This evening, a group of my friends and I — and a surprising number of folks who told me they bought tickets after reading the announcement on this blog — packed the Catalina Bar and Grill up on Sunset for a performance by Dick Van Dyke. Boy, did we have a good time. At the age of 92 years, 2 months and 14 days, Dick is still a great entertainer. No, he can't dance like he used to but he can still light up a stage just with his smile and style. Just try to think of a more beloved star. I'll wait.
Can't name one, can you?
Dick didn't do it alone on the Catalina stage, of course. His wonderful wife Arlene came up to sing a little…and to surprise Dick by noting that tomorrow — i.e., today by the time I post this — is their sixth wedding anniversary. Also up there at times was Dick's singing group, The Vantastix, and a great band…and we all had a rousing good time.
Here's a video of the last 50 minutes of the show so you can see why we all had that rousing good time. Depending on your browser, you may have to click off a little "X" next to the audio icon to hear the audio.
If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, move the slider over and start at the 44 minute mark and watch my favorite part of the evening. We all got to sing with Dick Van Dyke on the song you'd most want to sing with Dick Van Dyke. Gee, we love that man…
I haven't mentioned it in a while but I still get one or two calls a day from folks who are either contractors or are working for some service that gets a cut if they can drum up any business for clients who are contractors. A few of them are nice, asking me if I need any work done on my house and if they can send out someone to give me a free estimate.
I don't need any work done and if I did, I have a contractor and other home improvement people who've done repairs for me in the past and done them well and at reasonable prices. I will probably never buy anything from a stranger who cold-calls me as these folks do.
They're all annoying but the ones who especially irritate me are the ones reading from a script that goes roughly like this…
Hi, Mr. Evanier. This is Bruce of Phlegm Home Improvement calling back. I spoke to you last August and you were very nice to me and you said to call you back in [name of current month] because you'd be ready to do some improvements on your home. We have a team out on [name of my street] this week and I'd like to set up an appointment for them to come by and discuss the work to be done with you.
My reply? I interrupt them and say, "You did not talk to me last August and I did not tell you to call back now." Sometimes, they hang up right there.
Sometimes, they argue a bit — "Oh, yes you did. I distinctly recall it." — until they realize they're wasting their time with me and they hang up. Yesterday morning, one called and went through most of the above script before I cut them off…
ME: You did not talk to me last August and I did not tell you to call back now.
HIM: You're right. But listen, I represent a good contracting firm. If you have any work you need done, we'd like to come out and bid on the job.
ME: Why would I want to do business with someone who calls me and the first thing out of their mouth is a deliberate, pre-meditated lie?
HIM: Hey, lying's acceptable now. Look who's in the White House.
For a moment there, I was almost willing to let the guy paint my house.
Okay: So on his show last June, John Oliver does a segment about the coal industry and in the process, he says some very, very negative things about Bob Murray, the CEO of a coal mining firm that bears his name. Oliver even has a six-foot squirrel named Mr. Nutterbutter come out to join in the festivities.
Now, Mr. Murray is not unfamiliar with the concept of someone going on television and saying bad things about others. He's routinely gone on TV and said bad things about Barack Obama, including the suggestion that Obama should be thrown in prison for his deliberate attempts to destroy the lives of workers in the energy industry.
But I guess in Mr. Murray's mind, there's a difference between defaming the President of the United States and defaming the CEO of Murray Energy. Feeling understandably attacked by Oliver, Murray calls in what I'm guessing are rather high-priced lawyers and he tells them to sue the alleged defamer.
Now, I'm fuzzy on this next part. Do those high-priced lawyers tell Murray he's wasting his time and money and that he can't possibly prevail in his lawsuit? Do any of them say, "The same laws that permit you to tell President Obama to eat shit permit John Oliver to tell you to eat shit"?
Maybe they don't dissuade him because they want the huge fees he will be paying. Or maybe they do caution him but Murray says, "I don't care. I want to do it anyway and cause that rat bastard some money and anguish," in which case I wonder if any of the attorneys told him, "You know, the cost of fighting this suit will not come out of Mr. Oliver's pocket. HBO and perhaps some insurance firm will be paying."
And I wonder if anyone told him that by suing, he'd cause a lot of people to rally to Oliver's side and a lot of people who never saw the supposedly-defamatory segment to seek it out and view it, plus he's pretty much invited Oliver to take future shots at him. Murray — a big Trump supporter and donor — has been bragging about how much influence he has had on the current administration's rollback of environmental protections and complaining he hasn't had more. When Oliver feels free to do another segment on Bob Murray, I suspect he and Mr. Nutterbutter will have plenty to work with.
Donald Trump says that if he'd been at Parkland when the shooting started, he'd have run in to save the kids even if he was unarmed. This is the man who's afraid to be interviewed by a reporter not on the Fox News payroll.
This year, people will be watching the Academy Awards not to find out what won for Best Picture but just to see if the presenters can open the right envelope and announce the right winner. What went wrong last year when the wrong winner was announced? Well, the Hollywood Reporter has done a more thorough inquiry than Congress wants to do about how Donald Trump wound up being declared the President of the United States. Here's an oral history of that never-to-be-forgotten moment.
A whole bunch of his friends — and he had a lot of them — said farewell to Jerry Van Dyke today. It was a by-invitation-event on the Universal Studios lot in Stage 43 where he (and many of those in attendance) spent many years doing the TV series, Coach.
His older brother Dick spoke and lightly hosted. His wife of many years Shirley produced and performed. There were film clips of his career, most of them expertly selected and edited by Shirley and our pal Stu Shostak. Announcer Christopher Bay skillfully introduced speakers from offstage and narrated clips. A great Dixieland band — the Hollywood Hot Shots — played highly appropriate (i.e., banjo) music. And Wolfgang Puck did the catering. (Well, not Wolfgang himself…)
Shirley led off the proceedings with a well-selected song — appropriate since she was a singer when she and Jerry met in Vegas in the seventies and they often performed together. They were married in 1977 and many folks there spoke of what an ideal couple they were and how she took such loving care of a man who could be…we'll be polite and say "disorganized."
Then came the speakers amidst the film clips: Mike O'Malley and Greg Garcia from the series, Yes, Dear; Barry Kemp, Craig T. Nelson, Shelley Fabares, Bill Fagerbakke and Kenneth Kimmins from Coach; Eileen Heisler, DeAnn Heline and Neil Flynn from The Middle. If I'd been running things, they would have rolled in the 1928 Porter from My Mother, the Car to say a few words.
Early in the program, they showed Jerry's TV debut appearing with his brother on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Late in the program, they showed Jerry's last TV appearance, which was with his brother on The Middle. It was a nice bit of bookending for a long, lovely career. And then Dick closed by reading "God Bless the Clowns," a piece that he famously read at the funeral of his hero, Stan Laurel.
Everyone on stage and everyone I spoke to during the pre-show and post-show mingling spoke of Jerry being a natural clown — a fellow who was funny, on-stage and off. And they had the anecdotes to prove it. A fine afternoon.
Some time ago here, I brought up a movie called The Man Who Had Power Over Women which I first saw upon its release in 1970. I couldn't make up my mind then if I liked it or not. Turner Classic Movies ran it last August and I said then that after I'd watched it, I'd report back here and tell you if I made up my mind about it…but then I didn't. Didn't make up my mind about it and didn't report back that I hadn't. It's still on my TiVo so one of these days, I'll watch it again and try to decide. In the meantime, a fellow named Rod Barnett has taken a stab at the question. My thoughts so far are not unlike his but may change.
We love Laurel and Hardy so of course, we love the famous Laurel and Hardy theme, which was written by an eccentric gent named T. Marvin Hatley. BBC Radio has an audio documentary up about this smile-causing song. It's available for your listening pleasure for a limited time at this link.
I try not to think much about Donald Trump on the weekends. I figure if I can master that, I can start working, one by one, on the weekdays. But take a moment to read this piece by Matt Yglesias. Short summary: Trump sees his job as firing up his base and keeping them mad at his enemies and therefore madly in love with him. If this requires a major disconnect with the actual policies and actions of this administration, fine. In this sense, he's a lot like many of our leaders who talked tough, acted weak but who were still viewed by many as tough.
I'm off today to attend a memorial service for a funny man named Jerry Van Dyke. Tell you all about it when I return.
Every few hundred years, the California Department of Motor Vehicles refuses to renew my driver's license by mail and I have to go into one of their offices, take an eye exam and pose for a new photo. The one good thing is that I always — always! — get an interesting anecdote about the experience. Here's the last one which occurred ten years ago.
That time, as you can see, I was in and out in twenty minutes. This time, it promised to be a lot longer because when I called up to get a reservation time, I found out there was a three-week wait. That would put it two weeks after my birthday and the expiration of my current license. I called a number for D.M.V. info, waited a half-hour for a question-answerer-person and asked what I should do. I don't want to drive with an expired license and I don't want to be unable to drive for two weeks.
The lady said, "You'll just have to come in and take your chances with the line…but I warn out, it could be at least an hour wait. Maybe two hours." Her warning seemed prescient. Yesterday, my assistant John and I went to the D.M.V. office in Hollywood. The line there was long enough that had I decided to wait in it — which I did not — I would have gotten to the clerk just in time to do the next renewal or even the one after it.
Instead, we left there and drove to the West Hollywood D.M.V. and I don't know how long the wait would have been there because we never got to it. I'm not sure it was possible to get to it. Every route we tried to take was closed for street repairs. We hit so many detours that we finally gave up and went home. Apparently, this is the new driving test in the state of California. If you can actually figure out how to drive to the West Hollywood D.M.V., you qualify.
This morning, determined to wait as long as it took, I loaded my Kindle with a few books to pass the time, drove to a different D.M.V. office…and I was out in six minutes. That included the time for the eye test and photo. But that's not the anecdote I got.
As I was heading for my car, I witnessed an accident in the parking lot. A teenager trying to maneuver his car into a space tried backing up to approach it from a different angle — and in backing up, he backed into someone else's car — happily, not mine. There were no injuries but I'm guessing $500 worth of damage to each car.
A man I'd guess was the kid's father got out of the passenger seat, assessed the breakage and I heard him tell the young driver, "You're not ready to take your driving test." And then within seconds, the father-guy was back in the car and they pulled out and drove off. No note. No nothing. But I got both license numbers.
I went back into the D.M.V. office and explained to a clerk what had happened. She paged the owner of the bruised auto, he came over and I took him outside to show him what had been done to his vehicle. He was most displeased. I gave him the license number of the dent-and-run car along with my business card and offered to stick around if he wanted to call the police.
That turned out not to be necessary because just then, the car with the teen and his father rolled back into the lot. The father got out and began apologizing and suddenly, I was (happily) no longer needed. When I left, they were discussing whether the father would pay for repairs out of his own pocket or whether it would go through his insurance. I'd like to think they came back because of conscience but I suspect it was because one of them noticed me jotting down their license number.
Hey, remember how last June, John Oliver did a segment on Last Week Tonight about coal and said some pretty uncomplimentary things about Bob Murray, the CEO of the coal mining company that bears his name, Murray Energy Corporation? Remember how Murray then responded with a big lawsuit for defamation? Well, on Wednesday, a West Virginia judge dismissed the suit.
I dunno if Murray has some way of appealing the dismissal or if so, if he intends to do so. That might prevent Oliver from mentioning it or mentioning it a lot on his show this Sunday. Then again, it might not.
If you'd like to read more writing by someone named Evanier, here's a fine piece by my cousin David. It's about "the scholarly art film entrepreneur," Max J. Rosenberg. Well worth your browsing time.
I usually watch every new game show at least once but The Wall was on for close to a year before I even knew it existed. Why? Because it's on NBC and I watch almost nothing on NBC on my TV set. What I do watch on that network — highlights of Seth Meyers' show and occasionally Jimmy Fallon's — I watch on YouTube. So I never saw a commercial for The Wall and I missed any mentions of it on the 'net.
If you haven't seen it, it works like this: They bring on two contestants who have some sort of bond between them — they're best buddies or they're related — and who are extraordinary people who have done good things for the world and/or each other. The show spends a lot of time telling you how extraordinary they are and what good people they are and how much they love each other. And when the show isn't telling us how much they love each other, the contestants are telling us how much they love each other.
Sometimes, it has a very rehearsed feel and sometimes it sounds spontaneous. I suspect it's all sincere but that the players have been seriously coached to present all that sincerity in a way that will work better on television. Some of them — well aware they've been given the opportunity to maybe go home as millionaires — are probably trying way too hard to give the producers what they want.
The game itself involves a giant Plinko board and dropping red balls and green balls into its slots. When a green ball goes into a slot, the players win the amount of money associated with that slot. When a red ball goes in, the players lose that amount. Since the amounts escalate throughout the show and near the end, one slot is worth a million dollars, it is literally possible to win a million one minute and lose it the next.
Most players at one point rack up a total of well into seven figures but most do not keep all of it. A few keep none of it. So it's often an hour of wild mood swings.
Most of the ball-dropping is done by one contestant while his or her loved one is off in isolation, racking up bucks by answering questions. Then that person in isolation is given a contract which says that their team will accept the prize money they've accumulated answering questions plus what they won in the first ball dropping. They can do that and take home that amount or they can tear it up and accept the unknown-to-them amount that their partner has won on The Wall. So it's kind of a question of "How much do you trust your partner's luck?" Most of the time, they seem to tear up the contract.
In each show's finale, the player who was in isolation is brought out to go face-to-face with their partner and tell them whether or not they tore up the contract. But first, they make a little speech to their partner about how they love them and trust them and their lives would be worthless without them. Then they fake out their partners and this is where things sound almost scripted to me. If they tore up the contract, they have to start speaking about why they decided to sign it…so for a moment, everyone thinks they did. But then they make a switch and reveal that they tore it up after all and they're really, really unsure if that was the right thing to do.
Or it sometimes works the other way: They start telling their partner about how they love them and trust them and their lives would be worthless without them and then they start speaking about why they tore it up and then they do the switcheroo and reveal that they signed it instead. Then their partner makes a speech about how they love them and trust them and their lives would be worthless without them before revealing how they did on The Wall.
On one recent episode, there was a father/daughter team. The father, sent off to isolation, had to choose between accepting "the guarantee" — which he thought might be around $35,000 but was actually around $95,000 — or tearing up the contract and accepting what his daughter had won on The Wall. He had no way of knowing if that amount was more or less than the guarantee. For all he knew, it could have been zero.
Before I go any further, here's the clip of the finale…
It's kind of a strange situation where, if they'd left with $35,000 or even $95,000, he and his daughter would have been regarded as losers. I can remember the day when winning ten grand on The $10,000 Pyramid seemed like all the money in the world…and it's not just inflation that has changed the definition of Big Bucks on game shows. The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! all now occasionally dispense prizes that make the prizes dispensed on earlier versions of those shows look like a case of Turtle Wax and a copy of the home game. They have to to keep up with the trend.
Anyway, as you just saw if the video embed is still there and you clicked on it, the father made his speech about how much he loved her, no matter what the outcome, then he made his speech that made it sound like he'd signed the contract and accepted the 95 thou on their behalf…then he finally said, "I tore it up."
They cut to the other daughter in the audience — the who hadn't come onstage and dropped balls — and that daughter reacted a bit (quietly) because she now knew they'd won the $1.4 million. The daughter onstage knew too but she had to remain expressionless. I can't think of any other game show in history where if you won mega-money, you had to not show emotion for a minute or two. She had to deliver her little "I love you, no matter what" speech first. It actually makes that winning moment more meaningful.
If you think Big Money game shows are stupid or contrived or you resent the emotional roller coaster they put you and the players through, it could be agony. I'm fine with that if it seems genuine and there's enough on The Wall that seems genuine that I'm watching it. I occasionally fast-forward through some of the padding but I am watching it. It works for me in a way that most of these shows don't and one big reason I haven't mentioned yet is its host, Chris Hardwick.
He's real good. Real, real good. I liked him on @Midnight and I like him here because he's a person hosting a game show instead of playing the role of Game Show Host.
Unlike most in that job description, he doesn't seem to be reciting lines that were drilled into him and doesn't seem to believe that the show is about him. He's either a darn good actor or he really cares about the contestants and he has a way of saying just the right thing when, as often happens on this program, things don't turn out the way anyone would have liked. He's also sometimes pretty funny but he knows when not to be.
Years ago when I was working with Dick Clark, I was brought into a meeting about a game show proposal. The proposal never went very far but at one point, they were discussing potential hosts and Dick, who was a terrific game show host himself, vetoed one suggestion. I'll change the name of the suggested host to Johnny Giveaway and what Dick said was, "You don't want him. Instead of servicing the game, he'll spend every minute in front of the camera trying to turn it into The Johnny Giveaway Show."
The host of The Wall is wise enough not to do this…which is one reason I suspect we'll soon see The Chris Hardwick Show. Until then, I'm going to watch The Wall, occasionally throttling through with the FF button.
Hey, you know the song "Coffee Break" from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying? Well, in case you've been wondering how it played in the Japanese production…
