For years I've been a member of the Magic Castle…a place so cool, I'll even put on a tie to go there.  I put on a tie last Thursday evening, taking friends to see one of the best acts that plays there or anywhere — The Pendragons, who are just wrapping a two-week stint.  Jonathan and Charlotte are impressive not just because they levitate, disappear, reappear, etc., but because the essence of their act is showmanship and skill, as opposed to cleverly-made props — though they have some of them, a couple of which are their own, patented inventions.  Still, the hardware is less important than what a master magician does with it…or can do without it.  There are tricks in Siegfried and Roy's show that you or I could do without much practice.  It's really the box or the tech crew that creates the magic.

But we could rehearse for years and not be able to do most of what the Pendragons do — especially their traditional closer, which is their unique version of a classic trick, "Metamophosis."  That's the one where (in this case) Jonathan is stuffed in a bag and locked in a trunk…then Charlotte hops up onto the trunk, pulls up a sheet of plastic and — ZAP! — she and her hubby change places so fast, you'd swear you're watching a TV show and someone did an edit.  Only it really happened right before your eyes.

I have seen other, experienced magicians sneak into the back of a Pendragons' performance just to see that one because it's truly amazing.  (In fact, it's so amazing that many in the audience don't even notice a little "extra" that the Pendragons provide:  Charlotte changes outfits in the process, going from one revealing outfit to another that couldn't possibly have been worn under it.  The trick doesn't need that to be stunning but they do it, anyway.  That's one of the reasons they're so good.)

Jonathan and Charlotte play all over the country.  If they're performing near you, run (do not walk) and get a seat as close to the front as you can.  You can also catch them on most TV magic specials and they're terrific on those, too…but it ain't the same.  You've gotta be there.

The management of this website directs your attention to Michael Kinsley's excellent article — "Listening to Our Inner Ashcroft" — over on Slate.  Click right here to read it, please.

• The Second Death of Religious Politics by Cal Thomas, Tribune Media Services
• Enron's Existential Problems by Jeremy Rice, The Spleen
• Let's Roll by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
• Enron is a Cancer on the Presidency by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
• Media Blame Game Requires a Mirror by Joe Conason, New York Observer

The above links are to articles that the operator of this website believes contribute to the national debate. He does not necessarily agree with all or any of what they say…and you won't, either.

When I got my satellite dish, I got something like a hundred different channels, all of them — that first week — running Hello, Dolly and/or Guide for the Married Man.  While I can always find something on I want to watch, I am amazed at how limited the selection is; how so many channels run the same shows.  I wish someone would start The Old Sitcom Network and run some old situation comedies that are not I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, Leave It to Beaver, M*A*S*H, Taxi or The Jeffersons.  Where the hell is Sgt. Bilko?  Why is no one running He and She?  Car 54, Where Are You?  Or any of two dozen other great shows we could all mention?  For a time, the Game Show Network disappointed me, rerunning The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and a few other awful ones,
ad nauseam.

They still do that but lately, they've made up for it by offering great delights via their Late Night Black-and-White series.  Each night between 1 AM and 3 AM — 4 and 6 in the East — they run three episodes of vintage game shows.  (Putting them in 40-minute time slots mean that they get run relatively uncut, instead of being trimmed to allow more commercials.)  After a brief period wherein they recycled all the episodes they'd run recently in a similar Sunday night slot, they're now running shows that probably haven't been seen anywhere since they originally aired in the fifties and early sixties.

The episodes of Beat the Clock, hosted by Bud Collyer, are as dreadful as I recalled…but the original What's My Line? is enormous fun, especially when it reflects TV history — like guest panelist Johnny Carson being wished well on his new job hosting The Tonight Show, or Julie Andrews popping over from playing in My Fair Lady to be Mystery Guest.  My father always hated the show because, to him, it had a palpable air of snobbery and the arrogance of the New York literati.  I see very little of that.  Mostly, I see people having fun and the occasional wonderful outbreak of utter spontaneity.

Even better are rebroadcasts of old episodes of I've Got A Secret.  Garry Moore took game show hosting to a high art form, and it's amazing how witty Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan managed to be.  There are moments on all these shows — and especially on a forgotten show that GSN occasionally airs called The Name's The Same — where it's obvious that some briefing of the panelists has obviously occurred.  It's not that they were given the right answers but that they were given the wrong questions.  That is, the producers obviously told certain panelists to ask certain questions that would get huge laughs…like Arlene Francis, quizzing a man she didn't know sold mattresses, "Could Bennett Cerf and I use your product together?"  But both Cullen and Morgan got some amazing quips off, seemingly without benefit of such preparation.  There are also installments of I've Got A Secret that show obvious traces of the humor of Allan "Hello, Muddah" Sherman, who was then its producer.

Yeah, they're on late.  But that's why God invented TiVo, right?

I haven't seen it yet but several friends have previewed and praised Conspiracy Zone With Kevin Nealon — a new series which debuts this Sunday on The National Network.  (The National Network used to be The Nashville Network and, like you, I didn't know about the change until long after it occurred.)  I've never met Kevin but, ever since seeing him at the Improv in his pre-SNL days, I've always thought he was funny and bright.  And, sure enough, he became one of the Saturday Night Live cast members with the longest tenure.

A pal of mine who wrote on the show while he was there used to describe him as "our Maury Wills," meaning that he rarely hit homers but you could always rely on the guy to get a single, steal second and somehow score a run.

After hearing that, I watched the SNL reruns on Comedy Central with a different attitude and, yes, that was an apt comparison.  Mr. Nealon rarely bowled you over with his comedy stardom but he was terrific in everything he did and made a lot of splashier performers look good.  No wonder they kept him around so long.

His new enterprise is basically Politically Incorrect but about things like U.F.O. sightings, folks who claim Elvis lives, E.S.P. and the like.  I'm told there will usually be one passionate believer, one outright skeptic, and then a couple of comedians plus Kevin, working the topic for laughs but also for truth.  Sounds like good reason for me — for the first time since I got my satellite dish — to figure out what channel TNN is on.  Perhaps you'll want to find out if you get that network and, if so, where it's located on your dial.

Happy year, happy year.  And wouldn't it be neat if we could wake up New Year's Morn and things really were different in undeniable ways?  You know: Like, the sky is yellow or toilet water flows in the opposite direction?  Then we wouldn't just have to tell ourselves it's a new time with new possibilities.  It really would be a different world.  Not that I think there's anything wrong with just declaring a Fresh Start and trying to make things better…

I was going to make a couple of predictions here but lately, I haven't seen anyone in any venue make a prediction that was worth the time it took to read it so I figured, why add to the clutter?

Just in case I don't get back here tomorrow, I'd like to wish all my visitors a happy '02.  Hell, I'll even go for a happy year for those who don't click onto this site.  I happen to think that economy I just mentioned is — and for a long time, has been — much worse than the traditional indicators would seem to indicate.  This is anecdotal, I know, but I certainly feel like folks are more uneasy and depressed than what is measured by the Dow Jones or various "misery indices."  In fact, I think a lot of the emotion surrounding the big news items of the last few years — O.J., 9/11, the Florida recount, Mr. Condit, various Clinton scandals and pseudo-scandals, etc. — flows from a general, excessive uneasiness that people have about their lives and futures.  At the moment, a lot of folks seem to think that all will be right with the world in every way if only Osama could be properly tortured and killed and maybe tortured some more after that.  This is not to suggest he probably doesn't deserve all that, but it ain't healthy for us to invest so much of ourselves in the elimination of one particular demon.  There will be plenty after he's toast.

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions.  I think that if you really and truly want to stop smoking or drinking or eating Crisco, you can quit on August 9 or March 22.  But there's also nothing wrong with everyone picking 1/1/02 as the date they began trying to keep our problems in enough perspective to eliminate them.  Cheers!

Just realized that, when I posted the piece below about the new DVD of The Princess Bride, I should have posted one of these little links where you can go over to Amazon and buy a copy, with this site getting a teensy cut.  Past experience suggests that enough of you will do this for me to make a whopping ten bucks and — the economy being what it's been lately — that's not to be sneered upon.  Anyway, it's a terrific DVD and a terrific bargain and if you click here, you can get your very own copy of the thing. Or just click there, then buy something else.  I don't really care what you buy just as long as I get the commission.

I've been a little busy with deadlines lately and what time I've been able to spend on this site has gone to tech stuff, fixing HTML errors and such.  In gratitude though for the tips you folks are sending in (thank you, thank you), I'm going to try updating things more often.

In the meantime, if you feel like surfing, here are some more websites for funny men…

• www.howiemandel.com – Website of funnyman Howie Mandel
• www.charliecallas.com – Website of funnyman Charlie Callas
• www.bobhope.com – Website of funnyman Bob Hope
• colin.mochrie.com – Website of funnyman Colin Mochrie
• www.waynebrady.com – Website of funnyman Wayne Brady
• www.richardjeni.com – Website of funnyman Richard Jeni
• www.kevinmeaney.com – Website of funnyman Kevin Meaney
• www.lewisblack.net – Website of funnyman Lewis Black

In the last week, I have thrice watched the new "Special Edition" DVD of the 1987 movie, The Princess Bride — once, as one would normally watch, and once each listening to the audio commentaries of director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman.  These extra, narrative tracks do not convey a lot of extra insight.  Reiner says, of about 90% of what transpires, "Here's one of my favorite scenes," and almost all the performances are "one of the best performances in the film."  This is not to say we expect the director to say, "Boy, this part was rotten" or "Boy, did this actor stink up my film."  It's simple pride and etiquette at work and, anyway, I don't think there are any poor scenes or performances in this, one of my favorite movies of the period.

Goldman's narration mostly seems to consist of talking of how much he hates to be on the set and hates most of what he's written.  I happen to like most of what he's written but I really like The Princess Bride — in book form, even more than the film.  If you've yet to experience both, I recommend them…though, for reasons I cannot quite articulate, I think I preferred the book when it was one of those joyous, undiscovered treasures that no one had heard of until I told them.  I also liked it better in the original hardback where its dual narratives were printed in different colors — one in red, one in black — and where it felt more like a real book.  In umpteen paperback editions since, they put one narrative in standard Times Roman or whatever and the other in italics.  My first copy — a well-thumbed first edition, given to me long ago by a friend and still occasionally browsed — really felt like one of the old children's novel that Goldman managed so well to ape.  The paperbacks, being paperbacks, do not.

The audio tracks of the director and writer are in general agreement about darn near everything and, between the two of them and several "Making of…" featurettes included on the DVD, we get to hear several anecdotes two and three times.  Reiner and Goldman are in greatest accord when they speak of how the studio, though it tried hard, never really knew how to market this film, and how it never became a true "hit" until its home video release.  The uncertainty is easy to understand as it is equal parts heroic and silly, especially with its hero — played to perfection by Cary Elwes — flopping around like a corpse throughout most of the crucial, climactic scenes.  Some aspects of the script and art direction bend over backwards to avoid anachronism while others embrace it.  The moment when Mandy Patinkin finally faces Christopher Guest to avenge a death is still one of the most satisfying, cheer-the-moment scenes in any movie, even though its emotion seems oddly out of kilter with, for example, Billy Crystal's Borscht Belt performance as Miracle Max.  (If forced to point up a flaw, I would select him — Mr. Crystal — as the one element that pulled me completely out of the picture.  In their commentaries or other interviews, both Reiner and Goldman spoke of wanting to cast unknowns in the leads because stars might have been too distracting.  I don't think anything's as distracting as sitting there throughout a pivotal scene thinking, "That's Billy Crystal and Carol Kane under all that make-up."  But maybe that's just me…)

And speaking of what I was just speaking of: Here's something that's kinda odd.  Both Reiner and Goldman talk of Billy Crystal as having beefed up his role as Max with ad-libs like the following…

MIRACLE MAX

Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT, a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They're so perky, I love that.

Funny stuff…but here's the thing.  I just copied that dialogue from the 1995 volume, William Goldman: Four Screenplays from Applause Books.  It and all the dialogue that was added by the actors or improvised on the set have been put down in the published screenplay.

In his intro to the book, Goldman writes of the difficulty of deciding which draft of a screenplay to put into a collection of this sort and says that while other scripts therein contain scenes that were cut or changed, "The Princess Bride is pretty close to the finished film."  This is apparently because someone — probably not Goldman, himself — typed all the new dialogue into the script, perhaps after filming was complete, and Goldman chose to print one of those drafts.  I wish he hadn't.  We buy or rent or go see the movie to experience the collaborative work.  When I read a William Goldman screenplay, I'd prefer to just read the writings of William Goldman.

And speaking of Stan Lee, is there no end to his achievements?  According to this article in The New York Times, Stan is "the creator of heroes like Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and Batman."  This is about as accurate as that paper's coverage of Wen Ho Lee.  Do they do this with everyone or just with guys named "Lee?"  And what the hell am I doing up at 4:30, anyway?  Good night.

It's only 7:00 so I still have time to wish a happy day o' birth to the man who once referred to me in his Bullpen Bulletins as "a young, zingy, with-it guy."  This was in 1970 and I figure Stan Lee got one out of three right.  As the "young" part has gone away, I've tried to compensate by becoming zingier but to no avail.  How, you may be asking, does one go about become zingier?  Easy: Try to take after Stan, who — at age however-old-he-may-be — remains charming and witty and much-admired.

And though some recent business reversals no doubt made "Smilin' Stan" scowl for a while there, no one blames him and his Legend status remains unblemished.  As it should be.  I've had the honor of knowing him since '70 and working with him on a few occasions…and he is truly as super as any character he ever wrote.  And almost as powerful.

Over on his fine, must-visit website, Cartoon Research, my pal Jerry Beck has some comments about the state of the animation business.  On the whole, I agree with him but I have one area of polite disagreement that I thought might be worth mentioning.  First, for those of you too lazy to click over there, here are some excerpts from Jerry's essay…

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1986, the animation industry was pretty dead.  In Hollywood, animation work at DIC, Hanna-Barbera, Marvel, and Filmation was seasonal. Most of my artist friends worked for six months, then waited, unemployed, for six months until more work could be had…the only TV outlet for new animation was CBS, NBC and ABC on Saturday morning.

In 1986 we had three networks who programmed 4 hours of kid-vid (mainly animation) – Today we have three conglomerates: Disney/ABC – Cartoon Network/ Kids WB -Viacom /Nickelodeon /CBS.  Each one of these operates at least two 24 hour-a-day kids cable networks entirely reliant on kids programming, in addition to weekend broadcast program blocks.

Now then: I concur with his thesis that we now have better, more varied animation being done.  I'm not sure I agree that life is any better for the journeyman animation artist, and I base this in large part on talking to a lot of them at recent holiday gatherings.  During the network days, a small number of buyers controlled the market and, yes, much of it was seasonal.  But it was also rather predictable: Each year, you knew that between around January and August, X number of hours of new animation would be produced in L.A. to feed ABC, CBS and NBC, and artists could plan their lives accordingly.  The talent pool was rather constant in size because the available work was rather constant.

The current situation seems to me much less predictable, as witness the on-again, off-again nature of production at studios like Nick and WB TV Animation where they seem to have no particular pattern to the production of new programming.  One day, they will decide that new shows aren't a good investment; that reruns are vastly more cost-efficient.  That's when we see, as we've seen often lately, mass layoffs that annihilate what had been a thriving studio.  Six months or a year later, someone will decide that they need a new show for competitive or merchandising reasons and, suddenly, they'll be starting all over, trying to reconstruct some sort of studio operation.  It's an enormously inefficient system and one that also nukes any feeling that a writer or artist may have that he or she has a future with some company.  (I am all for creative folks not submerging their identities and becoming too trusting of their current employers, but it's also tough to thrive in an environment where everyone is expecting layoffs at any moment.)

As I said, I base this on a lot of conversations at Christmas parties.  The folks who fall into the category of "the last to be laid off" all seem to be functioning with an attitude of, "If it doesn't happen today, it'll happen tomorrow."  No one seems too confident that their studio will still be investing in new product once the current project, whatever it is, is completed.  I find this uncertainty to be less healthy than what artists had to endure back in 1986.

For years, one of the ways the animation studios could get by without paying residuals and rerun fees to most of the creative personnel was due to the continuity of work.  It was like, "No, we're not going to pay you when your work is rerun but you'll have steady income from the next show we do and the one after."  Now that this pattern is broken…now that so much of the industry is geared towards creating a "library" that can be rerun repeatedly in lieu of new production…it is less excusable that writers and artists are usually not compensated for reruns.  Such payments are, I believe, inevitable…but there may be, at least in some quarters, a long and bloody battle to make that the norm.  When that happens — or when studios plan far enough ahead so that they're willing to offer long-term contracts to their key creators — then I'll believe the business is truly better off than it was in '86.

This isn't particularly timely but I just came across this terrific photo, taken at a televised Friars' Roast of Jack Benny that ran on the Kraft Music Hall TV show in (I'm guessing) 1970.  It was definitely before Johnny Carson moved The Tonight Show to Burbank, which he did in 1972.  The folks depicted — just in case anyone's puzzled — are, left to right: Carson, Alan King, Ed Sullivan, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Benny, George Burns and Milton Berle.  It is perhaps significant of something that the only one of these men who is still performing is Alan King, who was recently seen on Comedy Central's airing of the Friars' Roast of Hugh Hefner.

The photo reminds me of one of the funniest ad-libs I ever heard on a TV show…and it was also, perhaps, the last time anyone ever did a "surprise walk-on" on a talk show that the host didn't know about in advance.  I suspect Mssrs. Leno and Letterman would fire their entire staffs if anything ever happened for which they did not have adequate preparation, including a few pre-scripted lines.  It's a shame since one of the great appeals of the talk show was, once upon a time, the spontaneity and the joy of seeing witty men working without a net.

The line I loved was uttered by David Steinberg.  He was guest-hosting The Tonight Show that evening while Mr. Carson was elsewhere in the building (Rockefeller Center in New York) taping the above roast.

So what happened was that Steinberg was interviewing some guest and, all of a sudden, Milton Berle walked out on stage — absolutely unannounced and apparently a complete surprise to Steinberg.  The audience, of course, went berserk.  Berle ousted the guest from the guest chair, sat down and said a few words before Jack Benny walked out.  Again, the audience went nuts.

Benny displaced Berle in the chair next to the desk and muttered a few words.  The audience was cheering and howling with glee, and I thought they couldn't get any more excited.

Then Johnny Carson walked out from the wings.

That's right: Johnny Carson did a surprise walk-on on The Tonight Show.  I have never heard an audience get as excited, as utterly apoplectic as they did at that moment.  Finally, the ruckus died down and Carson — now seated in the guest chair — explained how they could only stay a minute since they were on a break from taping The Kraft Music Hall.  For some odd reason, Steinberg chuckled.

"What are you laughing at?" Johnny asked him.

Steinberg grinned and replied, "I was just thinking about how wonderful the rest of this show's going to go after you all leave."

Let's talk about Sneaky Pete's Magic Show, a Remco toy that was among the favored Christmas/Hanukkah (we celebrated everything) gifts of my youth.  I'm guessing I was eight the year I got mine and I loved it, though I can't recall ever using it to put on a show for anyone.  It was just knowing how to do the tricks — knowing I could do them — that mattered, though I was never quite able to master the cups-and-balls.  There was no gimmick to the cups-and-balls, apart from the fact that you actually had one more ball than an onlooker might think.  The cups-and-balls required practice and dexterity and at that age, I was looking for more immediate gratification and easier answers to the mysteries of the world.

There was also the disappointment of the sawing-a-lady-in-half trick promised on the box and in the commercials.  The set came with a little plastic harem girl, a rack on which you'd place her, and a special sword.  The figure was made with some kind of internal wheel that allowed the sword to actually pass through the stomach seam without damaging the doll.  It was surely the greatest feat of engineering managed by the Remco folks (the other tricks were pretty basic ones) but it was the least satisfying to me.  It didn't relate to the way I saw Mark Wilson sawing women in half on his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, didn't show me how he bisected his wife/assistant, Nani Darnell.  She didn't have one of those little wheels inside her.

Believe it or not, that's just about my most painful Christmas memory.  I had it pretty good.  I wish the same for you.