Category Archives: Uncategorized

I appear to be back. The last few days have been rough in terms of work…and I want to make clear that I'm not complaining about that. I've started to get very annoyed with myself when I sound like I'm bitching about the rough part of projects and assignments that, on the whole, I very much enjoy doing. So occasionally the deadlines bunch up and I have to go a night without sleep. I don't want to catch myself whining about that, here or anywhere.

"When do you sleep?" is a question I get often here from folks who note the time stamps on my postings. The answer is that I usually manage to get 4-5 hours a night and that seems to be sufficient…though every week or three, my body analyzes my current workload, decides I have time for an extended coma and puts me into one. That's what happened yesterday. I directed a recording session in the morning, stopped at Farmers Market on the way home for a hot turkey sandwich (one of these), then came home and suddenly found myself playing Rip Van Winkle. Out like a mackerel. Today was mostly devoted to trying to wake completely up.

I missed yesterday's episode of Stu's Show on Shokus Internet Radio so I didn't hear the special announcement that my buddy Stu Shostak made…but I know what it is. He is ending Shokus Internet Radio as we know it. He is not ending Stu's Show. It will go on with new episodes which will be available on the Stu's Show website. You'll be able to listen to each episode for free upon its initial broadcast or download it for the most reasonable sum of 99 cents once it's a rerun. In fact, you can go there right now and download any past Stu's Show for that bargain price. I'd do that if I were you.

The final Stu's Show on Shokus Internet Radio will air next Wednesday, August 24. I was his guest on the first one back in '06 and I'll be there for the final episode on that channel. I'll tell you more about it when we get closer to that date.

Nice obit in the L.A. Times for our pal Vic Dunlop. And I'll toss in a quick story here…

Vic was a cast member on a show I worked on called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, which was basically Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In rolled into one. We had a roster of funny folks including Jan Hooks, Arsenio Hall, Thom Sharp, Rod Hull & Emu, Victoria Jackson and others. Up in the writers' offices, we spent all day writing little sketches for these folks to do.

For a time, we had trouble deciding what to write for Vic. We all knew he was funny but we didn't quite have a handle on what kind of material would suit him best. Then one day, one of the writers — it might have been me — suggested that Vic was great at physical comedy and at playing a shlep/victim. That opened the logjam and the material began flowing freely.

Vic dropped by the office the next day and visited the various rooms where teams of writers worked. He came by the one where a fellow named Mert Rich and I worked and we told him, "Hey, Vic! We just wrote a bit where you get dragged through a buffet and covered with food."

"Great," Vic said. Vic knew the value of slapstick.

The next team of writers informed him, "We're working on a routine where a house painter keeps dropping buckets of paint on your head."

"Terrific," Vic said.

The next team explained, "We have a series of running gags here where you keep sitting on breakaway furniture and falling on your ass."

"Love it," Vic said. And so it went with all the other writers. We were all writing stuff like that for him.

Later that day after Vic had departed, our producer called all the writers in and said, "I've been looking over the material. Just what is it that you guys all have against Vic Dunlop?"

I'm not really here. I just wanted to suggest you all read a rather personal and fascinating piece that Tom Spurgeon just posted on his weblog, The Comics Reporter. I know Tom a little and have vast respect for his wise and industrious writings about the field of comics. He's one of the good guys and while I don't know the exact nature of the medical problems he writes about, I'm sad to hear he has anything wrong with him. We need more guys like that in the field. Heck, we need Tom.

As busy as I can ever recall being and it may be this way through Tuesday. I literally did not go to bed last night and I'm sitting here working, having lost my ability to touch-type due to lack of sleep. Which certainly makes for some interestiong spllings of some words. (Those were actual errors I didn't correct.) You won't see a lot of postings from me for a while and if I owe you an e-maol, (there's another one) the odds of you getting it in the next few days are about the same as the odds of a sane person getting the Republican nomination. But I'll be back here full strength by Tuesday evening, I expect.

Unfortunately, I'll probably have to be back here sooner than that to post another sad bit of news. Just waiting for sufficient confirmation. Right now, I'll just put up some recent Tweets and a Keaton photo and get back to work.

From 1981: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel debate the burning issue: "Who's funnier? Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?"

In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono made a film called Bed Peace which was a documentary about their then-current efforts to bring some peace and sanity to a world that needed loads of both. It features them in conversation with prominent figures of the day including Timothy Leary, Dick Gregory and Al Capp, and is a very interesting and important historical record.

Yoko has put it online for free viewing this weekend. Hurry and catch it. It won't be there for long.

More than you could possibly want to know about shopping carts.

Yes, I am aware that I promised you more info on the Slate Brothers night club. I also promised you more reporting on the Comic-Con. I've been insanely busy lately and I'm not getting to do a lot of things I want to do. The Slate Brothers stuff will be along in a few days. The Comic-Con report will be here before the convention is officially history…which it isn't until I fully unpack. Haven't had the time to do that yet, either.

What it's like to work for Trader Joe's. Apparently, there's more to it than wearing a Hawaiian shirt and answering every question that I ask, "I'm sorry but I don't think they make that anymore."

You know, that company could save a lot of money. All they have to do is send me one of every item they're considering for their stores and letting me sample it. Then if I like it and would want to buy it again and again, they could just not carry it in the first place. That would save them introducing those products at all instead of discontinuing each one after I've bought it once.

What's more insulting to a screenwriter than having nobody want to buy his or her script? How about when the police blow it up?

There are a couple of online petitions circulating to urge the folks over at Sesame Street to have Bert and Ernie marry. This is a very silly idea. As readers of this site know, I believe it is barbaric and bigoted to stop two consenting adults of any persuasion to wed…and really none of the state's business to decree that they can't. I also think it is not only inevitable that gay marriage will become legal everywhere but that eventually, those who opposed will be like those who once fought against racially-mixed marriages in this country: Ashamed to the point of, in most cases, denying they ever did that.

But Bert and Ernie? Come on. They're Muppets. They have no genitalia and no sexuality…and you know, a character is really only what its creators decide it is. The writer part of me is offended at the whole notion of outside forces with a political agenda — even a political agenda I might share — coming in and pressuring for creative changes. If Jim Henson and Frank Oz had decided Bert and Ernie were gay…okay, that would be the decision of folks with a moral right to make it.

Obviously, they did not. We've had more than 40 years of Bert and Ernie adventures without a trace of homosexual (or for that matter, heterosexual) subtext. It's not that anything sexual is right or wrong here…it's just not a part of this world. Sesame Street doesn't have to teach kids about everything. And I really don't think its target audience — kids — needs to be taught that two men can love each other. I think kids need not to be taught otherwise. For those of you who are unafraid to admit an appreciation of show tunes, there's a song in South Pacific about this. It's narrow-minded adults who need the lesson here.

One could also argue, as I would if I could stand to devote five more minutes to this whole ridiculous matter, that there's a nice lesson in Bert and Ernie not being retrofitted as gay lovers. It is possible for two men or two women to be close friends and live together and sleep in adjoining beds without their sexuality being an issue or someone saying, "They must be gay!" I don't think same-sex wedlock threatens so-called "traditional" marriages in any way. I don't think the idea that two males might just be really close friends (and nothing more) threatens gay marriages.

And what I really, really long for is the day when no one cares about or pays any attention to the straightness or gayness of other human beings. Or puppets.

As a grand wallower in Watergate — I read everything in print about that most scandalous of political scandals — I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Richard Nixon's heretofore sealed/secret grand jury testimony. It was given after he'd received his pardon from Gerald Ford…but the pardon stipulated that it did not cover perjury in connection with subsequent trials. Nixon stalled as long as possible but finally had to answer questions under oath…the one time he faced any interrogation more dangerous to him than that of David Frost.

The intriguing question for Nixon Watchers is: Did he tell the truth? That is, did he own up to any breaking of the law? He could no longer be prosecuted for anything he admitted but he was still desperate to rehabilitate his image and to shape the way history would view him. So there are two possible ways his mind could have worked…

He could have thought: There are still zealous, Liberal/Democratic prosecutors out there who are angry and frustrated that the pardon prevents them from nailing me to the wall. If I say anything they can argue is perjury, they'll seize upon that to try and reopen the matter, which will mean more prosecution and more testimony and more jeopardy.

Or he could have thought: I've beaten the big charge…gotten out of this without confessing to breaking the law. I'm not going to concede that now.

Actually, this being Nixon, his mind could have worked in a lot more than two possible ways but those are the biggies. I'd bet on the second. Given how much in the Watergate matter leaked or was made public despite his expectations, he couldn't have assumed the secret grand jury testimony would remain secret for long. It did but he couldn't have expected that at the time. Rick Perlstein thinks that when it comes out, which it will shortly, Nixon will again shock those who "thought they had finally sounded the depths of the president's paranoid venality." I'm sure he will because he always does. But I wouldn't bet he said, "On second thought, I guess I am a crook."

A new production of Porgy and Bess is heading for Massachusetts with plans to wind up on Broadway. The director has brought in a playwright to make some major revisions in a show that some folks think works just fine without improvements. One person who is vocally objecting, if not to the modernization then to the arguments for it, is Stephen Sondheim. Go read what he has to say on the subject.

And now that you've seen today's great photo of Buster Keaton, go look at one of his friend, Ed Wynn.

I haven't written much here about late night TV lately because…well, nothing much has happened and I'm not watching much of it. I used to TiVo and watch most of Jay, Dave, Conan and Craig. Nowadays, I TiVo Jay and Craig and even those go largely unviewed for weeks…and when I do watch, I do a lot of skipping-ahead.

Wha' happened? Some of it's me but a lot of it's them. With the possible exception of Craig Ferguson, I don't think any of those gents are doing the best shows of their careers. I think they're doing the same shows every night — same as each always does and pretty much the same shows as each other. I also think they're booking too few guests who are interesting in and of themselves and too many who are interesting only because they have a movie opening this weekend.

In a way, I think the Internet has undone them. It used to be that when something happened in the news, Jay or Dave (or once upon a time, that Carson guy — no, no…not Carson Daly. The one Leno replaced.) would have the first topical joke about it and you turned in to hear that. Now, the first topical joke is on Twitter or Facebook ten minutes after it happens. You also tuned in the late night shows for fear you'd miss something unexpected and wonderful. Now, you can miss those shows and be confident that if something you want to see did transpire, the clip will be on fifty websites tomorrow.

So…what's with the ratings? Leno is pretty consistently in the lead, though not by as wide a margin as he was before he lost The Tonight Show and returned to it. Dave's a close second. Jimmy Fallon's doing well. He usually beats Ferguson, which is something Conan O'Brien couldn't usually do his last six months in that slot. I suspect NBC is pretty happy now that they have Leno on at 11:35 and not O'Brien.

Conan is over on TBS with a show that is watched by about a fourth as many viewers as are watching Jay and less than watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The show is probably profitable for that network, though not as wide a swath as they were presumably hoping. I know they had this idea that it could be an anchor for future expansion of original programming but that ain't happening. They just cancelled Lopez Tonight, which follows it and no "new" show has been announced to take its place.

I tried watching George Lopez a few times and couldn't quite understand what I was watching. You had this high-energy opening with a loud band and a flashing set and a raucous audience…and then out came this quiet, low-energy host whose main goal seemed to be to make sure no one could take any umbrage at anything he said. He was way too deferential to his guests, treating a lot of minor celebs like Show Biz Gods and forever dropping in little token reminders of his Hispanic heritage. I'm told he has a stand-up act that is quite wonderful and edgy…but as a talk show host, he just seemed out of sync with his own program. It was like the real guy hadn't shown up for work so they'd taken a funny stagehand, put him in a suit and shoved him out there to read the TelePrompter.

Rumor has it that TBS wanted to cancel Lopez the minute they got Conan but that O'Brien insisted Lopez be kept on. Conan was out there complaining someone else had stolen his time slot so he couldn't very well commit that same crime to another. I guess enough time has passed where no one's worried about that.

Pretty much everyone in late night is down, though not enough that we're hearing talk of any personality waiting in the wings to displace any of them. Years ago, NBC experimented with various hosts of the Later show that they aired at 1:35 AM. They tried host after host waiting for one to click and eventually came to the conclusion that it didn't really matter; that anyone they put in that time slot would get pretty much the same numbers. That's why Carson Daly has been there forever. One suspects they're starting to view Jay, Dave, Craig, Conan, Jimmy F. and Jimmy K. the same way. Those guys (and their ratings) may just stay right where they are until someone quits or dies.