Interesting how much these different journalists agreed upon, how many some of them missed that others caught…and how little truth matters to low-income people who think President Trump is going to make their lives better.
The other day, I came across this clip on YouTube. It's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 movie Swing Time, introducing the song, "Pick Yourself Up." I don't recall ever seeing the entire movie but this scene triggered a powerful flashback memory for me. I'm about 99% certain that I was remembering seeing this scene when I was four or five years old. I remember the old black-and-white TV set we had in the living room at our house, I remember this scene on it, I remember singing the song over and over again for a few days after…
…and that's all I remember. But it's one of my earliest memories…
While we're at it, I came across this fragment of a Sammy Davis/Jerry Lewis special that I never saw before but in the first few minutes, they do their version of the song. I liked Fred and Ginger better…
Paul Boross is a speaker, comedian, business psychologist and former pop star whose Humourology podcast has much to teach you about Funny — what it is, how to create it, how it can improve your life. As you might guess from the spelling, it's British-based but sometimes, he has on funny people from this country…and next Tuesday, his guest is our pal Shelly Goldstein, who knows a thing or two thousand about Funny. Tune in, learn and laugh.
The Fact-Checkers have their work cut out for them on Trump's speech to Congress this evening. There's plenty there to write about, starting with what the crew at CNN found to be erroneous. There will be more of these along shortly.
Last Sunday, I turned 73 — a number that amazes me. If my knees didn't keep reminding me otherwise, I'd swear I was in my twenties. Oh — and another thing that reminds me I'm not that age anymore is how often people I think of as my contemporaries talk about their physical problems or die. I've written obits and/or attended memorial services for too many of them. I've even done that for folks significantly younger than I am.
I attended my first Comic Book Conventions in 1970. The cons of that decade were swarming with people I wanted to meet and maybe interview because they'd created the comic books I read when my age was in single digits or early teens. In the eighties and for a few decades beyond, I would host Golden Age Panels of writers and artists who'd made comic books in the nineteen-forties. Now, I go to comic book cons where there's absolutely no one who did comics in the forties or fifties and maybe/sometimes, one or two who did them in the sixties. This amazes me.
I am occasionally the only one on the premises — or one of but two or three — with credits dating back to when comic books cost fifteen cents. This too amazes me.
I met Jack Kirby in 1969 when he was 52 years old and I thought of him as an old-timer…and why not? He'd been in comic books almost since they began and he'd fought in World War II. I am now twenty-one years older than he was the day I met him. Also amazing to me.
Not counting my recent broken/almost healed ankle — which could have happened to anyone of any age — I am in relatively good health. I have things that are wrong with me but they're all the kinds of things that are quite fixable by good doctors and I have good doctors. It seems to have helped that I have never indulged in alcohol, recreational drugs or the smoking of anything.
A friend tells me that I should add never marrying to that list but I've been in enough relationships that somewhat resembled marriage that I don't agree that's a factor. I am in occasional touch with my third-ever girl friend. She is now a grandmother…another one of those chilling reminders of time gone by. I may live to see her become a great-grandmother.
I do think it helps that I do not operate under the assumption that my life has a firm expiration date. As I've written here in the past, I've known a lot of people my age or older who kept talking endlessly about their impending demises. They hit a number like the Big Eight-O and decided that death was but moments away. Some of them, I think, made it arrive sooner as opposed to later with that attitude.
If a wizened physician — someone who studied medicine at a real medical school and not YouTube — told me I had X months to live, I might (might!) assume he or she knew what they were talking about. But I have seen enough self-diagnoses proven wrong that I regard them as about as certain as a World Series prediction. A little later today or tomorrow, I'll post one story — of many I've witnessed — where Tom said that Harry was in horrible shape and was not long for this world…and then Harry outlived Tom. And often, it's been by a decade or more.
Steve Benen, over at the Maddow Blog, deals with the constant claim by Trump and his reps that crowds that protest his actions must always be "paid protestors." In a country where every single major poll shows Trump's disapproval rating exceeds his approval rating, you don't need to pay money to find people who object to so much of what he is doing.
A lot of our elected officials or their appointees are arguing about proposed budget cuts and what they'd do to Medicaid and/or Medicare. Each side is accusing the other of lying so we need to go to the fact-checkers to even begin to get some sense of what's true and what ain't. The folks over at FactCheck.org take a stab at it.
Well, the Original Pantry restaurant has closed and no one seems to know if or when it will open or if anyone wants to buy the place. I would guess that if someone did and could make it more like it was in the seventies, it would be back to having lines out the door like it did back then. Then again, the emphasis then was on big, thick hunks of broiled beef and maybe that ain't as commercial as it used to be.
We don't have the ratings yet for last night's Oscar Telecast and I can't think of any way in which they might matter much. I watched a smidgen more of it and I thought the opening infomercial for Wicked was pretty good. I also caught a particular cringe moment: They brought out representatives of the various agencies that fought the big L.A. fires for a well-deserved ovation, then turned it into a bit by having a couple of them read not-very-good jokes about the disaster. Remind me not to watch even that much next year.
John Oliver devoted most of his show to problems involving Tipping. I'm sure most everything he said about it was valid but a big change I would make is to let folks who are expected to tip have a better understanding of where the money goes. Does that great person who served you expertly keep all of what you leave? Do they share it with other service workers on the premises? Do they share it with Management? I sometimes feel I have overtipped or undertipped because I didn't know what became of a gratuity I paid…or maybe should have paid in cash.
Lastly for now: I'm prepping for WonderCon later this month. I'll be hosting six panels and appearing on one other. One that may interest some folks will involve Mark Waid and myself answering questions about the world of comic books, the premise being that if neither of us knows the answer, it's likely that no one does. Another will involve me (who wrote the most-read book about Jack Kirby) sitting down with my pal Danny Fingeroth (who wrote the most-read book about Stan Lee) and trying to clear up some of the misconceptions about both men. And there'll be a Cartoon Voices panel and some others. Full details to follow. Tickets for WonderCon are still available.
Lists are already popping up on the 'net of folks who were "snubbed" by being omitted from the "In Memoriam" reel at tonight's Oscars…and of course, those who are upset are only upset about performers not being remembered in the broadcast. I decline to get involved in such squabbles.
I will though call your attention to this page on the Academy website where they've listed — by my quick count — 232 people who died in whatever they define as the year they're covering. I think they post this to slightly appease those who can be slightly appeased by certain omissions but also to make this point: If they put all these people on-screen for just ten seconds each, that's like a 38-39 minute segment. So someone who's gone has got to go.
I always like to look at this page because I invariably see some folks I knew but didn't know had passed. And I see friends like Mike Schlesinger and Susan Buckner who would have been pleased to know they at least made this page. Mike will be remembered a lot on April 6 when we hold what's looking to be a wonderful Celebration of His Life.
I usually don't quote a lot from other people on this blog but I decided to make an exception. My pal Vince Waldron, author of the highly-recommended-by-me The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, wrote and posted this piece on Facebook. It's about a great…well, I was going to call the man "a great unsung comedy writer" but he has been sung…just not enough. It's all about Aaron Ruben, a gent I was pleased to know casually and to admire from afar.
Here is what Vince wrote about Aaron and I'll follow it up tomorrow here with my own Aaron Ruben story…
Today, we pay tribute to Aaron Ruben, the late writer, producer and all-around good guy who was born on this date, March 1, in 1914. Although Aaron would earn the undying gratitude of classic TV fans the world over for his stint as head writer, story editor and producer of the first five seasons of The Andy Griffith Show, fans of this page may be surprised to learn that the producer also played a significant role in boosting the career of a young Dick Van Dyke.
That's Aaron pictured with Dick in the photo below, which was taken in late 1957, at the filming of the Phil Silvers sitcom Sgt. Bilko, a series that Aaron often directed (although he didn't direct either of the two episodes of Bilko in which Dick guest starred.) Aaron obviously saw a great deal of promise in the lanky young actor.
Dick Van Dyke and Aaron Ruben
In 1958, Aaron Ruben served as sketch comedy director of The Girls Against the Boys, the Broadway revue that first brought Dick to the attention of New York's theatre world. Of even more significance to fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show, that revue also put the talented young performer on the radar of Aaron Ruben's good friend, Sheldon Leonard, who would remember the comic mastery that Dick displayed in that show three years later, when Sheldon was looking for an actor to play a writer named Robert Petrie in a new sitcom he was developing with Carl Reiner.
But in 1957 — four years before Dick made his television breakthrough with Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard on The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1961 — Aaron wrote and produced a variety show pilot for Dick that was to be called — wait for it! — The Dick Van Dyke Show. Although that first attempt at a Dick Van Dyke Show never made it to prime time, Aaron Ruben's faith in Dick's gifts was not easily shaken.
A couple of years later, he wrote The Trouble With Richard, a sitcom pilot for Dick in which the actor played a luckless bank teller. Like Dick's earlier pilot, The Trouble With Richard failed to find a buyer, and it wound up airing just once, as a standalone entry on The Comedy Spot, a summer anthology series that basically served as a dumping ground for unsold TV sitcom pilots.
Of course, the failure of Dick's second attempt at TV stardom turned out to be a lucky break, since it left his calendar open when Sheldon Leonard finally came calling a few months later to offer Dick the starring role in a new series that would also be titled The Dick Van Dyke Show. This second Dick Van Dyke Show did get picked up, and actually worked out quite well for the actor.
Don Knotts, Aaron Ruben, Andy Griffith
Aaron Ruben didn't fare too badly, either. Not long after The Trouble with Richard fizzled, Sheldon Leonard once more came to the rescue when he tapped Aaron to serve as head writer and producer of a new series Sheldon was assembling to showcase a stage, film and recording star named Andy Griffith. And so, as fate would have it, Dick Van Dyke and Aaron Ruben spent the next five years working on neighboring stages on the Desilu Cahuenga lot, where Dick filmed The Dick Van Dyke Show a few hundred feet from the soundstage where Aaron was bringing Mayberry to life each week on The Andy Griffith Show.
At the end of a brilliant five-year run writing and producing The Andy Griffith Show, Aaron proved that his sense of timing was as sharp as ever when he left that series at about the same time Don Knotts moved on. Aaron spent the next few years producing Gomer Pyle, USMC, an Andy Griffith Show spin-off that he masterminded as a vehicle for Jim Nabors, a popular supporting player on Andy's show.
Aaron Ruben would be reunited with Dick Van Dyke for one final venture in 1969, when the writer teamed with Carl Reiner to craft the script for an ambitious feature film about an aging silent movie comedian that Carl would direct. Although The Comic failed to catch fire at the box office, the film is warmly remembered by all involved, not least because it afforded Dick Van Dyke one of his strongest big screen roles.
After The Comic, Aaron returned to television, where he distinguished himself as the producer of the first two and half seasons of "Sanford and Son, followed by a stint as writer and producer of the Don Rickles service comedy, CPO Sharkey. He would later serve as a creative consultant on Matlock, which reunited the scribe with Andy Griffith, who played the show's title character.
By the early ‘90s, Aaron began to taper off his television commitments and ease away from a career that spanned more than five decades. But he was by no means ready to retire. In fact, Aaron would undoubtedly have agreed that he did some of his most important work after he stopped collecting weekly paychecks for writing TV shows.
In his final decades, the enormously successful Beverly Hills comedy writer and TV producer devoted much of his time toiling in the farthest reaches of Los Angeles' family services system, where his long history of volunteer work with troubled kids eventually earned him a position as a court-appointed special advocate for abused and abandoned children in Los Angeles County's Juvenile Court.
But despite the seriousness of his work on behalf of the city's least powerful citizens, Aaron maintained a healthy comic perspective on his efforts. "I have this fantasy," he told Daily Variety in 2003, "that once a year, St. Peter appears before God and they go over the list of people that they're ready to take and my name comes up. God says, 'Is he still doing that work with the kids? Ah, let him stick around a little longer.'"
Aaron Ruben passed away on January 30, 2010, just a few weeks shy of his 96th birthday. The television legend is fondly remembered by fans the world over, who treasure the writer for giving voice to the sheriff of a small town where nothing bad ever seemed to happen. But Aaron will be equally remembered by the countless young people who were able to navigate places far more challenging than Mayberry, thanks to the efforts of a gifted writer who volunteered to speak a few well-chosen words on their behalf.
Thanks to Vince Waldron for permission to quote the above here. And like I said, I'll share with you tomorrow, the story of my own encounters with the quiet-but-very-impressive Aaron Ruben.
Steve Benen further debunks the claims of our vice-president that Volodymyr Zelensky was not expressing thanks for all the U.S. has done for his country. I have a hunch that on tomorrow night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart will show a montage of Zelensky expressing gratitude…that is if John Oliver doesn't do it tonight.
By the way: If you didn't see the cold opening on Saturday Night Live last night, it addressed this matter and they did a good job. Here's a link to it…with Mike Myers playing Elon.
