Here's a commercial for Kellogg's Sugar Pops. Paul Frees did the voice of the deputy, Daws Butler was Sugar Pops Pete, and I'm tired and unable to place the name of the actor who did the Marshall at the moment. Might be Bob Holt. In any case, when was the last time a breakfast cereal boasted how much sugar it contained?
The Beat
Carolyn and I went out to hear jazz this evening…the legendary Charles Lloyd has a new quartet, playing with much younger musicians. One of them — a drummer named Eric Harland — was outstanding. I once watched Buddy Rich rehearsing and showing off with the Tonight Show band and that was the last time I heard a drummer this good. Mr. Lloyd was great, too…but that wasn't a surprise. That drummer was.
Public Appeal
Okay, here's what I'm looking to buy and this is for my mother. I want one of those "pay as you go" cell phones where you put a few bucks of calling time on it and then you can use it whenever you want — this week, next month, the month after, etc. This is so she has a way of reaching me if her regular phone is out. But I also need one with large buttons. All the ones I've seen have tiny, dainty little buttons that won't do for someone with weak vision. Can anyone point me towards what I seek? Gracias.
me on the radio
Gary Shapiro's radio program From The Bookshelf is heard each and every Sunday night at 9 PM on Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz California. Recently, I chatted with him about my new book, Kirby: King of Comics, and you can hear that chat — it runs a little less than half an hour — over on this page.
Close Encounters
Our pal Kim "Howard" Johnson has been slaving away on a book I must have…a biography of Del Close, a man who was to improv comedy what Antonio Stradivari was to fiddle-making. (Come on, Evanier. You can come up with a better analogy than that.) (Not today, I can't.) Here's an article about this forthcoming volume.
Losing It
It's been a long time since I've written about my waistline. I get lots of e-mailed inquiries about it but I never seem to be in the mood to write about something like that. Today, I'm in that mood.
My girth has been fluctuating over about a ten pound variance with no logical connection to how much I eat or how much I exercise. My doctor says this is not uncommon and that I should not pay it a lot of attention. I go up, I go down…but even up, I'm more than a hundred below where I was two years ago so I'm still happy with me.
One of the things I find amazing is that I had so little trouble breaking food addictions. I have certain faves, including the Creamy Tomato Soup that's available for the next day or so at Souplantation. But I don't actually feel the need to eat anything in particular…or, some days, anything at all.
There was a time I would have bet you serious money that I couldn't kick my habit of drinking a half-dozen carbonated, non-diet beverages per day…and if I could cut back, it would be by chug-a-lugging orange juice or something else with high sugar content. Even before I had Gastric Bypass Surgery, I gave up the Pepsis and in the 18 months after G.B.S., I slowly gave up o.j., lemonade and everything else liquid but for tomato juice and plain, old-fashioned water. I occasionally flavor the H2O with True Lemon or True Orange but otherwise, it's that or the occasional Campbell's Tomato Juice and I don't miss other drinks one bit.
Then one day close to three months ago, my "sweet tooth" completely disappeared…and I can tell you where it happened. It happened in Las Vegas during this trip. On Saturday morning, I brunched at a $7.77 buffet…and yes, I could have gone to somewhere fancier. But given my reduced stomach capacity, I didn't figure to eat enough to make a better place cost-effective and assumed even at a cheapo spread, there'd be enough tasty/edible choices to satisfy my meager dining needs.
There was…and there was also a wonderful dessert. They had a soft-serve frozen custard that was quite delightful and I made a mental Post-It™ note to return before I left to have more of that custard. Monday morn, before heading for the airport, I went to the buffet, ate my fill of fish and rice…and then realized I had no craving for the custard or any of other available desserts. You know those great little one-bite eclairs they always have in Vegas buffets? Didn't want one of them, either.
So I didn't have dessert. It was free and I didn't have dessert. Apart from one recent visit to a Chinese restaurant where I ate a fortune cookie without thinking, I haven't had a cookie, piece of cake or candy, lick of ice cream, slice of pie, doughnut or anything "desserty" since. Obviously, I get a certain amount of sugar or high fructose corn syrup in some non-dessert food items but I am in no way tempted to taste something because it's sweet. I never would have thought this possible.
I sleep better. I walk better. I have occasional odd muscle aches which my doctor says are normal and will subside. I still don't recommend Gastric Bypass Surgery to everyone because I don't think my experiences are typical. But I do recommend losing weight. It has all sorts of unexpected benefits…and every so often, you can surprise yourself with how you can do what you didn't think you could do.
Today's Video Link
This is the trailer for what I think was the best Deanless movie Jerry Lewis ever made, The Bellboy. As the announcer (who I think is Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed) says, it was all shot on location at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. If I recall the history on this correctly: Jerry had finished shooting Cinderfella and Paramount had it scheduled as their summer Jerry Lewis release of 1960. Then Jerry or someone had the thought that because of that film's fairy tale nature, it would do better business as a Christmas release. Everyone at the studio agreed…but they'd promised exhibitors a summer Lewis pic. "No problem," Jerry said. "We'll make another movie in time for summer release."
The boys at Paramount said that sounded great but pointed out that Jerry was committed to play the Fountainbleu for a month and couldn't do that and make a movie in the allotted time. Again, Jerry said it was no problem: "We'll make the movie at the Fontainebleau during the day, and I'll play their showroom at night." The hotel, well aware of the publicity value, made some big financial concessions so the film could be shot very inexpensively…so that made the whole proposition sound very good to the studio.
All they needed now was a script and a director. Jerry said, "I'll handle those." He had not written and directed a film before but he'd been edging in that direction so it was a small leap. Quickly, he came up with the idea of doing a largely plotless movie with himself as a bellhop, wrote a very long script and then — at the hotel — threw out most of it in favor of freshly-improvised scenes based on what was going on there. The majority of the other actors were either members of his crew or, like Milton Berle and Joe E. Ross, performers who were playing Miami at the same time.
Some of the jokes worked and others didn't but the whole thing had a nice, friendly energy and at 71 minutes, you sure couldn't get bored. The same cannot be said for this trailer…
Interactive Al
This seems to be New York Times Day on this weblog. In connection with their profile of Al Jaffee (to which I linked earlier in another paper), they have an "interactive" gallery of some of Al's fold-in cartoons. This is the best use of Shockwave Flash I've ever seen on the 'net.
Go Read It!
Here's a good article on everyone's favorites, Bob and Ray. Thanks to Paul H. Hill for telling me about this.
If one of the photos looks familiar, it was cribbed from this here weblog. It's a screen capture I did from a game show that ran on GSN. And since they copied my picture, I'll copy one of their links. It's this one, which will take you to a website with 200 Bob & Ray radio shows you can download and enjoy.
Remembering Dave
An obit for Dave Stevens in The New York Times. I was going to write "Hey, they got his name right" but actually, I spoke to the reporter a few days ago and he struck me as smart and thorough and everything you'd want a New York Times writer to be. They do have people at that newspaper who get things right.
Correction Made
The New York Times has finally figured out Joe Shuster's first name. Maybe someday they'll figure out that their first two years' coverage of the Iraq War was equally accurate.
Recommended Reading
Daniel Gross explains John McCain's fiscal policy. It comes down basically to "The rich will pay less in taxes, I'll cut some earmarks somewhere but I'm not saying where yet, and somehow we'll balance the budget." Remember when John McCain was the Republican who at least raised token objections to this kind of thing?
Today's Video Link
Pat Paulsen was kind of the Stephen Colbert of his day. He was best known as "that comedian who keeps running for president," a bit he did with such deadpan perseverence that a lot of people probably thought he was more serious about it than he actually was.
He also did a lot of routines that came under that category of spontaneous stunts — a category later dominated for a time by a Mr. Andy Kaufman. One Paulsen effort — and you'll catch a brief glimpse of it in this video — was walking on water. Paulsen would go on TV shows and explain, with utter intensity and a face straighter than you could possibly imagine, that he could walk on water. Then, after a very long build-up (the kind Kaufman often gave his routines), Mr. Paulsen would attempt to demonstrate his skill and…well, you've never seen a human being get so wet in your life. He got wetter than wet but it never dampened his insistence that he could walk on water…and sometimes (not always), he eventually managed to do it. It was a hilarious bit even if the Mike Douglas audience didn't always know what to make of it.
Paulsen became famous, of course, for his appearances with The Smothers Brothers. He maintained such a bland, emotionless presence on camera that TV execs seemed to shy from him, presuming Americans would never love someone that cold. He did have a brief (13 weeks) series on ABC in 1969 that I remember as being quite brilliant…but when it went away, so did he to a great extent. Which was our loss because he was a very funny man, indeed.
His family (I think it's his family) has decided that Pat should be running for president again this year, and I think that's great. So what if he's dead? He'd still be better than most of them and he'll get as many electoral votes as Ralph Nader. Here's a link to the campaign website and below is a little tribute video about Pat's life and times…
$$$$$
Jack Klugman is suing NBC over his share of profits from the TV series, Quincy, M.E. The show was on from 1976 to 1983 and you have to figure that if that series didn't make truckloads of bucks, nothing could. I mean, it would be like McDonald's claiming there was never any money in selling burgers and fries. Still, at last report, NBC Universal was saying with at least a semi-straight face that Quincy was $66 million in the red so there were no profits to share with the guy who played Quincy.
Does NBC mean this? Of course not. It's just a corporate game wherein they're saying, "Hey, Klugman! If you want your money, you're going to have to fight for it. And we're going to make it so difficult and expensive that maybe you'll forget about it or at least settle for ten cents on the dollar!" They do this because it works. A lot of folks in Klugman's situation don't go to war over the money. Most do settle for a fraction…which is what Mr. Klugman will probably do, too. Companies like Universal save billions (that's billions with a "b") taking the position they take.
I mention this because it is not unrelated to why we all just went through that nasty strike. The people who told us there was no money to be made off the Internet are the same people who are telling Jack Klugman there were no profits from Quincy, M.E. They didn't expect the Writers Guild to believe that either, but they hoped we wouldn't go to war over the money…and they hoped that if we did, we'd settle for a fraction. It's a silly, often destructive game but that's how it's played.
Recommended Reading
Joe Galloway on Americans' (and especially Dick Cheney's) general indifference to the loss of life in Iraq.