Category Archives: To Be Filed

For those of you new to this blog: A mushroom soup day means that I may be too busy to post much today. What does that have to do with mushroom soup? I may also be too busy today to figure that out.

So what's up with the Trump News? He and his staff continue to throw reporters out of campaign rallies and Trump continues to make promises about controlling the media. All of this is loudly cheered by that certain section of the population that doesn't like it when the press — as it occasionally does — points out that people are believing things that may not be true.

As Fred Kaplan notes, Hillary Clinton is starting to show that when Trump slams her, she can slam him back pretty well. I smell a battle ahead when it comes time for these two folks to debate and Trump tries to control the format and moderators to his advantage. He'll do that, you know.

A lot of Mr. Trump's business practices remind me of a TV producer I worked for who viewed every business relationship as a negotiation…and every negotiation as a battle which he had to "win" in some way. If he was prepared to pay me $5000 to write a script and my agent called up and said, "Mark wants $5000," that wouldn't do. Any other producer would have said "Fine" but this guy wouldn't because he had to control the negotiation. He had to dominate it some way and make certain that I was giving in to his offer. So in that case, if we thought he was prepared to pay me $5000, my agent would say, "Mark demands $6000 or he won't do the show" and the producer or his rep would say "$5000 and not a penny more" and we'd give in. He'd be happy because he'd be able to pretend he beat me. He'd even be happy if we'd demanded $7000 and his guy got us to come down to $5500.

It was all about who's the boss and that's how Trump rolls. Watch. When they begin to plan the debates, he'll try to play things so that he can tell his supporters, "She was so desperate to debate me that she gave in to my demands."

Meanwhile, one of the things occupying me at the moment is planning the panels I'll be hosting at Comic-Con this year. The schedule seems to be pretty much set — a fact I mention because people always contact me in June and even early July to ask if I can help them arrange a panel or event they want to do at the con. That's wrong two ways, the first being that the convention has a whole, expert Programming Department and I'm not part of it. I'm just a guy who does a lot of panels there. Also, the schedule gets set around two months before the con and there's very little chance of events being added after that. I have to now figure out who's going to be on my panels but the times, room assignments and such are all pretty much locked.

The schedule and event descriptions will be released about two weeks before the convention. We're not supposed to announce things before that but I think it's okay if I tell you that I'm hosting all the same panels I usually host — at the same times and in the same rooms — plus some others.

Lastly before I get outta here: Some jokes just write themselves. This is a true item…

The National ENQUIRER today announced that renowned Author and Political Commentator Dick Morris would be joining the magazine in the role of Chief Political Commentator & Correspondent. The appointment of Morris to the editorial team further establishes The ENQUIRER as one of the leading voices of this political season.

It's a match made in heaven: A newspaper and a reporter, both of whom are constantly defended with the cry, "Hey, they're not always wrong." Except, of course, that Dick Morris is. See you later.

My favorite musical group, Big Daddy, is back with a music video of their interpretation of the song, "New York, New York" — a version that will probably send John Kander to his grave and cause Fred Ebb to roll over in his. But maybe not. I prefer Big Daddy's arrangement of the tune over Frank Sinatra's.

Big Daddy, in case you didn't know, is a group founded on the principle that the only acceptable sound is the fifties sound…so when they come across a song that doesn't sound like a fifties song, they fix it so that it does. If you're anywhere near Burbank, California and you'd like to hear them performing live, they're playing on Friday evening, June 24 at the Burbank Music Academy. Tickets can be purchased on this site. They'll be doing lots of great songs including perhaps even this one…

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum lists all sorts of things Trump does that a presidential candidate is not supposed to do — and with good reason. The worst is probably this one…

Trump is running not to be president of all Americans, but to be the clan leader of white Americans. Those white Americans who respond to his message hear his abusive comments, not as evidence of his unfitness for office, but as proof of his commitment to their tribe.

Nice of Frum to spell "clan" with a C instead of a K there. And while I'm at it, I'll link you to Jeffrey Toobin explaining how Trump doesn't understand how the Supreme Court works. He only understands that those who support Donald Trump must be rewarded and those who oppose him must be slapped down hard.

Bernie Sanders keeps vowing to fight all the way to the convention. Matthew Yglesias thinks he won't; that before it convenes, Sanders will face the reality of numbers, drop out of the race and endorse Hillary Clinton. That seems like the most likely scenario to me…though I do keep in mind that a lot of most likely scenarios have not happened with this election. I just can't imagine how Sanders can have any sort of effective future in politics if he doesn't do that…and he hasn't been running his campaign to become ineffective.

Then again, it might not be as neat as all that. The polls for California are still all over the place. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll has Clinton at 49% and Sanders at 47%, which is within the survey's margin of error…in effect, a tie. Okay — but even if Sanders wins California, he won't have more delegates than Clinton, nor will more Democrats have voted for him. His path to the nomination would still involve persuading the so-called "Superdelegates" to switch their allegiance from the candidate with the most delegates and the most votes from rank-and-file Democrats to the guy who finished second in both categories. Hard to imagine that happening.

The Marx Brothers made their Broadway debut in a 1924 revue called I'll Say She Is. They did two other Broadway shows — The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers — which were made into movies and otherwise had lives after they closed in New York…but I'll Say She Is disappeared, never to be seen again. Well, not until recently when a gent named Noah Diamond led the way to bring it back, first in a 2014 workshop production and now in a fully-staged off-Broadway production which opens tonight.

Since I'm in Los Angeles and it's at the Connelly Theater on East 4th Street in New York, I won't be seeing it any time soon…but of course, we're quite intrigued by the whole project. This article by Adam Gopnik makes it sound pretty wonderful but it also makes it sound like the folks behind it only found a few pieces of the original script and score and so have had to make up a lot of it anew. That doesn't mean it isn't a good show. It just makes us wonder how much of what they present is what the Brothers Marx did back in '24.

(One error in the article: Gopnik writes of the search for pieces of the material and discusses "…a version of the Napoleon scene that had, improbably, been made into a rather mediocre episode in a long-forgotten, cheaply made cartoon special in 1970, with the very elderly Groucho supplying his lines and Hans Conried doing the other brother's voices." That was The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians produced by Rankin-Bass back then and while Groucho did supply his own voice, the other guy wasn't Hans Conried. It was Paul Frees. Paul did a better Chico Marx than Chico Marx. I linked to a copy of the show back here.)

Anyway, I hope the show's terrific. I also hope that the publicity about it causes someone someplace to think, "Hey, I think I have an old, complete script called I'll Say She Is in my attic…"

Keith Olbermann on how the media goes too easy on Donald Trump because he's good for their ratings. I doubt there are many folks in the business who would disagree with his premise even as they commit the crime.

I have me a busy day ahead. Dunno when I'll be getting back to the blog here so I figured I'd better soup things up and give you warning. But before I go…

A couple of folks have written to quibble with my premise that saying Donald Trump is deliberately lying is nicer than saying he's a pathological liar. This isn't worth a whole lotta debate but I do think the latter is the more insulting view. A deliberate liar could theoretically stop lying. The pathological one probably cannot.

Speaking of the man everyone's speaking of: The newly-unsealed documents in the Trump University lawsuit do not speak well of Mr. Trump. It's looking like a pretty blatant swindle there with Trump only concerned with his profit and his image, not whether his business actually delivered that which was promised. I don't think this will cost him a lot of votes but it may make him seem even more hypocritical when he refers to "Crooked Hillary."

I can't believe I'm planning panels for this year's Comic-Con already. Wasn't last year's Comic-Con about a month ago?

Lots of folks online are bashing Mrs. Bill Cosby for standing by Mr. Bill Cosby. I guess it's easy to say "Well, if I was in her position…" but you're not. We don't know what that marriage is really like and how much they mean to one another or what it would mean to either of them to separate. I don't think abandoning a loved one in trouble is usually a great thing and I don't think staying with them is always "enabling" and like I said, we don't know much about their relationship. We just don't.

Want to know who's going to win the California Primary, Bernie or Hillary? If you search a bit online, you can find a poll that will show he will or one that will indicate she will or one which says it's too close to call. I sure have no idea. I'm not even that sure what kind of outcome — him winning, her winning, the winner winning by a lot or a little — I'd prefer. At this point, I just want one of them to win and for the loser to rally his/her supporters behind the victor.

I just hope all the Bernie-backers who've been saying they'd never vote for Hillary, and all the Hillary-supporters who say they'll never cast votes for Bernie will take their lead from Marco Rubio and promptly reverse themselves. Rubio's been apologizing for saying Trump had small hands and a smaller penis and I expect any day now, he'll be apologizing to Donald for even running against him. Hope we're not going to see Jeb Bush saying, "Donald was right…I am low-energy" and Carly Fiorina announce, "I'm sorry, Trump was completely right about my face."

See you folks later…maybe.

A few weeks ago, I praised a new musical revue I saw called L.A. Now and Then. It was up for a limited engagement and it's closed now…but that's no reason not to let you see its opening number. The first gent you see there is Robert Yacko and he's soon joined by the entire company, most of whom are theater students at Los Angeles City College. The song was written by the show's conceiver and director, Bruce Kimmel…

This may be the nicest post I ever write about Donald Trump. I keep seeing people describe him as a "pathological liar" and I don't think he is; not as I understand the term, at least. What I understand is more in keeping with this paragraph I found on Wikipedia…

Lying is the act of both knowingly and intentionally/willfully making a false statement. Most people do so out of fear. Normal lies are defensive, and are told to avoid the consequences of truth telling. They are often white lies that spare another's feelings, reflect a pro-social attitude, and make civilized human contact possible. Pathological lying is considered a mental illness, because it takes over rational judgment and progresses into the fantasy world and back. Pathological lying can be described as a habituation of lying. It is when an individual consistently lies for no personal gain. The lies are commonly transparent and often seem rather pointless.

Does anyone think Donald Trump's fibs are told for no personal gain? And it strikes me that Trump is not knowingly, intentionally or willfully making false statements so much as he just doesn't care if the statements are true or false just so long as they get applause from his base and allow him to avoid hard truths that may not be good for his candidacy.

The other day, he said there was no drought in California. I don't think he believed that or cared if it was true or not. I think he just knows his audience and he knows that a lot of them revolt against government and liberalism because government and liberalism often tell people they can't have certain kinds of spray cans or use certain kinds of light bulbs or that they have to put certain items in the blue trash can instead of the black trash can. A realtor who calls on me frequently in a futile effort to persuade me now is the time to sell my house told me of a neighbor I have who has been ticketed for overwatering his lawn. She says he told her, "I don't give a shit if there is a drought. If I want to water my lawn, no one's going to tell me I can't."

Betcha a hundred bucks that guy's voting for Trump.

What The Donald says is a lie but I don't see where it's a pathological lie. There's no reason to believe he said it due to mental illness and every reason to believe he said it because that kind of thing seems to be succeeding for him at the moment. He has paid no obvious price for past distortions of fact so he goes right on distorting. That's not being pathological. It's just sticking with what's worked so far.

I tried — I really tried not to get swept up in the back-and-forth between those who think Woody Allen, once upon a time molested his adopted daughter and those who think there was no molestation but that his "ex," Mia Farrow, convinced the daughter there was and has been trying to convince others and…well, it's not a pretty story, no matter which side you believe.

It long ago moved out of the judicial system and into the Court of Public Opinion. The main public accusation was made by the adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in this article and given wider support by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a few pieces in Vanity Fair and others. Woody Allen himself wrote a response to these accusations and there was a longer, more detailed one from his friend, Robert Weide.

More recently, Ronan Farrow (brother of Dylan) wrote a piece for the Hollywood Reporter reviving the discussion. And now in the newest installment of this drama, Bob Weide has posted a pretty strong response to Ronan. Stay tuned for the next chapter.

John Oliver is off this week but even when he's off, he's on…

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, says that he and a group of Republicans who don't want to see Donald Trump in the White House have recruited a third party challenger. I don't believe this and for the simplest of reasons: Bill Kristol said it. I have found that if you disbelieve everything Bill Kristol says, you'll be right an impressive percentage of the time. Donald Trump of course heard about this and immediately lashed back with the claim that Bill Kristol is a loser and a dummy and I hate to say it but Trump is right. Rude but right. He's wrong about just about everything else but he's right about this.

I don't know what's going to happen here and that's my main point: We don't know what'll happen here. Kristol says they have a candidate and it's "an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance." Is it? The first name that comes to mind is Mitt Romney but I don't know how much of a chance he'd have. He couldn't win the presidency when there wasn't another candidate in the race dividing up the right-wing vote and when he didn't get a late start and he had a major party's backing. Then again, Kristol may not have meant "A real chance to win the Presidency." He may have meant "A real chance to screw Donald Trump and throw the race to Hillary." Hard to say.

Still, the point I want to make is that this could be a real game-changer — maybe not but we can't say for sure yet. Those of you who are certain Trump's going to win in a landslide or that Hillary is going to cream everybody…you need to remember that in the 161 days until Election Day, there will be plenty of game-changers. Not only is this thing not over until it's over but it isn't even close to being over.

This is nice. Ira B. Matetsky, a longtime reader of this site, located an online treatise about soldiers from the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.) who returned home from Europe in 1919. It was written by Edward A. Gutiérrez and it contains two lines about my Uncle Henry derived from an interview conducted with him that same year…

Austrian-born Corporal Henry Evanier, resident of Hartford, enlisted in the National Guard on 14 April 1914 at the age of nineteen; for Evanier, his time spent in France, "Made my love for fellow men much more." A clerk at Aetna Life Insurance Company in Hartford, Evanier had served with the border service in Mexico prior to the war.

I believe Uncle Henry, who passed away in 1962, spent his entire career in the military. I did not know about the border service but now that it's out, I fully expect Donald Trump to condemn him for allowing in so many rapists who bring crime and drugs into this country.

Today's Memorial Day. You probably already knew that. I originally posted the following on Veterans Day of 2010 but it's just as appropriate for Memorial Day. It's all about my Uncle Henry, the guy in the photo below. I don't have a whole lot of memories of Uncle Henry. Darn near everything I remember about him is in this article…

It's Veterans Day so I thought I'd write about my Uncle Henry. One of his brothers (my Uncle Nathan) served in the Army, hated every second of it and refused to ever discuss those years except to generally condemn the way officers treated privates, at least where he'd been stationed. This created some friction with Uncle Henry, who spent his adult life in the military and according to family legend was at one point the highest-ranked Jew in the Army. I don't necessarily believe this but my Aunt Dot (his sister) did and sometimes said it was only because our bizarre surname didn't make it obvious he was Jewish; that if he'd been a Goldberg or a Schwartz, he never would have attained whatever rank he finally attained…Colonel, I think.

I don't know if any other Evaniers of his generation served. My father was 4-F and I don't know about the others. Because of Uncle Nathan's feelings, we never talked about it much. The only time I recall more than passing mention came in 1962 when Uncle Henry died and we drove down to San Diego for the funeral. Before that, we'd gone there almost every year to visit Uncle Henry and his wife, Aunt Phyllis, who lived in a lovely home in La Mesa, which is just outside San Diego. The only memories I have of those visits are of the utter boredom you have when you're a kid in a roomful of adults and you're largely uninvolved in any conversation. So I sat there reading comic books I'd lugged along and I suffered through the ordeal. The next day, my parents and I would do the San Diego Zoo, which I enjoyed enough to make up for the visits to Uncle Henry's.

We didn't hit the zoo on the funeral trip. We drove down on a Sunday and I remember spending the night with my folks in a real crummy motel room, selected for its proximity to Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma. My father was deeply depressed over the loss of his brother and at first, he wouldn't let me turn on the TV because it seemed inappropriate. As 8:30 neared, he realized he'd miss his favorite comedy show — Car 54, Where Are You? — and he decided that might cheer him up. So we watched that evening's episode. He didn't laugh, my mother didn't laugh and I felt I shouldn't, either.

The next morning, we dressed up and went to a very long service which was held outside by the gravesite. My father, my Uncle Nathan, my Uncle Aaron and I were the only males present not dressed in starched, formal military dress. I got the feeling we were among the few who'd really known Uncle Henry.

Just before speeches commenced, an official of some sort took us aside and told us that the program would conclude with a "salute" that involved a line of soldiers firing rifles in the air. Aunt Phyllis, who had been frail even before her husband of 40+ years had died, had been cautioned about this but the official suggested that "you men" (10-year-old me included) stand by her for the finale because the noise would probably upset her. We agreed to do this though I wondered why the military was saluting Uncle Henry in death by upsetting his beloved partner in life. As a kid, I spent a lot of time wondering why grown-ups did many of the things they did.

Sure enough, after a raft of speeches, a line of armed soldiers marched out in precision drilling manner, following orders barked out by some senior military official. My memory is that these were not all Army; that the whole ceremony was a mix of Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, etc. Uncle Henry was Army but he'd spent the last ten or so years as some kind of intra-military liaison coordinating activities of the various branches, operating sometimes out of Naval facilities. After much marching about and showing-off, the soldiers hoisted their rifles and waited for the command to fire. I was standing next to Aunt Phyllis's chair and she was trembling, dreading the "salute" like it was some horrible ordeal she was being forced to endure. I wanted to yell for them to call it off but everyone was so serious about this seemingly-mandatory ritual that I was half-afraid they'd turn those rifles on me.

Finally after what felt like hours of waiting, they fired into the sky. We were standing about twenty yards from a little groundskeeper shack and at the sound of the rifle shots, every glass window in the cottage exploded and all these serious, unsmiling military guys leaped about three feet in shock. For a flash second there, it felt like a Three Stooges comedy. I don't know why but that's what I thought of and I laughed out loud until I realized Aunt Phyllis was fainting. My father and I stopped her from falling off the chair and a male nurse ran over and tended to her needs. She recovered, of course…but the fact that someone with medical training had been standing by for this possibility further baffled me. They'd actually anticipated something of the sort might happen and had still pressed ahead, "honoring" my Uncle Henry's service to his country by doing something that caused such discomfort to his widow.

My parents and I drove back to Los Angeles that afternoon in (mostly) silence. Occasionally in the back seat, I could be heard snickering about all those rock-serious soldiers leaping about in fear. After a while, even my folks agreed with me that it was kind of funny…or at least funnier than the previous night's Car 54, Where Are You?

In the seventies, Aunt Phyllis died and I was notified that I was named in the joint will of Henry and Phyllis Evanier. For weeks, I expected some small amount of money…but one day, a box arrived and it turned out I'd been left all of Uncle Henry's medals and decorations. Included were dozens of clippings and certificates and they were the treat because they gave me a new appreciation of all that my Uncle Henry had done. From what I could tell, he'd never seen combat…never laid his life on the line to liberate a village or topple the Nazi/Commie menace. Still, he'd more than earned all those ribbons and promotions in rank by utter competence, getting jobs accomplished with precision and accuracy. There was one partial article that suggested my Uncle Henry had solved so many problems relating to keeping certain military bases operational that President Eisenhower had phoned him from time to time to thank him for preventing disasters. The box also contained the official 1947 photo of (then) Major Evanier which I have scanned and posted above.

Today on Veterans Day, it is right and proper that we salute the courageous men and women who go off to war when our leaders, rightly or wrongly, deem it necessary. Matter of fact, we should probably salute them enough on other days that this one is nothing out of the ordinary. But I wanted to remind you all about guys like my Uncle Henry who also have a lot to do with all that the military does for us. They also serve, those who sit and shuffle papers.

One of my favorite comedians, Irv Benson, died May 19 at his home in Port Jefferson, N.Y. He was 102 and that is not a typo.

Don't know who Irv Benson was? Let me tell you. No, I'll do better than that. I'll show you. Watch this video from the 1966 Milton Berle Show. Benson's the guy in the balcony…

But Irv Benson did a lot more than heckle Milton Berle. Irv was one of the last — maybe the last comic from Minsky's Burlesque. He played there and in vaudeville in the thirties and forties. In the fifties and after, he turned up in a number of touring shows that re-created the golden days of burlesque and was often tapped for TV guest roles. Johnny Carson had him on many times playing a stagehand who interrupted the show. Once teamed with a comic named Jack Mann in a vaudeville act, Benson later teamed with the last surviving straight man from the days of Minsky's, a delightful fellow named Dexter Maitland.

In the eighties, Maitland and Benson provided the comedy doing classic sketches in a Minsky's production that ran at the old Hacienda Hotel in Vegas. (I actually first saw them live around 1982 co-headlining with Sandler and Young and a bevy of Penthouse models in The Penthouse Pet Revue at the Sahara Hotel in Reno.) When I went to Vegas, I'd have dinner with Mr. Maitland and sometimes with Mr. Benson, then I'd take in their show. It may sound like Old Comics doing Older Jokes but I never got tired of watching two expert comedians demonstrate the fine art of Comedic Timing.

I particularly loved this joke which Benson would do with Maitland, though it worked better when he did it with Milton Berle…

BENSON

You're too close to the microphone.

BERLE or MAITLAND

How far should I be?

BENSON

You got a car?

I'm not sure what else to say about the man except that I sure wished I'd thought to roll tape when he got to telling me stories about the old days. Benson was one of those guy who just lived and breathed comedy and he did it all across this country for at least six decades, maybe seven. Utterly, totally remarkable.