Category Archives: To Be Filed

In the above photo, I don't know who the woman in the center is but the man is Edmund G. "Pat" Brown who was then the governor of California, a post occasionally since then held by his son Jerry. The woman on the left is my mother, Dorothy Evanier. She worked on the elder Brown's campaign in 1962…the one in which he beat Richard Nixon.

Today as you know is Mothers Day. This week, I'm going to rerun here the first three "Tales of My Mother" essays I posted here shortly after she passed away in October of 2012. This one ran here on October 5, 2012.

Near the end, you'll notice I tell a story about a man I called "Howard Producer." I disguised his identity not because I was afraid it would cost me work but because he was a man I felt didn't have much of a sense of humor. He passed away two years later so if you want to know who he really was, he was this person. And that said, here's the first of my Tales of My Mother…

For about ten years after my father retired, my mother worked part-time for a small chain called Jurgensen's Markets. Around Christmas, she worked full-time and overtime.

There were at least four Jurgensen's — one in Beverly Hills, one in Westwood, one in Hancock Park and one in either Glendale or Pasadena. Pasadena, I think. This was not a place where most of us would do our marketing. It was a rich person's market with alleged-gourmet food and sky-high pricing…in other words, not a place you went to stock up on Franco-American canned spaghetti. They didn't carry it and if they had, they would have charged you five dollars…per strand. My mother worked mainly at the one in Beverly Hills where at least half the commerce involved one person in show business ordering wine and/or a fancy gift basket delivered to some other person in show business.

She did me an enormous service there. I do not drink wine or anything alcoholic…and I never saw any non-beverage component of a Jurgensen's gift basket I'd consider eating. So if she saw one about to be delivered to me, she would intercept and re-route. She'd call and say — this was just before Christmas when there were a lot of presents flying about — "Jimmie Komack is sending you a basket of exotic cheeses and your agent is sending you a bottle of wine" and I'd say, "Great! Change the cards and send the cheeses to my agent and the wine to Jimmie."

We did this for years…as long as she worked for Jurgensen's. Sometimes, it wasn't as neatly symmetrical as that but it spared me having a lot of bottles around I didn't want. Often of course, I received wine that didn't come from Jurgensen's but we had a solution for that, too. I'd take those bottles over to my parents' house when I visited and my mother would sneak them into Jurgensen's and send them out for me via Jurgensen's delivery methods. After we did this for a while, she felt guilty so she told the manager and offered to have the costs deducted from her paycheck. The manager laughed, decided it was a great idea and he began bringing in unwanted bottles that had been delivered to his home and having them sent out to others.

My favorite moment in all this came when I was working for a producer named…well, I'd better not give his real name because he might still hire me again. I'll call him Howard Producer and tell you that he was a very important Hollywood-type person and he was also a wine snob. The one time he allowed me into his home, I was subjected to a ritual that was apparently required of all visitors — a tour of his wine cellar. It was huge and temperature-controlled and filled with bottles that he fingered like rare Ming Dynasty artifacts.

Though I tried to explain to him that I did not know one wine from another, he would cradle one and say, as if it was the most impressive thing one could possibly say, "This is a 1947 Bordeaux from the hinterlands of Greenbriar County and it was bottled on a rainy Thursday by the infamous Maria." Then he'd wait for me to adopt a jealous expression and indicate that I realized what an awesome thing that was to own. I learned to just go "Wowww" a lot. I also learned that he took his wine seriously. Didn't even snicker when I asked, "Hey, you got any Manischewitz around this dump?" and followed it up by inquiring, "What's a good year for Ripple?" Come to think of it, he didn't laugh at anything I wrote for him, either.

So, getting back to Jurgensen's: That same year, my mother called and said, "I have a bottle of wine here for you from Howard Producer. Where do you want me to send it?" I thought for a second and told her, "Send it to Howard Producer." I thought it would make a nice Christmas present…give Howard back his own wine.

It saved me shopping for something. It saved me getting it delivered and paying for it and it also saved me having to figure out what to do with that bottle of wine. But the best moment came when we went back to work after the holidays. Howard came by my desk to thank me for the wine. Then he leaned in carefully and said, "Listen, next time you send out wine to people as a gift, check with me and I'll suggest a few. It's important to make a good impression in this town and you don't want people to think you're the kind of guy who'd give out that kind of wine."

If you have a blog and want to get a ton o' e-mail, just post a message about having problems with your shoulder. I thank all of you who wrote in — mostly to suggest I google "frozen shoulder" — but there sure were a lot of you. I will guardedly investigate some of what you all said — "guardedly" because it has been my experience that the 'net is full of the worst kind of quackery so none of it can be taken at face value. I do have good doctors though and I'll run a few of your long-range diagnoses past them.

Our friend Mike Kazaleh says that what's missing from the 33-minute print of The Nut House are some animated gag sequences. I suspect also missing is an actual introduction of the cast along with an up-front credit for Jay Ward and Bill Scott.

I've also received quite a few suggestions of New York Delicatessens that are worthy of being identified as New York Delicatessens. Quite a few of you touted the new Times Square location of The Pastrami Queen. I may give it a try next time I'm back there even though its menu contains what it for me the single scariest sentence in the English language: "All sandwiches served with cole slaw."

In 1963, Jay Ward's cartoon studio was riding high with The Bullwinkle Show and starting to break out into live-action productions. One was Fractured Flickers, hosted by Hans Conried, which offered up silent movie footage redubbed with hilarious dialogue. It was a modest success in syndication.

Less successful was an unsold pilot for a prime-time hour-long variety show on CBS. It was called The Nut House (sometimes spelled The Nut House!!) and it featured a troupe of young comic actors performing sketches of various lengths, interspersed with cartoon segments, with no sense of continuity. While it didn't become a series, practically everyone involved in it considered it a prototype for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, which was a huge hit four years later. Most of them, in fact, were not hesitant to call Laugh-In a rip-off of The Nut House.

Ward's show was supervised by Jay and by Bill Scott. The writing staff consisted of some of the guys who were writing Ward's cartoons at the time plus some outside guys experienced in writing comedy sketches for TV. It is said that most of the material written by the outside guys failed to make the final cut. The full writing staff, as credited at the end, was Bob Arbogast, George Atkins, Allan Burns, Jim Critchfield, Chris Hayward, Art Keane, Jack Margolis, Hal Parets and Lloyd Turner. Atkins, Burns, Critchfield, Hayward and Turner all wrote animation for Ward before and after.

The cast consisted of Ceil Cabot, Jack Sheldon, Len Maxwell, Fay DeWitt, Tony Holland, Jane Connell, Don Francks, Andy Duncan, Adam Keefe, Muriel Landers, Mara Lynn, Marilynn Lovell, Kathy Kersh and Alan Sues. Sues, of course, was later a cast member on Laugh-In.

Charles S. Dubin was the producer-director, Jerry Fielding did the music, Herb Ross (later an Oscar-nominated director) did the choreography and there was special musical material from Martin Charnin, Mary Rodgers and Jim Rusk. Charnin later wrote for Broadway shows like Annie and Two by Two. Mary Rodgers, whose name was misspelled in the credits, was the daughter of Richard Rodgers and a pretty successful composer in her own right.

CBS was not happy with what the Ward-Scott team turned in and much editing was done on it. They didn't like the absence of a real host, cringed at the general chaos and objected to some bits as being unfunny or in poor taste.

The pilot was handed over to the CBS testing people, who showed it to focus groups and reported on their reaction.  It tested very poorly…probably about as bad as the pilot for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and we all know what a flop that was. Still, when the (by then) unsold pilot of The Nut House finally aired on CBS in September of '64, some reviews thought it was fresh and different. Alas, in network television, "fresh and different" are not always considered good things.

For years, bad video copies of that one episode circulated but a fairly decent one has recently surfaced and you can watch it below. The show as aired was an hour but this copy, which is minus commercials, runs 33 and a half minutes…so something is missing, I know not what…

I have no idea what caused it but my left shoulder has had something wrong with it for about six weeks now. It hurts like hell but only when I put that arm into one of several positions that are easy to avoid, especially when I don't have to put on or take off a shirt or jacket. Just sitting here writing, it's fine. If you pointed a gun at me and said "Stick 'em up," it might be less painful to have you shoot me than for me to raise that arm in the air.

And not only do we not know what caused it, the doctors aren't sure what "it" is. They did x-rays that told them very little and then an MRI which told them less. It's not a torn rotator cuff; that, we know.

There might be a slight tear in one muscle but it doesn't seem to be the kind to cause this problem. The shoulder doctor gave me (a) a shot of cortisone, (b) a prescription for more physical therapy and (c) an appointment in six weeks so we could assess how much (a) and (b) had helped. So far, the answer is "Just a little."

Physical therapy is great, though. For one thing, you learn stuff. The other day there, I noticed a wise bit of advice on the machine I was using…

"Stop if you feel pain or faint."  Yes, absolutely. This notice should be everywhere because it pertains to everything. No matter what you're doing — walking, running, having sex, twerking, watching Fox News, reading Groo the Wanderer, whatever — if you feel pain or faint, stop. Just stop.

We get lots of good advice that applies everywhere. When I go to comic conventions, there are almost always signs that remind you not to touch people without their consent or make sexual comments that may be unwelcome. You should absolutely heed those signs at conventions but you should also do what they say when you're at Costco, when you're walking down any street, when you're in a public park, etc. They apply everywhere.

Getting back to my shoulder: My orthopedist thinks that whatever's wrong with it will go away on its own. That seems logical to me since it happened on its own. For now though we're following the sage advice offered by the great all-seeing, all-knowing wise man, Henny Youngman. He told of the man who went to his doctor and said, "Doc, it hurts when I do this!" To which the doctor replied, "Then don't do that!"

It's a very old joke but it's basically what we're doing right now about my shoulder.

Last night, I was a guest on the first hour of the official podcast of the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. I recommend dropping by the blog on a regular basis because they post a lot of good news and info on the Comic-Con International, with which they are in no way connected. They just posted a good article by Robert Warners on myths surrounding the convention.

This time of year, they do regular podcasts. The hosts are Kerry Dixon and James Riley and they asked me to join them and talk about Comic-Con as we approach the fiftieth one. You can watch the whole thing below…

Josh Barro discusses the most divisive, class-oriented issue in the country today — the order in which we get to board airplanes. I never really understand it on any airline other than Southwest and I'm not always certain I understand it on Southwest. I just know I need an overhead space for my carry-on and I will certainly get it if I'm in Boarding Group A, probably get it if I'm in Boarding Group B…and there's a chance (but not a good one) I'll get it if I'm in Boarding Group C.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to criticize the Trump Administration's foreign policies because they don't even seem to know what they are. It sometimes seems like Trump himself doesn't want to get into a lot of foreign wars…but he picked John Bolton to be a national security advisor. You can mention just about any country on this planet to John Bolton and he'll tell you why we need to be dropping bombs on it, sending troops to it, seizing its assets and installing a government we control. Steve Benen has more.

I can't place the date exactly but around June of 2007, a little multi-colored kitten began showing up in my backyard, partaking of the free food that I put out there for other feral cats. I posted an item about her and this photo in September of that year. She's the one on the left…

We called her The Kitten and she turned up almost every night. At the time, I'm fairly sure her main hangout was across the street from me. It's a fairly busy street so she was risking her pretty little life every time she came over here for chow and then returned over there. At some point though, she seems to have relocated her base of operations to my yard.

In April of 2008, she was still dining here…but perhaps dining for at least two. She was either putting on serious weight or she was pregnant, mostly likely the latter. I called a friend who was involved with charities that care deeply about feral cats and asked what, if anything, I should do. He told me I should capture her, take her to a vet to get her "fixed" and to terminate the pregnancy. Each year, hundreds of thousands of feral cats in this country either starve to death or are "put to sleep."  It is better, he said, not to let them be born than to make the problem worse.

I thought about it and decided he was correct. The catching of The Kitten was a long, difficult process which I reported on in diary form on this blog. The diary ends with me succeeding and I have collected those listings over at this page if you want to read them. Below is a photo from that mission…

During the adventure, The Kitten got an actual name. I named her Lydia. When I brought her back from the vet, she seemed so angry in that cage/carrier that I thought she'd never come near me again. But when I turned her loose in my yard, it took about two minutes before she was on my porch asking for food.

That was April of 2008. Since then, I have posted many items and photos of little Lydia. There have been times when for some reason unknown to me, I didn't see her for a long stretch of time and I feared she was gone, probably in the mortal sense. I've had a lot of feral cats out there and sometimes, we find them dead but more often, they just stop coming around.

At one point, I was up to four regulars and an occasional guest for dinner. Then it was three. Then it was two. One of those two, Sylvia, died last August, leaving Lydia alone out there.

I haven't mentioned Lydia lately here and I recently received three messages from folks who feared the worst and wanted to know if there's any chance she's still dining on my porch. After all, feral cats aren't supposed to live long. You can find all sorts of different stats online but most would say that an outdoor stray will survive 2-9 years.

Well, here's a photo I took of Lydia Tuesday afternoon…

She doesn't look all that different from the way she looked when I first saw her wolfing down Friskies on that step back in mid-2007. Assuming she was born around the beginning of that year, that would make her a little over twelve years old now — and yes, I know it's rude to discuss a lady's age but she won't know. She almost never reads this blog.

The main change I notice in her over those years is that she's less active and especially less likely to climb up to high places. She used to chase squirrels and butterflies and sometimes even feral cats she didn't know who found their way to the buffet I provide. Now, she doesn't bother. She also used to like to sit on the roof of my garage, peering over the edge like a gargoyle. I haven't seen her up there in years.

She's out in the yard there 24/7 except when the gardener or the pool guy comes by. When one does, she relocates into an adjoining neighbor's property until they leave her turf and she can come back and resume licking herself. It's a pretty good life and I don't know how much longer it will last. I just know it always makes me smile to see her out there. When I get up in the morning and go to my bathroom, I look out the window and usually see Lydia outside, napping or cleaning some part of herself. It's a reassuring way to start my day.

I'll probably get back to New York in the next few months. I'm not sure what I'll be doing there yet but I'm fairly certain I won't be eating any deli food. That used to be part of my New York Experience but since then, the Carnegie Delicatessen has closed, the Stage Delicatessen has closed and my go-to alternative, the Ben Ash Delicatessen has closed. For years, no trip to New York was complete for me without meeting Joe Simon at the Ben Ash…and now they're both gone.

The two best delis remaining there are the Second Avenue Deli — two locations, neither on Second Avenue — and Katz's. I usually stay in or around Times Square and all three of those locations are tough to get to from there. Katz's is always mobbed and noisy — and while the food is pretty good, there's just too much of it. The sandwiches especially are too big and priced accordingly. Since my Gastric Bypass, I can't finish half of one let alone a whole one. Unless you're splitting it with a friend or heading from there back to your hotel room and your hotel room has a mini-fridge, don't order a sandwich.

Also, I like mustard on my corned beef sandwich — not deli mustard, not honey mustard, not dijon mustard, not brown mustard, not spicy mustard, not hot mustard, not German mustard, not whole grain mustard…just plain mustard, the yellow kind. If you ask for it at Katz's, they act like you want to smear your sandwich with bat guano or worse, mayonnaise. If you don't mind, I prefer my deli food without cole slaw or attitude.

Here's a video about the place featuring a young woman who is a little too impressed to be there. I mean, I like the place but not as much as she does…

Just a reminder that I'll be a guest on on the podcast of The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog in a few hours. It all starts at 6:30 PM Los Angeles time at this link. I'll be discussing the past 49 years of attending Comic-Con International in its various incarnations since 1970 and what may happen 70 days from now at the fiftieth such gathering. Who knows? I may even tell an anecdote or two. I've been known to do that on rare occasions.

And now, Playbill has up some photos from the original production on Broadway of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which opened May 8, 1962 at the Alvin Theatre. That's 57 years ago today.

I was at a party once where everyone was playing Theatrical Time Machine: "If you could go back in time and see one production from the past…" I think this might be it for me.

We've had a lot of televised car chases lately here in the City of Angels.  That's meant many opportunities on the web and on TV to watch/hear Stu Mundel in action.  Stu, who I've mentioned before here but not lately, is an "Aerial Correspondent" for local stations KCBS 2 and KCAL 9.  Those two stations are owned by the same company and share the same newsroom and crew…so coverage on one is often duplicated or handed over to the other.

"Aerial correspondent" means Stu's the guy in the helicopter covering and narrating the action below.  He's the fellow I dubbed "The Vin Scully of Televised Car Chases," and others have picked up on the analogy, including someone in the video below.  Like the now-retired Mr. Scully, Mr. Mundel is really good at making boring action on the screen interesting with his colorful play-by-play narration.  Here's a little story that ran on at least one of the two L.A. stations that employ him…

The New York Times has been looking into Donald Trump's past finances and come to the conclusion that he was a terrible businessman…and often when he did succeed, it was with deals where he got others to invest heavily, they lost big and he got out with a lot of their money.

I'm not sure any of this really matters. The people who don't like the guy couldn't have a lower opinion of him than they already do. The people who do like the guy won't let anything change their mind. When any evidence comes up that shows he's shady or incompetent, Trump or his minions just deny it as "fake, fake, fake" without explaining or offering proof that it's fake.

I am reminded of back when I was attending U.C.L.A., there was a lecture announced by an author who insisted the Holocaust was a myth. It never happened, Hitler and his mob never killed a single Jew…it was all a hoax. And this author was offering a cash prize — I think it was $10,000 which was a lotta money in those days — to anyone who could prove by rules he set down that the Holocaust was true. And what were his rules? They stated that you had to prove it without using "phony evidence." And what constituted "phony evidence?" Well, since the Holocaust had never happened, anything that indicated it had was "phony evidence."

And here's a reminder that Maltinfest — a celebration of some films my pal Leonard Maltin thinks have not received enough attention — kicks off this Friday at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. I'm not sure when I'll be there but I'll be there. You should be there, too. Here's an article about this very special event.

We're 71 days from the start of this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and one day from my appearance on the podcast of The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. The folks who run that blog have nothing to do with the operation of the convention. They're just enthusiastic congoers who report on all the news and gossip about the con. If you're attending or just interested in the event, you should of course be reading the official convention website but you should also be reading the unofficial site.

As the con draws near, the unofficial blog does weekly podcasts to keep you informed on what's likely to happen there. Tomorrow night (Wednesday) their guest is me and I'll be discussing things that have happened at the last 49 of these cons I've attended. That's right: I said 49. I've been to all of them and expect this year to attend the fiftieth one. I also expect to set a new personal record for appearing on and/or moderating panels, beating my old record of sixteen in four days.

The podcast kicks off tomorrow night at 6:30 PM Pacific Time and you can watch it live on this page. Join us, won't you?