I was a big fan of the late Richard Jeni, who I think was one of those stand-up comics who never got the attention he deserved. He was an imitator of no one and a guy who always scored big any time I saw him live or in one of his comedy specials. This special (my favorite) was called A Big Steaming Pile of Me and he recorded it at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine, California. It aired in 2005 and two years later, he took his own life…for what reason, folks who knew him seemed not to know.

I attended the memorial service for him and it was packed with top comics who all respected the hell out of him. You could tell because only one of them — well, maybe two — got on that stage and tried to turn the moment into an audition for themselves. Most spoke of how fresh and inventive he was and how he did everything so well. Here he is doing everything so well…and yes, this runs close to an hour but if you stick with it, I think you'll feel it was an hour well-spent…

Please forgive the paucity of posting today but I spent a lot of it at a doctor's office, not being examined or treated but merely waiting.  And then there was a hurried rewrite on something and a long phone call about a proposed project that — this is a guess — has at most a 25% chance of growing up to become an actual project.

Kevin Shaw, who was good friends with the (sadly) late Carl Taylor wrote to remind me that Carl had at least one solid published credit — a story in Big Bang for Image.  He was working on a couple of other stories for that comic but it was terminated before they could see print.  Kevin also reminded me that Carl had been in bad health for some time including having one of his legs amputated.  Like I said, he was a great guy and he certainly didn't deserve to go so soon.

I'm not watching much news but I heard about the cybertruck explosion at a Trump property and about the truck attack in New Orleans.  And what I heard was a lot of public figures kinda admitting they had no idea quite what happened or who was responsible but were not going to let that stop them from suggesting or stating outright that one or both could be blamed on their political enemies.  This is one of the main reasons I'm not watching much news.

 

 

A lot of folks who in the Southern California comic book community were saddened the other day by the news that Carl Taylor has died.  The cause isn't known, at least to any of us, but we'd heard he'd been ill lately.  Carl was a devout comic fan and an aspiring comic artist who never quite found the right place to apply his skills.  He drew exciting pages in a style that merged his two favorites — Jack Kirby and Gil Kane — and Jack especially was delighted with Carl's enthusiasm and imagination.  Though Jack and others gave him pointers and encouragement, Carl somehow never managed to make it out of the fanzines.

He seemed to be at every local convention and it was always fun to be around him.  He had a wonderful sense of humor and the talent to do vocal impressions of the folks he admired in the industry and a few he didn't.  Just a very nice, clever guy.  We need more like that.

For our top spot this year, here's another interpretation of Mr. Lehrer's great song — as performed by Deborah Silver and the Count Basie Orchestra. Deborah don't fool around with no ukuleles…

Earlier this morning, something that was said reminded me of this story so I told it and the person to whom I told it said, "Hey, I don't think you've ever told that one on your blog!" I said, "Sure I have," but when I later did a search here, I couldn't find it. So here it is…

As you probably know, I enjoy hosting panels at comic conventions and have done, by actual count, about ninety-four gazillion of them. This story occurred during the time that the first few issues of Groo the Wanderer comics by Sergio Aragonés and Yours Truly were coming out…so around 1984. From it, I learned a valuable lesson.

A gent staging a one-day comic convention here in Southern California called Sergio and asked if the two of us would be guests. That meant that we'd sit behind a table all day and sign copies of our comics for no money. The "no money" part didn't bother me and it still doesn't except when dealers bring half the press run for signatures that will theoretically raise the resale value of the books a smidge. But I just don't like signing my name all day and if I sit next to Sergio, the line extends well into some adjacent zip code. Then I'm expected to sign as much as he does and as swiftly, which is just not humanly possible.

Sergio said yes on behalf of us both, which was fine, and then the convention organizer called me to double-check and to also ask if while I was there, would I be willing to host a panel? I agreed and he said he'd would arrange everything including what the panel would be about and who'd be on it…and I'll tip the valuable lesson of this story before we get to it. The valuable lesson of this story is NEVER AGREE TO THAT.

But I did. I have since learned that I need to have some say as to what a panel will be about, who the panelists will be and — and this is vital — how many panelists there will be.  I've found that six is usually the max for a one-hour panel.  If you have more time, you might accommodate seven.  If you have too many, some or all of your panelists will sit for long stretches of time without being able to say anything.  They'll get bored and when your panelists are getting bored, so will your audience.

Our story now jumps ahead to the day of the con…

Sergio and I arrived at the hotel with me having no idea what panel I'd be hosting, when and where it would take place or who'd be on it. The con organizer — a genial fellow who was trying to do a hundred and eleven things all at once, greeted us warmly, showed us to our signing table and then he handed me a copy of a printed program for the day's festivities. He then scurried off to attend to some of those hundred and ten other things and I looked at the program he'd handed me. It was quite informative.

From it, I discovered that at 2 PM in Room I-don't-remember, I was moderating a panel on the works of the eminent science-fiction writer, Robert Heinlein. There was also a list of ten panelists who'd be appearing to discuss this man's reknowned body of writing. Instantly, I saw two problems with this…

1. I had never heard of any of these panelists and…
2. I had never read anything written by Robert Heinlein.

Neither of these seemed like insurmountable problems.  I assumed the panelists would all be familiar with Mr. Heinlein's work so I could have them each introduce themselves and then answer questions like, "Which of his many books is your favorite and why?" or "If someone was unfamiliar with Heinlein's work, where in his oeuvre would you suggest they start?"

"Oeuvre" is an excellent word for a situation like this because it makes you sound like you know a lot of things even when all you know is the definition of the word "oeuvre."  In case you don't, it means "the works of a painter, composer or author regarded collectively."  Remember that.  It may come in handy someday when you have to fake knowing something about something.

And lest you think I'm a Neanderthal for not have read extensively the works of Mr. Heinlein (i.e., his "oeuvre"), let me say this: I read lots of science-fiction, mainly when I was in my teens and early twenties, but there are a lot of great books in this world that fall outside that genre. You just can't get around to all of them and I never got around to Heinlein and still haven't.  But I figured that would be okay for this panel because my ten panelists would have, right?

No, not right.  Because as I found out when I got to the panel room a little before 2 PM and met them all, to continue our numbering…

3. Not one of the panelists had ever read anything written by Robert Heinlein and…
4. They were all mystified as to why the hell they were put on this panel which they knew no more about in advance than I did.

By the time I realized the magnitude of this problem, it was 2 PM and the room had filled with about 40 people.  I decided to just go ahead with the panel.  It might be a total disaster but, hey, that can be entertaining.  Sometimes.  So I quietly told each panelist that I'd start by asking them who they were and what they'd done and to please not mention their total unfamiliarity with the works of Robert Heinlein.

Then I welcomed the audience, introduced myself and had each panelist introduce himself or herself without mentioning you-know-what.  Then I asked the audience, "How many of you have read books by Robert Heinlein?" And you can probably guess what the response was…

5. No one raised a hand.

Not a one.  Not one person in that room — in the audience or on the stage — had read anything by Robert Heinlein. A lady who worked for the hotel came by to fill up water glasses for each of us and I'd bet my house that she hadn't read anything by Robert Heinlein either.

I asked why they'd come to a panel about Robert Heinlein and a couple of them said things like "I saw there was this panel and decided to see what it was all about."  I asked if anyone had any questions about Robert Heinlein and one guy said, "Yeah, who is he?"

That's when I said, "Okay, as moderator, I declare this is no longer the Robert Heinlein panel.  It's now the "Let's talk about anything that interests us" panel.  Ask about anything you like — comics, TV shows, movies, famous Bar Mitzvahs, people named Arnie…anything.  Someone on this panel may know something about it." The first question was, "What table is Sergio signing at?" That one, even I could handle.

Then someone asked a question about Groo and I could field that one, too. Someone on the panel had said they were writing mystery novels and they were asked a question about writing mystery novels. Someone else asked about having to write when one isn't in the mood and that was a good question — the kind I should have asked — because everyone on the panel was a writer of some sort. The whole panel suddenly turned into a panel about professional writing and getting into the mood to write and/or deal with know-nothing editors or making a living as a writer…and it turned into a pretty good panel.

There was no further mention of Mr. Heinlein. But I did manage to work the word "oeuvre" into my answers once or twice.

When it was over, I returned to the table where Sergio and I were signing. He was way ahead of me and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying and failing to catch up. Later, as the convention was closing down, the organizer came by to thank us and he asked me how the panel went. I told him it went okay and then asked, "Why did you decide there should be a panel about Robert Heinlein?"

He responded in the tone of voice you'd use if a child asked you what 2+2 equals. He said, "Because he's the greatest writer who ever lived, of course."

I asked him if he'd thought to ask any of us if we'd ever read Heinlein and he answered, "I didn't have to. You're all professional writers so naturally, you've read everything he ever wrote. Was there a problem?"

I said, "Well, since none of us had ever read anything by Robert Heinlein, yes, there was a bit of a problem."

He said, "Well then, that's on you. Hey, if you guys parked in the lot outside, let me have your ticket and I'll have it validated for you."

One great thing about the Internet is that it makes it easy to comparison-shop. I just made up the graphic below to show you what you can learn if you look before you buy. A lady friend of mine asked me to get her a supply of Glucosamine Chondroitin with 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 1200 mg of Chondroitin.  So I looked around and it didn't take long to realize that I had two options…

I could use my Costco membership and buy 280 tablets that contain 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 1200 mg of Chondroitin for $19.12 from Costco or I could go on Amazon and purchase 220 tablets that contain 1500 mg of Glucosamine and 1200 mg of Chondroitin for $32.20.  Same brand.  Probably the exact same tablets although one is labeled "Advanced" and the other is labeled "Extra Strength."

Which one to buy?  Which one to buy?

London welcomes in a new year…

Any song can be a Hanukkah song if you have a cantor, one or more menorahs and a whole batch of Jews in it. You can even turn a hit song from a Broadway show into a Hanukkah song. This is Julie Benko and Cantor Azi Schwartz performing in Times Square with a batch of Jewish Broadway performers and a couple of other cantors and I think I see Seth Rudetsky in there and I also think this is just wonderful…

And of course, I'm spending it writing. I spent most of this past year writing and — since Sunday, January 21 — dealing with the ankle I broke that evening. It's almost healed but I'm still walking like a seriously drunk person trying to make his way to the men's room. Apart from umpteen visits to doctor offices, 33 days in a rehab center and my five days at Comic-Con in San Diego, I spent 2024 upstairs in my house commuting — by whatever level of mobility I was capable of at the moment — between my bedroom, an upstairs bathroom and my office.

If this sounds horribly confining, let me tell you this: It hasn't been that bad. If I hadn't broken my stupid ankle, I probably would have spent almost as much time where I am now: In my office at my computer. And I'd have slept just as much and used the bathroom just as much…and I didn't miss that many events and shows I would have wanted to attend.

I've had a nice stream of friends visiting me here. If I had a camera crew in my office, we could have YouTubed ourselves one helluva great talk show. And it's nice that I didn't break my ankle until everyone had the equipment to do business meetings and interviews on Zoom. (I even visited a few doctors via Zoom.)

For most folks, I would imagine, 2024 will forever be characterized by the outcome of the presidential election — whether you're happy with it or suicidal. I continue to believe that while bad things will happen — including bad things that Trump voters will think are bad things — it won't be as bad as some are predicting. And that's as much as I feel like delving into politics tonight except to suggest a visit to the blog of Kevin Drum and a look at some of the year-end charts he's posted. You might be surprised at how well things are going in some categories.

Thanks to everyone who donated toward the upkeep of this blog. In case you're interested, there are now 32,470 posts on this blog, at least 300 of which are about things that matter. I'll try to put up a few more in 2025.

Ed Graham was an advertising man who specialized in animated commercials and this led to him producing the Linus the Lionhearted Show for CBS's Saturday morning schedule in 1964. I didn't think it was a great show but there were moments of wicked and very different humor in some of the cartoons. It also had good, solid voice work by some pretty famous folks outside the usual talent pool including Sheldon Leonard, Jonathan Winters and Carl Reiner.

After the show went off, Graham produced a few short cartoons and this one, in which he teamed up with Reiner, was one of them. It's called Funny is Funny and I think it's funny — especially to those of us who've watched eighty-two squadrillion other cartoons…

This year, our number three slot goes to Adam Sandler…

Linda Lavin not only performed "The Boy From…" on The Mike Douglas Show in the seventies — as seen here earlier today — she did it a few years ago in an online Zoom concert to celebrate the 90th birthday of Esteban Rio Nido Stephen Sondheim. My longtime amigo Joe Brancatelli thinks this is a superior performance so here it is. Take your choice…

(What I want to know is did she have to learn the lyrics all over again to do this or were they firmly embedded in her brain forever after umpteen performances of the song on stage?)

Me, I'm staying home with a friend. I don't like going out on New Year's Eve, she doesn't like going out on New Year's Eve…it's perfect. There was a time when I used to party-hop but — no offense to any friends who threw those parties — I never enjoyed any of them. And worse, getting from one to another, I was sharing the boulevards with some seriously alcohol-infused drivers. So I'm staying home.

If you're staying in like we're staying in, you might enjoy some or all of a special six-hour (six-hour!!!) program hosted by my friends Stu Shostak and Jeanine Kasun. It's a holiday edition of Stu's online TV/radio program, Stu's Show, and it should be of special interest to those of you who are interested in old TV shows and especially old game shows. They'll be showing both and Stu will be interviewing two in-studio guests. One is"Shotgun" Tom Kelly, the famed radio personality. The other is Rick Greene, who has a new book out on the promotional material for the classic Laurel and Hardy comedies.

You can watch it on your Roku TV. You can watch it your computer. You can listen to it without watching it. Details on how to do these things can be found over on this page. And no, you're not obligated to watch or listen to all six hours.

I never met Linda Lavin even though I was involved briefly with her show, Alice. I also don't think I ever saw her perform on the stage which, gauging from the rave reviews she routinely got, was obviously my loss. In case you haven't heard, the world lost this talented lady the other day.

One of the first things she did on stages in New York was the 1966 off-Broadway production of The MAD Show, based on guess-what-magazine. In it, she introduced this song, "The Boy From…" which was kind of a sideways parody of what was then a recent hit, "The Girl From Ipanema."

The music from the show was written by Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard, and the lyrics for just this one number were credited to "Esteban Rio Nido," whose name is in quotes because that was a pseudonym for Stephen Sondheim. The joke in the song — which I didn't get when I first heard it at age fourteen — is that the lady singing it is unaware that the boy from Tacarembo la Tumba del Fuego Santa Malipas Zacatecas la Junta del Sol y Cruz is gay and is moving to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to be with his boy friend. The latter location is a real village in Wales, whereas the first location is a name made up by Mr. Sondheim.

Please forgive whatever the unhyphenated length of the latter place name does to whatever screen or device you're using at the moment.

Here is Ms. Lavin performing the number — probably the exact same mostly-deadpan way she sang it Off-Broadway — on The Mike Douglas Show with Mike in the background…

So I just spent so long on a phone call that I thought I might miss New Year's Eve…and I don't mean the one tomorrow night. I mean the one after that. My problem was one of these robo-operators whose artificial intelligence is not only artificial but largely missing. "She" kept asking me to enter the number of a prescription I was calling about and I kept entering that sixteen-digit prescription and "she" kept telling me "she" could not locate any prescription by that number and there didn't seem to be any way to move the call to any sort of next step until I'd entered one that "she" recognized.

In dealing with such robotic logjams, there's usually a magic word or phrase you can say that will get them to kick the call over to an actual human being. I tried "agent" and "human being" and "representative" and "pharmacist" and everything else I could think of and finally, "she" said she'd connect me with someone. I think but am not certain the magic words were "live agent." I've jotted that down in the Notes section of my phone listing for this company. But wouldn't it be nice if they told us what those magic words were up front? Or if they all worked on the same magic words…like "Open Sesame" or "Swordfish" or "Human being?"