Category Archives: To Be Filed

Several people wrote to ask me why I like flying Southwest. Well, they seem to take off on time and land early. The employees are friendly and I've never come across one who didn't seem eager to help. If the plane isn't full, their "no assigned seating" policy can usually be worked in a way to give you an empty seat on one side of you or both. And every so often, you get a flight attendant like this lady…

Which airlines get the most complaints? According to this article, Spirit is way out in front, followed by Frontier, United and American. Southwest and Alaska get the fewest.

Here's a question I have: What percentage of people really have a lot of say in which airline they fly? I don't travel as much as some people but generally, when I go online to book a ticket, there's only one choice that leaves when I want to leave. It doesn't matter that I like Southwest and have had horrid experiences on United. United will turn out to be the only one flying where I want to go when I want to go. And of course, a lot of folks who fly have very little choice over which carrier because they don't book their own tickets.

My friend Joe Brancatelli will probably chime in with the answer. Joe knows everything there is to know about commercial aviation, including what the pilot on your flight is drinking. Here's a recent column of his that told me a lot of stuff that interested me.

Lastly on the subject of air travel, I wanted to recommend an app to anyone who flies. It's called Flightboard and it saved my life (metaphorically) last year…

You know that board in the airport that shows you the current status of every flight? Actually, it's two boards: Arrivals and Departures. Well, a lot of apps will give you that info but Flightboard lays it out in the neatest, most useful manner. You can set it for any airport and you can set it to show you Arrivals or Departures, depending on which concerns you at that moment.

Here's my story. When I flew out of Indianapolis last May, I checked in at ticket counter and they told me my 3:41 PM flight would be delayed until at least 6 PM. That would cause me to miss a connecting flight and mess up a carefully-planned weekend. Being a comic book person, I did a lot of cursing that included punctuation marks, then settled down with my laptop at a table in the food court to kill the extra hours. By the way, the dining choices there brought new meaning to the term, "contempt of court."

Around 3:35. I mused, "Gee, if not for that damned delay, I'd be on the plane now." I decided to see if the departure time had changed any so I hauled out the iPhone, called up Flightboard…and saw that the departure time for my flight was Now Boarding!

I leaped up, packed the laptop in record time, sprinted for the gate and was the last passenger to board the flight before the door closed. If not for Flightboard, I would have been back in the food court, blogging or writing Groo when the plane took off, sans me.

Flightboard for the iPhone sells for $3.99. I'd say it was worth it just for that one usage.

Here's a half-hour of reminiscences from Dick Cavett, a witty man who oughta be back on TV with a daily — or at least, a weekly series. He closes with a rope trick from his young magician days…

Jamie Masada runs The Laugh Factory, a very good comedy club up in Hollywood. The one time I met him, I liked him a lot…but I don't like this article of his complaining about the fact that another white guy (i.e., Colbert) is getting Letterman's job. I think Colbert's the most qualified guy out there. (If I had to pick the next two, it would be Ellen DeGeneres and Chris Rock — neither of whom is a white guy…or, apparently, available.)

No, I'm sorry. You can't expect CBS to entrust their 11:30 show to someone who's never hosted a TV program of any significance before. That applies to most of the names Masada mentions as deserving of the shot. Those folks deserve a show somewhere…cable, streaming or at best, 12:35 on a network. You should have complained when Seth Meyers got his show because that's the slot for newcomers.

I also question this statement…

The most important thing for any host at late night is they be a stand-up comic, because stand-up comics really know what can get a laugh day in and day out. Johnny Carson was a stand-up who encouraged the form by booking numerous comics on his show — two of them became late show hosts. Stand-up comics are the "ground troops" of the art form. They have been in clubs or bars or halls, and they have hundreds of nights behind them performing for a live audience. They know the audience and they know what they like. They have also learned the fine art of answering hecklers or being fast on their feet.

Let's see: Conan O'Brien had never really done stand-up before he got his talk show. His show worked pretty well. Jimmy Kimmel didn't have hundreds of nights behind him performing stand-up for a live audience. I don't think Jimmy Fallon did, either. Steve Allen hadn't done stand-up, Jack Paar had done very little, Dick Cavett had done it for a year or two. And he wasn't "late night" in every market but Merv Griffin, who never did stand-up in his life, lasted an awfully long time in the talk show business.

If I had more time, I could list stand-ups who didn't click as talk show hosts. Just as there are great piccolo players who can't do anything well besides playing the piccolo, there are stand-up comedians who can't do anything but their acts.

I'll agree this far: Stand-up training does pay off when you open a talk show with a monologue. I find most of those done by hosts who've never done stand-up pretty anemic…though there are times when Letterman also seems like a guy who's never done it before. But the thing is, that's the first 5-10 minutes of the program and after that, stand-up experience doesn't have a lot of value. You have to talk to other people, not directly to the audience. You have to listen. You have know when to shut up and let another person on stage get a laugh. You have to ad-lib, rather than as many stand-ups do, recite prepared and well-tested material. It's a whole different mindset than you employ in stand-up.

What it does resemble a lot is improv comedy where Colbert has a lot of training and tons of experience. I applaud Masada's loyalty to the folks who work his club but I think he's wrong about this.

Lynda Obst on how Netflix and other streaming services have changed Hollywood…not for the better, some think.

A few weeks ago, a lawyer friend of mine told me he'd just made a deal for a new project for one of his writer-producer clients. I asked if it was TV or movies. He said, "Neither…and both. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how to describe what it is."

This is the final chapter of the story of my grandmother's funeral. If you want to refresh your memory or just plain didn't read earlier chapters, here are links to Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Now then: Wednesday morning, I put on my best (and darn near my only) suit and a pair of dress shoes I never wore anywhere except to the Magic Castle and funerals.  Then I drove my mother to the church in Hartford for the funeral for her mother.

The day before, you may recall, we'd visited with the priest who'd be officiating…or whatever the proper word is for what a priest does at a funeral. Several of my grandmother's friends were bussed in from the Assisted Living Facility where she'd spent her last years, and there were people she'd known — not many but a few — from when she'd lived in East Hartford. One of them for some reason insisted on ticking off for me a list of my grandmother's close acquaintances who had died before she did. Since she'd made it to 97, it was a pretty long list.

The service was held in a church she had not attended in fifty-some-odd years and the priest was a man she had never met. I had given him a lot of information the day before about her, my mother and myself so he could insert names and facts into his speech. I have been to many funerals like this and it always feels to me like a macabre game of Mad-Libs. Once in the span of three weeks, I attended two services with the same rabbi presiding. He used the exact same eulogy —something about how the deceased "heard the music" in his life — and just filled-in the blanks with different nouns.

A somber organ played for quite some time in the chapel and finally the priest made his entrance. My mother, seated next to me, took one look at him and burst into laughter.

I don't know how to describe what he was wearing but it made the Pope's gaudiest outfit look like a beige tweed suit. There were robes upon robes. There was embroidery upon embroidery. There was brocade upon brocade. He couldn't have been more ostentatious if they'd lit up neon piping on his vestments and had a disco mirror ball pop up from his hat.

When my mother managed to contain her laughter, I whispered to her, "Gee, I thought he was going to be getting dressed up for this" and set her off again. Other mourners looked at us like…well, just watch "Chuckles Bites the Dust" again and you'll have a good picture. But this man of the gilded cloth was not fine with or even encouraging of laughter at a funeral. Instead, he gave a stern glare in our direction, then launched into a deeply-religious and very long oration about life and love and death and the Catholic Church and all that it does for the world. Occasionally, he even interrupted the infomercial for a moment or so in order to give a brief shout-out to Grandma.

I do not remember his name so let's call him Father Liberace…though come to think of it, Liberace was entertaining and didn't take himself seriously. This man droned on with a self-importance that could have shattered cold steel. On and on he went, finally getting to the part where he acknowledged the presence in the hall of the dearly departed's daughter and grandson. He made some detached remark about how I was not married, not Catholic and when he mentioned I was a television writer, it was with a tone of "The things some people will do to make a living."

Ah, but then he had to introduce me. My mother had asked that I say a few words.  Just so there'd be someone speaking who'd known the deceased.

He stepped to one side as I got up to the lectern and said, "Thank you, Father Liberace. And I'm glad I checked with you this morning so I didn't wear the same outfit." I got a big laugh from the assemblage, a bigger laugh from my mother and a cold "Harumph!" from my opening act.

I went on. "Thank you for laughing at that. My grandmother loved to laugh. Now, that may seem like a silly thing to say because, you know, how many people do you meet who say, "Laughter? Can't stand it. No, I don't enjoy that one bit"? But there was something especially wonderful about my grandmother's laugh. It was pure. It was real. It was the laugh of someone who never had a selfish or mean thought in her entire life —"

— and I don't really recall where I went from there. I think I said a few more things about how nice and loving she was, and I know I got a few more laughs…not difficult when you have an audience that is being flattened by oppressive seriousness and is desperate for anyone to come along and lighten things up.

When I returned to my seat, Father Liberace reclaimed his pulpit and muttered something about, "Never follow a comedy writer" and he got a laugh. He looked like he rather enjoyed it.

The next thing I recall of the ceremony is that we were across the street in the burial location. It was cold and windy and though it wasn't snowing, the ground was frozen over with ice. My main concern was that my mother not topple on the icy turf and my secondary one was that I, in my slick dress shoes, did not slip 'n' slide all over the place. Father Liberace read some graveside words as about ten people and the cemetery crew shivered. Several men who looked too elderly to be making their livings with shovels were standing-by with them and I started wondering why the grave had not already been opened and prepared. Surely we weren't going to stand out there in the chilly air while three men, all of them about the same age as the dirt they were there to dig, dug.

When Father Liberace concluded his encore performance, an official of the church stepped forward and explained that because the ground was frozen and certain machinery was malfunctioning, the cemetery had been unable to dig my grandmother's grave. "With the family's permission, we will begin the excavation in a ceremonial manner and then the actual interment will be done later when the ground thaws or additional machinery arrives." He looked to my mother for approval and she looked to me.

I thought of saying, "We ain't leavin' 'til Grandma's pushin' up daisies" but instead, I said that would be fine. He signaled the men with the spades to do a little groundbreaking and they tried. Lord, how they tried. But the land was like Lucite and the diggers were probably older than most of those they buried. They couldn't begin to make a dent in the frozen earth.

Since I was the youngest one present, I asked if I could take a crack at it. Skidding a bit in my shoes, I took one man's shovel and chipped away at enough ice to dislodge about a tablespoon of soil. "There," I announced. "The grave is started! Now, let's all go in and bathe in the hot chocolate." Everyone agreed and we filed back into the chapel building where coffee, tea, hot cocoa and little cookies were served. My mother thanked each person who had attended and then whispered to me, "Let's get out of here…please."

We got out of there…pleased, speeding back to the Holiday Inn. We both had a sense of relief that we'd done what had to be done. My mother seemed alternately happy that it was over and sad that…well, that it was over. She had told me several times in the past that when she died, she did not want a funeral of any kind, and she reiterated that request then and there. I said, "That's too bad because the priest offered to either fly out and give the same speech or loan me his wardrobe so I can deliver it."

Meanwhile, an idea had been forming in my head. I got her back to her room where she could nap and smoke (not necessarily in that order and not at the same time), then went to mine to change clothes and flesh out my sorta-wild notion. This involved calling Brenda the Travel Agent back in Los Angeles to ask a few questions that would help determine feasibility and cost.

An hour or two later when my mother called and told me she was awake, I went to her room and sat down opposite her. "I would like to propose a change of plans," I began.

"We can stick with the old plan if you would like," I continued. "Tomorrow morning, we can fly back to Los Angeles and you'll be home by nightfall. If that's what you want to do, I'm fine with that. Or we can do something else that occurred to me…

"You're not likely to be back on this coast again for a long time…maybe ever. How would you like to go to New York for two nights? You haven't been there since 1959. That's thirty-eight years ago and it's changed a tiny bit since then.

"Instead of flying to Los Angeles, we take the train to New York. I've checked and there are suites available at my favorite hotel, the Righa Royal, which is on 54th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues — and yes, we can get you a smoking one. They also have a wheelchair they can loan us if you're not up to walking much in Manhattan.

"You can rest up when we get there and then I would take you to dinner at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, which I promise you will be your favorite restaurant until the following night. The best scallops you ever had. Then we'll go see a show on Broadway. I have someone I can call and get us great seats.

"Nathan Lane is in his last week in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. There's a new production of The King and I I think you'd like. Or remember that movie you liked so much, Victor/Victoria? There's a musical version of that playing with Julie Andrews in it and there's also Sunset Boulevard and Beauty and the Beast and if you absolutely insist on it, I'm even willing to take you to see Cats.

"The next day if you're up to it, we'll do some sightseeing and then I'll take you out to Brooklyn for dinner at Peter Luger's Steak House. The best steak you ever had, I guarantee you. Then we'll go see another show from the aforementioned list and the next morning, we fly back to Los Angeles. What do you think?"

She thought for all of three seconds, then proclaimed it as the most wonderful idea she'd ever heard except maybe for one thing. "Won't this be expensive?" she asked.

"Less expensive than flying home and coming back another time," I told her. I don't think that was true but, well, maybe. It didn't matter. I said, "I'll visit one of my publishers while we're there and see if that makes the whole trip deductible."

With a grin I'll remember all my life, she said, "Okay. Let's do it."

"Great," I said. "I have some calls to make."

I ran back to my room and when I got there, the phone was ringing. It was my mother calling from the room I had just left.

"Mark," she said. "It's a lovely idea…so lovely. But I'm just not up to it. I'm so drained from this whole experience, I just want to be home. Thank you…and maybe we can do it some other time."

I said, "Sure…whenever you want." But we both knew there would be no other time.

The next morning, we flew back to Los Angeles. On the plane, she was mostly quiet but at one point, she turned to me and said, "I wish I'd gone back to see her a few more times. But other than that, I have no regrets."

I agreed. Other than that, no regrets.

My mother lived another fifteen and a half years after that but never got back near that coast. I took her as far as Las Vegas a few times…but her legs and her stamina got worse and worse and as they did, her world got smaller and smaller. Before long, Vegas was out of the question.

Then one Sunday, Carolyn and I took her up to Ojai to a party at the home of my partner, Sergio Aragonés, who made an exquisite paella for all. She loved the scenery. She loved Sergio's home. She loved the paella. The only thing she didn't love was being a two-hour drive from her own bed. After that at her request, we instituted a half-hour time limit on travel. She didn't want to go anywhere, no matter what it was, that was so far I couldn't have her home within thirty minutes.

I offered to take her to local plays and concerts and to see touring companies of Cirque du Soleil, which she'd seen in Vegas and loved…but the thirty-minute rule prevented all those. "If you get tired and want to go to bed," I told her, "we'll just leave."

"Nonsense," she'd respond. "I'm not going to turn to you halfway through Act One of a play you're enjoying and you paid good money for and say, 'Take me home.'" No matter how many times I told her I wouldn't mind, she stood by that position. She finally asked me to stop suggesting outings of that kind. Which I did until I came up with one she couldn't refuse…

Two years ago, I decided to have a 60th birthday party ostensibly for myself…but really, it was a way of dragging my mother out of her house and giving many of my friends a chance to meet her. There were some fabulous, fun venues available but I picked and bought out a small Chinese restaurant relatively close to where she lived. "It's at Fu's Palace," I told her.  "You love Fu's Palace and it's a ten minute drive from here. Fifteen with egg roll."

She said, "But if I'm feeling too tired, I can't ask you to leave your own birthday party and drive me home."

I said, "It's all arranged. I have five different friends who've volunteered to chauffeur you home and tuck you in the instant you say you want to go." With that as a guarantee, she agreed to attend…and she was, of course, the hit of the party. She held court at the front table and there was actually a line to sit and talk with her. I overheard her tell Stan Freberg how she used to watch Time for Beany when she was pregnant with me. (There is no truth to the rumor that as I was born, I yelled out, "I'm comin', Beany Boy!")

She not only had a great evening, she wound up staying until we were the last to leave and I could drive her home myself. It was the last time she left her house to go anywhere that wasn't Kaiser Hospital.

She died seven months after that party.

When you lose a parent, you can't help but ask yourself what, if anything, you should have done that you didn't. When my father passed, I couldn't think of a thing. When my mother passed, I couldn't think of a thing, either. Every now and then though, I wonder if maybe I should have talked her into that detour to New York. She would have had such a great time. Such a great time.

In many of the essays I've written about comic book collecting, I've talked about an increasingly-legendary group we had in the mid-to-late sixties called the Los Angeles Comic Book Club. Others started it but I was president for all of the several years of its existence. It convened every Saturday afternoon at a public park near where the Santa Monica Freeway and the San Diego Freeway cross…and each week, a few dozen devout comic fans would converge on that park for trading, selling and a lot of discussion.

A lot of great friendships were made (and one or two ended) at the L.A.C.B.C. This evening, I had dinner with a group of folks, two of whom I've known since they came to the club about '68. One is Bruce Simon, who drew for a number of underground comics at the time and who now owns and operates a company selling classic television programs on video. The other is Steve Sherman…and the reason for the whole gathering was to celebrate Steve's 65th birthday.

Some folks reading this will remember that when I worked for Jack Kirby in the early seventies, I had a partner. That was Steve. When I went off to write comics and TV shows, Steve became a very successful maker and operator of puppets, often for TV and movies. By sheer coincidence, I wound up writing a few shows which featured the skilled puppetry of my former partner and his current partner, Greg Williams. Greg was also there this evening along with many of Steve's friends and family members, most notably Steve's terrific wife, Diana.

I do not recall that Steve and I ever had an argument in the four-or-so years of our partnership or in the other 42 years I've known him. Disagreements — and there were some — were always resolved in a civilized, congenial manner. This was because he was and is a civilized, congenial fellow and someone I've always liked an awful lot. I like Bruce, too. It was great to see both of them again…and given some recent medical problems, especially great to see Steve up and around and looking well.

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush pushed a false rationale (Weapons of Mass Destruction) for the invasion of Iraq and took this country to war on bogus pretenses, in large part because Cheney saw the opportunity for his company, Halliburton, to reap billions in profits. And Halliburton got shady deals and delivered shoddy work that got a lot of American soldiers killed.

That's not me saying that, though I can easily believe it. No, that was the viewpoint just a few years ago of the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Hey, if he still believes it, that oughta make for a fun convention!

Turner Classic Movies has quickly assembled a Mickey Rooney tribute. Starting Sunday morning, they're running thirteen of his starring vehicles, none of them Andy Hardy pictures. (The Courtship of Andy Hardy is on this evening but that's not part of the marathon.)

[CORRECTION, added soon after: Hank Gillette writes, "There are two Andy Hardy movies in TCM's Mickey Rooney tribute: A Family Affair and You're Only Young Once. These are the first two in the series and before they started putting Andy Hardy in the title. A Family Affair is notable for having Lionel Barrymore in the role of Judge Hardy."  Hank's right, I'm wrong.  I never cared for any of the Andy Hardy movies so I don't know them as well as I should.]

The whole list and a lot of good background information can be found here. If you're only in the mood to watch one, watch Boys Town. It's a great film…easily the second-best to ever star Rooney and Spencer Tracy.

The Rooney films are followed by a nice string of classic films on Monday: The Maltese Falcon, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gaslight, Citizen Kane, Meet Me In St. Louis, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Singin' In The Rain and It Happened One Night. Oh — and I forgot to mention that early Sunday morning, they're running Disco Godfather, a Rudy Ray Moore film that's truly as crazy as its title would indicate. It's a classic of another kind.

Then next Wednesday, they're running If You Could Only Cook, a 1935 comedy that starred Jean Arthur. It was directed by William Seiter, who helmed what was arguably the best Laurel and Hardy feature, Sons of the Desert. If You Could Only Cook is a mildly fun affair but it occupies an interesting place in film history. It was produced at Columbia at a time when their biggest money-earner was producer-director Frank Capra and someone at the studio got the bright (!) idea that they could generate more rentals in the United Kingdom, and at a higher price, if they advertised If You Could Only Cook as a Frank Capra production, supervised by Frank Capra.

Mr. Capra — who hadn't heard of the film, let alone produced it — was furious and he sued Columbia to be released from his contract. It led to a year of Capra, who was then in his prime, not making movies for anyone while the lawsuit dragged on…and he eventually dropped it for reasons that remain murky. Capra, in his autobiography of dubious accuracy, said it was because Harry Cohn — the gruff, antagonistic head of Columbia — came to him and pleaded. Which is not impossible.

And an early alert: Starting in the wee, small hours of April 21, TCM is running darn near all of the American-International "beach party" type movies: Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Ski Party, Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Pajama Party, Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Record all eight or just record any one and watch it eight times. Buster Keaton is in the last three. For some reason, they're omitting the final one American-International made — The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini…a film that answers the question, "How bad does one of these things have to be that Frankie Avalon and Vincent Price wouldn't appear in it?"

That's one of the things I like about TCM. They run Gone With the Wind and Casablanca and then they run Disco Godfather and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. If you really love movies, you do that kind of thing.

There was a time I thought Mike Huckabee was a good man, the kind of Republican I could imagine voting for. Maybe I was wrong then or maybe he one day realized there was a career advantage to pandering to the Extreme Right. That would apply to either of his careers — running for public office or hosting TV and radio programs for the Fox News audience. Lately, he's been thrilling those folks by questioning Barack Obama's devotion to Christianity based on the president's support of Gay Marriage.

But doesn't that apply to…well, everyone who supports or at least doesn't actively oppose Gay Marriage? Huckabee has long maintained that it is an undeniable fact that America is a Christian Nation. The polls are telling us that somewhere between 55% and 59% of Americans approve of two guys or two gals getting hitched. Some polls say a majority of Republicans now feel that way. Could someone ask former-Governor Huckabee if 55% to 59% of Americans are no longer Good Christians? I suspect they are and he's just got the definition wrong.

Tony Randall tells Johnny a story about Groucho Marx…

I'll probably stop posting much about Stephen Colbert in a day or so but I wanted to direct you to a piece by Ian Crouch about Colbert's screen character and how Colbert has managed to disappear totally into the character but still manage to remind all but the dumbest people that it is, after all, just an act.

And it's really been quite a feat. I suspect in classes that teach improv comedy, Colbert's ability to ad-lib interviews in that character will long be pointed to as a very high watermark in the art of improvisation. I can't even think of what might come close.

But you wonder — well, I do at least — if he ever regretted tagging that character with his own name instead of drawing a line of separation as Bill Dana did with Jose Jiminez, Paul Reubens did with Pee-wee Herman, Jim Varney did with Ernest P. Worrell and Cliff Arquette did with Charley Weaver. Or if he regrets it now. If he'd named the character something else, it could become part of his repertoire, the way Martin Short could be Jiminy Glick for one part of a show and be himself for other portions. I also wonder if something he might do on his Late Show is actual sketches, the way Johnny would occasionally bring us The Mighty Carson Art Players.

• There's no menu item in Italian restaurant anywhere that's tastier than the garlic bread dipped in the spaghetti sauce.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's secret report on the C.I.A.'s use of torture is starting to get leaked. It's only a matter of time before the whole thing is public. Not that anyone's going to be held accountable for wrongdoing…

Here's a great article by Ben Smith about Tom Lehrer, the reclusive writer-performer of many brilliant tunes. (Well, when you think about it, not that many…but a lot more than most songwriters manage in their lives.) Lehrer was — and the past-tense seems appropriate, though he is still alive — a wickedly funny man.

One slight quibble with the article, which was brought to my attention by Mark Thorson: Smith says the man's last public performance was on a fundraising tour for George McGovern in 1972. Ah, but here's the man performing in a very public place in 1998 at a tribute to Cameron Mackintosh. Yes, that's Stephen Sondheim doing the intro…