Category Archives: To Be Filed

Forgot to mention this yesterday: The Thursday programming schedule for Comic-Con International is up and available for your perusal. Scope it out, make note of what you want to see, include my panels on that list and get ready to do Friday later today.

Bill Cassidy is a state Senator from Louisiana and a fierce crusader for "abstinence-only" sex education in schools…which I have long felt is about the biggest crock of self-deception out there. Teaching horny kids to refrain from sexual activity as a means of avoiding pregnancy, disease and other consequences has never worked very well, it will never work very well, and there will always be parents who are so personally disturbed by this reality that they won't give up on it.

Thanks to folks like Cassidy, Louisiana is very big on teaching abstinence, which surely has a lot to do with the fact that Louisiana is one of the few states where teen pregnancy has not declined and has probably increased. And you can probably guess where this is headed: Cassidy has just announced that his teenage, unwed daughter is pregnant.

This of course reminds us of Sarah Palin having a teenage, unwed daughter. I always thought that if it had been Barack Obama who had one instead of Ms. Palin, the 2008 election would have been about one thing: Republicans insisting that a man who'd let his daughter get that way was an abominable parent and "If he can't run his own family, we cannot trust him to run our country." It probably would have been nastier than that and Palin's would have been the loudest voice saying such things.

Personally, I think not teaching your kids about Safe Sex while pretending that "just say no" is a viable strategy is an indicator of bad parenting. Even worse is what some parents seem to do these days which is to screw their kids' sex lives up forever by convincing them it's evil and terrible and you'll be consigned to Hell for all eternity after your genitalia falls off. That's real bad parenting. Just as Abstinence Education is a real bad way to deal with teenagers and what their hormones are telling them.

This is kind of interesting. In 2010, the BBC Proms organization did an evening of Stephen Sondheim music with a huge orchestra and a huge chorus and a huge cast in a huge building…and I dunno. There's something about doing some of those songs in that situation, out of the storyline of their shows and with everyone in formal wear, that just seems amiss to me. This is the closing number — "Side by Side by Side" from Company performed not as an acting piece (I don't think anyone is playing Bobby) but as just a song performed because it's a good song. Which it is but…well, watch it and decide for yourself.

The crowd loved it and at the end as you'll see, Mr. Sondheim came onstage to hug many of the performers. I wonder if he was thinking, "Gee, that's not a bad song completely out of context…"

A couple of folks have written to ask if I can recommend good barbecue places in and around Los Angeles. I'm really not the ideal person to ask that because my tastes are changing and so, it would seem, is the definition of good barbecue. I used to like sweeter sauces than I do now so I'm not even sure if I still recommend all the places I've favored in the past but haven't visited lately. And many restaurants — BBQ and non-BBQ — seem to be ramping up the hot/spicy factor in their cooking, which is a big negative to me.

There's a business called Bigmista's that makes the rounds of farmers' markets and events. Their food looks great. The guy who runs it is funny and clearly dedicated to great barbecuing and very skilled at it…but even asking for his chow at its mildest, I've gotten food that's just plain too spicy for me. The same is true of both locations of Bludso's — the fancy one on La Brea and the not-fancy one in Compton.

Those are probably the two most raved-about sources of 'Q among local BBQ enthusiasts and I'm not saying they're wrong; just that what they're after when they seek great barbecue is not what works for me.

Years ago if you'd asked me about this topic, I wouldn't have hesitated to send you out to Dr. Hogly Wogly's Tyler Texas BBQ, way out on Sepulveda and once well worth the drive. Harlan Ellison took me there my first time, told me it was the greatest barbecue in the world…and back then, he may have been right. But the business changed hands or suppliers or something and…well, my last three visits there were a crapshoot. One was mediocre, one was as good as ever and one was a take-out order than I took home, took two bites of and then stuffed it down the garbage disposal. Really. It was so tough and tasteless as to be inedible. Even my InSinkErator said, "What is this stuff?"

I have not been back in close to two years. I think I'm afraid to go back. If I do and it's bad, I will have to scratch that place off my list forever. If I don't go, I can still think of it as a place where I might once again have the best brisket I've ever eaten.

My fave place for a time was Porky's down on Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood. They did great food and great business but the owner had a dispute with the landlord and he closed down that location to concentrate on his outlet in San Pedro. That's a little too outta-the-way for me but next time I'm in the area, that's where I'm eating. I worry because the last time I ate at the Inglewood store, he was starting to go spicy on me.

I kinda like J.R.'s Barbecue down on La Cienega but my last two times there, which were a while ago, they too were edging towards the volcanic. Not far from them is J-and-J Barbecue which is a two-in-one shack — see the photo above — that looks like it's been a Los Angeles landmark longer than the La Brea Tar Pits. One side of the shack does hamburgers. The other side sells ribs and chicken and other barbecued delights from an ancient smoker. I'd put this place near the top of my list except for one very silly thing…

Their food puts me to sleep. I'm not kidding. Every time I've been there, I doze off as if drugged…and it isn't just me. I took Sergio Aragonés there one day, cautioning him that something about their smoking or their sauce did that to me. We dined, enjoyed our meals tremendously, went back to my place…and then, within a half hour, I had to go in the bedroom to nap and Sergio stretched out on the floor of my office and went off to dreamland. In my lifetime, I have taken exactly one actual sleeping pill and it had zero effect on me. J-and-J Barbecue puts me out.

This is not completely a negative. Sometimes, a great meal and a nap are what you want. I just can't usually fit that into my day.

There's a small chain in and around Inglewood called Phillips' Barbecue that is take-out only and I've been known to visit two of its three locations. I find it a bit of a hassle at both to park, order, wait a long time and make real certain they give me the mild sauce because the hot stuff could weld the fillings in your upper teeth to the fillings in your bottom teeth. The "take-out" aspect is preferable because their food comes drenched in sauce and after you eat it, that's how you'll be.  It's easier to eat at home where you can change into old clothes first and then hop into the shower after.

A lot of folks think Phillips' is the best anyway and when it's good, that's an understandable position. But in my experience, it's been variable…not quite as much as Doc Hogly's but enough to send me to a nearby competitor…

When I'm in that area and in that mood, I'm more likely to stop at the Woody's Barbecue at Market and La Brea. There are three other Woody's but I haven't been to any of them. That Woody's has a few tables but it's mostly for take-out and I find it easier than Phillips' to take-out. The cuisine is very similar and there apparently is or was some family connection in the two chains that I won't pretend I understand. But it's pretty much the same dining experience including the part about the food and you both being drenched in sauce.

Other places I've tried? The Lucille's Smokehouse chain is okay, though verging on Too Spicy. Tasty Q was seriously Too Spicy and the web has conflicting reports on whether it's still open…which doesn't matter to me 'cause I'm not going back either way.  The one time I took home its food, the InSinkErator began making Shemp Howard sounds and gasping for water.

The Kansas City Barbecue Company out on Magnolia seems to be changing its name to The Barbecue and it's okay for a quick sandwich. It is not related to the Kansas City Barbecue Company in San Diego, right near the convention center, which is a great place for ribs 'n' chicken, especially the chicken.

The Outdoor Grill located next to a car wash over in West L.A. is also a decent place for a modest barbecue experience. I haven't been to its other location. And I think that covers every local place I've been to which isn't long out of business.

Don't bother writing with your personal local recommendations because if they sell ribs, they're already on my "to do" list. And if you live in this area and you crave hot 'n' spicy, don't listen to me at all. The fellow who owns Porky's told me a few years ago that he felt the whole culture of barbecue was heading in that direction and the Big Mister who runs Bigmista's seconded that opinion. If they're right, I probably won't be eating a lot of BBQ in the future. If you feel as I do, maybe we'd better enjoy it while we can.

I got through Mushroom Soup Monday without having to post an obit of anyone I'd ever met. Yesterday, we heard about the passing of Richard "Dick" Jones, who was a great star of western (and some non-western) movies…but more impressively, the voice of Pinocchio in the Disney flick with that name. Jones died Monday night after a fall at home in Northridge. He was 87.

He was a kid actor, starting on screen when he was seven, and he had a pretty good career until he hit his forties, the roles started becoming fewer and he decided to get into real estate. I got to chat with him a few times at parties and film festivals and I could never quite get over the fact that I was talking to the star of Pinocchio. No one who met him seemed able to get over that. Still, he was a delightful gentleman with a great laugh and I'm sure sorry I won't get to hear it again.

Two brief items. The Programming Schedule for Thursday at Comic-Con should be online tomorrow. The schedule for Friday should be up on Friday and so on. I really suggest that if you're attending, you take the time to study the whole list and jot down what you want to see and what your second and third choices are if the lines are too long. I believe the line for the Adam West-Burt Ward-Julie Newmar panel on the 60's Batman show is already forming. I will have the list of my panels up as soon as the convention has announced everything.

And Joe Melchione alerts me to a stupendous bargain on Amazon: Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection for (at the moment) $34.49. This was a great deal at a hundred bucks and I don't regret paying what I paid — around $70 — for my copy. When I was a kid, I was thrilled to have four and ten-minute abridgements of some of their films on 8mm. To think that you could own a set like this of their best work, fully-restored and complete, at any price was like hoping to win the World Series…except that the kind of kid I was, I would rather have had the Laurel and Hardy movies than win the World Series. You can order this set at this link. Thanks, Joe.

I probably write way too much here about food and especially fast food. Neither topic is as large a part of my life as it is on this blog. Nonetheless, I will in a day or two post a piece about various barbecue restaurants I've visited in and around Los Angeles.

In the case of "fast food," I probably have it once or twice a month at most. I think the less I have it, the fussier I am about what I eat. So I was interested in a series of articles over at Consumer Reports about the world of fast food. On the best list for burgers, my favorite — Five Guys — finished near the top. Then again, it finished just behind In-and-Out, which I no longer like, and they put Carls Jr and Burger King ahead of McDonald's, which I think is backwards.

Five Guys not only finished near the top of the Best List, it also — probably for a lot of the same reasons — finished near the bottom in the category of Healthy Places. Subway was at the top of that list and I guess that makes sense…but those places sure don't feel like healthy places to eat. And Subway may have healthy food but it didn't make the Top 11 on the list of Cleanest Fast Food Restaurants.

Anyway, there are a lot of opinions over there if the topic interests you. And it interests me, though maybe not as much as you'd think from this blog.

And today (Wednesday), Stu will be talking with another friend of mine…and I frankly don't know where he's going to start with Carl Gottlieb. He could talk about Carl's early days as one of the important guys in the field of improv comedy. He could talk about Carl's days writing for the Smothers Brothers on the show that got them bounced off CBS. Then Carl worked on a long list of other shows and segued into movies as both an actor and a writer. He was an actor in the original film of M*A*S*H. He was an actor and a screenwriter in Jaws and The Jerk and many other hit movies. He directed a couple of movies (like Caveman) and he wrote books including co-authoring David Crosby's autobiography. He's been an important figure and elected officer in the Writers Guild through about the last nineteen strikes. There's not very much in show business this guy hasn't done…so good luck, Stu. You have much ground to cover.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go into serious overtime. Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a bargain at 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. And by the way, there are no additional discounts for the episodes that contain me…so don't ask.

Two old guys (John Cleese and Michael Palin) trying to recapture their youth…

I really like the freshly-cooked Rotisserie Chickens I buy at Ralphs Markets and at Costco. At Ralphs, you sometimes have to do a bit of planning (or call up and ask) in order to get them when they're fresh but it's worth the effort. At Costco, they always seem to be fresh but maybe that's because I rarely go to Costco in the evening.

Years ago, I purchased a home rotisserie and spent some time trying to learn to prepare poultry in it. I came to the conclusion that I would never make a better chicken than I could buy at those two places, nor would mine require less of my money or less of my time. Cooked chickens at both Ralphs and Costco are actually cheaper than the same bird purchased raw. Unless I had the yearning to eat a fresh chicken late in the evening or at 4 AM, there was no reason aside from Pride of Authorship to ever cook my own. (I also sometimes get a Rotisserie Chicken from a local chain called Zankou. They're not really cheaper but they're really, really good.)

So why are the cooked chickens cheaper than the raw chickens? This article explains and it does not discourage me from buying rotisseried fowl.

David Weigel tells us how the Cuban version of the C.I.A. apparently planted a phony story with Tucker Carlson's website smearing a Democratic senator. The story has been discredited but the website is still (apparently) standing by it…and as has become way too common in our world today, no one involved in reporting the bogus item is suffering any career consequences for having done it.

A little over two years ago in this message, I extolled the virtues of True Lemon Original Lemonade mix and said I hoped they'd someday come out with an orange drink. They have. Actually, it's orange mango but that's close enough.

This company called True Lemon started out to just market crystallized lemon which one could add to one's tea or drinking water but when it succeeded, they began to diversify with True Lime, then True Orange and True Grapefruit and they now have such an extensive line of fruity products that they seem to be slowly changing the name of the firm to True Citrus. I am most interested in their drink mixes, which are a bit different from their crystal flavoring powders.

Simple rule: If it doesn't say "DRINK MIX" on the box, it's not a drink mix. It's crystallized fruit extract that you can add to water or anything else. If you want a glass of water with a hint of lemon, you add the crystallized version they call True Lemon. If you want something that tastes like a glass of lemonade, you want their drink mix. In it simplest application, you buy these little envelopes of powder and you add one to a chilled 500ml bottle of water and turn it into a refreshing drink.

They now have five drink mixes, all of which are sweetened with a tiny bit of sugar but mainly with Stevia. They are Lemonade, Raspberry Lemonade, Peach Lemonade, Mango Orange Drink and Black Cherry Limeade. The two I'm stocking in my cupboard are the plain Lemonade and the Mango Orange.

The latter is a tad sweeter than I would like but since I have no sweet tooth, it's probably just right for most people. The oddest thing about it is that they stress this natural flavoring — Crystallized Orange (Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Orange Oil, Orange Juice, Ascorbic Acid), Natural Mango Flavor, etc. — and then they add Beta-Carotene for color and it makes it a very unnatural shade of orange.

I wish they sold a sampler pack so you could just get one or two of each flavor but what this link offers is a box of each of the five flavors, ten little envelopes to a box, for $20.00. There are other packages of True Lemon/Citrus products that do include a sampler pack of one of each drink and you might want to browse Amazon to find one of them. Worth checking out, I say.

We're again declaring it Mushroom Soup Monday. I'm not sure why I picked a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup to post as the symbol of me being really, really busy but I did and I have all these neat graphics I made to use up…so Mushroom Soup Monday it is. Posting here will be light today unless, as happens too often, I have to race back to put up an obit. Gee, I hope I don't have to do that.

Before I submerge, a few brief announcements, the main one being that I spoke too soon. The Time-Warner e-mail problem which looked so fixed the other day now looks so unfixed.

Also: Several folks who won't be at Comic-Con this year have written to me about the Stan Sakai benefit book I mentioned. They all had the same idea, which is that people who are there should buy multiple copies of it, get them signed by the artists in attendance, then put the books up on eBay and donate the proceeds to the Sakais. Yeah, I think that would be a great idea.

Lastly for now: I keep getting e-mail asking me when, oh when, will there be a big reprint project that will reissue all the Groo stories to date in big, fancy hardcover volumes? Here's how I'm answering the messages I answer: We've agreed to do it, the publisher has agreed to do it and we're trying to get the details ironed out. We may or may not be able to announce them at Comic-Con but I'm reasonably sure the first books in such a series will be out before the 2015 Comic-Con. And that's really all there is to say about it at the moment.

I'll be back later today…just not very often.

And here in its entirety is another press conference the gents of Monty Python gave to promote their current farewell performances. This was the first announcement, I believe…

Joey Helleny identified the mystery woman in the photo with Allen and Rossi as Karon Kate Blackwell, otherwise known as Mrs. Marty Allen. I have changed the caption accordingly. Thanks, Joey.