Category Archives: Uncategorized

You couldn't help but feel sad for Siegfried last night on Larry King Live. You also felt that he was only giving interviews because he or his advisers felt that, for their past work not to be besmirched (and for the future of any acts that use big cats, including theirs), they had to start getting people to view what happened to Roy as a rare, flukish accident. They need to convince folks — and I'm not saying this isn't the case — that the animals aren't that dangerous, that what happened to Roy could not possibly have been prevented and is unlikely to ever happen again.

In this article, Vegas mogul Steve Wynn offers a more detailed explanation of what happened, including the notion that the tiger was distracted by the ringside presence of a lady with a large hair-do.

This is not the same thing but I am reminded of one time I did a TV show where one of the guests was a fine magician named Mark Kalin who, in the course of his performance, made a live tiger appear. Before the taping, the director went up to the pages (the staffers who seat the audience) and told them to make sure that none of the women sitting near the stage were having their periods at the moment. "The cats smell the blood," he told them. "It drives them crazy." I've heard this is — you'll excuse the expression — an old wives' tale, and I'm not sure if the director believed it or if he just thought it would be funny to stick the pages with this silly job. But pages do what they're told and a couple of them diligently went out and started interrogating female audience members about their menstrual cycles — a chore made even more awkward because the tiger was going to be a surprise so they couldn't explain why they wanted to know. I actually overheard two male pages discussing whether certain ladies were young or old enough that it wasn't necessary to ask them, and it reminded me how utterly clueless most males are about things like that.

I also remember that in the trick, throughout two dress rehearsals and two tapings, the tiger never failed to urinate about thirty seconds after it appeared. One of Kalin's assistants was positioned such that he could not avoid being rained upon. After the third or fourth time this happened, I actually heard the guy mutter out loud, "What? And give up show business?"

Here's another article about Leno cozying up to Schwarzenegger. I don't think it's as bad as this article makes it out to be. But it could get there.

Michael Kinsley is not swooning for Wesley Clark. And while I think it would be nice to have a Democratic nominee that Republican chickenhawks can't brand as anti-military, neither am I.

A minor adjustment I made in this site's design last night caused it to be unreadable in most older browsers. What happened — this will only make sense to those of you who know HTML coding — is that I neglected to close one "table" tag. The page still read fine in the current versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, etc. But it didn't appear for the users of some older versions of those browsers until a couple of them e-mailed me and caused me to find the error. I thank those alerted me and apologize to all who were inconvenienced…and I urge you all to upgrade your software. In the next few months, there'll be plenty of sites out there you won't be able to view.

Andrew Sullivan is an openly gay conservative pundit who I find to be spectacularly off-target on most topics unrelated to being an openly gay conservative. But he does know that beat and here, in perhaps the most influential conservative forum in this country, he makes a strong case that conservatives are on the wrong side of the issue of gay marriage.

Here's an interesting glitch in online banking that happened to me and that might happen to you. I use Microsoft Money, which downloads the details of my checking account and credit cards. On the first Monday of each month, my bank charges me a $12.00 service charge for my checking account and then because my balance is over their minimum, they immediately reverse it. So each month, I download from them a transaction that says, "Monthly service fee, $12.00" and then one that says, "Monthly service fee reversal, $12.00." Or at least, I did.

In June, I purchased something off eBay for $12.00 and sent a check to the seller, whom we shall call Myron. As it turns out, that check was dated the first Monday of that month. For some reason, Microsoft Money merged that transaction with that month's monthly service fee. It saw two $12.00 debits the same day and treated them as one.

Ever since then, it's been treating each monthly service fee as if it's a debit to Myron. Each month, I download "Payment to Myron, $12.00" followed immediately by "Monthly service fee reversal, $12.00." Since the balance is correct, I didn't catch it until this week. Suddenly, I noticed that this Myron guy, from whom I bought one silly item in June, had been charging my checking account $12.00 every month since then! I dug up his phone number and called him to accuse him of thievery or worse. I got his voice mail and decided not to leave a message…which was fortunate because a few minutes later, I resorted Microsoft Money to isolate just my $12.00 transactions and that's when I realized my Monthly Service Fees were missing for the same dates as the charges to Myron. After (literally) forty minutes on the phone to the bank, we figured out it wasn't Myron and it wasn't even them. It was Microsoft Money…or maybe it was me not checking its math closely enough.

Anyway, I almost accused an innocent eBay vendor, and there's a lesson to be learned here. Never attribute to larceny that which can be explained by computer error. Or something.

Several articles today (like this one) are discussing the propriety of Jay Leno introducing Arnold Schwarzenegger at his victory party and otherwise boosting the man's candidacy. For what it's worth, I don't think Jay has gone easy on Arnold in the monologues but he has certainly left himself wide open to the charge. I think Leno's wrong if he thinks that he can avoid being considered a supporter of a candidate in such a situation just by not making a formal endorsement and by saying, "He's a friend."

Here's a piece about the recent Friars Roast of Tom and Dick Smothers. [WARNING: Contains Jack Carter jokes. Approach with caution.]

My pal Paul Harris does a fine talk radio/interview show Monday through Friday on station KTRS, which is 550 on your dial if you're in or around St. Louis. You can find online audio excerpts of his best celebrity interviews at this site, along with his weblog and lots of other fun stuff. Not long ago, I chatted with him about my book on MAD Magazine, Mad Art, and he's replaying that conversation on Monday as he takes a rare day off. (My segment is scheduled to air at 12:35 PM Central Time, but I think you can also find it on Paul's site and listen to it any time you want.)

Also, on the Thursday edition of All Things Considered on N.P.R., another pal is interviewed. Joe Bevilacqua is a radio producer and performer who studied with the late, great Daws Butler and has recently co-edited this book of sketches that Daws wrote for his legendary voice acting classes. Some time during the All Things Considered hour, there'll be eight minutes with Joe discussing Daws and the book.

Which brings us to the question of how you're going to listen to these shows. Lately, I've been playing around with and generally enjoying Replay Radio, which is a piece of computer software that functions like TiVo for the recording of Internet radio feeds. If you have a good, swift 'net connection, you can set Replay Radio to record any channel that you can access at the time you want it to record. It will make an MP3 or WAV file or even burn the recording right to a CD if you like. A list of shows is built into it, as is a list of Internet addresses for channels, but you can set it for any radio station for which you can find a web address. A demo version of the software can be downloaded from their site. It will only record five minute hunks but it'll give you the idea and let you see if it's compatible with your system. Once you register, which costs thirty bucks, you can record broadcasts and webcasts of up to four hours. There's also an add-on piece of software that will you let you listen to these recordings easily on a Pocket PC. So far, it's working fine for me.

An unannounced walk-on at the end of Mr. Leno's monologue tonight on The Tonight Show. Maybe Jimmy Kimmel can get Gray Davis.

By coincidence, my friend Nat Gertler was at the same performance last night of The Producers. His reaction is over here on his weblog. While you're there, browse around the entire 'blog because Nat's a bright guy and a good writer.

One way in which the recall seems to have been good for George W. Bush is that it distracted attention from David Kay's report on the hunt for those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. For months now, one of my conservative friends has been e-mailing me that when that report was in, it would prove that Saddam had weapons and was about to use them on the U.S., no doubt about it. Well, if anything, it proves the opposite. Here's Fred Kaplan's reading of it, which among other things extracts the claim that the policy of sanctions and inspections was working just fine. If it wasn't more fun to talk about Arnold grabbing ladies' breasts, the press might have pointed this out.

Michael Kinsley on "Why Bush Angers Liberals."

Interesting, of course, to see everyone spinning the recall verdict in the most positive light for their faction. Depending on which weblog you visit today, it either represents a victory for the conservative movement in California because of how much of the vote Schwarzenegger and McClintock got between them…or a loss because of how many liberal positions Arnold had to have to get that. It could be good for Bush because it means that Arnold will presumably be governor in 2004 and may be able to help the state and raise money, or it could be bad for Bush because it could start the trend of throwing out elected officials who run up deficits. It could be good for the Democratic and Republican establishment because Independents did so poorly or it could be bad because it represents an electoral urge to toss out career politicians and bring in outsiders.

It could lead to cleaner elections because all the reports of Arnold grabbing women didn't hurt him and maybe helped, or it could lead to dirtier elections because the hatchet job on Gray Davis worked and because Arnold proved you don't have to define your positions to win. It could lead to lower taxes in California because Arnold will be a better manager or it could lead to higher because he'll feel the need to quickly wipe out deficits and the sooner he raises taxes, the easier it will be to blame them on Davis. It could lead to elected officials not only in California but across the nation becoming more responsive to the people because they fear they'll be recalled or it could lead to them catering more to the special interests that could defuse any recall attempt.

I don't know which way a lot of these things will play out and neither do you. My guess is that people who supported Arnold will like him a lot less once we get down to the specifics of what state programs will be cut and what sources of revenue will be increased. Some have suggested that former governor Pete Wilson and his crew will really be running the state with Arnold as figurehead. I sure hope that's not true. I can't think of a single rotten thing you could say about Gray Davis that wasn't equally true of Wilson. If that becomes the power structure in Sacramento, the Schwarzenegger era will probably be a lot more like the Davis era than anyone in either camp is now prepared to admit.

While many of you were watching an Austrian bodybuilder become governor, I was watching a German dictator become the toast of Broadway. An acquaintance asked why I got seats to see the Los Angeles company of The Producers on the evening of Election Day. I had to remind him that when I bought these tickets, there was no election scheduled this month. Besides, even if I'd known, it was a lot more fun to watch Jason Alexander and Martin Short prance about than to view any conceivable kind of election coverage. Then again, you could say that about almost any show.

Since I was fortunate enough to see Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick do The Producers in New York (report here), it raises the obvious question: How do Jason and Martin compare? Friends of mine who've seen the L.A. company have mostly reported that they liked one but not the other and have been pretty evenly split on which one they liked. I guess we got a good night: I liked both of them. A lot. This production seemed broader than the Broadway version, which may be because the Pantages Theater is larger than the St. James in New York, or it may be because the cast has been doing the show longer and actors often find little schtick with which to get laughs that weren't there before.

It may even be because though Alexander chews no less scenery as Max Bialystock than Lane, Short is a lot more physical and cartoony than Broderick. His version of Leo Bloom writhes on the floor and does "takes" they probably saw in the last row of the balcony…in the theater across the street and down a block. At times, he misses the humanity in the character but he's so funny, you almost don't mind. I wish he'd lose or at least not overdo that strained "inhale" voice he does…but boy, talk about taking a part you didn't originate and making it work for you. Which is also what Alexander does. I'm not sure I liked him more than Nathan Lane but I'm pretty sure I didn't like him any less.

The rest of the cast was pretty good. Lee Roy Reams is playing Roger DeBris and I always thought he was terrific, ever since I saw him in the first Broadway show I actually saw on Broadway — 42nd Street. Bill Nolte is playing Franz Liebkind. (If you're tracking the players in the various companies of The Producers: Gary Beach, who originated the role of DeBris, was out here but he has now returned to the New York company. Fred Applegate was playing Liebkind out here but he went back to New York to take over as Bialystock since Lewis J. Stadlen had to leave due to a hip injury. In fact, Applegate debuted and Beach returned to Broadway last night.) Our Ulla is Angie Schworer who, in keeping with the tone of this production, made her character even more of a caricature than what I saw back east.

It's interesting how the Pantages up in Hollywood has turned into a first-rate (albeit, too large) legit theater. I first knew it as a movie palace. I remember my parents taking me there to see The Great Race in 1965. I'm not sure when it switched to housing plays but I'm pretty sure that's where I saw — not in this order — La Cage Aux Folles with Gene Barry, The Music Man with Dick Van Dyke, Barnum with Jim Dale, My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison, Camelot with Richard Harris, Fiddler on the Roof with Herschel Bernardi, and Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan and again with Cathy Rigby. I'm sure there were others. Owing to a bad case of food poisoning, I saw half of I Do, I Do there (i.e., I saw one I Do) but I don't remember who was in it; all I remember is the men's room. For several of those shows, the acoustics in the place were not wonderful but they are now. It's really become a pleasant place to see a musical. Especially if you can secure seats in the same zip code as the stage.