And since I'm posting a Christmas video every night leading up to Christmas, I think it's only fair to post a Hanukkah video every night of Hanukkah…so prepare yourself for eight different renditions of the most popular Hanukkah song — that Public Domain Classic, Tom Lehrer's "I'm Spending Hanukkah in Santa Monica." We start with Mr. Lehrer's own recording of it…
And I'll also throw in my new favorite Hanukkah song which is not public domain. In fact, I don't know if they even got permission to parody the hit song on which it's based. This is the Jewish a cappella group known as The Maccabeats…
Interested in a latke recipe? I'll give you a choice. Here is Alton Brown's, which unlike all others I've ever seen doesn't use flour or matzo meal but instead calls for instant mashed potatoes. What would an Alton Brown recipe be without at least one ingredient or kitchen tool that no other human being ever thought of using before?
My mother's latkes — which of course were the best in the world — were made using a slight variation on Jenny Grossinger's recipe. Ms. Grossinger was to Jewish cooking what Antonius Stradivarius was to making violins. Here is that recipe and remember that the most important thing is to make sure you get as much water as possible out before you put them into the frying pan. Mr. Stradivarius did the same thing with his fiddles.
This is the most popular thing I've ever posted on this weblog. In fact, it's so popular that proprietors of other sites have thought nothing of just copying the whole thing and posting it on their pages, often with no mention of me and with the implication that they are the "I" in this tale. Please don't do that — to me or anyone. By all means, post a link to it but don't just appropriate it and especially don't let people think it's your work. This is the season for giving, not taking.
Yes, it's true…and I was very happy to learn from two of Mel Tormé's kids that their father had happily told them of the incident. Hearing that was my present…
I want to tell you a story…
The scene is Farmers Market — the famed tourist mecca of Los Angeles. It's located but yards from the facility they call, "CBS Television City in Hollywood"…which, of course, is not in Hollywood but at least is very close.
Farmers Market is a quaint collection of bungalow stores, produce stalls and little stands where one can buy darn near anything edible one wishes to devour. You buy your pizza slice or sandwich or Chinese food or whatever at one of umpteen counters, then carry it on a tray to an open-air table for consumption.
During the Summer or on weekends, the place is full of families and tourists and Japanese tour groups. But this was a winter weekday, not long before Christmas, and the crowd was mostly older folks, dawdling over coffee and danish. For most of them, it's a good place to get a donut or a taco, to sit and read the paper.
For me, it's a good place to get out of the house and grab something to eat. I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.
Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.
I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had.
Instead, I continued over to the BBQ place, got myself a chicken sandwich and settled down at a table to consume it. I was about halfway through when four Christmas carolers strolled by, singing "Let It Snow," a cappella.
They were young adults with strong, fine voices and they were all clad in splendid Victorian garb. The Market had hired them (I assume) to stroll about and sing for the diners — a little touch of the holidays.
"Let It Snow" concluded not far from me to polite applause from all within earshot. I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.
"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"
The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."
I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"
Again, a "No."
I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…'"
"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"
"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle…and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…" directly to him.
A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé…he wrote that…"
As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no…the little fat guy wants to sing."
But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing…and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first…then properly impressed.
On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways…Merry Christmas to you…" Big smiles all around.
And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight…which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.
I have witnessed a number of thrilling "show business" moments — those incidents, far and few between, where all the little hairs on your epidermis snap to attention and tingle with joy. Usually, these occur on a screen or stage. I hadn't expected to experience one next to a falafel stand — but I did.
Tormé thanked the harmonizers for the serenade and one of the women said, "You really wrote that?"
He nodded. "A wonderful songwriter named Bob Wells and I wrote that…and, get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down."
Then the gent I'd briefed said, "You know, you're not a bad singer." He actually said that to Mel Tormé.
Mel chuckled. He realized that these four young folks hadn't the velvet-foggiest notion who he was, above and beyond the fact that he'd worked on that classic carol. "Well," he said. "I've actually made a few records in my day…"
"Really?" the other man asked. "How many?"
Tormé smiled and said, "Ninety."
I probably own about half of them on vinyl and/or CD. For some reason, they sound better on vinyl. (My favorite was the album he made with Buddy Rich. Go ahead. Find me a better parlay of singer and drummer. I'll wait.)
Today, as I'm reading obits, I'm reminded of that moment. And I'm impressed to remember that Mel Tormé was also an accomplished author and actor. Mostly though, I'm recalling that pre-Christmas afternoon.
I love people who do something so well that you can't conceive of it being done better. Doesn't even have to be something important: Singing, dancing, plate-spinning, mooning your neighbor's cat, whatever. There is a certain beauty to doing almost anything to perfection.
No recording exists of that chorus that Mel Tormé sang for the other diners at Farmers Market but if you never believe another word I write, trust me on this. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
Back in this post, I remembered an episode of Virginia Graham's old talk show in early 1971 on which Carmine Infantino appeared. This was back when Carmine was the top guy at DC Comics and he was on to discuss the new books DC was putting out. I wrote, "I may be remembering another show Carmine did but my recollection is that Telly Savalas was a guest on the same episode and that he started lambasting Infantino for selling comic books full of violence to children."
Well! Bill Mullins, a faithful reader of this site who has dug up additional info on many things I've written about, dug into the archives of the Los Angeles Times and he found a listing for that program. It was on at 8:00 in the evening — at least it was in Los Angeles — and Telly Savalas was indeed a guest as were Joanna Barnes and Ron Eliran. In case you don't recognize the name, Ron Eliran is a great singer of Israeli folk songs. The date is April 14, 1971.
It's doubtful a tape of that episode will ever turn up and based on my memory, that's not a great loss. Mr. Infantino was a brilliantly talented artist but he was not a great spokesperson for his product, especially compared to Stan Lee. Carmine came across not as a friendly, creative person but like a guy in a gangster movie. A few years later, called upon to defend his company's treatment of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, he gave off precisely the wrong image. Matter of fact, he sounded like Telly Savalas in one of the many movies in which Savalas played the bad guy.
Thank you for visiting this page whenever you have visited this page. And that's about all I have to say about it except that, as always, donations are appreciated. Keeping this blog up and running is costing more and more…like everything else in this world. And besides, I blew all my savings on Donald Trump NFTs.
I came across this recently on the Internet and I really liked it. It's Josh Turner and his guitar and band accompanying two fine vocalists called The Ladybugs…
More than a dozen of you have written me lately to tell me that the great writer-performer of funny songs, Tom Lehrer, has announced that he's putting his works into the public domain. Anyone is free to do anything with the songs he wrote. They don't need permission. They don't need to pay him. And on his website, it's possible to download audio files of just about anything he ever recorded and in many cases, the sheet music as well.
Thank you all for writing to tell me about this but it's not news. I covered it back here more than two years ago. But I figured if so many people are writing to tell me about it, maybe I oughta mention it again.
I recently solved two tiny problems in my kitchen. You probably never had either of these problems or if you did, you figured out how to solve them in a lot less time than it took me. But just in case anyone reading this can benefit from my silly little discovery, here goes…
I love baked potatoes, especially when they taste like baked potatoes. It is sometimes a struggle in restaurants to stop service people from drowning mine in sour cream, salsa, black beans, chili, buffalo sauce and all sorts of other toppings including eleven different kinds of cheese. I just want butter and a little salt on mine…or sometimes, in lieu of the butter, ketchup but not a lot of it.
Well, even I could figure out the solution to that: Bake your own potatoes at home, which I tried doing. But that gave me the two tiny problems I've solved…
First tiny problem: I don't want to turn on the oven for one potato, especially given how long it takes to bake one that way. So what's the alternative? The microwave, of course…
…but for some reason, neither my current microwave oven nor the one I had before it could do a decent job of baking a potato. The spuds came out flat and overcooked on the bottom even when I dutifully rotated them in mid-bake. Then I tried a few commercial products, like one where you insert the tater into a little cloth bag before microwaving. That time, the potato was overdone in places, underdone in others and the bag was charred like it had caught fire for part of the cooking time.
Solution to this tiny problem: I tried one of these and while it is overpriced considering how cheap one must be to make, it did work. In fact, it worked as advertised, even though it's advertised on television. I'm not suggesting it will work for you but it worked for me and I also use it to heat up corn-on-the-cob.
Second tiny problem: I don't like potato skins, especially Russet potato skins, and my stomach doesn't like them. But it's annoying to scoop the filling out of a baked potato, especially when that temperature of that potato is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). Also, you wind up not getting a large percentage of the inside of the baked potato.
Solution to this tiny problem: I bought a potato ricer. Again, I'm not suggesting this one's better than any other model because this was the only one I've tried…but it works pretty well for my purposes.
So I scrub the potato, put it in the Yummy Can Potatoes Microwave Potato Cooker and put the whole thing in my microwave and run it on full power for six minutes. Then I let it sit for 5-10 more to finish baking and to cool down enough for handling. (One problem with the Yummy Can: It doesn't accommodate the really large Russets.)
When the potato is touchable but still warm, I cut it in half and then put one half, cut side down, into the potato ricer and squeeze the bejeesus out of it. It extrudes all the delicious white interior but leaves the skin inside. You lose very little of the interior. Then I remove the skin from the chamber and process the other half of the potato. You will need a knife to scrape off the extruded innards.
The result? A dish of lovely, skinless baked potato…and you'll be surprised how much more you get out of one that way. I add salt and butter, mix it all up and it's exactly what I want. The ricer is handy for other things like making mashed potatoes or juicing lemons. What a neat tool to have in a kitchen.
Yes, I know that getting cooking advice from me is a lot like getting medical advice from a raccoon but occasionally, I stumble across something that works. And during The Pandemic, it feels like a lot of people have gotten their medical advice from raccoons.
This morning's COVID test was negative. If the next one a few days from now is likewise, I shall emerge once again from the fortress and declare myself fit to mingle with others, albeit masked. Just doing what my doctor recommends.
You get the feeling that Trump's current presidential campaign is about (a) seeing how much money he can wring out of his supporters, (b) being able to argue that all prosecutions of him and his family are politically-motivated and therefore bogus, and (c) nothing else? He never really cared about most of the things his supporters care about but now he's not even pretending.
The first issue of the new four-issue Groo mini-series comes out next Wednesday. It's called Gods Against Groo and it's of a piece with two earlier Groo mini-serieses (I've decided that's the plural of "series") we've done in the past. As always, it's drawn by Sergio Aragonés, he and I collaborated on the story and Stan Sakai lettered it. As is fairly new, Carrie Strachan did the coloring and while we were not happy to lose the services of Tom Luth — aka The Hardest-Working Person in Comics — we were fortunate to find Carrie.
I have about fifty yet-to-be-answered questions in my "ASK me" folder — questions you folks have sent in for me to address on this blog. More than forty of them are about comic books so if you have no interest in comics and want to see me write about TV or movies or stand-up comedy or the campaign to criminalize cole slaw, you probably should send in an appropriate question to this address. Thank you.
Over the next ten days, I'm going to link to my current ten favorite Christmas videos, one a day. Here's the first one…
Some years ago, back before he was on CBS, Stephen Colbert did a tune and video called "Another Christmas Song," which was written by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger. I thought it was clever and funny and just great but his video of it doesn't seem to be online anywhere, at least in a linkable form. You can listen to the song though on this video…
Henry Kissinger recently authored this article with his idea about how to solve The War in Ukraine. Fred Kaplan says that Kissinger's plan makes no sense, cannot possibly happen and there's no reason to try it. Okay…but I never understood why there was ever any reason to try any plan that Henry Kissinger ever came up with.
A poll by USA Today and Suffolk University says that of folks who self-identify as Republican, only 31% want to see Trump run for reelection. That's not good, especially when you consider that that's a pre-indictment number. The spectacle of him selling NFTs (and insisting he was a greater Chief Exec than Washington or Lincoln) probably knocked it down another point or two.
A question I would honestly like to see someone put to Rudy Giuiani is: "After 9/11, you were one of the most admired and respected men in this country. Now, your approval rating is hovering around 30%, you're involved in a mess of lawsuits and you're fighting to keep your license to practice law. Do you think maybe you did something wrong?"
I mentioned in this recent post that back when I worked for Jack Kirby in the early seventies and he had to draw Superman, I sometimes drew Superman's emblem for him. A relic of that time has just resurfaced.
Carmine Infantino was running DC Comics. I don't think he had the actual title of "Publisher" yet but he was the guy in charge. He was the person who persuaded Jack to leave Marvel and join DC…although given the way Marvel was treating Jack then, that didn't take a whole lot of persuading. Mostly, it took a certain amount of "bait-and-switch," promising Jack one deal and then, when he didn't think he had any viable alternatives, forcing a different deal on him. But Jack was relatively happy there…for a little while.
In early 1971 (I believe it was), Infantino visited Los Angeles on business and to make an appearance on The Virginia Graham Show, a syndicated talk show hosted by Ms. Graham. She hosted a lot of talk shows, mostly of the daytime variety, in her long career.
I may be remembering another show Carmine did but my recollection is that Telly Savalas was a guest on the same episode and that he started lambasting Infantino for selling comic books full of violence to children. This would be the same Telly Savalas who had appeared in The Dirty Dozen, The Assassination Bureau, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Kelly's Heroes and a number of other movies in which lots of people were shot and killed. There at least was some program around then on which Infantino and Savalas debated violence in the media and Carmine did not do well in that discussion.
Prior to his appearance with Ms. Graham, Carmine asked Jack to whip up a drawing which he could take on the show and present to Virginia. Jack did one and Carmine didn't like it so Jack did another. I helped a little with both but I do not recall which one made it to air. I do recall that there was also a drawing by Joe Orlando which Infantino took on the program with him.
Here are the two drawings. The one at left has been around for a while but the one on the right just turned up in an online art auction…
For the drawing on the left, I did the lettering and I'm not sure but I think I inked the buildings in the background and pasted-in the stat of Jack's signature. For the drawing on the right, I again did the lettering — though Jack drew the balloons around that lettering — and I penciled in Superman's emblem and inked the sound effects that he roughed-in. Jack, of course, penciled in everything, wrote the copy, indicated where I should letter it and how large, and inked whatever I didn't ink.
It should be noted that at the time this was done, DC was horrified by the way Jack drew Superman and wouldn't allow it in their comics without considerable redrawing. But they were fine with a Kirby Superman drawing being shown on national television. If you click on the above image, you can see an enlarged version of the one on the right. It's now being offered in that auction with a minimum bid of $6000, which by coincidence is $6000 more than Jack ever received for drawing it.
This may seem like a fairly innocuous question but answering it's going to get me in trouble with some of this blog's most loyal readers. Mark Ingraham wrote me to ask…
If you haven't written about it on your blog yet, I was wondering what your favorite game shows of all time were? (Mine tended to be Bob Barker's The Price Is Right, The Joker's Wild, and even Tic Tac Dough…though anything with Bill Cullen was extremely watchable!)
I've always been a big fan of some (not all) game shows. The ones I've liked over the years have generally had two or more of the following qualities…
First, they have to feel like the outcome is in no way controlled. That lets out shows that have an "edited" feeling either because they're seriously edited or they somehow always turn out the way I'd want them to turn out if I were the producer. I lost my interest in Deal or No Deal and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? because of that. I'm not saying they were rigged — I'm sure they weren't — but they sure felt edited and you could sometimes feel things had been built around the producers' hope for a certain dramatic ending.
Secondly, I like to see a show have respect for its contestants and to root for them, not laugh at them. In the past, you had a lot of shows that involved silly stunts or silly pranks or silly costumes like Beat the Clock or Truth or Consequences or Let's Make a Deal. Then you also had Treasure Hunt or a number of other Chuck Barris shows. The surest way to get on The Newlywed Game was for a couple to go into their audition and blurt out embarrassing things about each other and then start bickering. These days, the whole point of some shows for a younger audience is to "slime" people.
Thirdly, I like shows where the contestants have to have some smarts or cleverness. If I can answer almost all the questions, the show's too easy. Or if you can win by making lucky guesses, the show's of little interest to me. Obviously, I've always liked Jeopardy! and I really liked Press Your Luck because there was some genuine strategy involved. Press Your Luck was built on an interesting dilemma which we all face from time to time: When things are going your way, how long do you press your luck? When I was playing a lot of Blackjack, I spent a lot of time thinking about that.
Fourthly, if there are questions, they should be real questions of knowledge. "Who was the nineteeth President of the United States?" is a question of knowledge. This is not: "According to Spice Merchants Monthly, what is the most popular spice to put on pork chops?" They're not asking you what the best-selling spice is. They're asking you what one source (which you've probably never read) judged the most "popular" (by what measure?) A real question doesn't need an "According to…"
And lastly, I have to like the host or at least not dislike the host. There have been a few who were somewhat more important than the games they ran: Groucho on You Bet Your Life, Johnny Carson on Who Do You Trust?, Jan Murray on the original Treasure Hunt, maybe Richard Dawson on Family Feud…and I do like Steve Harvey on the current Feud.
Bill Cullen and Garry Moore
I admired the hell out of Garry Moore on the old I've Got a Secret because that was a very unpredictable show and a lot of things went wrong on live TV and no matter what it was, he handled it. He was also real good at playing Straight Man for the panel and contestants. Steve Allen took over that show for its last few years and while there was much to admire in Mr. Allen, I think he had a way of turning everything he did into The Steve Allen Show.
Bill Cullen, I thought, could make even the worst idea for a game show work…and often did. (Anyone remember Blankety Blanks? Or Eye Guess?) Reportedly, at various times there were plans for Cullen to host a Tonight Show-type program but no such series ever materialized. I bet he would have been great at it.
I don't really watch The Price is Right but sometimes, I have it on because I admire the way they keep things moving and all the expertise that's involved in putting it together. If that show had never existed and you walked into a network today and pitched it, describing what they are able to accomplish taping two a day, you'd be told it was utterly impossible to mount a show that gives away so many prizes and that it would take three days to tape one hour of what you're describing.
But they manage to do it, it's never dull and — here comes what some will consider blasphemy — I like Drew Carey as the host more than I liked Bob Barker's last twenty-or-so years. Carey does not seem to be under the delusion that the audience is there to see him and that winning a car or $25,000 is of lesser importance.
I also liked The $XX,XXX Pyramid (whatever the dollar amount was at the time) when Dick Clark hosted it, Press Your Luck when Peter Tomarken hosted it and Jeopardy! when just about anyone hosted it. I also like old episodes of I've Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth and What's My Line? less as game shows than as time capsules for seeing celebrities of the past. I'll probably think of some more later and do a follow-up to this post.
