Another one of them Craig Ferguson openings. More than a few of you have written in to note that Mr. Ferguson is working with the ingenuity (and pert near the budget) of the late Soupy Sales. This is so.
And if anyone from the Late Late Show happens upon this blog, I have a suggestion for a future musical opening. Check out a copy of an old rock 'n' roll tune by Brook Benton called "Hit Record." I can already see you guys working your magic with that one.
My fave folk singing group, The Limeliters, on The Ed Sullivan Show…
When I was in Vegas this past weekend, I was amazed how bad the traffic was. They've removed pedestrian crossings on The Strip in the most crowded areas. If you cross, you have to use these M.C. Escher-designed escalators or walkways that link some hotels to others via bridges. Even with that, it was bumper to bumper at the intersection of the Trop, the MGM, the Excalibur and New York, New York…and not much better at the juncture of Bally's, Bill's, the Bellagio and Caesars Palace. You'd think it couldn't get any worse.
Apparently, someone took that as a challenge and asked themselves, "How can we make traffic on The Strip even more impossible? We need something that will slow down drivers and distract them." The answer, obviously, is to put strippers in glass trucks and drive them up and down Las Vegas Boulevard at night. Think I'm making this up? Check out the video clip on this page.
I didn't see one of these trucks even though I walked The Strip from about Midnight 'til 2:45 AM. What I did see — and it's relevant to the question of whether these trucks should be allowed — was an awful lot of parents who were toting around very young kids. Even just before I called it a night, I saw children under the age of twelve being led around or if very young, pushed in strollers. None of them particularly looked like they were enjoying the experience. Then again, I wouldn't be happy if I had parents like that.
Shelly Goldstein, who I haven't mentioned on this blog for almost two days now, has written a little something you all oughta hear. You can sing along if you like…
The talented Shelly Goldstein (not to be confused with the many untalented Shelly Goldsteins out there) turned me on to this nugget of Broadway gold: Nine minutes of rehearsal footage from the original 1975 production of Chicago, starring Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Jerry Orbach and Barney Martin, directed by Bob Fosse. Also in there is a stunning dancer named Charlene Ryan who is now wed to the guy who draws Groo the Wanderer. The video ain't great and the audio ain't grand but it's amazing that this even exists. Certain things were changed before the show opened and wowed them in New York.
One of these days, the currently-ubiquitous concert-style staging of this show will fade from favor and view, and we'll see a revival that promises to faithfully recreate the original Fosse production. Not that what they're doing now is bad in any way but I'd sure like to see it, at least once, the way Bob did it. Here's a little taste…
Yep, it's another one of those commercials I saw incessantly as a child, complete with a jingle that's been running through my head ever since…
So for a while now, I've been writing, voice-directing and producing this new cartoon series called The Garfield Show. The show debuted some time ago in various foreign countries and fared so well that we're already in production on its second season.
This week, it debuted in America on Cartoon Network. This is a well-kept secret. My TiVo's schedule has no mention of it. The Yahoo TV listings don't mention it. If you search the schedule on the Cartoon Network site, you can find it but that's about it. In most areas, it runs Monday through Friday at 10:30 AM and at 3 PM (the same episode repeats).
This is not a real complaint. I'm sure they'll get it straightened out soon and in the meantime, we have a dandy excuse if the ratings aren't dazzling. But friends are asking me what's up with it and that's about all I know. Here's a clip from an early episode. Frank Welker supplies the voice of the pussycat and Gregg Berger does the voice of Squeak the Mouse. Tune in and try an entire episode…if you can find it.
Here's a clip of Lou Goldstein, who made a helluva career off the simplest of kids' games — Simon Says. I believe he honed his skill working resorts in the Catskills and later took the act all over the world, entertaining at conventions and sporting events and anywhere a crowd turned out. There have been other guys who've done this routine but Lou seems to have made himself into the Tiger Woods of Simon Says, and I hear he's still at it…
And here we have the full (not the truncated) theme song from The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. They recently did a new visual for it…shots of Mr. Ferguson roaming around my neighborhood. The little gas station where you see him playing drums is a tableau over at the Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax, right next to CBS.
Him again…
Here's a twelve minute look at the new production of Bye Bye Birdie that's playing in New York. The show didn't get the best reviews but so far, it seems to be selling a respectable percentage of its seats. This video doesn't make me rush to see it…but then, I've never been a huge fan of the show. I think it has five or six wonderful songs, a great premise and a silly, uninteresting book. I know a lot of folks don't like to see popular musicals "revised" but this is one that could really use it.
To get you in the proper mood for tonight…
A number of my friends say they were disgusted by this new DirecTV commercial…the one that takes a scene from Tommy Boy and turns it into a pitch for the satellite company. David Spade has been criticized for whoring himself out and exploiting his dead pal — and I really don't think he deserves that. It's not like Chris Farley had some solemn dignity that is being diminished. If they did this with Laurence Olivier, okay, maybe. But Farley was a guy who would do anything — a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g — to get attention. Do we really think he would have been outraged at the idea of being kept "alive" this way and having his best movie promoted as some sort of semi-classic?
No one would think anything was wrong if they just did this commercial by running a clip of Farley and then cutting to Spade telling everyone to watch DirecTV because they occasionally run Tommy Boy. I don't see why this is all that different except that it's cleverer this way…
Remember how I said that the power had been going on and off in my neighborhood yesterday? Well, I live a few blocks from where Craig Ferguson tapes his show and it seems he got hit with the same blackouts…
This is the trailer for The Guide for the Married Man, a 1967 movie that turns up often on cable. Back in an earlier posting here, I had this to say about its DVD release…
I'm kind of amazed that they're releasing A Guide for the Married Man since ever since I first got a satellite dish, there have been few moments when it wasn't playing on some station. For a time there, I thought DirecTV had added the All-A Guide for the Married Man-Channel to my lineup, somewhere between the channel that's all M*A*S*H reruns and the one that seems to alternate between showing Hello, Dolly and the equally-entertaining Ron Popeil infomercial for the steak knives. Guide is an odd film. Everyone in it's great, especially Walter Matthau and Robert Morse. There are cameos (briefer than the advertising would have you believe) from Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar and others in that category of performer that is becoming sadly extinct. There are great looking women. There's a bouncy theme song by The Turtles. The film even has a scene where Joey Bishop is very funny, and how often does that happen?
So what's wrong with it? Well, it's one of those sixties' comedies built on the premise that cheating on one's mate is a fun, acceptable and even (in this case) noble thing for one to do. Even if you buy that philosophy, that aspect of the film seems so shallow and sitcom-silly that it's hard to enjoy. If you can get past that, you might. (Two other interesting things about the film: It was directed by Gene Kelly, and you can hear his voice pop up occasionally on a TV set or otherwise off-camera. And he originally wanted to have Matthau and Morse play each other's parts. Matthau kept declining the project until one day when he was telling Billy Wilder about this film he'd been turning down, and Wilder said, "Hey, that would work if you guys switched parts." Matthau decided he was right and said he'd do the picture if they swapped, and the studio agreed.)
Those who live in Los Angeles may get an extra jolly in that the movie was shot all over 1967 Los Angeles, but especially around Century City. Art Carney plays a construction worker…and the structure his crew is putting up soon became that big office building on the southwest corner of Avenue of the Stars and Santa Monica Boulevards. The scenes in the supermarket were filmed in what is now the Gelson's in what is now the Westfield Century City Mall, and there are scenes around the mall itself as it then looked. There are even moments in a tiny amusement park called Ponyland which was then located at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega. It was a little rat-trap with cotton candy that seemed to exist only for divorced fathers to have a place to take their kids on the weekend when they had custody. Around 1980, it and some surrounding oil wells were torn down, and the Beverly Center was built on that land. Anyway, if you buy this film and you're bored by what the actors are saying and doing, keep an eye on the backgrounds.
Anyway, here's the trailer. You can see a few seconds of Matthau and Morse in the amusement park I mentioned — the one located on the ground where the Beverly Center is now situated…