Hey, it's the next installment of our play-by-play coverage of the eleven-day trip that I took recently with my fabulous friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 8, you really oughta read the chapters on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, my Philadelphia Addenda and Day 7.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Let me warn you at the top: This is a real long post. I mean real long.

Dick Cavett once said that when he first moved to New York, he realized an amazing thing about it. You could go to bed there and in the morning when you woke up, you'd think, "Hey, if I walk outside, I'll be in New York!" I still sometimes feel that way when I'm in the city.

On those visits, Breakfast always seems elusive and gets supplanted by Early Lunch. Amber and I met my pals Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin at Sardi's, where Jim's prominence as a theatrical performer is noted with a caricature on the wall. Jim and Steve are a splendid union of two very talented people who seem to know absolutely everyone in their profession, their profession being The Theatre.

The great thing about knowing performers is that I usually don't have to tell you about them. I can show them to you by embedding a YouTube video. Here's nine minutes of Jim and Steve singing about their relationship…

I knew Jim before he met Steve and now cannot imagine him without his longtime partner. The four of us sat and dined and talked and talked and talked and had a very good time.

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Because lunch ran so late. I wasn't all that hungry as it neared time to head uptown for our evening's entertainment. Neither was Amber so we decided to each get a slice of pizza to tide us over until after the show. We went to Joe's Pizza on Broadway in Times Square, which many will tell you sells the best individual slices in town. She had pepperoni and I had plain cheese and they were pretty good. Then we took the subway to Lincoln Center and got there with enough time to spare that Amber asked, "Is there somewhere around here where we could get two more slices?"

I had Yelp! show me what was nearby and most of the pizza spots seemed like places where it's a whole pie or nothing. But a restaurant called Francesco Pizzeria on Columbus Avenue was described as a "slice joint" and I thought I recalled it getting a good review from Dave Portnoy, who does those YouTube pizza reviews that I occasionally post.

I was right. He gave it an 8.1 out of 10 and I trust Dave. Unfortunately, his guest reviewer was Dr. Oz who gave it an 8 and I wouldn't trust Dr. Oz to tell me where to buy aspirin. The slices we got there were good — Amber liked hers more than the one she had at Joe's but we got pie that was a lot greasier than what Dave and the alleged Doctor sampled. Mine required two napkins' worth of blotting.

Full of cheese 'n' dough, we strode back to Lincoln Center to see the new revival of My Fair Lady. Dividing line, please…

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I was really looking forward to this. The national touring company of the original production of My Fair Lady was the first real Broadway-type show I ever saw. I had the songs memorized by age ten…but that was the last time I saw it performed on stage. It is not a cheap show to do, requiring as it does a very big cast and very lavish sets and costumes. Most local groups simply cannot afford to do it, or at least to do it right.

[CORRECTION ADDED YEARS LATER: I read what I wrote again and realized I'd seen it performed on stage in the eighties. Rex Harrison was doing a "farewell tour" in it so everyone could say they saw him in it…and cringe a bit when he forgot lyrics.]

I enjoyed 97% of this new production tremendously. The costumes and sets were superb. The cast was excellent. Harry Hadden-Paton is good enough as Higgins to make you forget Rex Harrison. Lauren Ambrose is good enough as Eliza Doolittle to make you forget either Julie Andrews or Audrey Hepburn, depending on which Eliza you have embedded in your brain. The orchestra does full justice to the score.

And it has Diana Rigg as Higgins' mother. I am just the right age to have loved her as Mrs. Peel on The Avengers — the *real* Avengers, not those usurpers of the name led by Captain America. Mrs. Higgins has never been a large part and Ms. Rigg probably learned all her lines in about twenty minutes. But she also scored with every damned one of them and the applause at her entrance made me quite happy.

The show also has Norbert Leo Butz as Eliza's father, the role Stanley Holloway played on the stage and on the screen. Alfred P. Doolittle has two show-stopping numbers — "A Little Bit of Luck" and "Get Me To The Church on Time." The first was fairly routine this time out…charming but nothing spectacular. The "Church" number, though…oh, my goodness. The "Church" number.

This is kind of interesting. The original Broadway version of My Fair Lady in 1956 had no trouble securing a top director, a top production designer, a top costume designer, etc. But it took a while to find a choreographer. Several of the best ones turned it down because it wasn't a real dance show. It was mostly ballroom-style and a little of the English Music Hall style dancing in which Stanley Holloway excelled. There was no number where a choreographer could show off or be particularly innovative.

There is now. I suppose some would quibble that what they did with "Get Me To The Church" is out of character with the show itself, adding in acrobatics and rotating sets and drag queens (yes, drag queens) and extra, extra choruses. They might be right on some level but boy, was that number spectacular. Norbert Leo Butz is an actor first and a dancer second so he doesn't turn into a Fred Astaire wanna-be when he dances. He dances in character and at the end of the song, the place exploded. It was maybe the most exciting dance number I ever saw on a stage and Amber and I were on our feet along with the general consensus.

Everyone in the show is so perfect that you're probably wondering when I'm going to get to the 3% I didn't love. That's now but first I need to insert one of these…

Remember: You've been warned.

They changed the ending.  At the end of Pygmalion, the George Bernard Shaw play on which My Fair Lady was based, Eliza and Higgins do not fall in love.  She leaves him, though not as an act of defiance or anger.  She leaves for a reason that has been valid for any woman at any time in our history: She simply has not gotten any affection from the man.

Shaw wrote the play for a prominent actress of the day, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who as her name would suggest was not a woman of great independence.  She did however have a keen sense of what pleased audiences and she decided it would please audiences if Eliza and Higgins wound up together.  That was how the first English-language stage performances of Pygmalion went, much to Shaw's surprise.

He does not seem to have stopped this, though he did pen a note that was added to the published version of the play that said that Eliza wound up marrying Freddy Eynsford-Hill (the silly fop who in M.F.L. sings "On The Street Where You Live") and they moved in with Higgins for a time before she opened her own flower shop, a possibility mentioned earlier in the play.  Higgins remained a mentor to her and also the "confirmed old bachelor" that he said he was.

Shaw also suggested that Eliza stayed interested in Higgins and had some fantasies about dragging him "off his pedestal" and seeing him "making love like any common man." He also wrote that while her instinct told her not to marry Higgins, it also told her not to give him up and that he would remain "one of the strongest personal interests in her life."

Pygmalion was performed then with many variant endings, some honoring Shaw's views, some not. Shavian scholars have debated for years just what is the proper ending and indeed, the published text of the play was changed at least once during Shaw's lifetime. The 1938 British film starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller had an ambiguous ending, also not approved (but not stopped) by Shaw. Eliza flees Higgins' home to be with Freddy but then returns to Higgins and it is suggested she cannot or will not leave him.

The screenplay, probably more so than Shaw's original play, was the basis for Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady and it ends of course with Higgins realizing he has grown "accustomed to her face," getting off that pedestal as much as any "confirmed old bachelor" can…and Eliza deciding her future is with him. In the new version, she returns to him and it does seem to be leading up to them being a couple, as every audience member who knows My Fair Lady from any venue expects.

But then she runs away from him. In fact, she runs off the set and up an aisle of the audience, the suggestion being that she is running as far from him as is humanly possible. The End.

Advance word on this revival suggested that the traditional ending had to go because it did not match with current attitudes about women and Me Too and such. If you didn't know that was a concern, it's announced clearly when in one scene — and remember this show is set a long time ago in Edwardian London — a completely gratuitous band of women march through a public square with signs demanding the vote for women, which is of course never again mentioned in the show.

There is a separate argument as to whether plays set well in the past should reflect society then or now. Assuming we decide a play should not contain sensibilities we have outgrown, I would argue that the change in My Fair Lady is still wrong and unnecessary. My friend Shelly Goldstein wrote on her Facebook page this morning…

OK, let's really take a deep breath here. My Fair Lady is not sexist. Henry Higgins is supercilious & chauvinistic but he's no worse to Liza than he is to anyone else. The show isn't a romance and it isn't about sexism. It's about language, class and the choices one makes to rise above the station some would insist is your only option.

Professor Higgins in any version of this musical is about as far from a Harvey Weinstein as you could get and still be an asshole. He insists that Eliza be properly chaperoned when living in his home, doesn't show the slightest interest in wanting to touch her and is outraged at the suggestion of her father who is more than willing to pimp her out for money. There are those who have even argued that Higgins and Pickering are "confirmed old bachelors" because they're both gay. That's how total Higgins' disinterest is in molesting his fair lady but there's nothing in the text to indicate that either.

He treats her like a lower class person only because she talks like one and he argues that that alone is the reason she is but one half-notch above a beggar woman. He is anti-female only in the sense that he personally does not want one in his life, which even the most avowed advocate of women's equality would concede is his right. His song, "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?" is a parody of how foolish some men — most notably, a man who's never really had a woman in his life — can be about the opposite gender…and also about their own.

He makes a deal to pay her for participating in his little wager that he can pass her off as duchess by giving her the elocution lessons which she came to him to get. He could have made the exact same bet to pass her father or any lower-caste male off as a duke.

Her learning to talk like a proper lady was her idea, remember. He keeps his part of their bargain in every way. And in the traditional text of My Fair Lady, the climax is that this arrogant, I-don't-need-anyone person comes to realize that he needs her…and while she could leave him at that point — and has once — she chooses not to. Even in the year 2018, what is wrong with that story?

What to me is particularly amiss with the changed ending is that it just plain doesn't fit. I doubt you can take any decent play ever written, invert the last 10-15 seconds and have it apply. Imagine if in the closing moments of The Music Man, Harold Hill skips town with all the money he collected for band instruments, laughing at what suckers they are in River City. Or if you have a production of Death of a Salesman and every word is the same until the last second, as his funeral is letting out, Willy Loman turns up alive. If you want your My Fair Lady to end as this revival does, you should probably drop "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" and everything else that starts to humanize Higgins in the end.

You should also explain why she comes back to his home at all. The way it plays, she comes back because (I guess) she still has some feelings about him and needs to explore them…or something. But then he is nicer to her than he has ever been before and she responds by, without a word of explanation, sprinting into the audience and (I guess) out of his life.

So what happens next? She left him once and came back. Does she come back again? We don't know. People defending this ending are arguing it's merely restoring Shaw's ending…but Shaw didn't have Higgins expressing anything like the change of emotions he does near the end of My Fair Lady. Shaw's Higgins never changes one bit.

Does she wed Freddy? Shaw said she did but we get no indication that that happens either and even if it did, that's not an empowering act for a woman…marrying a man for whom she has not shown the slightest ounce of affection. And oh, yes — to have a place to live, they'll have to go persuade Higgins (the guy she ran away from like he was Dracula) to take them in.

Does she make something of herself? Does she open that florist shop that Higgins and Pickering were going to help fund? That would sure be a better life for her than remaining a prisoner of the gutters, condemned by every syllable she utters. As is, we don't know she doesn't wind up back there.

This version of the play doesn't say what becomes of her. It just kind of stops…and the audience we saw it with let out a big, unheard collective "huh?" It surprised them but not, it seemed to me, in a good way. Eliza running for dear life away from the man who taught her how to speak like royalty was not what the book Alan Jay Lerner wrote led up to.

We cheered the show of course because everything before that was so splendid. The performers certainly deserved the standing ovations they received…and if they'd trotted out the designers and choreographer and arrangers, we'd have cheered for them, too. I absolutely recommend you see this show if you can…and considering how hard it was for me to get tickets, I suspect it'll be there for a long time.

If you do see it, please write and explain to me how the ending fits that play or even any concept of how women should be treated today. I'm not even sure My Fair Lady should be about how women should be treated today but if it has to be, that wasn't it.

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The Tonys last night seem to have done okay in the ratings department. The show's never going to be a blockbuster there, given that its premise is to bestow awards for work most of America will never see to people most of America has never heard of. And if they have heard of them, it's mostly because they were on TV or in movies.

The hosts — Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles — were largely unobtrusive, making the night about others rather than themselves…which was fine. Many of the winners gave great, touching speeches and many of the winners were big surprises.

This was supposed to be the evening when Angels in America dominated the stage but that distinction instead went to The Band's Visit. Mean Girls was also supposed to win a lot and didn't. Often, the Tony for Best Book of a Musical is presented during the non-televised portion of the award-giving but it was part of the telecast this year, obviously because they thought Tina Fey might take it home.

My friend Shelly Goldstein came over and we watched the show in a skillful way. My TiVo was recording both the Tonys and also John Oliver's show over on HBO. We watched the first half-hour or so of award-bestowal, then hopped over to view Mr. Oliver's program. When we returned to viewing the Tonys, we were a half-hour behind the broadcast…so we could skip instantly ahead through commercials and station breaks. By the time that "pad" was used up, we were current with the Tonys, watching the last half-hour or so in real time. Thus, we watched a three-hour awards show and a half-hour of John Oliver in three hours. Who says time travel is impossible?

Having only seen a few of the nominees, we had no real opinions as to who was win-worthy or not but we were qualified to judge the show itself — it was okay — and the all-important question of which shows probably managed to make viewers say, "Hey, I want to see that!" The Band's Visit probably did that just by winning so many trophies. Frozen and Spongebob Squarepants didn't win much of anything but I bet they sold more tickets than some shows that did. (These are my views, by the way, not necessarily Shelly's.)

Carousel probably didn't because though the number was rousing and fun, you could watch it and still have no idea what the show was about; the same with Once on an Island. My Fair Lady is a marvelous show and I'll be discussing it here shortly…but they opted to cram three of its numbers into their allotted time and that meant slicing them down so much they lost all impact. Given how hard tickets already are to get, that might not matter much.

And the number from Mean Girls sure didn't make me want to buy a ticket but since I'm not teenage and female, maybe they don't care. It'll do fine without that Tony Bump.

All in all, a decent show especially when watched with Shelly Goldstein and great food from the Wood Ranch Grill. It's really the best way to watch the Tony Awards.

• Tonight when he should be prepping for the most important meeting of his life, Donald Trump is staying up, composing outraged tweets about the low-rated Tony Awards, that failing actor Robert DeNiro and all those gay people who stood and clapped for what DeNiro said.

On we go with this diary of the eleven-day trip that I took recently with my friendly friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 7, you really oughta read about what transpired on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 and my Philadelphia Addenda.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Left the Philadelphia Marriott at 10:15 AM, took a cab to the 30th Street Station, ate breakfast at a Dunkin' Donuts there (hey, not bad) and stumbled onto the 11:25 AM train to New York. That meant shlepping our bags down an escalator and onto the train. Despite having shipped all our soiled garments back to L.A., my suitcase weighed about as much as I do and a nice lady who was stronger than I am helped me get it up onto the overhead rack. Turns out she's a physical trainer and she lives in L.A., not far from Amber. By the time we got to Penn Station, the two of them were fast friends and I think/hope we'll be seeing more of her.

The train got into New York around 12:30, fifteen minutes early. Finding our way out of Penn Station, where many have perished in the same quest, used up the time we'd gained and then some. Through dumb luck, we lucked into daylight and one cab ride later, Amber and I were at our Times Square hotel, several hours before our room would be ready. Instead, we checked our bags, went out for some lunch and then took the subway down to Lincoln Center to pick up the tickets for our Tuesday evening theater-going.

I don't know how many of you know about House Seats. Here's a definition that I found online…

Every show on Broadway holds a certain number of seats offsale to the general public called "house seats." They are reserved for the authors, producers, cast, theater owners, etc. and are generally released 48 hours prior to each performance if not used.

Even if all the good seats for a show — or even all the seats, period — are sold, there may still be house seats. They hold some back just in case a Very Important Person or one of the stars' parents or someone with clout suddenly wants to go to an otherwise sold-out performance. If Mike Pence was in New York and had a sudden yen to see The Boys in the Band, they would stick him in a house seat. That's assuming the producers wanted to let him in at all.

Often, I either know someone in a show or I know someone who knows someone in a show and house seats can be achieved. They are not free unless, of course, the person arranging for them wants to pay for the tix themselves, which they never do. But they are almost always better seats than you can get via Ticketmaster or Telecharge or any other official source and more importantly, they're not marked-up to scalpers' prices. The seats I got for our Tuesday evening show cost me $187 each. Scalper sites were asking $700 and up for comparable rows.

On a New York visit many years ago, I learned something the hard way. When I procure house seats for something and they don't send me specific seat numbers in advance, it's a good idea to go to the box office as far as possible ahead of showtime and grab the physical tickets. As long as they're sitting in the box office, some box office employee may be tempted to give them to someone more important than I am (a category which only includes everyone else in the known free world) and stick me in the last row of the balcony facing away from the stage.

When Nathan Lane was about to debut in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum — this was '96 — one of its authors, Larry Gelbart, graciously arranged for me to get house seats. Foolishly, I thought I could go to the box office fifteen minutes before showtime and claim them. As I tell people, an unfunny thing happened on the way to that show. Gelbart's prime house seats had been given to someone else and my date and I wound up in, literally, the last row downstairs at the St. James Theater.

I don't know if they've fixed this since but that last row was not only leagues from the stage, it was also torture for anyone over about 5'10". I'm 6'3" and there was so little legroom in that row, I could not sit in the seat and an usher informed me it was either there or come back another night. I wound up leaving the seat up and sitting, none too comfortably, on the front part of the cushion. I could do this, of course, because there was no one seated behind me.

Nine months later when I was in New York again, Mr. Gelbart was nice enough to get me his house seats again. They were in the second row in the center on the aisle, where I could have been the first time if I'd had the smarts to pick my house seats in advance. That time, I did. Lesson learned.

So Amber and I made the trip to seize our well-placed tickets for the next night. I also had house seats for our Thursday night show but those came via a PDF that was e-mailed to me and it had our seat assignments…so advance pickup was not necessary. Then it was back to our hotel where our room was ready.

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At 6:30, we met Charlie Kochman and his splendid wife Rachel for dinner at a highly-recommended Italian restaurant which I won't be recommending. Then we hiked over to the Avenue I was takin' them to…42nd Street. The show we were attending is a revue playing there called Newsical. Simply put, it's ninety or so minutes of topical songs and sketches performed by four very talented people and one pianist.

It's a very low-budget presentation, so much so that they don't even have printed programs, nor did the players' names seem to be posted anywhere. On the way out, I asked if they had anything that would tell me who those four talented performers were and they didn't. Fortunately, I knew one of them — my longtime friend Christine Pedi, who's been featured on and off Broadway, on Sirius XM radio (she's one of the hosts of their Broadway channel) and most importantly, on this blog. That's Christine above, dressed as a statue that Donald Trump would probably like to tear down because it welcomes immigrants.

From Christine, I got the names of the three other performers: Michael West, Scott Foster and Susan Mosher, with Ed Goldschneider on the piano. They're all wonderful and deserving of recognition. Betcha you see some of them soon in other shows, maybe even shows that have program books.

The show, which was written by the also-undercredited Rick Crom, is a lot of fun. One particular song about Sarah Huckabee Sanders (played by Christine) must be a fairly recent add and it's still playing in my head. As with all decent political satire these days, you'll like the proceedings better if you don't like Donald Trump. In theory, it oughta be possible to do something funny from the other POV but it never seems to happen, just as Liberal-oriented talk radio never seems to reach the largest audiences. As I've written elsewhere, doing political humor from a Conservative stance is like trying to write a Marx Brothers movie and make Margaret Dumont the funny one.

We went out after with Christine and ate and talked and ate and talked and talked, talked, talked…and that was about it for Monday. Tune in tomorrow as I try to explain why I liked 97% of the new production of My Fair Lady.

Click here to jump to the next day of our trip

• If you'd like to visit any foreign country and have them welcome you as an American, you'd better get there before Trump does.

Ray Bradbury called his classic book about censorship Fahrenheit 451 because that's the temperature of burning paper. This department is called Fahrenheit 212 because that's the temp when human blood comes to a full, rolling boil.  It's for items in the news like this one…

A white South Carolina man who managed a buffet restaurant near Myrtle Beach admitted in federal court this week that he had beaten and verbally abused an intellectually disabled black cook, forcing him to work over 100 hours a week without pay for about five years, according to the Justice Department.

In pleading guilty to one count of forced labor on Monday, the defendant, Bobby Paul Edwards, 53, said that he had used violence, threats, isolation and intimidation against the victim, John Christopher Smith — or "JCS," as he is identified in court documents.

Mr. Edwards, who could face up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced, admitted that while he was in charge, from 2009 to 2014, he beat Mr. Smith with a belt, punched him, hit him with pots and pans and burned Mr. Smith's bare neck with hot tongs, according to a Justice Department statement released on Tuesday. He also used abusive language and racial epithets against Mr. Smith.

Full story here.

We interrupt our journal of that eleven-day trip that I took recently with my fine friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before we leave Philly and move on to New York, I have a few things to add, starting with this photo which I plumb forgot Amber took. It's me and Jake Tapper…

Note that Sergio Aragonés is behind me. Sergio is always behind me except when he's in front of me.  Also note that for the rest of my life, this is about as good as I'm ever going to look.  That's the reason you should never wear a tuxedo.  If you don't, people can at least say, "Well, maybe if you put him in a tux…"

I should also have mentioned that Mr. Tapper gave a very nice speech at the convention about his love of cartooning and how he pursued that profession for a long time before turning to journalism.  He was there as this year's recipient of the National Cartoonists Society's A.C.E. Award, the "A.C.E." standing for "Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinary."  It's for someone who has distinguished themselves in the public arena but either cartoons on the side or once set out to become a cartoonist and changed careers.  Past recipients have included Carol Burnett, Jonathan Winters, Jackie Gleason, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Orson Bean, Ginger Rogers, Al Roker, Denis Leary and Morley Safer. It's — and this is openly admitted — a shameless way to get a famous person to appear at an NCS awards ceremony.

Tapper spoke just before the intermission in a pretty long awards show.  He was there with his father and I figured that when we took that recess, he'd seize upon the opportunity to get the heck outta there…but no.  I think his father left but Jake Tapper sat there 'til the end and was on his feet applauding for the Reuben winner and at other appropriate moments.  I was impressed with that.

He spoke about the award in this interview and this seems like a good spot to also insert this video of him with Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau…

Several of you have written to ask me about the National Cartoonists Society and how one joins. I refer you to the NCS website which happens to be down as I write this but will probably be back online shortly. Basically, you have to be a professional cartoonist or someone who fits in well with them. The NCS has regional chapters that meet often and once a year, they have their Reuben Weekend gathering, which is both a party as well as a place where cartoonists learn from one another and address issues facing the profession.

Lastly, I've had a number of requests like one from Jim Guida who wrote to ask me for — and I quote: "Less stories about old television shows, more photos of Amber." Here are two more from the evening of the NCS Banquet. Click on the pics to see them larger…and if you think she looks good now, wait'll next month when the braces come off…

Click here to jump to the next day of our trip

The Tony Awards are tomorrow evening and there are a lot of articles online where supposed experts are predicting who will win and sometimes also stating who should win. Often but not always, those are the same names.

I see in the predictions a consensus that Angels in America will absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, bet-the farm win as Best Revival of a Play (and should) and that there is zero chance that Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane and Denise Gough won't rightfully win for their work in it as Best Actor, Best Featured Actor and Best Featured Actress, respectively. The predictors are also so certain that Glenda Jackson will win for Best Actress in a Play for Three Tall Women that the other nominees should just send her their congratulations now and not bother coming to the ceremony.

Maybe those are locks but I see many a Broadway Nostradamus who is certain of some win where another disagrees. Depending on who you read, The Band's Visit, Mean Girls and SpongeBob SquarePants are all utterly certain to win for Best Musical. Barring the unlikely three-way tie, some folks who are absolutely certain are going to be absolutely wrong.

I saw but one of the nominated shows — the revival of My Fair Lady, 98% of which I thought was wonderful. I'll tell you about the 2% when I get around to that night in my trip diary. How well it will fare tomorrow evening I can't say because I didn't see the shows it's up against. But if the number that's performed from that show is "Get Me to the Church on Time," make sure you catch it. It probably won't be. They'll probably opt for something with Higgins and/or Eliza, perhaps "The Rain in Spain," maybe truncated to allow a segue into a few choruses of "I Could Have Danced All Night."

But Norbert Leo Butz performing the "Church" number was one of the most exciting things I ever saw on a stage — so much so that a lot of the seers are saying he will definitely win for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. And of course, a lot of them are saying that about other nominees.

We continue recounting the eleven-day trip that I took recently with my fine friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 6, you really oughta read about what transpired on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and Day 5.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

I awoke Sunday morning feeling like I'd been away from home for six months, all the time reminding myself that we weren't yet at the halfway point of the trip. Amber felt the same way and we reminded each other to enjoy the leisurely pace of our last full day in Philadelphia. For the most part, we were (and still are) glad we decided to hit three cities in eleven days but there were moments when it didn't feel like the best idea I ever had.

I was moderating the MAD panel at 11 AM and before it, I caught the last half of a presentation that Charlie Kochman was doing in the same room about the great cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Rube has probably not received his due since he, unlike many of his peers, did not leave us with a truly iconic and legendary character; not the way Elzie Segar left us with Popeye or Charles Schulz left us with Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Then again, Rube did get his name in many dictionaries as a noun or adjective referring to a very silly, elaborate invention…and the top cartooning award — the Reuben, which was presented the previous night to Glen Keane — was named for Mr. Goldberg. Those count for something. His work is often reprinted — though probably not as often and as much as it oughta be — and there are books like this one inspired by his work…

Charlie was the editor of Rube Goldberg's Simple Normal Humdrum School, written by Jennifer George and illustrated by Ed Steckley. It's a fun book to give a kid or to read if you are one or have ever been one. Here's a link if you wanna get a copy. In an ideal world, Amazon would deliver yours by having a pussycat knock a bowling ball off a shelf which would turn on a fan which would blow a kite across the room which would knock over a lit candle which would burn through the ropes of a catapult which would fling a copy of the book across the room into a FedEx box…

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The Rube Goldberg presentation was followed by the MAD panel. I've moderated well over a dozen MAD panels over the years and most of them blur together in my memory. This one won't because though no one imagined such a thing at the time, this was the last MAD panel to feature Nick Meglin on it. A week later to the day, he was the late Nick Meglin and a lot of us are still reeling from that.

In the obit I wrote, I hope I made it clear how utterly vital Nick was to the creative and financial success of MAD. Most people are aware of its founding editor Harvey Kurtzman and his successor, Al Feldstein…and you all know of Don Martin and Mort Drucker and Al Jaffee and Sergio Aragonés and Dave Berg and everyone else in the Usual Gang of Idiots. Their contributions were credited and it was kinda obvious what they did. What Nick contributed is a bit harder to explain and once I came to fully understand it, I felt I had to do my part to help others to know. He was kind of the Vice-President in Charge of Funny.

Here's a photo from the panel. It was taken by Kevin Segall…

Nick is the guy seated.  MAD's recently-retired Art Director Sam Viviano is the man leaning on the chair next to Nick.  From the left, the others are Ryan Flanders, Bill Morrison, Grant Geissman, Tom Richmond, Sergio and Yours Truly.  Ryan was a designer and talent scout for the old MAD, Bill's the editor of the new MAD, Grant's a fine musician and the world's greatest expert on MAD not counting me, Tom is its star caricaturist and I have no idea what Sergio does.  But I know what Nick did and I want the world to know.

Nick was the guardian of the magazine's sense of humor when it was growing up.  And since that helped shape my sense of humor when I was growing up, I feel a great debt to him.

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The MAD panel was the last seminar-type event of the weekend. Many NCS members then spent the afternoon at a nearby library giving drawing demonstrations but Amber and I went to eat at the Reading Terminal Market (where I did not have turkey) and packing The Box.

The Box was an idea I had to avoid having to squish eleven days of clean clothes into our respective suitcases. The previous Monday, I packed the clothes we'd need in Philadelphia and New York in a big crate and shipped it to myself at the Philadelphia Marriott. In our luggage, we took the clothes we'd need in Vegas. Then when we got to Philly, The Box was waiting for us and we had our clothes for that town (including my moth-eaten tux) and for the next town. Before leaving Philadelphia, we would pack our New York clothes in our suitcases and ship everything else back to Los Angeles.

This was a brilliant notion, especially since the Philadelphia Marriott has a 24-hour FedEx/Kinko's in its lobby. It turned out to have one teensy complication but we'll get to it.

That evening at the hotel, there was a Farewell Dinner and a chance to say bye-bye to everyone. Amber and I turned in early because we had a big day ahead of us. The next morning, we had to catch a train for New York, New York, a helluva town.

Before I close down this installment though, here's a little video with Nick Meglin in it. It's fuzzy but watchable footage from two New Year's Eve parties hosted by longtime MAD writer Dick DeBartolo. He's the one who stole his mustache from a member of the Village People. You'll briefly see MAD publisher William M. Gaines doing a magic trick, and you'll see two musical performances — a year apart — from Nick…

Click here to jump to the next day of our trip

Josh Marshall says that if Russia had a wish list of what it wanted to see happen in the United States, it would look an awful lot like Donald Trump's agenda: "If candidate Trump and President Putin had made a corrupt bargain which obligated President Trump to destabilize all U.S. security and trade alliances (especially NATO, which has been Russia's primary strategic goal for 70 years) and advance the strategic interests of Russia, there's really nothing more remotely realistic he could have done to accomplish that than what he has in fact done."

Amy Davidson Sorkin on Rudy Giuliani's attack. I doubt there are very many people in this country who think Stormy Daniels' story of an affair with Donald Trump is false. There are, however, those who think they if they deny, deny, deny and attack, attack, attack, the story won't do their boy any real damage. And there is of course, Giuliani who will say anything he's told to say.

Here's a list of all of Robert Mueller's indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far. Not bad for a fake witch hunt which hasn't done anything.

Trump is now claiming he's caused some major, for-the-better changes in Iran via the stance he's taken against them. Daniel Larison says this is an outright lie.

And Fred Kaplan tells us what to expect (and not to expect) when Trump sits down with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this Tuesday in Singapore. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

This is another page in an after-the-fact diary of the eleven-day trip that I recently took with my wonderful friend Amber to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and New York. Before you read about Day 5, you really oughta read about what transpired on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Amber and I were somehow up early enough to hit the 8 AM NCS Breakfast Buffet which preceded the 9:30 AM NCS Business Meeting. Since I am a member and she is not, she could not attend the Business Meeting. I went and she headed back upstairs to bed or maybe out to get some makeup or accessories for the evening's gala formal dinner.

Would that I could have sent her to the meeting in my place. No insult is meant to the biz proceedings of the National Cartoonists Society but behind closed doors, we do not discuss the denuclearization of North Korea or the secret peace negotiations between Alex Jones and his marbles. We talk about Top Secret, hush-hush classified stuff like where the next NCS convention will be held and about where to get good deals on art supplies.

There were seminars and such all afternoon. I absented myself from some to go out to a CVS Pharmacy. My feet were now pretty much back to normal but I purchased a few items I thought might help keep them that way, given the considerable walking ahead of me on this trip. Then I went over to the Reading Terminal Market, which oughta be paying me out of their advertising budget to mention them on this blog.

I decided that before I made my lunch selection, I would walk up or down every aisle, studying every booth.  There are well over a hundred of them, some selling cooked food, some selling raw food and some selling things like books and housewares.  It took about forty minutes, every second of which was fascinating, before I decided I would eat…wait for it…

…the same thing I had there the day before: The roast turkey from a stand there called The Original Turkey.  Some things I saw looked good but nothing looked better except maybe at one or two stands that had long, long lines.  I was just about to go buy a plate o' turkey when my cell rang.  It was my friend and editor (yes, those things can go together) Charlie Kochman.  He asked where I was.  I told him.  He said, "I'll be right over and I'm bringing Nick."

Charlie showed up with our mutual pal, Nick Meglin.  I showed them both around and talked them both into having the turkey.  If I ever take you there, I'll talk you into having the turkey and you'll thank me for it.

The tables where one consumes one's purchases seemed to be full so we took our meals back to the Philadelphia Marriott and took occupation of a deserted ballroom. We ate. Nick told stories about working with Bill Gaines on MAD. They loved the food. It was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip.

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The cocktail reception began at 6 PM even for those of us who never drink cocktails. Amber and I spent the hour before getting dressed — me, donning my tuxedo with the tiny holes chewed by moths; her, doing her hair and putting on The Greatest Dress In The World. I have spent our entire relationship telling her she's beautiful without fancy clothing or any makeup whatsoever. I still believe that but maybe a bit less since I saw her all dolled-up and ready to hit the party…

There, we had a good example of what we in the magic world call Misdirection. When we walked into the party, no one noticed the moth holes in my tux. Hell, I probably could have been wearing no pants and no one would have noticed.

We mingled with well-attired cartoonists. One of them was former-cartoonist-turned-CNN-journalist Jake Tapper. Even a couple of cartoonists who don't like how his network covers Donald Trump — they deviously quote him in full and in context — found Mr. Tapper to be a very nice, intelligent man. He was genuinely impressed to be among so many cartoonists and very familiar with the work of many of them. (I wasn't even familiar with the cartooning of everyone on the premises.) He and I had a long conversation, much of it about Walt Kelly and Pogo.

As you may know, I am an editor, along with Eric Reynolds, of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, a series from Fantagraphics reprinting my favorite of all newspaper strips. It turns out Jake Tapper is also a huge fan of it and a collector of original artwork from the feature. Volume 5 will be out around Halloween with a foreword by Mr. Tapper and we didn't ask him to do it. He asked us if he could…and, well, of course he could.  It's a very enthusiastic, well-informed piece.

I thought the awards ceremony was too long…but then, I think every awards ceremony since the Early Middle Ages has been too long.  Sergio Aragonés and I presented a couple of them. At the end of the evening, the biggie — the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year — was presented to Glen Keane, who gave a touching and lovely speech. The audience seemed very happy with the choice and with what the winner had to say about it. That's the great thing about awards. Sometimes, they make everyone real happy.

Click here to jump to the next day of our trip

Everyone mourning Jerry Maren today is mentioning how amazing it is that he was a part of The Wizard of Oz. But I was at least as impressed by another role he had on the same lot that same year…

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.

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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.

Click here to jump to the next day of our trip

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."