Category Archives: To Be Filed

• I am currently in the Whole Foods Market at Fairfax and 3rd. If you're not, you're one of the few people on this planet who isn't.

Several folks have written to tell me that the Metropole Cafe in Times Square was open and operating, apparently as a strip club, into the eighties. I remember passing it there, recognizing it mostly from The Odd Couple…and then one trip, it suddenly wasn't there. I just don't recall which trip that was when it went away.

Regarding the infamous triple-play in The Odd Couple movie, Jerry Wolper sent me this link to a contemporaneous newspaper report on its filming. It was, as you may recall, filmed before a 1967 game at Shea Stadium between the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates and the home team, the New York Mets.

It says that Pirates Roberto Clemente and Maury Wills declined to participate. Clemente does not seem to have liked the idea of being in a movie for the fee each player received, which was $100. Wills apparently bowed out for the same reason.

The batter was indeed Bill Mazeroski and the baserunners were Don Clendenon, Matty Alou and Vern Law. Jack Fisher was the pitcher and Ken Boyer was the third baseman who fielded Mazeroski's hit, stepped on third, then fired the ball to the second baseman who hurled it on to the first baseman. The latter two Mets are unnamed. The whole thing took two takes. The first pitch was too wide for Mazeroski to hit but everything worked during the second throw.

Kim Metzger wrote to ask me if I ever saw Neil Simon's distaff rewrite of The Odd Couple, which turned Felix and Oscar into Florence and Olive. Yes, I did. I saw it here in L.A. in April of '85 at the Ahmanson in a pre-Broadway tryout. Sally Struthers played Florence, Rita Moreno was Olive and Lewis J. Stadlen and Tony Shalhoub played the Costazuela brothers, who replaced the Pigeon sisters.

My recollection is that the Costazuelas — pilots for Iberia Airlines who were on the make — were hilarious but the rest of the play didn't work with women. In the original, Oscar and Felix more or less turned into each other's wives, echoing the fights that had destroyed their respective marriages. In the new version, Olive and Florence did not turn into each others' husbands. They just got on each other's nerves for reasons that seemed forced and scripted. The show went on to New York, opening two months later to tepid reviews and running for eight months, which was probably a lot less than anyone expected. It was produced in a lot of regional and community theaters, which I think is the market for which it was mainly intended.

I also saw Simon's 2002 update of the original work which was called Oscar and Felix, A New Look at the Odd Couple and starred John Larroquette as Oscar and Joe Regalbuto as Felix. I wrote about that here and reading that posting now, I think I was a bit charitable towards it. That version never played Broadway and doesn't seem to have played too many regional theaters, either.  (I can't find a photo from it anywhere.)

I suspect that both these versions were done because of two factors. One is that Mr. Simon famously sold all rights to The Odd Couple to Paramount Pictures as part of the deal that led to the movie. In later years, he seemed quite bitter about that. In his autobiography, he wrote…

In total, this is what I got: $125,000. Although it didn't become clear to me for some time, this is what I lost. Paramount made a TV series of The Odd Couple starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Those were one of the ancillary rights Paramount got in buying [my company] Ellen Enterprises. I never received one cent from the series. I had my name on every episode but I never saw a dime, a nickel, or a penny. It ran for years and will run in syndication for years and years to come. Not just in America but all over the world. The value of what I had given up for The Odd Couple series was in the millions. Probably a great deal of millions.

This is not to suggest that any of us should have been too upset at the financial condition of the world's most successful playwright but it probably has a lot to do with what has become of the property. Paramount is about to launch its third sitcom version of it…the fourth if you count The Oddball Couple, the 1975 animated version that made them a cat and a dog.  Paul Winchell voiced the dog, whose name was Fleabag.  Frank "Yesssss?" Nelson voiced the cat, Spiffy.  I'm guessing they thought of calling them Oscar and Felix but there were trademark issues with naming a cartoon cat "Felix."

They're making decisions about it to try and maximize their income from an acquisition, which is of course what corporations do. Someone obviously thought there was a lot of money in finding a new way to market the play, kind of like The Muppet Babies was a new way to merchandize Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy and the rest of that gang. At some point, we'll doubtlessly see The Odd Couple remounted with an entire cast under the age of twelve. Instead of a poker game, it'll be Grand Theft Auto and instead of leaving his wife, Felix will be running away from home.

If Mr. Simon had retained ownership, we might not have seen some of those exploitations. I like to think that if he'd made the money off the eighty zillion stage productions of The Odd Couple since he sold the rights, he would probably not have been that eager to see all these revised versions. He might have been satisfied with that dough or he might have okayed the Klugman/Randall sitcom and then felt he'd made enough off the play and had no need to exploit it further. As it was though, he couldn't stop the cartoon or the later sitcoms and I believe he participated in (or even instigated) the female version and the updated one in order to get a piece or two back of what he sold and to protect his play. After he's gone, I'll bet someone at Paramount says, "Hey, let's make a musical out of it!" That might come before the kid's version or CGI feature set in the future or the video game where you and another player battle to clean up or dirty up the apartment and to win green sandwiches and brown sandwiches.

• How come turkey sausage tastes almost like pork sausage but turkey bacon tastes almost like an old Social Security card?

This is just stupid enough for me to really like it. Nick McKaig is one of those folks who makes a cappella videos and posts 'em to YouTube. This is his rendition of the theme from The Muppet Show…

I'm watching the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast, a show I sometimes avoid due to my allergy to excessive praising of rich, famous folks by other rich, famous folks. They're honoring Al Green, Patricia McBride, Tom Hanks, Lily Tomlin and Sting. Stephen Colbert is hosting, which is probably because CBS wants to introduce America to the real Stephen Colbert instead of the one who's an ignorant right-wing pundit. Colbert did a good opening monologue but right now, it's half-past Lily Tomlin and he hasn't had much to do.

One funny moment: David Letterman was introduced and he came out to talk about Mr. Hanks. As soon as Letterman was at the podium, Colbert came out as if he was there to take over the speech from him. Dave turned to him and said, "Not yet" and Stephen turned and walked off.

Neil Patrick Harris is hosting the Academy Awards in February. That may well mean he won't host the Tonys in May, which makes me wonder if Mr. Colbert will be tapped for the job. I don't think he's ever been in a Broadway show but he was in the 2011 concert productions of Company with N.P.H. and he's presented and performed on past Tony broadcasts. CBS will want to keep him in front of the public during the long spell between the end of The Colbert Report and the commencement of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. So I'll bet they at least discuss having him host the Tonys. That is, assuming Neil Patrick Harris doesn't want to do two awards shows within three months.

It was made public today that voice actress Christine Cavanaugh died December 22 at the age of 51. She was best known for voicing the title role (the pig) in Babe, the character Chuckie on Rugrats and Dexter on the first two seasons of Dexter's Laboratory. (Candi Milo replaced her for the next two seasons.) Christine was also heard on many other series including Duck Tales, Aaahh!! Real Monsters, The Wild Thornberrys and The Powerpuff Girls.

I have about a dozen e-mails here asking if I worked with Christine and can therefore write a long, personal remembrance. No, I didn't and no, I can't. But she was much loved and respected in the industry. Here's the L.A. Times obit and if I come across the proper kind of tribute from someone who knew her well, I will certainly link to it.

This ran here 1/17/03 and probably should be reposted here every month or so. In the years since, I've only heard more (and more egregious) examples of this kind of exploitation of aspiring or outta-work writers. Don't fall for this kind of crap, people…

This next item is about folks who might best be described as "new professional writers," meaning that they've sold a few things but not many, and are eager to sell more. Lately, several have written me for advice and/or sympathy as they have experienced the same baffling, dispiriting situation. It starts via an e-mail contact with someone — we'll call that person "The Buyer" — who is looking for writers for some project. Sometimes, The Buyer solicited applicants on the Internet; sometimes, The Writer was referred to them. Either way, The Buyer sends an e-mail with a long breakdown of rules and guidelines, and encourages The Writer to submit pitches — samples, premises, "spec" outlines, whatever.

The Writer invests some time in cobbling up ideas, sends them off…and the next thing, he or she gets back an e-mail that asks for a price quote. In other words, "How cheap will you work?" The Writer, who knows little of how the project is to be marketed, where it will be distributed, etc., doesn't have enough info to cite a price but if they don't, they don't have a shot at this job. So they do, erring on the low side. And the next thing they receive is an e-mail that says, basically, "You're too expensive. We're going with someone else."

For some reason, this kiss-off is usually accompanied by some sort of gratuitous insult. One writer-applicant recently received one that said, "Obviously, based on the price you quoted, you're not a professional." Based on the low price quote that The Buyer found exorbitant, I would say the project is not very professional, either.

I've heard of this happening often lately, and I have no real advice to offer the rebuffed scribes who write to me except this: Don't spend a lot of time auditioning, especially for jobs that pay rotten (or unknown) fees. No one builds a career doing these kinds of assignments. There's no money in them, and they rarely lead to the kind of jobs that do pay. Even a beginner is entitled to basic courtesy, including the right to know the pay scales for a job before they do any try-out work. If it's going to pay less than a hundred dollars — and some of these jobs seem to pay a lot less — you're probably better off putting the same effort into writing something you can go out and sell. You might also want to read the three columns I posted here about "Unfinanced Entrepreneurs." Here's the link to the first one and I'll repeat something I say in one of them…

Steer clear of those who want to exploit you. Even when you think you have no better prospect, avoid the Unfinanced Entrepreneur. They not only steal your work; they embezzle a little bit of your soul.

The Internet does a great job of connecting us with one another. It also increases the number of leeches who can contact you, and makes it harder to know who — or what — they really are. That "22-year-old blonde cheerleader named Tiffany in Malibu" you encounter in a chat room will probably turn out to be a 62-year-old fat pervert named Sid in West Covina. The supposed publisher or producer who contacts you via e-mail and promises to make you a star may be equally legitimate.

Starting this Friday evening, Turner Classic Movies is running a Neil Simon film fest. The nice round number of 17 movies written by Mr. Simon will be screened and our pal Ken Levine will intro and outro as host. Here's the list.

They're starting strong this Friday with The Odd Couple, which is one of those films I've seen about eight hundred quadrillion times. Yeah, it's talky. Yeah, it's pretty much a photographed stage play without much about it that's cinematic. Yeah, the ending's a bit limp. I don't care. I think it's hilarious.

Walter Matthau plays the role he originated on Broadway. Jack Lemmon plays the role Art Carney originated on Broadway. I would have loved to have seen Carney do it. I did see him live in another of Mr. Simon's plays — The Prisoner of Second Avenue — and he was wonderful…but Lemmon is pretty danged wonderful as Felix, too. (One of the few times I didn't like Jack Lemmon on the screen was the film version of The Prisoner of Second Avenue but I think that was the adaptation, not him. It's also far from my favorite of Simon's plays.)

Interestingly, even though Matthau had won an Academy Award for his prior teaming with Lemmon — The Fortune Cookie — Lemmon got more than three times the salary for The Odd Couple. I suspect that after this one, Matthau achieved parity. At one point, there were negotiations with Billy Wilder, who'd directed The Fortune Cookie and many of Lemmon's other best films, about directing The Odd Couple. I'm kinda glad he didn't as I can't imagine Wilder being as true to the stage play…or any better.

Over on Wikipedia, where as we all know erroneous information is rare, it says…

At one point, Frank Sinatra (as Felix) and Jackie Gleason (as Oscar) were going to do the movie version but this fell through. Dick Van Dyke and Tony Randall were among those considered for the role of Felix (the latter portrayed him in the TV series). Similarly Jack Klugman (who aside from the TV show often replaced Matthau on Broadway) and Mickey Rooney were also to play Oscar.

I don't believe any of that…or reports I've seen that Gleason was going to play Oscar to Art Carney's Felix. I believe the Mickey Rooney rumor came from a story Garry Marshall tells about casting the TV version. He says they hired Randall and asked him if he had anyone to suggest as his Oscar. Randall mentioned Rooney. Marshall, who'd worked with Mickey Rooney, said, "Write down your second choice on a piece of paper and I promise I'll get that person instead."

There are many interesting trivial things to watch for in The Odd Couple. One is the scene at Shea Stadium where the players staged a triple-play for the cameras. It was shot there on June 27, 1967 just before a Mets-Pirate game with Bill Mazeroski as the batter who hits into the one-two-three sequence. It is said that Roberto Clemente of the Pirates was originally going to do it but, depending on which report you believe, he either tried to do it but couldn't or declined to be in the scene at all.

Maury Wills was reportedly one of the baserunners. This was during the brief period when the Dodgers traded him to Pittsburgh, which traded him to Montreal, which traded him back to the Dodgers. That guy got around and not just on the field.

Here's another minor thing to watch for. At one point, Felix (Lemmon) goes to a Bohack. That's a now-defunct supermarket chain in the East which was still somewhat funct back in '68 when the film was made. Felix pesters a butcher for fresh ground beef…and the butcher was played by Joe Palma, who gained fame as Fake Shemp.

When Shemp Howard died, the Three Stooges had four shorts yet to make on their then-current contract….shorts that had been planned with real low budgets thanks to extensive reuse of old footage. If the producers had replaced Shemp with another actor not playing Shemp, they wouldn't have been able to use all that existing film. So they replaced him with bit player Joe Palma as Shemp, keeping his face away from the camera. Palma later became Jack Lemmon's personal assistant and had small roles in most of his movies…like this one. (In Good Neighbor Sam, he played a character named Mr. Palma.)

Finally, just to see how deep this blog can delve into utter, meaningless matters, I'm going to share with you a mystery that I think about every time I see this movie. At the beginning, Jack Lemmon is roaming the streets of New York, contemplating suicide. At one point, he goes to the old Metropole Cafe at at 7th Avenue and 48th Street. It started life as a great jazz club, turned into a strip bar at some point and closed some time in the seventies, I believe. On his way in, he passes a lady coming out — a woman with way too much eye makeup on. You can sort of make her out in the image below. She's the one with the orange-yellow coat…

Once Lemmon is inside, he ogles a line of dancers dancing above the bar. One of them is pretty clearly the same lady. Here's a better photo of her from that sequence…

This is flagged in many books and websites that list mistakes in movies. They note that a dancer is seen leaving the club and then the same lady is dancing inside the club. Okay. But here's what puzzles me…

The exterior shots of the Metropole were shot on location on 7th Avenue in New York. The interior shots of the Metropole were shot in Hollywood on a soundstage at the Paramount lot. (One of the other dancers is Angelique Pettijohn, who turned up in bit roles in everything Paramount was shooting on that lot at the time, including the original Star Trek.)

How is the actress with the industrial strength mascara in both scenes? She's essentially an extra and they wouldn't fly an extra cross-country, especially to be in a shot that she shouldn't have been in at all.

The only thing I can imagine is that she was the spouse or lady friend of someone who worked on the crew in both locations and she tagged along with him. That's quite a reach and maybe the answer is that they're not the same lady…they just happened to engage two women in different cities who looked amazingly alike. But it sure looks like the same woman.

Anyway, don't let that riddle distract you from enjoying The Odd Couple. Great film.

It's kind of amazing how many movies written by Neil Simon T.C.M, is not showing in this festival: Barefoot in the Park, The Last of the Red-Hot Lovers, I Ought To Be In Pictures, Max Dugan Returns, The Lonely Guy, The Slugger's Wife, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Marrying Man and The Odd Couple II. Most of those aren't wonderful — Barefoot in the Park is the best of 'em — but, geez, the man's lifetime output just as a screenwriter is incredible. Never mind all the TV shows and the 37 (!) produced plays, some of which ran for years on Broadway and are still staged constantly in revivals and non-Broadway productions.

And enjoy Ken's commentaries at the start and close of each of the seventeen films they are running. I think I have most of the movies on DVD but I'm TiVoing them all just to hear what he has to say. I wonder if, being a sportscaster at heart, he'll mention that triple-play.

New Republic is spotlighting bad predictions that were made about the year now ending…

• The Three Worst Economic Predictions of 2014
• The Two Worst Technology Predictions of 2014
• The 3 Worst Policy Predictions of 2014

What I always find amazing about these things is that the bad predictors never pay any real price for being wrong and they never revise their thinking. They just make the same wrong predictions again and again and again. There are still people in the world who listen to Dick Morris, who's kind of the Peter Popoff of politics.

This ran here on 11/21/05 and drew a number of angry e-mails from folks who thought a Three Stooges short with Curly in it was a thing of beauty comparable to the Mona Lisa, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" or the pastrami sandwich at Langer's Deli downtown, whereas one with Shemp or Joe Besser was a national disgrace. In other later posts, I came out and expressed more of my fondness for those two Third Stooges and began to hear from folks who liked Shemp and Joe as much as I did. Nice to see the public consensus wising up on this vital issue…

My TiVo keeps grabbing Three Stooges episodes from Spike TV, especially those that feature Shemp Howard or Joe Besser in the coveted post of Third Stooge. Every now and then, it'll get a Curly but it's mostly Shemp and Joe. (If you are woefully unfamiliar with the lineage of Stooge Membership, I covered it here.) Among Stooge buffs, the consensus seems to be that Curly was the undisputed greatest of all Stooges and that Shemp was a barely-acceptable substitute and then, only because of his bloodline. And Joe Besser was the pits, bettered slightly when "Curly Joe" DeRita happened along. In some Stooge circles, if you express a contrary opinion, you're likely to have someone poke you in the eyes, run a saw over the top of your head and slap you silly. At one point, I felt that way.

But as I occasionally watch the Stooge epics my TiVo collects, I'm struck by how much I've come to like Shemp and Joe. The lower quality of the films that featured them may simply have been a matter of money. Year after year as the Stooges made two-reel comedies for Columbia, there was less of a market for two-reel comedies and therefore, the increasing necessity to make them cheaper. Many were out-and-out cheats where the producers took an old Stooges short and shot a few new scenes, then edited them in and passed the result off as a different film. This saved enough cash to enable them to do other films that weren't mostly footage from earlier pictures…but even those look like they were shot on 8mm in someone's garage.

I wasn't conscious of the lowering of production values when I was a tot. That's because back then, they all looked cheap. In the sixties in Los Angeles, Channel 11 ran Stooge films, often hosted by a gent named Don Lamond who happened to be Larry Fine's son-in-law. The show he ran fluctuated constantly in length and time slot. It would be a half-hour a day for a few months, then they'd cancel something else and make it an hour for a while. Then they'd move it later and cut it back to a half-hour. Then they'd move it again, make it an hour and stick some cartoons in it. TV Guide never knew what time it was on and neither did those of us who wanted to watch. About three times a year, Lamond would have Moe, Larry and Curly Joe live in the studio where they'd plug Stooge merchandise and admonish the kiddos at home not to try the things they did in their films.

Most of the Stooges shorts originally ran between 17 and 19 minutes and you'd think one of them, plus commercials and Mr. Lamond's hosting, would nicely fill out a half-hour of TV time. Channel 11 didn't see it that way. When the program was a half-hour, they always chopped the films down to get in two. If they had an hour to fill, they'd run four or sometimes three plus an unrelated cartoon. This rendered most of the Stooge films pretty far from coherent. In many cases, the editors didn't put a lot of thought into the cutdown. If six minutes had to come out, they'd often just chop out the first six minutes after the titles. The films didn't have much in the way of plot but whatever they had, they had in the first scene or two. In some cases, I suspect, scenes were lopped out because Channel 11's prints were simply falling apart, and there was at least one instance when they got pieces of two separate films confused. The action suddenly cut from Moe, Larry and Shemp running a tailor shop to Moe, Larry and Curly drilling for oil…or something like that. Between the scheduling and the editing, it felt like the Stooges were not only in the films but running the station, as well.

I was always curious why they didn't just run one Stooge film per half-hour and I came up with two possible reasons. One was just to keep things moving faster. The competition was running 6-minute Bugs Bunny cartoons and the Channel 11 execs may have felt the need to approximate that pace and to give the kids two stories per half-hour. The other reason was that they had all those Shemp and Joe shorts, and someone there may have wanted to prune things down so they could get a Curly into every show. They did run them in a completely random order which usually resulted in one Curly plus one non-Curly episode. Every so often, by sheer chance, the two films that shared a half-hour would include some of the same footage or one would be a remake of the other.

What this all meant was that my introduction to the Stooges was via the worst possible presentation of their work. I don't know how old I was when I finally saw shorts that were uncut and had all the scenes in the proper sequence. When that happened, I began to realize that the problem with the Shemp and Joe shorts wasn't Shemp and Joe. They just weren't good films and wouldn't have been much better with Curly. Given their paucity of opportunities for physical comedy, they might have been worse. Shemp and Joe were funnier than Moe and Larry when they had nothing to work with.

The films run relatively uncut on Spike TV, a channel which sometimes defines itself as "entertainment to inspire men." I'm not sure the Stooges should be inspiring any man over about the age of nine but given some of the other things on that channel, you could find worse role models.

John Oliver, teasing his return to the air, speaks of the horror that is New Year's Eve. Mark concurs. I have been to one or two decent New Year's Eve parties…and then enough horrible ones that I now avoid them all. It's a bad night for a non-drinker who would rather not spend time around those who consume to excess.

I recall more than one party where several folks took the following attitude: "I'm not having a good time so I'll drink some more. And then if I'm still not having a good time, I'll drink some more. And then if I'm still not having a good time…" It wasn't the alcohol so much as this idea that you absolutely have to have a "good time" even if you're really not sure what that would mean. Trying too hard can make that not happen in the worst way.

After a few of these, I wised up. Haven't had a bad one since I decided to stay home that night. You don't have to go out that evening and once you accept that concept, it's probably even easier to enjoy yourself if you do travel somewhere to celebrate. Here's Mr. Oliver…

Here's an example of one reason (of many) that some women decline to file reports when they're raped…

Bill Cosby has reportedly hired private investigators in order to dig up dirt on his alleged rape victims and discredit them. The American comedian, who has been fighting an onslaught of accusations that he sexually assaulted more than two dozen women over many years, had paid six-figure fees to investigators to find information, Fox News reported. Sources confirmed that Cosby, through his Hollywood attorney Martin Singer, was implementing a scorched-earth strategy in which anything negative in his accusers' pasts was fair game.

If they could turn up proof that one of Cosby's accusers had a history of filing bogus rape charges, that might be relevant. But it's probably going to be more like, "So-and-So was arrested for shoplifting a bracelet when she was thirteen so you can't believe her when she claims Cosby raped her eleven years later."

Everything about the above story may be untrue. He may not be spending six figures to dig up dirt and I can't imagine where any reporter would have gotten the thing about "fair game." But just the fact that this might be done to any woman who was raped will scare many of them off. And then years later, if they finally get up the courage to report it, some will say, "If it was true, why did she wait so long?"

This was originally posted on this site on Friday, January 13, 2006…

I had a whole batch of errands to run today…

Stop #1: My ATM. I complete the transaction and head for my car when I suddenly hear my name yelled. A woman I do not recognize runs up to me and begins hugging me and smothering me with kisses. Finally noticing my clueless expression (well, more clueless than usual), she informs me she is Kris, who worked as the second P.A. (i.e., the writers' secretary) on a show I wrote in 1982. She does not blame me for not knowing who she is because not only has so much time passed but she has also changed her hair color, lost sixty pounds and had her nose made smaller and her bustline made bigger. We have a nice conversation and Kris tells me that she hopes to see me again some day. She has more plastic surgery and another hair color adjustment planned so she says she'll make sure and tell me it's her.

Stop #2: Electronics Shop #1. I want to buy a pair of wireless headphones to plug into my new TV set so I stop at a store that should have some. They do not. The salesguy looks at me very strangely…as if there's something very odd about me wanting wireless headphones. I shall have to go elsewhere but before I do, lunch would be nice.

Stop #3: A Small Sandwich Stop. I go in and order a small sandwich. The lady behind the counter gives me the same kind of odd look and I think, "What is it with people today?" She says she'll bring my order to my table. Later, when she does, she summons up the courage to ask me, "Do you know you have lipstick all over your face?" Oh, so that's why the guy at the Electronics Shop looked at me that way.

Stop #4: The Men's Room of the Small Sandwich Shop. A look in the mirror confirms that I am streaked like an Apache in a bad western. Why do they make lipstick that doesn't stick to lips and why does Kris purchase it? She has every right to change her appearance but did she have to change mine? I seem to have also gotten a few big crimson streaks on my shirt so, figuring it's better to be wet than red, I remove the shirt, wash those parts of it, wash my face, put the shirt back on and depart.

Stop #5: A Sav-On Drug Store. I go in and purchase a few items. At the checkout line, the cashier gives me the same odd look. Since I know I don't have lipstick all over my face, I ask her what's so odd. She says, "Your shirt." I look down and realize that I have misbuttoned my shirt. The top button is in the second buttonhole from the top and all the others are off one. It is embarrassing to realize that I am 53 years old and apparently unable to dress myself.

Stop #6: The Men's Room of the Sav-On Drug Store. I discover it's worse than I thought because when I tucked my shirt in back in the Men's Room of the Small Sandwich Shop, I got the shirt tail caught in the zipper of my pants. I zip it down and the shirt gets further ensnarled and then I can't move the zipper up or down. I spend a good five minutes in a toilet stall straining and grunting before I finally disengage shirt from fly. During this, others are coming in to use the urinals outside the stall and I can only imagine what they think is going on in there.

Stop #7: Electronics Shop #2. I ask a salesguy if they carry wireless headphones. This salesguy gives me the same odd look as the salesguy at the first Electronics Shop. I ask this one why he's looking at me that way. He says, "Nobody uses wireless headphones any more." I think from now on, I stay home and order everything through Amazon. Including my small sandwiches.

Mike Worden writes…

I disagree with you that Jeb Bush has a chance of being the Republican nominee in 2016. He can't win if he splinters the party even if it only splinters 70-30. What would you say would be the selling point for the non-crazies to get the crazies on board?

Well, I should first point out that I don't think any of my political-type predictions are anything close to infallible. They're just what I think at the moment and since I'm not a professional pundit and I don't have a huge audience, I don't think it's awful when, as I often am, I'm wrong. The Internet is way too full of people who think their hunches and deductions are blessed with some kind of Papal-like infallibility and I don't think that's true of anyone. It's certainly not of me.

That said, here's my thinking. There's almost no chance of the Republicans losing the House. I think there's very little chance of them retaining the Senate and I base that on looking at the particular seats that will be up next time…but I don't think the G.O.P. can admit that, certainly to each other and in many cases, not even to themselves. (One of the key differences between Republican and Democrats is that I think Republicans are always way too certain of victory and Democrats, way too uncertain.)

So I think the selling point of the G.O.P. to its various factions is going to be, "This is our chance for all the marbles." They fantasize about having the House and the Senate and the Presidency…which would, of course, also give them effective control of the court system, as well.

They will say to their ranks, "This is an opportunity to get everything we've ever wanted. We can ban abortion and gay marriage and Obamacare and environmental protection and every last trace of gun control and The Daily Show and Big Bird and judges who rule against us and all those taxes you hate paying and illegal immigrants (except for those who work cheap for you) and we can add Reagan and Bush to Mount Rushmore and pass all sorts of laws that will make it impossible for the Democrats to ever win another election…but we must have every single branch of government to do it. It doesn't matter what Jeb Bush (or other candidate some would call a R.I.N.O.) has done in the past. All that matters is that he will pledge to never veto anything that the Republican House and the Republican Senate will pass…

"…so are you going to not support him and risk ruining our one chance to destroy the Democratic/Liberal agenda finally and forever?"

Now, I don't think there's much chance of the G.O.P. taking the Triple Crown. But I think what I just wrote is a compelling argument that would get a lot of Tea Party types to work their butts off for Jeb Bush (or Romney again or anyone in that category) to say nothing of the bucks it would unlock from the Koch Brothers and other zillionaire donors. I think that's what the 2016 election will all be about.

And like I said, I may be wrong. I just think that's going to be the dream and the Tea Party folks won't let a little thing like Jeb Bush being a Bush and a crook get in the way of it.

Another interview from John Cleese's recent book tour. Here he is in Seattle…and you may want to vault over the first four and a half minutes of introduction…