Category Archives: To Be Filed

There's a PBS special called An Evening with Jerry Lewis that's debuting this weekend — tonight, in some towns. It was taped last November at the Orleans Hotel in Vegas and it's supposed to be Jerry singing and telling stories and mostly doing a Q-and-A with the audience. I am told that Jer loves the Q-and-A segments more than anything he does professionally and that he would not do a show without an extended one.

I've seen a few of them, live and on video, and they're…odd. He seems to like playing the non-nutty professor…likes to hold court on lofty topics. If someone asks him if he and Dean liked to hang out, he turns it into a five minute discourse on trust and caring and the bond of two men, and much of what he says is incoherent and rambling. Sometimes, he doesn't even wander away from the topic. He just starts a mile away from it and keeps going in all directions. I assume the PBS special will be edited judiciously to make it appear as if he is actually addressing the questions that are asked.

He is beloved and honored these days — less, I suspect, for anything he's done than for what he is: A survivor and a relic of another time. I don't think people love him for his movies or TV shows so much as they love him for just being Jerry Lewis all these years and not dying or going away on us as so many of his contemporaries have. When he does go away, it'll be sad…because he'll be taking an entire era of show business with him when he goes.

Here's a little preview of the special in which, as you can see, he does the Typewriter Routine for about the three hundred thousandth time…

As Joe Brancatelli informs us, all those points you've accumulated in your hotel loyalty program may be worth a lot less soon than you thought.

Ezra Klein on why Obama can't make a deal with the Republicans. Long story short: They don't care what he offers unless it's unconditional surrender. That's no way to make a deal, especially when you just lost a big election and your demands don't even reflect the majority of your own party rank 'n' file.

The Hollywood Reporter is once more telling us that NBC is planning to forcibly retire Jay Leno from The Tonight Show and rotate Jimmy Fallon into that slot as soon as next summer. We went through this a few months ago with many a media expert saying Jay's departure was a Done Deal; that there was no way the network would extend him again. Then they extended him again.

It kinda fascinates me how often everyone has been wrong about this guy. In Bill Carter's book on the Jay/Conan debacle, he quotes Lorne Michaels as saying "Fortunes have been lost underestimating Jay Leno." I can't think of anyone who so consistently defies predictions of impending demise. He more or less became Johnny Carson's Guest Host as a second choice. Most at NBC then wanted Garry Shandling to replace Joan Rivers in that capacity but Garry was too busy so at first, it was Garry and Jay switching off and the sense was that Shandling was the new Guest Host and Leno was kind of the Guest Host's Guest Host. Then Shandling withdrew and industry pundits doubted Jay could hold down the fort.

He did just fine. Then when Johnny left, they said he couldn't hold Carson's audience. He did. Then when Letterman came on against him, they said Jay would be replaced. He wasn't. Then they said okay, so he's finishing a respectable second…but he'll never beat Dave in total viewers. He did. Then they said he'd never best Dave in the 18-49 age bracket. He did. Then they said it wouldn't last. It did. Then they said Jay was just being buoyed by strong programming at 10 PM and would never hold his lead once those shows died out. Then they did and he stayed on top…and so on and so on. There's something about this guy that turns everyone who forecasts his collapse into Dick "Obama has zero chance of getting re-elected" Morris.

People in this business get fired all the time because they aren't in First Place. Only with Leno do his bosses say, "He's in First Place. Let's get rid of him." He was in First Place when there was a move inside NBC to dump him and install Letterman in that job. Dave didn't accept or they would have. Jay was in First Place when they actually did dump him and put Conan O'Brien there. That didn't work out so now Jay's back and he's in First Place…and they're reportedly talking about firing him yet again.

Don't tell me it's because his show sucks. First of all, I don't think it does. I think he's phoning it in…but I find the current Letterman less watchable and the two Jimmies unwatchable. And secondly, even if it does, when has that ever been a consideration in cancelling a network television show? Do we think one single person in the television industry believes Dancing With the Stars is a quality program? Or the current Saturday Night Live? It's almost a running gag in television that the folks running any network don't watch their biggest hit and don't understand why anyone does.

Now admittedly, Leno is only in First Place by a hair or two lately. He's a bit ahead in Total Viewers and holding his own against Jimmy Kimmel in the 18-49 bracket. In the latter category, he's again topping all expectations though, also admittedly, he has a lot more viewers at the 49 end of that demographic than around the 18. It would not be unscientific to presume he will start losing in that capacity before long…except for the fact that for something like two decades now, every single prediction that Leno's Tonight Show numbers would plunge has been dead wrong.

They always underestimate this man. You know the one time they didn't? When they thought he could establish a franchise at 10 PM every weeknight. And even that got the numbers they expected but so damaged the affiliates' 11 PM local news programs that NBC had to yank it. So they stuck him back in at 11:30 and again, wizened heads said that while he'd do better than Conan did there, he could never get to First Place there again…and now there he is in First Place with NBC saying, "Let's get rid of him." I don't know if they will or even if Fallon would really be the replacement…but someone's suggesting it again. Yeah, it doesn't make sense but it didn't make sense the last time they did it, either.

I don't really care that much about Leno's show. I just like something about a guy who so consistently gets written-off and then proves the prognosticators wrong. Eventually, predictions of his permanent departure will come true. Maybe that time is at hand, in part because NBC will make it be at hand. All I know is that whenever he goes off and stays off, all those who've been wrong over and over for two decades about Jay Leno will say, "See? I told you he wouldn't last."

Actress Megan Hilty made her Broadway debut in Wicked playing Glinda, the role originated by Kristen Chenoweth. Ms. Hilty was much acclaimed for her work there, particularly in her rendering of the song, "Popular."

So here we are a few years later at "Defying Inequality," a benefit to amass funds to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation. Performing is the inestimable Jason Graae, a fine fellow with whom I have had the pleasure of working on a few occasions. Jason opts to serenade Megan Hilty with his rendition of "Popular" and — well, you'll see how it goes. Sorry about the shaky camera work but it's worth it…

John Cassidy on Bob Woodward.

Are you stopping into a Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes this month to try the Classic Creamy Tomato Soup I like so much? Well, if you are, here's a coupon for 20% off your entire check…and it's good through the end of April. I don't see why you couldn't print it out again and again and keep going back.

Boy, do I like this one. I've seen a lot of great books lately reprinting classic comic books with reproduction worthy of the material…and not to belittle the desirability any others but IDW's "Artist's Edition" of MAD is the best one I've seen. Some of that, of course, is because the material itself is so wonderful — twenty whole stories and a number of covers and loose pages from the comic book issues of MAD, back when it was written and edited by Harvey Kurtzman and drawn by the likes of Wally Wood, Jack Davis and Will Elder. But a lot of the wonderfulness has to do with what IDW and editor Scott Dunbier have done with it.

The big thing they did right was to track down the original art itself and scan directly off it…so you see every erasure, every white-out, every stray pencil marking that didn't get erased. Then they printed the art the size it was drawn. Now, this has its drawbacks because the resultant book is roughly the size of Penn Jillette. It's 15½" by 22¼" and will fit on no shelf in your home or anyone else's. You can't hold the thing in your lap either. You need to open it flat on a table. I'll be storing mine in a wide art drawer I have. That is, when I'm not hauling it out to show everyone who comes by and doesn't have their own yet.

One thing that stands out is that not only does the reproduction live up to the work but the work lives up to the reproduction. Davis, Wood and the others drew this material for dime comics printed on crappy paper and they had no reasonable expectation that it would ever be reprinted once, let alone dozens and dozens of times, eventually full-size and crystal-clear. They could have put a lot less work into the pages and all would have looked fine in what they then thought would be the one and only printing.

They didn't. The panels are loaded with detail and nuance that wasn't visible the first time around — or the second or the third or the ninth. I know these stories real well and I'm seeing things in them I never saw before, not even in Russ Cochran's excellent hardcover reprints. You know how wonderful Wally Wood's art for MAD was? Well, it turns out, it was even better than we thought. Same with Davis, same with Elder, etc. (One minor quibble: John Severin is unrepresented. You may also regret that your particular favorite MAD story didn't make the cut…but there wasn't room for everything and not every story's original art could be located.)

I am similarly impressed with what Harvey Kurtzman did. Years ago, I had the chance to study the original artwork to Marvel's Not Brand Echh #1, which was more or less their attempt to do Kurtzman's MAD. Some very talented people worked on it including Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and even John Severin but the effort fell leagues short of Kurtzman & Company. Looking at the originals, you could see one reason why: Almost every panel had retouches and relettering and patches to indicate they passed it around the office and let everyone take a crack at adding silly signs and gags.

The pages of MAD in this volume show very few examples of relettering or pasteovers or of anyone going through the work after it was completed, trying to make it funnier. Kurtzman was notorious for fussing over pages and redoing his own roughs over and over, spending whole days on one page to make it 1% better. But the stories in IDW's splendid collection have sparse evidence of after-the-fact renovations. The pages really demonstrate that these guys knew what they were doing and did what they wanted to do. I never felt the sheer professionalism so strongly in any other book reprinting great comic art.

The book lists for $150 and it would be a bargain if you paid that. Right this moment, there's one dealer selling it via Amazon for $85.10 and I'll bet that price doesn't last long. I'll further bet that when this book is outta-print, you see copies going on eBay for $300 and up, maybe way up. If this material interests you in the slightest and you can find a place in your home for a copy, don't delay.

In case you can't tell, I kinda liked it.

Kevin Drum explains the Sequester in all its glory.

I don't eat Oreos or any kind of cookies anymore. If I did eat Oreos, I don't think I'd want one of these…

Sometimes, it seems like our leaders have sequestered their brains. As Fred Kaplan notes, the cutbacks that may occur in the military would not be the wisest ones due to the way the rules have been concocted.

Back in this post, my longtime buddy Scott Shaw! told the story of how for the costume competition of the 1972 World Science-Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, he covered himself with peanut butter and went as "The Turd," a character he'd recently concocted for an underground comic. It's one of those stories that sounds like it couldn't possibly happen but it did, it did. I was there. In fact, I took this photo of Scott clad in a stocking mask, shorts and an awful lot of Skippy Chunky-Style…or whatever brand it was.

During the day at the con, a hat was passed. Folks were asked to put up a few bucks towards the obviously-worthy cause of covering Scott with peanut butter. I tossed in a few though, like the other donors, I didn't believe it would actually happen. I mean, nobody does things like that…right? Then that evening as a group of my friends were heading down in the elevator for the ceremony, we noticed a familiar smell in the air. "What's that odor?" someone asked. It took a few seconds to place it but I think I was the one who uttered — with a gasp of shocked realization — "It's…it's peanut butter." And we all looked at one another in amazement: He really did it?

We could spot traces of Scott's "costume" as we walked towards the ballroom. Here and there on the floor, we'd spot a tiny mound of peanut butter. And about a third of the people we passed had a smear of the stuff on one of their shoulders, having brushed past him. I got there in time to see Scott waddle up to Forrest J Ackerman, extend his arms and say, "Hug me, Forry! I'm a monster!"

The reaction to him was fascinating. The last time I'd been to an s-f convention, the costume event had been the subject of a controversy: Two women had entered without costumes — one wearing nothing, the other wearing darn near nothing. There were folks who'd spent months and mucho dinero designing their costumes…and here they were being upstaged by ladies who'd spent zero dollars and no time. As I explained here, arguments ensued and the judges finally opted to create a new, separate category for nude women.

At the '72 WorldCon, Scott managed to create an even greater argument. From what I could tell, there were some judges who felt that the sheer effort could not be ignored; that it was worthy of some kind of recognition. There were others who felt what Scott had on was not a true costume, and also that he'd caused enough mess that he should not be trophied and therefore approved of. When all the arguing levelled off, the decision was to create a new, separate category for Most Disgusting Costume. Would that Congress could solve the sequester problem with such patient wisdom.

Soon after, some WorldCon committee passed a rule that banned the wearing of edible substances in future costume contests. This struck me as a rather myopic way to prevent the cleaning problems Scott had caused. There was no law preventing you from covering yourself with mud or tar or even feces…but you couldn't cover yourself with a substance that most people love.

Anyway, that's the story. For a few years later, Scott was known to many as "that guy who dressed up in peanut butter." Then he became a very successful, popular cartoonist and now he's "that guy in the Hawaiian shirts who likes to draw Flintstones." I'm not sure it's an improvement in status but it pays better.

I just received this vital press release…

Official Statement from Girls Gone Wild

Yesterday several of the U.S. operating entities for Girls Gone Wild joined the ranks of companies like American Airlines and General Motors having sought reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy code. Girls Gone Wild remains strong as a company and strong financially. The only reason Girls Gone Wild has elected to file for this reorganization is to re-structure its frivolous and burdensome legal affairs. This Chapter 11 filing will not affect any of Girls Gone Wild's domestic or international operations. Just like American Airlines and General Motors, it will be business as usual for Girls Gone Wild.

Doesn't it make you feel good about the economy to know that American Airlines and General Motors are just as financially stable as Girls Gone Wild?

Joe Brancatelli says we just might be living in a Golden Age of Air Travel. Now, if the airlines could just give us all that and also show a profit…

I dunno, just as you dunno, how the Supreme Court will rule on the matter of Gay Marriage. I see its opponents everywhere throwing in towels and conceding its inevitability so you might expect that even Scalia and Thomas would figure "What's the point?" and vote for it, if only to make their righter-wing decrees seem more reasonable. If they want to say, "We don't always vote against minorities," this might be a good time to do that. Then again, you'd also figure Scalia would see some value in not making it clear on most issues that he has his mind set in concrete well before the oral arguments.

Then again, the Field Poll in California, which is the poll always cited on this topic, now says that denizens of my state support by a margin of almost two-to-one, the right of gay couples to wed. That's enough that if a measure went on the ballot to allow it, I would think its opponents would have a hard time raising funds or generating outrage to defeat it. Then again, some folks have pocketed a lot of money and also manipulated votes on other matters by panicking some voters into thinking the world will end if Gay Marriage is not defeated…so someone will try it.

Then again, they won't win. This battle is over.