This is from Saturday Night Live for 2/08/86 and it's the bit that made me really love Penn & Teller. I'd seen them before — in person, in fact — but this routine sealed the deal. It's also, interestingly, a bit they soon retired because they got too old to do it. Not long ago, it was resurrected for their Penn & Teller Fool Us series but with two young women standing (or hanging) in for them.
Make sure you watch it 'til the end…and make sure you realize that it's a perfect routine for Saturday Night Live. It could never have the same impact on any pre-recorded show…
I can't always focus on Trump's daily tap dances for his base, convincing them to believe in an alternate reality where he turned around the dreadful Obama economy and having the Russians pick our leaders isn't that bad an idea so long as they pick Trump and Trump-like candidates. It's like an ongoing disaster right outside my window where, since I can't do anything about it, it's sometimes easier not to look.
On a personal level, it's sad (to use one of Trump's favorite words) to see people I know — including some I like and otherwise respect — giving him a pass on things that outraged them when done by Democrats. One friend of mine has never shut up about the time Obama once misspoke and said in a speech there were 57 states. That, my friend insisted, told us something about the man and his honesty or stupidity or something. Apparently, there was a good chance he could fool all of America into thinking there were 57 states.
But every day, Trump serves up a half-dozen of those. His poll numbers are higher than Lincoln's, you need an I.D. to buy groceries, America is more respected than ever in the world, etc. And it's dismaying to see people buy into it because, you know, staying in power is all that matters. If you haven't visited it lately, here's a link to the database of (currently) 4,229 lies and distortions of the Trump presidency as compiled by the Washington Post. The only response to it from the Trump fans seems to be, "Oh, that's the Washington Post. You can't believe anything they say including what day of the week it is."
That's the same defense mechanism Nixon used. You saw how well it worked there. Here are some other links that might be worth your time…
Kevin Drum points out that despite Trump's insistence that Obamacare is a disaster, defunct, long gone, dying any second now, a failure for 17 years (!) and anything else bad he can find to say about it, it's doing rather well.
Matthew Rozsa attacks the new G.O.P. line that collusion isn't a crime. Uh, doesn't it depend to a great extent on who colludes and for what purpose? There's nothing in the statutes about it being illegal to form a partnership but if you and I form a partnership to bust into houses and steal everything, we just might be breaking the law.
As Jonathan Chait notes, Trump has been bragging about making a deal with North Korea to stop with the missiles and to return the remains of American soldiers. And neither brag stands up to any scrutiny.
Ed Kilgore notes that the Trump Administration is trying hard to undo all the progress that's been made about auto fuel-efficiency standards, especially in California (i.e., the state that Trump hates most and vice-versa). If I had to single out one principle that today's Republican leadership values more than anything, it would not be abortion or guns or immigration. It would be the concept that government must never get in the way of a big company missing out on any opportunity to increase profits. And if that means fouling the environment, fine.
Trump will be real happy one of these days when one or more of his supporters beats the crap out of some reporter. And it won't matter which reporter or what they said or did. Just so long as his team feels like they dominate the press and have power to intimidate it.
And I assume you've heard how a Conservative think-tanker set out to prove that Single Payer would be a financial disaster for this county and wound up proving the opposite. It's changing no minds because in this country, studies are just things to put supposed facts behind our prejudices and we never look at those reports and think, "Hey, maybe I was wrong."
Lastly: Is it my imagination or is Trump now beginning to do an impression of Alec Baldwin's impression of him? I can remember when Nixon began acting like he'd learned how to "do" Nixon by studying David Frye. And whenever Bill Clinton was in trouble, he sounded just like Phil Hartman doing Bill Clinton in trouble. It may be significant that no one ever became noteworthy for doing an imitation of Barack Obama. Even Obama wasn't that good at it sometimes.
Rummaging through Michael Palin's notes for the screenplay of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So what didn't make it into the final film? Find out here.
Andre's Restaurant, which I wrote about here, is a small Italian cafeteria in the Town and County Shopping Center, located at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax. That puts it directly opposite the world-famous Farmers Market.
Andre's has been there since around 1963 and I have memories of my parents taking me there not long after it opened. I still go there often (or send my assistant over for take-out) and the reason I haven't mentioned it here until recently is that it usually has a line out the door and nothing personal but I don't need to have you ahead of me in that line.
They offer inexpensive Italian fare that is always fresh because they sell so much of it during the day. The plate you see above is the large spaghetti which comes with your choice of sauce (meat, marinara or mushroom) and a hunk of garlic bread, all for $10.50. The meatball is another buck. I usually get it "to go" with three meatballs then carve it up into three portions so I get three meals for four and half bucks each. They're each plenty large and very good. The small spaghetti, which is about half that size and fine for one person is $7.00.
The place is friendly and busy and most of the staff's been there long enough that they can recognize us regulars and start prepping our meals before we order them. I love it and so do the folks who come from miles around to dine there. When Andre's first opened, it was in a courtyard full of other cheap eateries. My sense was that the only reason anyone ever went to the other ones was because the line for Andre's was just too long. Still, one by one they all closed — and in some cases, walls were then removed and Andre's expanded into their spaces.
Photo by me
But recently, we heard that Andre's might be going away. As I wrote in the earlier piece, the folks who run that shopping center have big expansion plans. They involve erecting a massive building, variously described as between 19 and 26 floors, to create space for new retailers and for 380 housing units. For a long time, the obstacle to their dreams has been the long-term lease of a pretty pathetic Kmart which has anchored the eastern side of the shopping center for years.
Actually, most Kmarts these days are pretty pathetic, as are the lingering vestiges of their sister chain, Sears. In 2008, Sears/Kmart CEO Eddie Lampert announced he was restructuring the company to apply the principles of his idol, Ayn Rand, and that the wild success that would result. This, he said, would prove to the world that her philosophy should not only rule the business world but the real one, as well.
It is probably unfair to Ms. Rand to blame her for what has happened. After all, she never provided detailed instructions on how to run budget department stores in the era of Amazon — though she doubtlessly would have gotten much of the credit had Mr. Lampert's plans succeeded. They did not and his Randian approach has been an utter disaster. It's hard to imagine how you could do more damage to the American institution that is Sears unless maybe you went around and set them all on fire.
Every month now, a few dozen more Sears and Kmart outlets go outta business. (Here's the list of the ones going bye-bye in September.) The Kmart in the mall that also houses Andre's has probably only lasted this long because it's been on a lease…but that lease expires this December and we're now hearing it will not be renewed. The building would then be razed and the shopping center expansion could commence.
Unfortunately, Andre's lease expires at the same time, the difference of course being that Andre's is a successful, thriving business that many would miss. In the earlier posting, I was pessimistic about its future. I'm a fraction more optimistic after last night…but only a fraction.
Last night, I attended a meeting of the Mid City West Community Council, which has some sort of supervisory role on development in the area. Interested parties are invited to address the board for three-minute speeches on matters that matter to them. I decided to go in and speak against allowing the redevelopment and for finding some way to keep Andre's open for business there. I was one of many speakers and most were better-prepared than I was…which was not a shock since having never done anything like this before, I wasn't prepared at all.
The principal of an elementary school that's adjacent to the real estate in question delivered a long PowerPoint presentation on the problems that the expansion would create for her and the students. Her argument alone seemed like a slam-dunk reason not to allow the developers to proceed. Another gent spoke with far more facts than I possess about what the increase in traffic will do to the area. But I, speaking about how Andre's is unique and beloved, got a few laughs and some applause and back-pats.
The biggest laugh came when I stated that I have no financial interest in Andre's but that given how much money I've spent there in the last 40+ years, I should be co-owner by now. And I think I scored some points when I talked about how sad it is that privately-owned, non-franchise restaurants keep being displaced by Burger Kings and Wendy's. My time ran out before I got to use my line about how one Andre's is worth a thousand Sbarro's and added, "I prefer my pizza be fresh, made with care and, most of all, edible."
Will the new development be stopped? The consensus I got from those who attended the meeting to argue against it was that it will almost certainly be scaled back. They all assumed what I've assumed; that the full proposal, which is a monstrosity, is not what the developers even want. It's a deliberate overreach: You say you're doing 26 stories so the commission can scale it back and you can settle for the 12 or 15 stories you really plan. But no one seemed confident that a downsized blueprint would still not create massive problems or have a place for Andre's.
I started my little speech by saying, "I read online that I could come here and state what I'd like the new Town and Country Shopping Center to be like. I'd like it to be exactly like the old Town and Country Shopping Center but with better parking and regardless of what happens, someone's got to do something about the dreadful traffic that we already have at that intersection." I doubt that there won't be a new Town and Country Shopping Center there. I just pray it won't be anywhere near the size of the proposed Godzilla, stepping on and crushing a lot of things that deserve to remain. Maybe it could be more like Godzilla's little, harmless friend Godzooky. And maybe we can take Godzooky down and feed him the great lasagna they serve at Andre's.
If that doesn't happen…hey, it was worth a shot. I'm glad I took the time.
My food allergies do not seem to apply to foods that are served around me but which I do not actually consume. I do have a bad reaction to smoke but unless the amounts are excessive, that's a matter of unpleasant feelings as opposed to actual illness. But it's nothing like, for example, how some people react to the proximity of peanuts.
As you can read here, Southwest Airlines has become the latest carrier to give up completely on offering peanuts to its passengers. Good idea. I'm for anything that recognizes that some people just plain have bad reactions to foods that others can eat with nary a care.
Recently, Alan Alda revealed to the world that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. The diagnosis was a few years ago but he "came out" to encourage others not to surrender to it and to spread the word that a person with this condition can still function and accomplish much. Good for Alan Alda.
The other day, a reporter called my pal Leonard Maltin to get a comment from him on Alda's announcement. Leonard decided that was a good time to reveal a secret which some of us have known about for some time: Leonard has also been diagnosed with Parkinson's. Good for Leonard…and I can attest that it hasn't slowed him down one bit. (The panel he and his daughter Jessie did at Comic-Con was packed and very informative and funny.) He's one of the nicest, smartest people I know and telling the world about his condition was a nice, smart thing to do. More on it here.
When Trump tweets (as he just did) that Sessions should shut down the "rigged witch hunt" that is the Mueller probe, don't we all think, "Oh, something very bad for Trump is about to come out!"?
You've seen the work of my pal Lee Aronsohn on a number of successful TV shows including Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. A while back over lunch, he told me about a new project he had — a documentary of a musical group he followed in the early seventies. You never heard of the band because they never made it, never even had an album. But they were popular at and around his alma mater — the University of Colorado in Boulder. They were called Magic Music.
Haunted by their music for decades after and curious about whatever happened to them, Lee set out to track 'em down, find out and maybe even get the band together again. The result is a documentary called 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie and it's won many, many awards in film festivals. It's opening this weekend in New York and the following weekend in Los Angeles and so on and so on in other cities.
Lee gave me a preview and I really liked it…a lot. A story about a group that hit the big time would not be without interest but this tale of a band that never quite went the distance is somehow more intriguing. I'm about the same age as Lee and like him, grew up in the turmoil of the sixties and Vietnam and Nixon and a lot of fumbling-about to find one's values and to reconcile them with finding a place in the world. Every one of my friends had to weigh living for the present against living for the future and we often struggled with being what your heart told you you should be versus your brain telling you what you could be.
So the film's about all that and it's also about Lee trying to reunite the guys and get their story told…and I guess also to make sure their unreleased tracks finally, a half century later, got released. If any of this sounds even vaguely interesting to you, check it out. You can find out where it's opening near you and learn more about it on this page. You can also watch the trailer there or — to save you a click — you can watch it below…
There seems to be no particularly vigorous denial out there that Les Moonves of CBS didn't do all or most of the abusive things he's been accused of doing. He's admitted it — perhaps not as explicitly as some might like but you have to figure he has lawyers advising him on how not to make things any worse for himself than they already are. The controversy now seems to be about what should happen to the guy.
CBS Corporate is engaging experts and more lawyers to determine the scope of his wrongdoing. It probably extends beyond the actions laid out in the Ronan Farrow article but how far? That may lead to the answer to the bigger question of What now? When a Louis C.K. or Jeffrey Tambor is disappeared, it impacts one show or one company or one small cranny of show business. Moonves was one of the most powerful people in television. Having given Moonves all that power, CBS has a duty to police the improper ways he abused it but they also have a duty not to nuke their own company and in the process hurt others.
What should they do? Beats the heck outta me.
This is not a perfect analogy but it's worth bringing up: Some years ago, I had a wonderful physician. He was a lovely man and he was as good a doctor as you could ever find: Kind, compassionate, intuitive and very, very good at his job. He was the kind of doctor who could look at you and know what was wrong before you even listed your symptoms.
One day, he did something very, very wrong. It wasn't the same thing of which Moonves stands accused but it was in the ballpark. In my physician's case, it was inexplicable and I mean by him. It was like demons had taken possession of his brain for two minutes and only two minutes…and it was not part of a pattern of misbehavior. Perhaps it could have become that but it was a one-time incident…which was still one time too many for the Medical Board. He lost his license to practice medicine and I lost the best doctor I ever had. A lot of his patients felt that way and while we turned out in support of this man, our pleas were denied. From the standpoint of the Board, he had to go — period, end of discussion. Even his victim felt the punishment was too severe.
I kept discussing it, if only with myself. It seemed wrong to throw all that medical expertise and wisdom away. I asked his successor why there wasn't some way the ousted medico could continue to advise or perhaps practice under controlled supervision. "Unfortunately," my new doctor replied, "It doesn't work like that. It should but it doesn't."
What Mr. Moonves did must be stopped…and I wonder to what extent it has been. The sheer existence of the MeToo movement and the public shaming and penalties have doubtlessly made some powerful men think, "I'd better knock off that shit." Even the vilest, most immoral boor can clean up his act if he's afraid of getting caught. I'm not suggesting they all will or have but some of them have to have stopped for fear of winding up like Harvey Weinstein.
This week, somebody must have stopped because he thought, "If Les Moonves can get caught, so can I." Too bad there's no way to measure how many have but it'll be interesting to see how many men (or even women) of power are henceforth caught harassing less-powerful employees in 2018. I'd like to think there will be none but then this also occurs to me: The punishment for the misdeeds of Moonves may turn out to be him taking his zillions of dollars and living the rest of his life in one of his many homes doing all the same things except not running a TV network. CBS and its stockholders may suffer more.
I'm not leading up here to any recommendation because I don't have one. But I thought there was a more constructive way to punish my former doctor than what they did and I can't help but think there's a better procedure to spank the Les Moonveses of the world than to give them golden parachutes and early retirement.
Sad to hear of the passing of animation producer-director Bob Curtis. And it's also sad when I think that though I worked with Bob on many shows, I never really got to know the man well. He was the producer of two seasons of Garfield and Friends and one of Mother Goose & Grimm, two shows I worked on for CBS. For the same studio (Film Roman) he did the same fine job on other programs, most notably the acclaimed Bobby's World.
He was very skilled at his job and though shouldering great responsibility and putting in long hours, I never heard him yell, never saw him lose his temper. I also do not recall not being pleased with anything he ever did. All of that added up to him being liked and respected by his colleagues. Condolences to Jeudi (his wife of sixty years) and to his sons Jeff and Kevin. He was one of the best.
I have the feeling that tomorrow, we're going to see Rudy Giuliani walk back, deny or otherwise reverse all eleven of the contradictory positions he took today. By the weekend, he will have been on so many sides of every issue, he will have himself surrounded.
Sorry I've been away. I was coping with this crisis and that crisis and one or two others, plus my power was out again. All should be well soon.
Hey, here's a real early heads up! for those of you in the L.A. area who yearn to see my fave musical group, Big Daddy. They're the guys I wrote about here and here and other places on this blog. They'll be playing at Vitello's Restaurant in Studio City the evening of Saturday, September 22. Yeah, I know that's a long way away but you can reserve a good table now and apparently a number of readers of this blog are doing so. It's a fun, inexpensive evening in a good restaurant and you might want to get tickets now. Yes, I will be there.
I am still working on my piece on the late Steve Ditko. There's so much to say that it's taking a while to chop it down to a proper size.
I tweeted the other day that there was a time when Rudy Giuliani seemed like an admirable man. I was deluged with denials of this, some even from my pro-Trump acquaintances. One of them thinks Trump is an innocent man but with Rudy as his lawyer, he'll likely get the chair. Anyway, I abhor a lot of the things Mr. Giuliani did as Mayor of New York and more since but I stand by my belief that during and after 9/11, he did some very good things and that he reminded a lot of people (who needed the reminder) what courage looked like. Which may make his current behavior even less forgivable than it already is.
Today, we seem to be up to "Trump absolutely, positively did not collude with Russia…and when there's no wiggle room left in that denial, it won't matter because it was perfectly fine that he did."
And by the way: If we ever had a prominent male Democrat who was known to dress in drag, there would not be single prominent Republican who would not denounce the guy as a moral degenerate who was unfit to serve in government in any capacity other than maybe as a decoy to ensnare rapists in public parks. And that's without all the baggage of Giuliani's marital escapades. But I still think he was a leader on 9/11, certainly more than some other prominent folks.
In California, work has commenced on the $100 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train. This is the same project that used to be the $75 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train and before that, it was the $60 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train and started life as the $40 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train. This article asks if it'll ever be completed and I can answer that. The answer is, obviously, no…but by the time it's abandoned, it may become the $150 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train and then the $200 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train and then the $300 billion Los Angeles…
A reader named Joey Fisher sent me five questions…
Did you really eat lunch yesterday in the CBS Commissary?
You seemed to have had such a great time at Comic-Con in San Diego. Why don't you go to more conventions?
You're working now for the videogame company Blizzard that makes some of my favorite games. Why didn't you tell us about this?
When will your long-awaited jumbo biography of Jack Kirby come out?
When will the next Pogo book be out?
Those are his questions. Here are my answers…
Yes. In fact, I was lunching with my occasional employer Marty Krofft. In case I haven't made it clear here, I have lots of stories about producers I've worked for who were crooks and/or incompetents and I am not shy about telling them, especially when I omit their names. None of those stories are about Sid and Marty Krofft. I've worked for them on and off since the mid-seventies and I thought (and still think) they're terrific.
I don't go to more conventions for two reasons. One is that I went through a period of approximately five years when my mother was dying, followed by a period of about equal length when my friend Carolyn was doing likewise. During that span, I turned down most invites to go outta town so a lot of cons that invited me stopped inviting me. Secondly, most cons seem to have no idea what to do with me. They expect a guest to come in, set up a display and sell things, maybe even including autographs. I don't like selling things and I get bored writing my name over and over. So unless they want me to do a lot of panels (or I want the free trip to that city for other reasons), there's not much point to me being there. At the moment, the next convention I have on my calendar is WonderCon, which is March 29-31.
I dunno. I think I have more interesting things to write about than what of mine you may soon be able to purchase or watch. Like I said, I don't like selling things. And I think it looks terrible to make one's entire Internet presence into one continual infomercial for one's self. When others (like publishers) remind me, I do it but it usually does not occur to me.
Hoping for Christmas of 2019. Right now, I'm in the process of chopping out some sections where I wandered significantly off-topic and wrote about things peripheral to Jack. Those hunks will probably turn up here or somewhere else but I've decided they don't belong in the book.
Amazon is saying they'll have it October 9 and it'll probably be sooner than that. The insides are all printed and I know this because I actually have a printed, finished copy. It takes a while to bind and ship them all but 10/9 should be easy. This, I oughta be promoting here more so here's the cover…
It's a wonderful book with a fine foreword by Jake Tapper and two whole years of my favorite cartoonist at the height of his talents. Doesn't get any better than this.
