Number two hundred and fifty in a series…

Jeff Wallenberg writes…

I was intrigued by what you said about never going to audition meetings and being too eager to get the job. Is this because you think that makes you more appealing to producers or because you just don't care that much about any of them?

A little of each…and it's also that I'm not the kind of person who likes to get too obsessed with some outcome, especially something over which I have little control. I have friends, for example, who get so emotional about sports that if, again for example, the Lakers don't win the championship, it will be a major life tragedy on a par with a death in the family. Me, I'm not big on sports. I don't see where my team winning does anything for me…so I don't want to pretend it matters a whole heap, thereby setting myself up for a letdown if and when it doesn't.

It does sometimes make you seem less desirable if you're too eager. Dick Cavett used to say that in show business, the most desirable quality you can have is unavailability. If you seem too unavailable, that can work against you of course…but when you seem real hungry, it usually makes the person with hiring capability think, "Hmm…this guy acts like no one else wants to use him, including people who've hired him in the past. I wonder why that is…"

I'm also aware from several experiences that you usually don't know how some projects will turn out. You're up for Job A and it looks like it might be the most exciting, lucrative, career-fulfilling thing that's ever been dangled before you. But it might not turn out to be that…and working on it might prevent you from getting Job B which turns out to be all or at least more of those things. One day back in the eighties, I was asked to come in and talk about a new series that was seeking a writer. It didn't seem like a great project but you never know…

So I went in, heard about the show and decided it might be a good one but I dunno…maybe not. I really didn't know how I felt and as it turned out, I never had to decide. The next day, they called with a "Thank you for coming in but we've hired someone else." I recall my only reaction to that news being to think, "Good. Now I don't have to decide if I want to do it." A few weeks later, I was offered Garfield, which has turned out to be the best experience of my writing life, at least in the animation division. If I'd gotten that other show, I might not have been offered Garfield or been able to take it. This kind of thing has happened to me a number of times. As a result, when I don't get a job I tend to think, "Okay…let's see what's going to come along soon that will make me happy that one fell through." More often than not, there's something.

So that's why I don't hang my heart on every potential opportunity. Sometimes, it isn't bad news that they decided to go with someone else. You just plain never know.

Louisiana Congressman Jeff Landry claims the Obama administration is granting special waivers to Muslims as they go through TSA screenings at the airport. Except they're not.

The Tony Awards are this Sunday. I don't get a sense that even the few folks who are usually interested in who wins are that interested in who wins this time. There's certainly no The Book of Mormon or The Producers kind of runaway hit, nor are most of the acting nominees quite as well-known as usual.

The only interesting this is that most years, the winners of about two-thirds of the categories are pretty obvious in advance. Last year's win for The Book of Mormon as Best Musical was so expected that presenter Chris Rock joked about it before opening the envelope. This year, I don't think anyone's too sure. About all we can predict is that Audra McDonald will win for the new Porgy & Bess, Neil Patrick Harris will do a classy hosting job…and there'll be low ratings, no matter what N.P.H. does.

Here's the promo reel — all the little spots CBS is airing between now and Sunday. The first one promises "…live performances from all your favorite shows." But of course, they aren't our favorite shows. 99%+ of America has never seen them and only a slightly smaller percentage has even heard of most of them…

Matt Taibbi has been asking the question, "Why isn't Wall Street in prison?" He more or less answers that question by explaining how the prosecutors have decided it's too much hassle to go after the Big Guys so they justify their paychecks by going after the Little Guys. This is how too much of our legal system works: Just go after the crooks who can't afford a lot of lawyers and lobbyists and campaign donations.

Amazing things invented by Donald Duck…or more accurately, by Carl Barks and Don Rosa.

Number two hundred and forty-nine in a series…

Last week here, I mentioned the Broadway show, Beatlemania, in which four gentlemen did an altogether passable job of impersonating John, Paul, George and Ringo. Amazingly in out-of-town tryouts, the cast consisted of actors playing John, Paul, George and Pete Best, and it wasn't until they replaced Pete with Ringo that the show really took off.

That's not true.

What is true is that there was a movie made of Beatlemania which came out in 1981 to poor reviews and scant attention. As several folks have informed me, the whole thing — all 95 minutes of it — is up on YouTube. I am not suggesting you watch it; just telling you it's there.

Fred Kaplan discusses "America's Sputnik Moment" and why there may never be another. Well, for one thing, we may never again pass anything that involves funding education…

Bob Elisberg sent me this. It's the opening of the Drama Desk Awards for 2007 with your host, Kristin Chenoweth. Someone — I dunno who — wrote her a very funny opening number…

Ronald Brownstein parses some polls and suggests the following: That white, working-class Americans have a general unfavorable view towards "Obamacare" because the G.O.P. Machine (including Fox News and Rush) has convinced them — wrongly — that it won't do a thing for them, personally.

I hope that's not so. I mean, my Business Manager did a pretty thorough look at what it would do for his clients' insurance costs and needs, and it will help me a little, personally…plus there are the advantages in helping the economy and reducing clogs in emergency rooms and such. But even if it was of no benefit to me, I'd be all for it if it just helped those around me who don't have insurance or can't afford what they have. I'd hate to think that's a growing sentiment in this country; that if it helps save others' lives but not yours, it shouldn't be done.

I don't always link to articles with which I agree. Here's David Frum arguing for the ban on large-size sugary sodas in New York. It seems like a token gesture that won't cause one person to lose a pound to me, and one that creates a bad precedent. But read Frum and see if he sways you.

Number two hundred and forty-eight in a series…

Back in the seventies, very little was known about the men and occasional women who'd written and drawn "funny animal" comic books for Western Publishing. This was the Dell line of comics and later the Gold Key line. (If you don't know the difference, you need to read this.) Because I was working for Western, I learned some names and some art styles, and historian-types were always writing me to ask who'd drawn this Daisy Duck story or who was the guy who drew Clarabelle Cow with such huge feet. Whenever possible, I would try to help out.

There was a gent who lived in…I want to say Sweden but it may have been some other country. I'm not certain now of his name or location so let's just say he was Olaf from Sweden. He would send me huge packages of Xeroxes from Disney comics and letters demanding (not asking, demanding) that I immediately identify all the artists and ship the packages back to him…at my expense, I might add. I think I'd answered two or three questions for a friend of his and he had taken that as some indication that I would answer hundreds for him.

One of his packages would arrive on Monday and I'd look at it and think, "Jeez, it will take weeks to tell this guy what he wants to know," and I'd set it aside to deal with at some later date. At a later date — three or four days later — I would get another package from him with 300 more Xeroxes and a letter scolding me because he had not yet received the previous package with every i.d. he had requested. The letter would say something like…

The geniuses who created the Disney Comics labored in shameful anonymity like plantation workers flogged at the whim of their masters. Insensitive, uncaring people such as yourself, Mr. Evanier, perpetuate this injustice by withholding their identities and compounding the insult to these great artists.

And that was one of Olaf's nicer ones.

Well, you can imagine how eager I was to sit down and spend the time figuring out for him who'd inked Scamp #9. I didn't even know what he wanted to do with all this information — keep it to himself for all I knew. So I let his packages pile up and then one day when the latest cover letter had compared me to animal droppings — and not favorably, I might add — I tossed them in the trash and wrote Olaf a brief letter that suggested he have Captain Hook give him a reacharound. I don't think I used quite those words but that was the general sentiment.

Olaf wrote me back saying I was urinating on downtrodden, neglected artists and would someday be judged by my maker for my vile treachery. Well, I'd already known the second part since I created the Hallowed Ranks of Marveldom. After I got this note, I figured that was the last I'd hear from Olaf. Not so.

Two or three months later, I was at a San Diego Comic Con, which is what we used to call what we now call the Comic-Con International. A local Disney fan came up to me there and informed me that Olaf was somewhere on the premises, having flown over from Sweden. If indeed he was from Sweden, I forget. Anyway, imagining a nasty and insulting guy, I decided to avoid anyone who looked too blonde and tan…and I managed to do so for most of the con.

The last day, I was talking with a group of people and one was a slim young gent who was so shy and soft-spoken, I had to ask him to repeat everything he said. We were talking maybe ten minutes about Disney Comics when he turned and something that had been blocking his name badge was suddenly not blocking it. That's when I saw his name. It was Olaf: Exactly the opposite of what I'd imagined.

And within moments, I realized what the problem was. He wasn't an outraged, rude Swedish guy. He was a Swedish guy who didn't write English very well.

It was not unlike the Monty Python sketch — which I hadn't seen at the time — in which the Hungarian guy thinks he's saying the English equivalent of "Can you direct me to the station?" is actually saying "Please fondle my bum." Or the tale of the man who'd just learned a little English who went to an art show and said "These paintings are worthless" when what he wanted to say was "These paintings are priceless." Olaf knew the English words but not well enough to apply them in the right way.

After that when I read fanzines, I often suspected that even a lot of folks reared in English simply did not write well enough to accurately convey their feelings. They were coming across in print angrier and harsher than they actually were.

This often seems to be the case on the Internet. I've gotten e-mails from folks who seemed inexplicably furious with me and I've then phoned them or met them at a con and found out that no, they weren't angry at all. There's a skill to conveying an accurate tone in what you write and these people were simply lacking in that skill.

I think it's getting better. When this mode of communication was in its primitive state of computer bulletin boards, you had a lot of folks participating who were unused to writing. When calling by phone replaced communicating by mail, a lot of folks let their writing skills atrophy or never developed many in the first place. Now, e-mail is a near-necessity and people are learning or relearning how to express themselves at a keyboard. Which doesn't mean they all do it well.

I got one more letter from Olaf after the convention thanking me for our conversation and telling me I was a blight on humanity. I'm guessing he meant to say something very flattering but he just couldn't find the words.

The "word" on Richard Dawson, who has died at the age of 79, is that he set out to be Peter Sellers or Jack Lemmon and was frustrated that he wound up being Bill Cullen. He first came to this country as a comic actor — a pretty good one as evidenced by a guest-starring spot on The Dick Van Dyke Show, regular stints on Hogan's Heroes and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and other gigs, some of them even dramatic ones. Along the way, he started picking up extra bucks doing game shows as a panelist and occasional host. He was so good on the panel of Match Game that it makers, Goodson-Todman, gave him the job of hosting a new show they invented called Family Feud. This was reportedly after their first choice, Geoff Edwards, passed on it to his presumed regret. The show was a monster hit and before long, all else Dawson had done was forgotten and he was a Game Show Host. Even his one big job in a movie — The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger — cast him as a Game Show Host.

I'm sure he appreciated the money but it's easy to believe, as rumor had it, that he felt he was using about 25% of what he had to offer. At one point, he got some bad press because TV Guide wanted to do a cover with the top quizzzmasters (as Lou Grant would say) all posing together and he refused to participate. It came across like he thought he was above Bob Barker and Alex Trebek and the others and too good to be grouped in with them.

I had one brief (very brief) encounter with Mr. Dawson around 1983. I was working on a show that was taping at ABC's old studio at Prospect and Talmadge. Family Feud was taping one episode after another in rapid succession across the hall and we shared a common corridor.

It was apparently Dawson's custom to do a formal "goodbye" with each family when their time on the show was over. By the rules of conduct, he was not allowed to have much contact with contestants before the game was played but after, he'd pose for photos, sign autographs and talk to them like a human being, not a Game Show Host. There was a family that had lost big and some of its members were taking it hard, not so much because of the money they hadn't won but because they thought they'd just plain looked stupid. Taping was to commence on the following episode without them and the Stage Manager was diplomatically hustling Dawson, who had changed into a different suit, to get out into position to be introduced so they could start.

Dawson instead was standing in the hallway with the departing family, taking a surprising interest in seeing that they left there feeling good about their appearance and themselves. The Stage Manager kept saying "Richard, they're ready for you" and Richard would say "They can wait" and resume telling the family members that it was just a game, that all games have losers and there's no disgrace in losing on something as inconsequential as Family Feud. I was running back and forth past them putting out some fire on the program I was doing but I caught snatches of what he was saying and it seemed like compassionate, pragmatic advice. It also sounded like it was helpful in its goal, which was to get those people to view their brief moments on Family Feud not as a low point in their lives and not even as a high point but as an event of little consequence.

A young woman who was in tears began hugging him like he'd just saved her child's life. Then she suddenly realized she had moistened the exquisite suit he was wearing and she practically shrieked in horror at what she'd done. He took her in his arms, allowed her to cry some more on his jacket and said in a calming voice, "Don't worry about it. Do you have any idea how many of these suits I have here?"

All this time, I was navigating around them in the corridor and as he hugged this young woman and I walked past, he said to me, "Pretend you didn't see this." I said, "I'll tell people it was Gene Rayburn." He said, "Thank you." Then he added, "And Gene will appreciate it, too."

Finally, the family was calmed and they left. The Stage Manager told Dawson, "We're twenty behind," meaning twenty minutes.  That's a lot to be behind when you're taping many shows per day. Dawson said, "Well, we're going to be farther behind because I have to go change my suit." But before he did, he made a point of coming over to me and apologizing for the traffic jam in the hallway. He didn't know who I was or what I was doing in the other studio but he said, "I hope we didn't cause you any problems." I muttered something about how if he promised not to kiss me, we'd call it even and he so promised and hurried off to change his outfit.

I later heard stories of Richard Dawson not being the nicest person to the crew, to other performers and especially to fans who recognized him in public. I have no idea if they were true or not. I've heard such stories about stars and known for sure they weren't true…and also heard gossip that was, if anything, understated. But he sure went way beyond the call of duty with that family that afternoon and he didn't have to come over and apologize to me, either. I'm going to choose to believe he was always like that and I hope you'll join me.