You can't say Jerry Stiller didn't have a long, amazing career. Well, I guess you could say it but you'd be spectacularly wrong. Very few comic actors are still in demand at the age of 92 and the one time I met him, which was October of 2017, the main thing we talked about was that he was being offered good roles in movies and TV shows but his body just wasn't up to the demands for his time.
It was at a party thrown by my friends Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin, and Mr. Stiller was helped in by other folks because he just wasn't walking so good. This, of course, was when he was a much younger man of 90. Out of respect, someone vacated a big, comfy easy chair in the living room and Jerry was parked in it. If you wanted to talk to him — and I, of course, did — you had to kneel down next to him…and of course, I did.
When I meet someone like that who is so familiar from film or television, I often find myself thinking, "Hey! He looks and sounds just like himself!" Jerry Stiller looked and sounded just like Jerry Stiller and he was very funny and very gracious…and self-deprecating. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't been. He talked about his physical problems and I remember saying, "God, I'm so sick of hearing actors complain they have more work than they can possibly handle."
He laughed at that and I'm very proud that I made Jerry Stiller laugh. If I could have done it about another 999 times, we might have been close to even.
I'll explain about the above photo in a moment but first, here's a message I received from Brendan Totten…
Your link to the recent Evening with Frank Ferrante was very much appreciated. I was one of the many people who was lucky to see him in person thanks to your recommendations. When I saw his show he got several members of the audience involved, with hilarious results, and a couple of times I saw him look straight in my direction and I thought "He's going to pick on me! He's going to pick on me! He's going to pick on me!"
But the show came to an end without me being picked on and I was left with a curious mixture of relief and disappointment!
Which brings me to my question. Have you ever voluntarily or involuntarily become a sudden participant in someone's show? If so, who was it and how did you feel about it?
I have occasionally been tapped and I never like being in that position. I'm never sure if I should just play dumb, which is what they usually want, or say something that might get a laugh.
It's very awkward for me when magicians yank me out of the audience at the Magic Castle. When I'm there in the evening, I always wear my member lapel pin — I've been a member for forty (!) years — and if the magician spots it, he knows not to pick me since the last thing a magician wants in a "volunteer" is someone who knows how the trick is done.
Once in a while though, I get picked and I do a real bad job at appearing clueless and amazed. Needless to say, I have no trouble being that way when I'm not on a stage as part of a magic routine. There have been a few real awkward experiences but the one that comes to mind was with a magician named Ondřej Pšenička, who you may have seen on Penn & Teller Fool Us.
He selected me for a trick in which he asks the "volunteer" to eat a cricket and I refused. Yes, I know they're harmless for most people but I'm not most people. I'm a guy with many, many food allergies and there are foods that you can eat all day that would put me in the emergency room. I don't know if crickets are one of them but I see no reason to ever find out…and especially not in a public place with an audience watching.
Eating the cricket was not essential to the trick he performed. It was just something he liked to have the volunteer do because I guess with most people it yielded a funny, entertaining moment. He looked annoyed at me and eventually sent me back to my seat and got someone else up there to eat the cricket. I don't think he knew how unfunny and unentertaining the end of his act would have been if I'd had the same reaction to that cricket that I once had to a piece of asparagus.
That was the most unpleasant experience I've ever had with a performer calling on me. A not-unpleasant one came in November of 2007 when Carolyn and I were in Columbus, Ohio for the annual Mid-Ohio Con, which was one of the best outta-state conventions I used to attend. One evening, we went (and took along our friend Maggie Thompson) to see the national touring company of Spamalot.
I wrote about that evening here but for those of you too lazy to click, I shall summarize: As I guess is no secret by now to anyone who cares, a member of the audience who sits in a certain seat is dragged up onto the stage as part of the show. I was in that seat and suddenly, there I was up there.
I managed to not look too awkward and I said something that got a laugh — which prompted a lot of people to ask me on the way out if I was a "plant," which I was not. I was given the above Polaroid photo (it's not out of focus; I was) and a little trophy which they give to everyone in my position. You can see it at the start of this item and in case you can't read the inscription, it says "THE ARTHUR AWARD — Best Peasant — Monty Python's SPAMALOT."
In the hundreds of thousands of times I've seen Frank Ferrante play Groucho, he has never selected me to be part of his act and for that, I am most grateful. In October of 2010, I took a young lady I liked very much to see Frank in his other identity — that of Caesar, the preening host of Teatro ZinZanni. This was in their San Francisco location which has since closed. A new location is being built for them in that city and they are expected to reopen, as most of America is, sometime in the year 2022.
Caesar
Teatro ZinZanni is kind of like what Cirque du Soleil would be if it was in a smaller tent, featured lots of English and more comedy, was slanted a bit more towards adults and involved a gourmet dinner show with courses served between the various acts. It is quite a wonderful experience…or at least it was that evening with Frank as the Master of Ceremonies and his lovely friend Dreya Weber flying over our heads in a beautiful aerial act.
And there were other acts, also quite enjoyable, and a great live band and Frank got us the best seats and comped the whole thing…and the only thing I asked him before was that he not select as us "volunteers." Caesar does a lot of that during the show, getting people up on the center stage to dance or play games or play roles in scenes with him. Frank, who is a man of honor, did not do this.
After the performance, he gave us a tour of the place and mentioned that the musicians had asked him to get the cute lady at Table 1 up on stage and encourage her to dance. But Frank, who is a man of honor, had followed my request and not done this, whereupon the cute lady punched me in the shoulder and said, "Why did you do that? I would have loved it if he'd brought me up there!"
I asked her, "Wouldn't you have been afraid of looking foolish?" And she replied, "Would I be going out with you if I was afraid of looking foolish?" Or at least, that's what I thought I heard her say.
Here's one of my favorite songs that Audra McDonald sings. I posted a video of this a long time ago but it's been deleted and this is a better version anyway…
It's Mother's Day so here's a piece I put up here about my mother on 11/3/12. It inspired a lot of you to write and tell me about fond memories of your mother's cooking. It also inspired my wonderful friend Shelly Goldstein to surprise me by making my mother's recipe for Lamb Hot Pot and presenting me with a lovely half-sheet-pan full of it. Shelly does things like that, which is why she's a wonderful friend…
My mother was a pretty good cook with a limited repertoire. My father didn't like new foods. In every restaurant we went to repeatedly, he'd find one thing he liked on their menu and he would just order that one thing each time he went there. I inherited that trait from him and in my case, it's kind of a necessity. I have so many food allergies and intolerances that trying new things can be dangerous. So we both urged my mother to just make the same things over and over. I liked her Meat and Rice dish and her Tuna Noodle Casserole and her Split Pea Soup and her Beef Stew…but I really liked a dish called Lamb Hot Pot.
It was one of those labor-intensive dishes so she didn't make it very often — and just for us, never for company. The recipe yielded about enough for three people and the size of her oven and her casserole dish didn't permit her to scale things up to serve four or more. So it was just for the three of us. Here's how she made it…
3 shoulder lamb chops
¼ cup flour
1 tsp salt – dash of pepper
¾ can chicken broth, undiluted (Swanson)
1½ tsp A-1 sauce
2 onions peeled and sliced
3 carrots and 3 potatoes – pared and sliced
Trim fat from chops – heat fat in large heavy skillet.
On a plate combine flour, salt and pepper. Dip chops in flour coating lightly. Reserve remaining flour.
Brown chops in hot fat on both sides. Remove and set aside.
Drain off excess fat leaving 2 tablespoons drippings. Stir in rest of flour.
Beat until smooth. Gradually add broth and A-1. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat – simmer 1 minute.
In large casserole dish, layer half of onions and carrots. Cover with chops, add half of the potatoes and remaining onions. Overlap remaining potatoes and carrot slices over top.
Pour broth mixture over all. Bake covered at 350 degrees for two hours or until meat and potatoes are tender.
I don't know where she got that recipe but I know where I got a copy. About twenty years back, before my mother's eyesight really began to desert her, there was a December when she asked me her usual pre-Christmas favor. She asked me to tell her something she could buy me for Christmas. I'm darn-near impossible to buy for since I have modest wishes and a tendency to immediately fill them for myself. Each year, my mother would say, "The only gift I want you to give me this year is to tell me something I can buy for you." One year, I asked her to write down all her recipes for me and she was delighted with the project. She had them all on little slips of paper and cards stuffed in a kitchen drawer…and she'd altered many of them but never written down her alterations.
She bought a decorative notebook, filled it with handwritten cooking instructions and presented it to me on December 25. The star of the book was her Lamb Hot Pot. Also in this one-of-a-kind binder were some of her Jewish recipes like how she made latkes and how she made brisket. These, I already had.
As I mentioned here a month or so ago, my mother was not of Jewish heritage but my father was. When they wed, she had to learn to cook at least a few semitic dishes and this was achieved with the aid of a book she bought: The Art of Jewish Cooking by Jennie Grossinger. Ms. Grossinger was of the family that owned Grossinger's, the famed Catskills resort which served a Jew or two in its day. My mother had the small paperback edition seen above right. She made us a number of dinners as per that book and they were all delicious.
Years later, I found out why. Her copy had been ruined — I think she spilled boiling oil on it or something — and had gone unreplaced since by then she'd learned all her recurring preparations by heart. About twenty years ago on a whim, I decided to locate a copy just to have and found it was out-of-print. No problem. eBay had since been invented and it didn't take long to find, bid for and win an exemplar of the same pressing. (The book is no longer out-of-print — you can order one here — and it's even available on Kindle. If you get it that way, try not to spill boiling oil on your tablet computer.)
When I received my copy, I opened it and instantly realized why everything my mother made from that book was so good. Almost every recipe in it called for a pound of chicken fat. You could sweep up the confetti left after Rip Taylor performed, bake it in a pound of chicken fat and it would be very tasty. Not good for you but tasty.
The only recipe my mother ever made from that book that didn't require a pound of chicken fat was the one for latkes. That just called for pan-frying in boiling corn oil. You could sweep up the confetti left after Rip Taylor performed, pan-fry it in corn oil and it would be very tasty. Not good for you but tasty…and not as bad for you as if you'd baked it in a pound of chicken fat.
Latkes were a big production. Potatoes had to be peeled, then grated. When I was living at home, I usually assisted with peeling/grating duty and we did it all by hand. The last few batches she ever made, the spuds were shredded with a food processor I bought her. The resultant latkes were not quite as perfect that way owing to a change in texture…but they were still wonderful and it seemed like a fair trade-off for avoiding so much of the manual labor. Here's how Ms. Grossinger said to make them…
2 eggs
3 cups grated, drained potatoes
4 tbs grated onion
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp ground black pepper
2 tbs cracker or matzoh meal
½ cup oil
Beat the eggs and add the potatoes, onion, salt, pepper, and matzoh meal.
Heat half the oil in a frying pan and drop the potato mixture into it by the tablespoon. Fry until browned on both sides.
Keep pancakes hot until all are fried, adding more oil as required. Serves eight.
My mother only made latkes as an adjunct to brisket, pot roast or a concoction she made that could have passed for either…and she only made them for holiday-type family dinners. That meant that she stopped making them once we stopped having family dinners owing to loss of family. We had one or two after my Aunt Dot died but it felt too obvious that someone was missing that it cast a light gray cloud over the dining. Also, Aunt Dot used to always come over early and help grate potatoes so the latkes became more work. After my father died, I think my mother made latkes one more time — for her, me and my Uncle Nathan. Then Nathan died.
I found this photo on the web. That's how my mother's latkes looked and how the ones you get in restaurants don't.
I missed those pancakes. For a time, I tried ordering latkes in our nation's top delicatessens and finally gave up. None of what I got in delis in any way resembled the wondrous ones my mother had made…and since they didn't, what was the point? Hers were crisper and tasted fresher and always contained just the perfect amount of shredded onion, which was more than was decreed by Jennie Grossinger. (She used 6-8 tablespoons.) I believe I abandoned my quest for latkes as good as my mother's when the Carnegie Delicatessen in New York failed the test. Theirs resembled hers about as much as The New Munsters resemble The Old Munsters.
The waiter at the Carnegie noticed mine had gone largely undevoured and asked if something was wrong with them. I said, "Yes, they're not the way my mother made them." He said that was a common complaint of diners there though he rarely heard it about anything besides the latkes and/or the matzo ball soup.
He said, not loud enough for the manager to hear, "My mother made them better, too. She put in more onion and her latkes were incredible…and she wasn't even Jewish." I guess that's the secret. Or maybe it's all the caring and love that our respective mothers added to the recipe. Oh — and the extra onion, too.
Once again, the Andrew Lloyd Webber organization has posted a video of one of his shows to YouTube and once again, I am late posting it here. This is By Jeeves and it will be viewable until tomorrow afternoon. If you wanna watch it, watch it now…
As I'm sure you've heard, Richard Penniman — better known to all as Little Richard — has died at the age of 87. In the history of rock 'n' roll, Little Richard really mattered…and if you don't know why he mattered, this article will tell you why he mattered.
Usually, helicopters are forbidden to fly over Disneyland. Of course, usually, Disneyland is full of people. Since it isn't at the moment, Micah Muzio was allowed to give us a great aerial view of the place. It occurs around 8 minutes and 40 seconds into this tour of Orange County…
But just a bit because we've already talked way more about this than it deserves, relative to the real tragedies in the world today.
Despite me asking you all not to, many of you are still sending me recommendations of places to get tomato soup or recipes. A couple of you have also asked me how "Souplantation" is pronounced. When I spoke to folks at their corporate offices a few years ago, they all pronounced it the same way I did…which was the way you'd pronounce it if it was named "Soup Plantation."
And a number of you have written to me to ask if I don't think they could keep the chain open if they rearranged things so that masked and gloved servers would put the food onto your plates as per your directions. That's kind of what some buffets in Vegas will be attempting. I don't think it would have the same appeal but even if it did, I think Souplantation had larger financial considerations than that. I'll miss it but I'm ready to let it go.
Our friend Floyd Norman appears on an episode of the "reality" series Pawn Stars that debuts on Monday. The famed Disney Legend walks into the famed Las Vegas pawn shop with a pile of his drawings and asks $4000 for them. Will he get it? You'll have to tune in and find out.
I am tardy in noting the passing of Matty Simmons, who got rich founding the Diners Club and richer/famous publishing the National Lampoon. The Diners Club was a big-deal credit card in its time but today, it seems to have quietly been absorbed by MasterCard and I don't know much more about it than that. The National Lampoon was a grand success story in its day, while it seems to have turned into a brand-name to be slapped on any old product.
Matty was a bright, fascinating gent and I had the pleasure (which it was) to dine with him on several occasions where no one put the meal on a Diners Club card, He was overflowing with great stories about overseeing the creation and rise of the magazine, and the success of the first few movies that boasted the NatLamp possessory credit. They were mostly stories about being The Grown-Up amidst creative folks who behaved like hyper-kinetic children and if even a third of them were true, Matty earned every million he made off those enterprises.
I can't say I knew him well but I always enjoyed his company…and National Lampoon was a helluva magazine when it was under the control of Matty Simmons.
Here's Audra McDonald (still my favorite singer) with the song "Stars and the Moon," which I'd never heard of before I heard it and now I can't hear her sing it too often…
Like me, Sewell Chan mourns the loss of Souplantation. Its closure doesn't even make the list of the Top Ten Thousand bits of bad news we've had lately but I'll still miss it…at least during the periods when they would have been offering my favorite tomato soup.
To be honest though — and if we can't be honest about soup, what can we be honest about? — I am not surprised. First of all, just about all the "buffet-style" chains in this country were seeing declining sales and occasional bankruptcies before any of us had heard of COVID-19. Souplantation was crawling back from a 2016 bankruptcy when they closed thirty stores.
Buffets LLC, which operates Hometown Buffet, Old Country Buffet, Ryan's and others filed for Chapter 11 at about the same time (their third bankruptcy since 2008) and closed many outlets. For the last few years, Las Vegas hotels have either closed their buffets or not opened one in the first place.
I don't have any particular theory as to why this is but even before the coronavirus was in our lives, a lot of restaurant chains were in trouble and that included almost all the buffet ones.
…I've cooled a bit on the glories of the Souplantation chain…at least the three I used to frequent in or around Los Angeles. In honor of Classic Creamy Tomato Soup [this month], I'll go try one of them again in the next few days but my last visits there were a bit disappointing. The food didn't seem as fresh, the serving areas didn't feel as clean and they seemed to have troubles keeping the buffet serving areas stocked. They were all in or near L.A. Last year, I went to one in San Diego that was phenomenal — great service, great food, great decor, everything. It reminded me of how good the ones I patronize used to be. I suppose it's just a coincidence that the corporate offices of the Souplantation company are in San Diego…
So I'm not that surprised and I'm not as saddened as I would be if this closure had come ten years ago. Back then, I used to even go to Souplantations when they didn't have my favorite soup.
Speaking of which: Since I first got on this subject, people have been sending me recommendations of restaurants that serve what they consider great tomato soup ("Next time you find yourself in Rineyville, Kentucky…") and endorsements of certain brands of canned or packaged tomato soup and recipes…
I appreciate the eagerness to help but please don't. I loved the Classic Creamy Tomato at Souplantation because I thought it was great soup. I'm not in love with any or even most tomato soups and am jes' fine with a good chicken or turkey or chowder. I've also lost my interest in cooking anything more elaborate than a ham sandwich for a while. I'll be fine, thanks.
Several folks — first among them, Gabriel August Neeb — sent me this link to an article stating that the Souplantation chain (aka Sweet Tomatoes) will not reopen after it's okay to reopen. They'd been in financial trouble for some time and I guess they figure that self-service buffet-style restaurants will not make an astonishing recovery. As you all know and probably don't particularly care, I really, really liked the tomato soup that they sometimes had on their menu. I'll be sad if this report turns out to be true and it's probably true.
By the way: Six posts ago, we passed 27,700 messages posted on this blog.
In times like this, what America needs is one of those great comedy teams of knuckleheads…and I don't mean the Republican Party. [Insert Rimshot sound effect here.] We need two guys like Biffle and Shooster. No, better still: We need Biffle and Shooster. Have you seen these guys?
I know, I know. Some of you think their comedy shorts aren't really from the thirties; that they were made recently in that style by producer-writer-director-occasional actor Michael Schlesinger. Yeah, and you probably believe Mae West was really a woman, too. Well, believe what you want but make sure to check out the comings and goings of Benny Biffle and Sam Shooster in their high-larious escapades. A good starting spot would be ordering this DVD which contains six of the classic Biffle and Shooster comedy shorts plus loads of extras that will tell you all about your favorite comedy duo that you never heard of until recently. The Kino Lorber video company did such a good restoration on these vintage comedies they they look like they were shot in the last six or seven years. Here's a trailer…
