Last week on Ken Levine's popular podcast, you could hear Part One of a two-part interview with me and we talked about my work in comics with Jack Kirby and how I broke into TV writing. Ken has just posted this week's episode, which is Part Two. On it, we talk about maybe the weirdest job I ever had — the infamous series, Pink Lady and Jeff — and about casting voices for cartoon shows.
And while you're over there, listen to some episodes of Hollywood and Levine that don't have me on them. Ken is very good telling stories from his own amazing careers (plural) and he's good at interviewing his talented colleagues who guest with him. Highly recommended.
We're going day-by-day reliving an eleven-day trip that I recently took with my great friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 4, you might do well to read about Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3.
Friday, May 25, 2018
The Philadelphia Marriott was crawling with cartoonist friends. Every trip through the lobby, I'd run into some. When we went up to pick up our badges, we ran into some. In the elevator, a woman who was not with our group asked me, "What kind of convention is this?" I told her it was a gathering of the National Cartoonists Society and she sighed and said, "I hope no one draws an insulting cartoon about me."
Amber and I had planned to do sight-seeing for part of the day today as there are many fine sights to see in Philadelphia and we saw only a few our last visit here. But I needed to do some foot repair and not walk a lot, and Amber still didn't have an appropriately fancy dress for the appropriately fancy dinner the next night — something that would look proper alongside me in my tux and divert attention from the moth holes in my tuxedo.
We brunched at the Reading Terminal Market. She had fried rice. I surveyed the countless offerings and decided on the same thing I had the last time I was there — the turkey at a stand called The Original Turkey. Terrific food, well worth traveling 2,718 miles from my home. Then she went off in search of The Greatest Dress in the World and I went back to my room to attend to sore feet and to finish up a script that should have been done by half-past Vegas.
I wrote for a while. Amber occasionally texted me a video from a Macy's changing room of her trying on a dress to get my opinion — certainly one of the reasons the Internet was invented. She picked out a great one.
The NCS had a casual-dress welcome party/dinner that evening and we all cheered as an award was presented there to veteran cartoonist Arnold Roth. I'm of the mind that every organization that gives out awards gives out way too many of them but this one made so many people happy (not just Arnold) that it seemed very right.
I spent a lot of time that evening and over the next few days with Nick Meglin. He was funny and altogether Nick-like and none of us, of course, imagined that soon there would be no more Nick Meglin. The time we spent together now seems very special and I'm very grateful for it.
Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of Amber and Mark's Excellent Adventure with our special guest, Jake Tapper.
Sigh. Another obit. Jerry Maren, who apparently was the last surviving actor to play a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, has died at the age of 98. Being in that film was an impressive credit but some of us are equally impressed that the same year, he appeared in At the Circus with The Marx Brothers.
And he worked his entire life, though you may not have always known it was him inside some rather odd costumes — like portraying denizens of McDonaldland in many commercials. Jerry stood 4'3" but he wasn't just hired for his height or lack thereof. He was a real good actor.
He was one of several "little people" who played the character of Little Oscar for the Oscar Mayer company. He was the main guy who played Buster Brown for the Buster Brown shoe company. He was a kind of mascot on the original Gong Show. He was in the famous film Superman and the Mole Men starring George Reeves. He really had an impressive career.
I met and talked with Jerry on several occasions, mainly when we both showed up for one of Frank Ferrante's performances as Groucho Marx. The last twenty years or so, Jerry was one of the few people you could meet who'd actually been in a Marx Brothers movie…but that was just one of hundreds of great name-drops he had. He'd worked with half of show business, being active in the business from around 1938 to 2010.
His career and life took a definite downturn in 2011 when Elizabeth Barrington, his wife since 1975, passed away. She was around the same height and often worked in films as a stand-in or stuntwoman for child actors. They were a delightful couple.
Thinking about Jerry reminds me of a moment at one of those Hollywood Shows where one can meet movie and TV stars and buy autographs. Mickey Rooney was a featured guest and he was behaving like Mickey Rooney, meaning that he was yelling and getting upset about nothing and yammering about things that no one else could understand. At one point, for reasons invisible to others, he announced he was leaving and stormed out of the hall. Someone said, "There goes the oldest, shortest great actor in the room."
And someone else pointed to Jerry Maren, barely visible behind a table where he was sitting and signing photos…and the someone else (who I think was me) said, "Wrong both times."
I just turned on my TV and caught a little of some show that amazingly did not have Steve Harvey on it. Is that even legal? I hope nothing's happened to him.
You're reading about an eleven-day trip that I recently took with my terrific friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 3, you might want to read about Day 1 and Day 2.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Checking out of the Excalibur Hotel in Vegas turned out to be not much easier than checking in but we were somehow outta there and heading for the airport by 9:30 AM, just like it said on my schedule. We grabbed a bit o' breakfast at the terminal, hopped on an American Airlines flight for Philadelphia, landed, got a cab and were at the Philadelphia Marriott by 8 PM.
It's a very nice, well-run hotel though our bathroom had the same, admittedly-minor problem that the Excalibur had and that's been true of just about every hotel I've been in for the last few years. Why are folks who design showers so unaware that people who take showers need someplace to put their bar of soap, their little bottle of shampoo, their little bottle of conditioner, etc.? The hotel even supplies versions of these little condiments for your scalp but rarely gives you a place to have them at the ready when you're wet and naked and have soap in your eyes and you need to grope for them. Our hotel in New York would turn out to have the same failing.
Note To Every Hotel In The World: They sell these at WalMart, they sell these at KMart, they sell them at Target, they sell them everywhere and they cost under $20 and can be installed in under three seconds. I do not want your tiny soaps and your tiny bottles of lotion. I can bring my own big soap and my own travel size potions and I need someplace to put them, whereas I really can't pack my own shower caddy. Thank you.
My feet weren't up for a lot of walking that night in Philadelphia so we had dinner at a Maggiano's across the street. I'm not usually fond of Italian food as prepared by chain restaurants but Maggiano's is awfully good, especially when it's right across the street and your feet hurt.
One disappointment today. Next Wednesday in New York, I was supposed to record my second appearance on Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. The first one (which you can hear here) was done with me in Los Angeles and Gilbert in Manhattan along with his co-host, Frank Santopadre. But Gilbert's wife Dara e-mailed me with more apologies than necessary that Gilbert had to go do a job out of town that week…so we'll have to do an in-person show another time, hopefully soon.
Have I explained why we went to Philadelphia? I'm a member of the National Cartoonists Society and every year on or around the Memorial Day weekend, the NCS holds its annual get-together, which used to always be in New York but now rotates around the United States. It's called the Reuben Weekend because its centerpiece is a fancy, black-tie banquet where cartoonists in formal wear present awards to one another and one person wins the society's highest honor, the Reuben Award. There are also parties and seminars and shop talk and an awful lot of cartooning camaraderie. And we're also here for another reason: To eat.
Last year: Amber and the Liberty Bell.
Last September when we were in Baltimore for the Baltimore Comic-Con, Amber and I and our pal Marv Wolfman made a one-day train trip to Philly to do some sightseeing, to see our pal Frank Ferrante in a play and to lunch at the Reading Terminal Market. As I explained here, the Reading Terminal Market may well be my favorite place to eat in this country. Here's another little video tour of the place for those of you into Serious Food Porn…
A few weeks later, Amber and I were at the New York Comic-Con and I ran into Bill Morrison, who is both the new editor of MAD and the current prez of the NCS. Bill told me he'd just signed the deal for the 2018 Reuben Weekend to be in Philadelphia. I instantly thought, "Gee, that would be an opportunity to eat again at the Reading Terminal Market." Then I thought how silly it would be to go all that way and spend all that money just to have a couple of great lunches.
I was thinking that as Bill said, "We're going to be at the Philadelphia Marriott."
I asked, "The Philadelphia Marriott that's directly across the street from the Reading Terminal Market?" He said yes and I said, "Amber and I will be there." Tune in tomorrow to hear how we were there along with Bill, Sergio Aragonés, Tom Richmond, Mike Peters, Sam Viviano and dozens of other fine cartoonists, plus the (now, sadly) late Nick Meglin. One of my last memories of Nick is showing him around the Reading Terminal Market.
Here's an oral history of The Bob Newhart Show. And if you have an hour and a half to spare, you might enjoy this video of Bob being interviewed by Conan O'Brien.
I'm reporting about an eleven-day trip that I recently took with my lovely friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 2, you might want to read about Day 1.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Amber and I spent the second of our two days in Vegas roaming the floor of the Licensing Expo. For much of this, we were joined by two sets of friends, which I'm listing here in order of appearance. One set consisted of Frank Ferrante and his exquisite companion, Dreya Weber. Dreya is a producer, director, performer and choreographer specializing in aerial (i.e., off-the-ground, dangling in the air) choreography. Frank is…well, if you read this blog, you know who Frank is.
Also roaming the floor with us were Charlie and Sherry Frye, who together form Charlie Frye and Company, one of the best acts I've ever seen — juggling, magic, physical comedy…
Here. Rather than tell you what they do, I'll show you a little of it, also (like this morning's early video clip) from an old Jerry Lewis Telethon. Charlie's the guy who does the heavy lifting. Sherry's the beautiful Company who makes him do it…
In addition to being able to do all that stuff, Charlie's also a pretty good cartoonist so he was excited when I introduced him to Jim Davis over at the Garfield booth. So was Frank, who did some voice work for me on The Garfield Show. We covered the hall but I occasionally broke off from the pack to complete the last of my scheduled meetings with certain folks about certain projects.
One tip: If you ever visit the Licensing Expo, it's a fun thing to browse but if you want to talk business with anyone, you need to make appointments with them weeks in advance. And if you want to go at all, you need a good, working pair of feet because there's an awful lot of walking involved.
That was my problem. A few weeks ago, I somehow fractured the little toe on my left foot. I haven't a clue how or when this happened but it got to hurting and when I went to my podiatrist, he did that x-ray thing, gave me the bad news and slapped a fracture shoe on that foot. A fracture shoe is like a rubber sandal with Velcro® straps. It prevents the injured toe from having any pressure put on it but it's not good for the foot in other ways, especially when you're walking all over Las Vegas. I applied some drugstore, over-the-counter remedies (mostly gel-pads) and was able to lessen the pain but it would remain a major distraction and problem for much of the trip.
That evening, Amber, Frank, Dreya and I journeyed to the Rio Hotel to see Penn and Teller's show and to meet those two men — and I guess I have to stop and tell a story here.
A few years ago, I was in talks with the CW Network about a possible show for them. In particular, I was dealing with a friend of mine, Kevin Levy, who is the Executive Vice-President of Program Planning, Scheduling, and Acquisitions. I was kinda hoping they'd buy a show idea from me and it would run longer than his job title.
It was kind of a game show targeted for a certain time slot on their schedule and at one point, the question arose as to who would be the host if it went forward. I suggested my pal Jonathan Ross, who is very big on TV in Great Britain…and he's also a huge fan of Jack Kirby, which in my book counts for a lot. Kevin wasn't all that familiar with Jonathan's work and asked where he and the others in his office might see Jonathan in his natural habitat — in front of a TV camera. I suggested they take a look at Penn & Teller Fool Us, a series that had a brief run in 2011 on ITV in the U.K. All the episodes, I told them, were up on YouTube.
Kevin and his crew checked them out and liked Jonathan — but they also liked the show he was hosting. Kevin called me and asked a whole bunch o' questions about it and said he was thinking of seeing if the rights to run those episodes in the U.S. were available. They were…and this kind of demonstrates why Kevin has a much longer title than I do. He knows what CW watchers want to watch on CW. The old episodes did well, they led to new episodes…and Penn & Teller Fool Us has recently completed taping their fifth season, which is their fourth for American television.
When I mentioned to Kevin that I was heading for Vegas, he offered to arrange for me (and however many guests I had) to be comped to their show and to go backstage before to meet the stars so they could thank me for my (minor) role in getting their show on the air here. I think it's been exaggerated but hey, free tickets are free tickets. Penn plays stand-up bass before the show until about twenty minutes before it starts, and the two of them linger outside after for photos and autographs…so they only had a brief window of time to give us.
The four of us were taken backstage to a place called The Monkey Room decorated with Penn & Teller memorabilia and almost immediately, Teller came in, all dressed to go on stage and curious about this person their manager (I think) had told them they oughta meet. I was impressed with what a smart, polite man he is…and how we quickly fell into talking about the show and the "rules" of presenting magic on television.
The directors and editors of any TV show are sitting there with dozens of ways to create magic that is not actually performed on stage, or ways to make a trick more impressive than it actually is. If in the midst of a trick, the magician makes a move he hopes the audience will not notice, the director can shoot it from an angle that guarantees the home audience will not see it. The editor can cut around it so it isn't even there. There are other tricks which can be done and it is not ethical to employ them, though some shows have.
This is an area that especially interests me. I've occasionally worked on shows where magic has been performed and once got into a huge argument with an Emmy-winning TV director who shall remain nameless (it was this guy) who wanted to "enhance" a magic trick by editing out the ten seconds when the magician did most of the sneaky stuff.
I've been involved in many discussions with magicians about this and about when you cross a line of honesty with a viewer. It is not dishonest for a performer to say "I'm putting the three of clubs in my pocket" when he in fact has already switched that card for another. It is dishonest for him to say "We are employing no camera trickery" when that's only true by a very odd, disingenuous definition of "camera trickery." Some shows have not only crossed that line but made it vanish altogether and I was pleased that Teller seemed to share my disdain for those who cheat that way. I wish we'd had more time to talk about it.
Penn came in. We only had a few minutes before he had to go don his stage wardrobe but I told the two of them the story of my tiny role in causing CW to bring Fool Us back from the dead. Everyone was introduced and shook hands and then we were gifted with Penn & Teller swag and escorted out to great seats in the Penn & Teller Showroom and we saw a very good Penn & Teller show with an impressive percentage of Penn & Teller bits I hadn't seen before. Amber — who had never seen them perform until that night — said, "I wish we'd gone backstage after because I would have been more impressed to meet them once I knew how good they are at what they do."
So that was Wednesday. Join us tomorrow as we fly to Philadelphia…and really nothing else happens except that Gilbert Gottfried flakes on me. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.
Anyone I know who's skilled at Wikipedia? An actress friend of mine had her page disappear and needs some help getting it restored. Drop me a note if you can and want to help.
Sam Viviano, who was MAD's art director for an awfully long time, writes about what Nick Meglin meant to him. There are a lot of people — some, sadly no longer with us — who could pen similar essays on how their lives were made better and richer by Nick.
Matt Yglesias explains the new theory of presidential power that Trump's White House is advancing…and why it would give dictatorial powers to our Chief Exec. No one who is for this would have been for this if Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had proposed this while they were in office.
Daniel Larison explains why Trump's tariffs and trade wars are bad ideas that will wind up helping no one be better off.
Initially when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, we heard that 64 people had been killed. More recently, we're hearing that the actual number is 4,645 which is quite a jump. So which is it? Probably neither, says Washington Post truth seeker Glenn Kessler. He thinks it's more like 1,000 which is still horrifying but not as horrifying as 4,645 but still indicative of a government that doesn't care about human life.
Here's another view of John McCain, this one from a reporter who has covered him a lot. And lastly…
Since he took residency in the Oval Office, Trump has uttered 3,251 false or misleading statements. You know…in a way, that's kind of impressive.
My lovely friend Amber and I are back from eleven days and ten nights in Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Manhattan. Those days, nights and cities were all too busy to allow me to file contemporaneous reports…so taking it one day at a time — Hey, good name for a sitcom! — I'm going to do it here. Come on along and join us on…
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
When I fly to Vegas, the odds of my luggage arriving on the same flight are about the same as the odds of winning big on Keno. This trip, Amber and I got lucky — at Luggage, not Keno. We got there with our bags but without much sleep the night before.
It was not the comfiest of flights. All the way there, I was in a middle seat with Amber snoozing to my right, which was fine…but there was this Vomiting Supermodel to my left. You have no idea how unattractive an attractive lady can be when she spends an entire 50-minute flight making grotesque moans, filling an airsick bag and apologizing to all around for making grotesque moans and filling an airsick bag.
"This always happens to me when I fly," she explained during a brief pause in the grotesque moans that sounded like a water buffalo giving birth, not that I've ever actually witnessed that. "It happens when I'm a passenger in a car too," she added, "but not when I'm driving." She was changing flights in Vegas to head elsewhere and I suggested she ask if they'd let her fly that plane.
Amber and I cabbed it to the Excalibur Hotel where, at any hour, there's always a long line at check-in. Fortunately, I'd had the good sense to sign up for their Automatic Check-In Service where you claim your room online, then you go to a kiosk and it dispenses your room keys. Sounds great, right? Well, it might be when the key dispensers are working. Fortunately, there was only a moderate wait at the special line they'd set up to service the people who were smart enough to sign up for the Automatic Check-In.
I asked one desk clerk, "Does it work when it works?" She said, "I couldn't say. I'm new here and I haven't seen it work yet." If a nickel slot machine was busted, you know they'd have had it fixed faster than you could say "Bugsy Siegel."
Upon reaching our room, Amber — operating on two hours of sleep — promptly went beddy-bye. I — functioning on almost four — hiked over to the Mandalay Bay to pick up our badges for the main reason we were in town…the Licensing Expo!
What, you may well ask, is the Licensing Expo? Well, I'll tell you. It's a convention of folks who can mainly be divided into two categories. You have your Licensors, who are people and/or companies who own properties that they exploit on t-shirts, dolls, games, posters and other kinds of what they all seem to call "merch," that word being short for "merchandise." The other category are the Licensees — those who buy the rights to exploit the brand names, characters and various properties of the Licensors. Each year at the Licensing Expo, Licensors and Licensees get together for an odd version of The Dating Game that could potentially result in mutually-profitable deals.
I am in neither category but many of those who engage my services are present so I have little biz-type meetings with them to discuss current and possible projects. The whole event looks a lot like this promotional video which, since it was released before this year's Expo, probably features video shot at last year's…
They wouldn't give me Amber's badge but I got mine and wandered around in the hall for an hour or two, getting a few of my biz-type meetings done. It's a pretty big room full of exhibits and celebrities and people in weird costumes and I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't have to rush upstairs soon and host six panels.
I attend the Expo every three years or so and I've become very skilled at separating hype from reality. I met one gent, for instance, who was promoting a new cartoon series he created that does not, by any reasonable definition of word "exist," exist. Still, if you saw his booth and heard his sales pitch, you might not know that. His characters recently beat The Simpsons for Name Recognition according to a recent poll, probably of his immediate family. Roaming the hall, I saw a lot of illusory successes, a lot of genuine well-known properties and a startling number of characters designed by Jack Kirby.
The thing I enjoyed most was in the Expo Lobby, outside the main exhibit hall. There, they'd set up a reasonable facsimile of the street and front stoop we all know from Sesame Street. And there, sitting on a stool for most of the day (and part of the next one) was David Rudman, the current custodian-actor of Cookie Monster.
I love Cookie Monster. Always have, always will. I think he's one of the funniest, most wonderful creatures ever created in any medium and if the guy who took over the role from Frank Oz wasn't doing right by him, I would be damning his name on this blog three times a week. You know how I feel about Trump? He would be the second-biggest threat to decency in the world today. Joyously, Mr. Rudman is doing C.M. as well as any human being today could do him. He sounds right, he acts right, he even ad-libs absolutely in character.
I already knew this but I got the chance to witness it up close at the Expo. I just stood there for maybe a half-hour, watching and listening as Mr. Rudman and the blue, shaggy superstar with the goo-goo-googly eyes worked the line. People — a few small kids but an awful lot of big ones in my age range — queued up for a few moments and a selfie opportunity with Cookie Monster. Rudman was perfectly "on" the whole time I watched, and also later and the next morn when I passed by, giving all comers an expert performance.
He was sitting right there in full-view with one of his hands operating Cookie Monster's mouth and the other serving as one of Cookie Monster's mitts…but the effect is so total, so complete that you can ignore that human being sticking out of the monster you came to see. And hour after hour, he did that gravelly voice which sounds hard on the throat but I guess isn't on his. I just watched one person after another have a delightful serving of quality time with Cookie Monster — an experience that they will never forget.
I entertained the notion of getting in line but the end of it would have put me out of eavesdropping/observing range for too long…and anyway, I really wanted five minutes with David Rudman more than I wanted the two minutes with Cookie Monster they were offering. Four Comic-Cons ago, I got a photo and about forty seconds with David and C.M. as one of my panels followed one he did with Eric Jacobson, another expert Muppeteer who does as-good-as-it-gets mimicry of others' characters. I only briefly got to tell them both how, because of my years working for Sid and Marty Krofft and my years directing cartoon voices, I think I really, really understand how difficult it is to do what they do…and how well I think they do it. I am now more impressed than I was then and I was pretty damn impressed then.
In my many trips to Las Vegas, I have seen many great shows by some of the world's greatest entertainers. I can't think of one I enjoyed more than watching Cookie Monster greeting his public.
I hung out for a while with Jim "Garfield" Davis and another friend who takes good care of a famous cat — Don Oriolo, guardian of Felix — and attended a cocktail party thrown by King Features. I don't drink but I do eat little delicious shrimp hors d'oeuvres…and I had a lovely conversation there with C.J. Kettler, the newly-installed president of that fine operation. Our chat got interrupted but we agreed to continue it later that week in Philadelphia, where we were both heading for the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Weekend.
Finally, Amber texted that she had awoken from her coma and I trammed back to take her out for some of that glamorous Vegas night life. We staggered to a Walgreens for supplies and grabbed barely-edible burgers at the only bad Johnny Rocket's I've ever found.
We were both still exhausted so as we chewed on our putative hamburgers, we stared at each other and said and/or thought, "This is just the first day. Can we possibly get through ten more days of this?" Reading this report, you may be thinking the same thing but it'll be better when we (you, Amber and I) aren't exhausted. So get some sleep and tune in tomorrow for more in Las Vegas with our special guests, Penn and Teller.
Everyone in the extended family that is MAD Magazine is shocked this morning at the news that Nick Meglin died this morning of a sudden heart attack. Nick worked on MAD for close to half a century, starting as an Idea Man and Writer, moving to an Associate Editor position and then to being co-editor (with John Ficarra) and then, upon his retirement in 2004, becoming a Consulting Editor. Given his wicked sense of humor, Insulting Editor might have been a better title.
Many of us are especially jarred because we spent last weekend with Nick at the National Cartoonists Society convention in Philadelphia. I had lunch with Nick a week ago today and a week ago tomorrow, moderated a MAD panel in which he participated. He was alert and funny and seemed like a guy in good health for a man of 82.
Since leaving regular duties on MAD, he has mostly been involved in writing musicals and was looking forward to the opening of the stage version of Grumpy Old Men (based on the movie) at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine in August. Nick did the lyrics for that show and for the musical Tim and Scrooge, a sequel to Dickens' A Christmas Carol, he wrote both book and lyrics.
But, getting back to MAD: I want you all to know this about my friend Nick. The sense of humor that permeated that magazine from about 1957 into the eighties was mainly Nick's. The editor of MAD for much of that period, Al Feldstein, was a skilled craftsman at producing a magazine on time and in giving the best possible presentation to the work of his freelance writers and artists…but Feldstein wasn't all that funny.
Meglin was funny. He wrote much of MAD's editorial material (intros, ads, etc.). He rewrote or punched-up articles that were in need of extra laughs. And he recognized comedic talent in writers who submitted work and encouraged them and guided them. At least half of MAD's best writers during that period were "found" by Nick as were many of its artists. When I researched my now-outta print book, MAD Art, I interviewed just about everyone who'd ever worked for the magazine and was still around to be interviewed. A lot of those folks told me that had it not been for Nick, they never would have had their proud association with the magazine.
I've talked to a few of them again today. They're all very sad about this news and so am I.
This should be the last Mushroom Soup Day for a while. I'm home from a long trip: Amber and I did two nights in Las Vegas, four nights in Philadelphia and four more in New York. We saw shows, ate at amazing eateries, socialized with great friends and I even snuck in some biz-type meetings. I'll tell you all about the adventure over the next few days. Right now, I'm going to get into my own bed and sleep 'til Sunday.
