartened. A more prosaic analysis might be that the five-a-week grind is wearing him down, and that he feels he and the show will be better off if he works a bit less.

That would not be an aberrant viewpoint. Very few TV hosts in history have ever felt they could maintain a five show work week. The politics of the Leno-Letterman face-off, along with Leno's own personal mania for hard work, seemed to dictate that both men perform at that pace. In ten years, Jay has never had a guest host (apart from the one recent night when he swapped jobs with Katie Couric) and Dave has had them only while in the hospital or recuperating. But guest hosts are more the norm than not for talk shows: Steve Allen and Jack Paar both took nights off on a regular basis. Johnny Carson sometimes was so absent from The Tonight Show that it almost became a joke. Once, when the Friars roasted Mr.Carson, Groucho Marx got up to the podium and said…

You know, I've tried to watch Johnny. I've tuned in three times. One time, Jerry Lewis was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The next time, Harry Belafonte was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The third time, I was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I've never known Johnny Carson to host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. We're honoring a man who doesn't show up for work.

Carson somewhat abated such jokes by making his absences more predictable, and by solving marital problems that had apparently necessitated some of them. Eventually, it became standard that someone else would guest host on Mondays, a Carson rerun would be offered on Tuesday,and Johnny would take X weeks per year off altogether. (The Tuesday rerun was sometimes a new show during Sweeps Weeks.) If Letterman decides to go that route, he's going to have to allow guest hosts who have a fighting chance.

Tom Arnold was a disaster — and I say that as someone who inexplicably enjoys Tom Arnold, at least in the guest chair. But the show was awful, falling easily to the level presumed by Arnold's self-deprecating jokes. It may not have been his fault. He seemed to have a sore throat, and was facing a studio audience that wrote away months ago for tickets, and probably planned their vacations, expecting to see Dave. He also may not have had sufficient support or time to prepare. All of this is reflected in the overnight ratings. Jay had a 5.2, Nightline had a 4.2 and The Late Show guest-hosted by Tom Arnold had a 2.8. That's about as bad as it could be. You or I could go out there and do hand shadows for an hour and get a 2.8.

Guest hosting is hard. You're working in someone else's arena with some (not all) of their equipment, working with people who know you're a temp. The writers, for instance, are going to save the best material for the star. Everyone on the staff knows that if the show bombs, the guest host will get 100% of the blame. I mean, the regular star isn't going to come in tomorrow and start firing people because the show wasn't just as good with the guest host.

The folks who've succeeded in guest-hosting have not been thrown into the spot in which Tom Arnold found himself last night. Joan Rivers did pretty well sitting-in for Johnny, at least for a while, and Jay Leno did as well as you could do. Both were "permanent" guest hosts who could plan well ahead, hire their own writers and get involved in the advance booking of guests. Both also were coming back again, so the staff had a little more incentive to do right by them. The guest hosts who did well for Johnny before them, functioning on a "non-permanent" basis, were those like Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart who walked in the door with decades of prepared material and enough importance that they almost equalled Johnny's personal star power. (Dave had Cosby guest-host for him once a few months ago, but it wasn't Cos at his best.)

Working less might be a good idea for Letterman. (An even better idea might be to try some actual comedy bits, rather than to just screw around with Rupert, the staff and pointless games.) But if he's going to bring in guest hosts, he's going to have to give those nights a fighting chance — by booking people who have a shot at being good. Even if it may mean auditioning for his own replacement.