Category Archives: Uncategorized

Several of you have sent me to this website for their taste test comparison of burgers at In-N-Out, Five Guys and a new chain in New York I've yet to sample called Shake Shack. It's not exactly a fair contest since they sampled hamburgers that were many hours old and reheated…and I also think that if you're deciding which place to go, you're going to take fries into account. I happen to like Five Guys burgers better than In-N-Out but where Five Guys really takes the lead is with their french fries.

Last night, I dined with Publicist-to-the-Stars Jeff Abraham at the new Five Guys in Culver City, my second visit there. I thought it was great both times, though not quite up to the quality of my first Five Guys, which was in Arlington, Virginia.

I should point out, in case anyone gives a damn about my opinion of hamburgers, that I'm a minimalist. If I go to a place that loads its burgers with cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, chili, avocado, jalapeno peppers, onions and ketchup, I have them leave off the cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, chili, avocado, jalapeno peppers and some of the onion. My idea of a hamburger is meat, bun, ketchup and a small amount of onion, either raw or grilled. (I almost always remove two-thirds of the onion they put on.) Those of you who like your burgers loaded with stuff are playing an entirely different game than I'm playing and my views may not apply.

My cleaning lady told me we were all out of Lysol. I said I'd pick some up and I forgot when I was at the market the other day. So I stopped this morning at the closest place to get some, which was a nearby Kmart.

In the parking lot, which also serves a CVS Pharmacy, a Whole Foods and a few other businesses, I ran into a lady I knew who used to have a high position at the NBC Network. We made small talk which got smaller when I mentioned I was on my way into the Kmart. She looked at me like I'd just said I was about to go down to Skid Row and bunk with the homeless people. "Why would you ever go into a Kmart?" she asked…and "To buy Lysol" turned out to not be much of an answer.

"It's just…" and here she was having trouble finding the words to express why that was wrong. The point was so obvious to her that it went without saying. Finally, she said, "Kmart is for the kind of people who'd shop at Kmart."

Well, hard to argue with that. I said, "I need some Lysol. They sell Lysol. What's wrong with going there to buy it?"

She pointed to the other end of the mall and said, "They probably have Lysol at the CVS store."

I said, "Yes…and it's the exact same Lysol and it's probably not any cheaper down there, plus the Kmart is closer."

When I noted it was the same Lysol, I suddenly reminded myself of something. Ten or fifteen years ago, I had to buy a small household appliance. I checked out Consumer Reports and they recommended a certain brand and a certain model. Let's say it was the Acme 74W. The next day, I was passing that Kmart and I ducked in to see if they had it. They didn't but they had the Acme 74X. I thought, "Well, how different could that be?" and I bought it.

Which turned out to be a mistake. It was a terrible product. I phoned up the Customer Service folks at the Acme Company (not the same one that makes Road Runner traps) and asked if I'd gotten a defective item or I didn't understand how to use it or what. I got an uncommonly honest person on the phone who told me basically that I'd purchased their crappy version. The 74W was a fine product. The 74X was a piece of junk.

"You should have looked at the price," she said. "The 74W is $65. Places like Kmart can't or don't want to sell it to their clientele so we designed the 74X for them. You probably paid about thirty bucks for it."

I looked at my Kmart receipt which I'd pulled out for possible returning purposes. "I paid $29.98," I told her. She said, "Well, there you are. I mean, it's a good thirty dollar appliance but it's like paying less than half of what you have to spend to buy a decent meal. Some people can't afford anything better. That's why they have the Value Menu at McDonald's."

I took her point. The $30 appliance went back to Kmart for a refund and I found the 74W online for $50 and ordered it. It worked fine.

If I'd been the Acme Company — which actually has a famous name, one you'd probably know — I don't think I'd be putting my brand on cheapo merchandise. I might service that marketplace with products under another trademark but I don't think I'd devalue my reputation by applying it to intentionally low-grade products. But that's another matter. Standing there in the parking lot, talking with the lady who used to work at NBC, I thought, She's right in a way. She's just not right about this particular example. They don't make a cheaper grade of Lysol.

At least, I don't think they do. The bottle I ended up buying said on it, "Kills All Germs!" not "Kills Some Germs and Not Others!"

She didn't want to shop at Kmart because of some sort of snobbishness. I don't mind shopping there but I've learned to be cautious of the mindset that the cheapest alternative is always the one you should buy, which is sometimes the dynamic you get in a place like Kmart.

But not always. Not long ago in a men's store, I found a kind of pajama that I really like. A pair was $40 and I'd been meaning to go back there and buy a couple more next time I'm in that area. Now I don't have to. While carrying my other purchase out of Kmart, I passed through their men's clothing section and found the same pajamas — and I mean exactly the same — for $19.95.

I just told this story on the phone to a friend of mine who remarked, "Great…but what if it turns out the $19.95 pajamas are so cheap because the people who make them in some primitive country have a deadly disease and it's transmitted through the material?" I thought for a second and replied, "Well, I guess that's what the Lysol is for…"

This strikes me as odd. A high school in Danville, Illinois is renaming its auditorium in honor of Danville native Dick Van Dyke. Okay, great. But they're hoping Dick can make it there for the dedication ceremony which for some reason will take two days — May 27 and May 28.

Mr. Van Dyke has been very busy lately with his book tour which ain't over and includes that appearance we mentioned for the Writers Bloc group in Beverly Hills on May 31. Renaming an auditorium is not a vital, time-sensitive activity. You'd think they'd say, "Dear Mr. Van Dyke…We will hold the ceremony whenever it is convenient for you to get here."

Anyway, thanks to Bruce Reznick for the link. And by the way, the May 31 event — where Carl Reiner will interview Dick Van Dyke and Dick will sign his book — is sold out. If you're a local friend of mine and you still want to go, drop me a note. I may know someone with a couple of extra tickets.

From a few years back: Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart. I wonder if today Stewart would still insist that he and The Daily Show do not take up causes.

Newt Gingrich is saying that Democrats will be lying if they quote anything he said last Sunday on Meet the Press. Apparently, Newt got all confused and said the exact opposite of what he really believes.

In other news, Ben Stein thinks IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn might be innocent of rape because, hey, when has an economist ever done something like that?

This has been today's edition of You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

Today on Stu's Show, your genial host Stu Shostak welcomes your genial host Monty Hall for two hours of chat, mostly about Monty's work in game shows like Video Village, Split Second, Keep Talking and (of course) Let's Make a Deal. To make his guest feel right at home, Stu will conduct the entire interview dressed as a giant lobster.

Monty Hall endures a lot of jokes like that…and he should. It's kind of the trade-off for all the money he made hosting (and owning) one of the most successful programs in television history. I'm not sure everyone understands how successful that show was. The folks running NBC then didn't, back when it was the cornerstone of their daytime lineup. It went on the air there in 1963…and legend has it that almost no one at the network thought it had much chance to succeed. But succeed it did in a big way. So did NBC then appreciate it? Nope. Legend also has it they resented it, dismissed it as an anomaly for five years and then in '68 when it came time for contract renewal, tried to lowball Monty Hall, TV's Big Dealer, with piddling offers. Incensed, Mr. Hall took his three doors and his trading floor over to ABC and probably derived great satisfaction as not just his ratings but all of ABC's daytime numbers surged and the NBC schedule got zonked. Let's Make a Deal also performed enormously well when either network would occasionally slot it for a while in prime time.

I never cared for Let's Make a Deal. It was too repetitive for me and it hovered too close to the old Truth or Consequences concept of entertainment, which was to make the contestants look like damn idiots. But I respected its popularity and the skill with which it was done. It's been revived many times since with many hosts but only Monty and that original crew of it were ever able to make it really work. I hope Stu asks him why he thinks that magic has been so difficult to recapture.

And I really did like Monty's other game shows — some he hosted, some he owned. Video Village, which he took over (reportedly without ever having seen the show before) was a great program. So was Split Second, which his company produced after Deal went over to ABC. Before Let's Make a Deal, his outfit also produced a largely-forgotten program called Your First Impression that was quite intriguing and which inspired a lot of other game shows that dealt in free association. I trust they'll talk about them too on Stu's Show.

You can hear Stu's Show by clicking your computer over to Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is from 4 PM to 6 PM on the West Coast, 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast and other times in other zones. That's right…they do it live and while you can tune in all week for replays, you'll enjoy it more if you listen when Monty is actually in the luxurious Shokus Broadcasting Complex out in Chatsworth, California. Give a listen…and remember that you should never hold onto whatever is on the tray that Jay's bringing down the aisle. Seven times out of ten, it's Rice-a-Roni.

I keep getting e-mails asking what I think of the new Looney Tunes show on Cartoon Network. I think I haven't seen it…which you'd assume would be a perfectly valid reason for not having an opinion about it. It is but that didn't stop a lot of websites and animation fans from condemning it before they'd seen ten seconds of finished program…or even after they'd seen only about that much. I do now see a number of reviewers expressing delighted surprise and a couple even saying, "Gee, I was looking forward to trashing this thing but I kinda like it." Good for them. I hope I like it too when I get around to watching a couple.

And now I'm getting lotsa e-mails from people asking me what I think of news that Seth MacFarlane has been engaged to spearhead some kind of reboot of The Flintstones. Well, Seth MacFarlane is a funny, successful guy and that alone is encouraging. Over the years, a lot of wonderful properties have been entrusted to folks who were neither funny nor successful…and in this case, "successful" may be the more important of those two factors.

I think what's gone awry with a lot of company-owned franchises is too much company-thinking. There's usually a reluctance to let anyone get too much control of a company property. Everyone I encounter within the relevant divisions of Time-Warner seems to want to be the person in charge of Bugs Bunny and doesn't want anyone else to be. Ergo, no one is in charge of Bugs Bunny and I think it shows.

What they need over there is a super-genius who's appointed to supervise, at least in a creative sense, what's right and wrong for the property…someone who can, for example, select one voice artist to speak for Bugs in all venues, all appearances. By my count, ten different people have been the voice of Bugs Bunny on major projects since Mel Blanc passed…and every time a new need comes along, someone there wants to hold open auditions and make all the guys who've done Bugs in the past come in and audition again so he can pick. And while he's choosing the voice of Bugs for a new videogame, someone down the hall from him is auditioning to find the voice of Bugs for a new series of TV cartoons.

That to me is an example of what's wrong with the handling of many classic characters. No one is empowered to make a decision of any lasting value. If they can't all get on the same page as to what Bugs sounds like, how can they agree on what's an appropriate joke for that voice to utter? Or an appropriate new direction for the character's design or storylines?

So they need to have one person in charge and then they need to pick the right person. Handing Seth MacFarlane The Flintstones probably means they're going to do the first. He has the track record and he's very rich so I doubt he's signing onto a situation where he won't have the necessary power to impose a coherent, firm vision on Fred, Barney, Wilma and the rest. I'm also guessing he has some guarantees of proper budgets and ample opportunity to take his vision into the marketplace.

Is he the right person? I dunno. We'll have to wait and see what he does. There are probably other people around who could bring forth a great Flintstones show or movie if they had enough control…but you'd have to have the clout and track record of a Seth MacFarlane to get enough control. I'm eager to see how he puts that control to use.

Rick Santorum thinks John McCain doesn't understand how torture works.

This has been today's edition of You Can't Make This Stuff Up.

With the help of a few readers of this site, we're doing vital detective work to figure out the precise airdates of Johnny Carson's early TV venture Carson's Cellar and of the episode we embedded here the other day. Stu Shostak, who owns a kinescope of said episode, told me it said 11/22/52 on the leader. Turns out he misread it. It actually says 11/23/52, which was a Sunday.

Bill Mullins researched old listings in the TV section of the L.A. Times and found dates listed for Carson's Cellar. It seems to have debuted on Saturday, October 4, 1952 at 7:00 PM. It then skipped a week, aired October 18 in that slot, then moved to Sunday at 5:30 as of October 26. It then skipped another week, aired again on Sunday the 9th, then was seen every week in that slot until its telecast of 1/18/53. It then moved to Friday nights at 8:30 as of 1/23/53 and ran there for five weeks. So it started on 10/4/52, ended on 2/20/53 and there were 19 episodes in all. Don M. Yowp (who runs a great Hanna-Barbera blog, by the way) dug into the online archives of the Long Beach Independent and found confirmation of the 10/4/52 date plus this clipping about it…

Mr. Mullins further notes that starting in April of '53, Johnny had a show called simply Johnny Carson at 10:00 pm on KNXT which ran on Fridays through June 29. Beginning on April 20, 1954 he hosted a morning show (also listed as just Johnny Carson) at 9 AM. The infamous episode of Red Skelton's show where Johnny filled in for Red was on August 18, 1954. I believe the official story was that during rehearsal, a breakaway door didn't break away and Red was injured. I seem to recall reading somewhere that while that was what was told to the press, Skelton was having some sort of emotional problem fueled by alcohol that day. Red was a very funny man but he did tend to keep his staff in a constant state of worry as to whether he'd show up, whether he'd looked at the script, whether he would follow that script…

The online library listings for the collection at the Paley Center for Media (formerly known as the Museum of Television & Radio) show two hits for Carson's Cellar. One is the episode that was embedded here…and they give no date for it but say the series aired "1951-1953," which is obviously off by a year. There's no description given on the other listing and I'm wondering if it isn't just the same episode listed twice. Next time I'm over there, I'll try to take a peek. Does anyone know for sure if a second episode exists?

Here's an article about the Bullwinkle statue up on Sunset Boulevard…which is darn close to the most lasting relic of the Sunset Strip as some of us recall it from the sixties. I took the above photo a few years ago.

Bill Scott, as you all know, was the voice of Bullwinkle and the cartoon's head writer and producer. At the time of Bill's passing in 1985, I was collaborating with him and Frank Welker on a screenplay for a live-action Dudley Do-Right movie that the folks at MGM wanted to make. This has no relation to the one made by others in 1999 with Brendan Fraser. At the time, the statue had fallen on hard times with cracks and chipped paint…and Bill said it pained him to even lay eyes on it. Frank and I were witness to a friendly argument between Jay Ward and Bill about having it refurbished. Jay would only trust one certain artist to handle the task and since that artist had died, it was kinda unlikely they could get him.

But Bill kept after him about it and finally, Jay agreed to engage someone who was still alive. Just a few days after that engagement, Moose and Squirrel had a makeover and looked like new again. I remember how happy Bill was.

He passed away less than a month later — over the Thanksgiving weekend. He had directed a play out in Sunland…a production of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor which, he told us, Mr. Simon would have hated due to extensive, against-the-rules rewriting. I was too busy to get out there for it but on Saturday night, Frank went to the final performance…and at the curtain calls, someone (Bill's son, I think, who was in the play) announced that they'd performed it in the "show must go on" tradition since Bill had died a few days earlier. It was quite shocking to the audience and Frank was extremely rattled when he called me from his car on his way home.

I had planned to stay in that Saturday evening but when Frank called to tell me, I had a sudden urge to get out of the house. I had nowhere to go: Just that sudden, urgent need to go somewhere else. It was around 10:30 and my options were pretty limited as to where I could go. I decided on the Comedy Store, forgetting for the moment that driving there by way of Sunset would take me right past the Bullwinkle statue. Seeing it there, repainted and bathed in light, only depressed and frustrated me further.

When I got to the Comedy Store, I went backstage to see a friend of mine who was performing there, a fine comedienne named Louise Du Art. I'd decided on the way there not to start babbling to people about Bill Scott and I kept to that decision for around two minutes. When I told Louise, she was depressed. Then I ran into Garry Shandling and told him and he was depressed. Then I told Jeff Altman and a few others…and everyone I told, I depressed. None of them knew Bill personally but they sure knew (and loved) Bullwinkle.

I guess it was around 1 AM that I suddenly got what seemed at that moment like a brilliant idea. I decided to see if I could get a funeral wreath and go over and somehow get it onto the Bullwinkle statue. I figured the next day, news crews would be reporting on Bill's passing and someone would send a camera crew down to get some footage of the statue. So my question became where do you get a funeral wreath at 1 AM on a Sunday morning? There were no florists open at that hour but it occurred to me that large funeral homes have someone on duty 24 hours a day. I went into a pay phone, looked up the number of Forest Lawn and dialed. The conversation would have been difficult even if I hadn't had to cope with the noise of Sam Kinison performing in the next room.

A sombre voice answered and I asked the gentleman if he could tell me where to procure a funeral wreath at that hour. He asked, "Where is the deceased lying in state?"

I said, "This isn't for a deceased person. Well, it is but I just want to put a wreath on a statue."

The sombre one said, "I see. Can you tell me where this statue is located?"

"Sure," I said. "You know up on Sunset how's there this big statue of Bullwinkle Moose? And he has Rocky the Flying Squirrel on one hand and…"

The line went dead. He'd hung up on me. And when I thought about it, I decided that I'd have hung up on me, too.

It was about then that I decided the wreath was a silly idea and I should just forget about it. Bill would not have appreciated the gesture. On the other hand, I'm sure he would have laughed himself sick over that phone call.

Hmm…my earlier item on Jerry Lewis no longer hosting the Labor Day Telethon was based in part on that article I linked to, the one headlined, "Jerry Lewis to host his final telethon this Labor Day." But maybe that's not exactly what's happening.

A reader of this site who signs his messages "GE" points me to the actual press release and it doesn't say Jerry's hosting. In fact, it notably does not say that. It says he's retiring as host of the annual Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon and quotes him as saying…

As a labor of love, I've hosted the annual Telethon since 1966 and I'll be making my final appearance on the show this year by performing my signature song, "You'll Never Walk Alone". I'll continue to serve MDA as its National Chairman — as I've done since the early 1950's. I'll never desert MDA and my kids.

So it sounds like he's not hosting, just coming on at the end to sing his song. But this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Do they mean that if he's around and reasonably healthy during the 2012 telethon and continuing to serve as the charity's National Chairman, he won't set foot on the stage? To no longer host is one thing…but to not even show his face on the broadcast? If that's the case, I revise my informed guess as to what's going on here. I'd heard he wanted to host the whole thing and that the telethon operators didn't want that. They, I'm told, were hoping to just get a brief appearance so they could thank him and he could pass the torch.

Sounds like they may be getting their wish…but I still think there's going to be a pretty big deal made out of Jerry's exit. Which brings us to the question of who will host and whether they're going to try to establish anyone as an ongoing replacement or if it'll just be like the Oscars each year. Hey, Billy Crystal wouldn't be bad…

So you think the folks at Goldman Sachs are the scum of the Earth. You think they couldn't possibly sink any lower in your estimation…

You haven't read this yet.

Last October, it was announced that the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon was being pared to a shorter length, that Jerry apparently had not been consulted on this, and that there was some speculation as to whether he'd want to stay on…or if the telethon organizers even wanted that. Now, it's been announced that his next will be his last.

Rough translation, I'm guessing: Jerry wanted to keep doing it. In fact, now that it was going to be shorter, he wanted to do all of it and dispense with the other hosts. The telethon overlords didn't want that and instead wanted to negotiate a figurehead role for him. Negotiations ensued. The bosses saw wisdom — i.e., donations — in giving him a big, splashy last hurrah as the star and then he'll transition to his reduced role. Jerry agreed to settle for that. (This is actually a bit more than a guess…it's based on what I'm hearing…)

I'm thinking they'll get a helluva tune-in, especially for the last hour. I'm also wondering which of two routes they'll take. One would be to invite every big star they can get to come in and be a part of this event. An awful lot of them would turn out. The other would be for Jerry to remain loyal to the less-than-stellar-but-often-quite-entertaining-friends who've turned out every year to fill his stage — the Max Alexanders of the world, the Tony Orlandos, etc. Reportedly, he's considered them an integral part of the telethon all these years and has objected when the producers suggested eliminating any of them. Six hours, which is all he has this year, is not a lot of time to shine the spotlight on those performers, on all the celebs who might want in on his final year, the clips they'll want to show (memorable past moments like Dean's walk-on, the annual tribute to Ed McMahon, a new one for Charlie Callas, etc.)…and, oh yeah, they'll want to talk about Muscular Dystrophy and the fine works the MDA has done and could do in the future if the tote board goes high enough.

Plus there's the annual pitch for Jerry's Nutty Professor musical which has been about to open at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego before going to Broadway for about the last five years. Have they even talked to the Old Globe yet about this? And they have to give Jerry time to reminisce and talk about what all the past telethons have meant to him. He could probably fill the old, all-night length with that.

They'll probably try to cram it all in but once you subtract the 20 minutes per hour they take for local cutaways, it's not nearly enough. And I guess I'm curious as to what Jerry would like to see happen…

This will be of interest to those of you who attend Comic-Con International in San Diego and who scramble for hotel rooms nearby. Mayor Jerry Sanders has proposed a new hotel tax to help pay for the current expansion of the city's convention center. He's talking about 3% for hotels right near the center, 2% for those a little farther away and 1% at hotels so far away that you might even be able to get a room at one of them.

The expansion plan has a current completion date of 2015, which probably means 2017 but some of the increased space is supposed to be available well before either date. When it's done, the "gross floor area" (and some of it's pretty gross) would increase by 961,187 square feet — from 1.76 million square feet to 2.72 million square feet. Most of the added space is expected to be filled by extremely large people in Star Wars costumes.

Actually, it includes 225,000 additional square feet of exhibitor space and a new 80,000 square foot ballroom. And since there will be 100,101 square feet of new meeting rooms, I plan to host an additional 200 panels each year.

I am told the hotel tax (or something like it) looks likely. Apparently, there are still a lot of questions about how the city is going to pay for the convention center upgrade and they're also talking about surtaxes on taxis that serve the area and on restaurants in the vicinity. The current cost estimate is 24% less than the original $711 million price tag but they don't even have all of the lower bill fully funded. A few months ago, a reporter in San Diego interviewed me about the Comic-Con and told me (approximately), "The city was so worried about losing big conventions — Comic-Con, especially — that they rushed through the expansion deal without totally figuring out how they were going to pay for it." Sure looks that way. The $711 million figure, by the way, does not include the cost of the new pedestrian bridge between the convention center and the Gaslamp Quarter. That's another $40 million.

In the meantime, because parking and hotel space around the convention center are not utterly unobtainable, another group has proposed the construction of a new $800 million buck football stadium between Petco Park and the convention center. Yeah, that's just what they need down there.

Before President Obama released his longform birth certificate, I kinda figured that if and when he did that, it wouldn't make more than a smidgen of difference; that the number of Americans who tell pollsters he wasn't born here would scarcely decline. In fact, it might even increase. All the usual suspects would find some semi-convincing way to argue that whatever he put out there was an obvious forgery and the story would dominate the news for weeks and drive more of those who don't like Obama's policies (at least the way Fox News and the Republican Spin Machine represent them) into the birther camp.

Didn't work out that way. Obama released the longform and birtherism took a sizeable hit, at least if we believe the few polls that have been done. Brendan Nyhan discusses why this might be.

His reasons all seem valid but I'd like to suggest a better one. I think birthers had stopped wanting to be birthers. The movement was becoming so nutcase crazy that it was becoming embarrassing to some to be a part of it. It was also hard. When your friends asked you to explain those birth announcements in the newspapers or how come the state of Hawaii (with a Republican governor, no less) certified the short form certificate you had to insist was bogus, you didn't have an explanation. You didn't even have a credible fantasy as to how that might have been accomplished. You had to fall back on something like, "The President has great power to arrange things so he just arranged all that." And even you didn't really buy that as a response.

Plus, we'd lately had a lot of prominent Republicans cautiously distancing themselves from that mob or even suggesting that birtherism was harming the G.O.P. cause. Even John Boehner, the man some of them hope will ram through their agenda, was sending pretty clear signals that he wished they'd shut up about the President's birthplace.

So what do you do if you're an avowed birther and you want off that bus? You can't just suddenly say, "Hey, I've been thinking. I know I said that there was incontrovertible, undeniable evidence that Obama was born in Kenya but I've just decided there isn't." A lot of people in this country would rather change their sex than their minds — and birtherism attracted a particularly stubborn, angry lot.

Ergo, my theory: A lot of birthers wanted out. The release of the long form gave them not only a good opportunity to climb down but maybe their last. It gave them the chance to say, "All I ever wanted was to have this document released and now I'm satisfied," thereby spinning it as a "win" rather than as proof they were wrong. I think a lot of them grabbed that opportunity…and some of us may even owe them an apology. We didn't think any of them were smart enough to do something like that.