It's been a while since we had baby pandas on this blog…so here to make up for it, we have triplets. The birth appeared in 2014 at the Chimelong Safari Park in the Guangdong province in China. The mother panda, Juxiao, was preggo and there were some indicators that she might have twins. When three came out, the attendants couldn't believe it.
This video shows the actual births so don't watch it that kind of thing will disturb you…
It has now been a week plus about ten hours since my loving friend Carolyn Kelly officially passed away. I say "officially" because the last few days, she was breathing but that was about it. Couldn't speak. Couldn't recognize me or anyone. Could barely move. There are all sorts of definitions as to when life ends but hers did well before the time on the Death Certificate, which was late Sunday evening.
As I keep telling everyone, I am fine. I have a ridiculously-long list of things I need to get done in the next few weeks but even without that distraction, I'd be okay. The last time a lady friend died on me, it was utterly unexpected, out of the blue. That one took me a while to work through because I had to start the moment I got the phone call. With Carolyn, I had eight months of being sure of what would happen and at least as many before that of thinking it was likely.
What I learned with the death of the first lady was that it was important to keep functioning. I'm writing here about what I found works for me. It might be different for you but just in case it isn't, let me tell you a story about Henry Fonda. That's right: The actor Henry Fonda.
Beginning in 1948, he starred in the Broadway play of Mister Roberts, written by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan (based on Heggen's book) and directed by Logan. It was a smash hit both with critics and theatergoers, and Fonda — who had the title role — stayed in it far longer than a star of his magnitude might have confined himself to one job. It was, he said, just too good to leave.
One day, Mr. Fonda's wife committed suicide. It was not wholly surprising. She'd been institutionalized and he'd just filed for divorce. Still, a man's wife of many years — the mother of his children — kills herself…you'd think that's got to immobilize the man for a while.
That's what the producers of Mister Roberts assumed when they heard the news that morning. They assumed Fonda would shut down for a while and, realizing their star's understudy was woefully under-prepped, they ordered intensive, all-afternoon rehearsals to get him ready to go on that night. They then called Fonda and said, "Don't worry. Take as much time off as you need." To their amazement, Fonda said, "I'll be there tonight to do the show."
And do it he did…a letter-perfect performance. After, people asked him how on God's Earth he was able to do that. He said, "I had to." He went on to explain that the great thing for him about Mister Roberts was the thing he especially needed that day: The stability.
He knew exactly what would happen from the moment he arrived at the theater (around 7:30) until he left (around 11:30). Other things in his life were falling apart but he knew exactly what would happen every minute of those four hours. He knew what to say, what to do, how to do it. He knew when he'd get a big laugh and precisely the time at the end when he'd get a standing ovation.
With so much of his life not working, he was clinging to the part that did work, the four hours every night that always worked, that reminded him he was good at what he did. He also knew that as rough as the performance that night might be, it was not as rough as the one he'd experience if he'd taken a couple of weeks off, then tried returning to the show. He wouldn't have the weeks of wondering if he could still do it.
I have this repairman who sometimes does work around my house. He was always honest, very good at what he does and super-dependable and he never stopped being the first two of those things. But a few months ago, I needed work done here and he began flaking on me — said he'd be here at 10 AM and didn't show up until 7:00 that evening. A few times, he didn't show up at all. He'd phone me from his van, tell me what street he was on and estimate he'd be here in a half-hour…and then never arrive. It was so unlike the guy.
When he did show, the work was done expertly and efficiently…and he even tried to charge me less by way of apology. I kept telling him, "I don't need a discount. I need you here when you say you'll be here." I explained to him several times about Carolyn and how I had to fit him in around the times I had to run over to the nursing home, which were sometimes unpredictable.
He apologized over and over and told me some of what he'd been going through. It involved an ex-wife who had turned, he said, vengeful and had seized every possible asset, including for a time the van he needed in his work. There was a custody battle over a five-year-old son and there was some drinking and other ugly things. For some reason, I flashed on the Henry Fonda story so I offered some advice that I think was sound and I'll pass it on to you in case it ever comes in handy.
I said, "Half your life is a mess. You can recover from that but it'll be ten times as hard if you fuck up the part of your life that's working. Your business is working and you need the stability from that, to say nothing of the income." He later told me it helped him a lot to think of it in that terms. In fact, he said that the very next time he came over to fix something and he arrived here that day…well, not on time but darn close to it. Close enough, at least.
People who've lost loved ones have written me this past week to ask how I'm getting through it. I think I'm just taking my own advice about protecting the part of your life that's working, no matter how difficult that may be. I'm pretty proud of that advice even if I did steal it from Henry Fonda.
Oh, Lord…not another obit. But I do want to note the passing of Martin Greim, an important figure in comic book fandom and later a writer of comics. Marty died Saturday at the age of 74 and they're saying heart failure was the cause.
He was a guy who truly loved comic books and the folks who made them. He was active in running comic conventions in Boston and he published a magazine called Comic Crusader, which was mostly filled with his writing and drawing. When I first knew him, he very much wanted to write and draw professionally but a degenerative eye condition made half that dream impossible. He did manage to write a number of comics, including The Shield and his own creation, Thunderbunny. Before his eyes failed him, he wrote and drew one Donald Duck story that was published and I know he was very proud of that.
I had not been in touch with Marty for a long time but I recall spending much of a New York Con with him back in the seventies, talking about our favorite comics and debating some differing tastes. He was one of the good guys and we've lost way too many of them.
Friday evening, a friend of mine and I went to the Greek Theater here in Los Angeles to hear a woman of extraordinary talent, Idina Menzel — or as John Travolta once called her, Adele Dazeem. If she keeps this up, she's going to be more famous than he is.
Boy, she's good. The lady has an amazing voice on her and I don't think one false note came out of her mouth during the two hours she strutted across the stage and belted out one tune after another. She was accompanied by a eight-piece band and while I would have liked the "mix" to lower their volume a hair, they were just about as sensational as she was.
Many of her song selections were new to me — including some she wrote — but the audience loved 'em all, especially the ones they/we knew before. When she performed her signature numbers from Rent (her first Broadway show), Wicked (her biggest Broadway success) and Frozen (the Disney movie), a wave of Sure Thrill rippled through the Greek.
For "Let It Go" from Frozen, she sang most of the tune, then brought onto the stage an ad hoc chorus of audience volunteers in the 6-10 age bracket to help her with a section of it. Some of the children were volunteered by their parents and so were (appropriately) frozen at the concept of singing in front of thousands of people. It was quite charming and I couldn't help thinking that at least one of those kids decided then and there on a career in show business.
The show was supposed to start at 8:00, though my tickets were on the TicketMaster app on my cell phone and they said 6:30, which was the time the doors opened. We got to our seats at 7:50 and then waited. And waited. And waited. At 8:38, I posted a snide remark on this blog and I guess Idina was reading it and said, "Evanier's getting pissed. We'd better start" because the show started at 8:39.
I don't get why they do that. I heard someone in the row behind us say, "It's because they want to sell more refreshments" but at 8:05, my friend and I both wished we could go out and get something and didn't because we were afraid of missing the start of the show. If we'd known we had 33 minutes, we'd have spent more money.
That was my only real complaint. Ms. Menzel is a superb entertainer, and not just when she's singing. Her talking between numbers was charming and often quite hilarious and the audience just adored her. People kept shouting out "We love you" even though they were too far from the stage for Idina to hear them. Some shouted it close enough and everyone felt that way. Her tour continues and if she comes near you, you could go and have the same wonderful time we did.
And come to think of it: If her name isn't already as well-known as John Travolta's, it will be by the time this tour is over. Here, from another stop on that tour, is a mash-up of two numbers that shows you why…
Ezra Klein on the ridiculous process by which seats on the Supreme Court get filled. It's one of those things that has never made a lot of sense to me and I'm skeptical it can ever be changed because no party is going to give up the wish-dream of skewing it their way.
But I agree the system isn't working. There are probably thousands of judges out there who are very well-versed in the law and not beholden to either liberal or conservative ideology — the kind of judge whose vote cannot be predicted or assumed because he/she will decide each question solely on its merits. That's the kind of justices we should have but such folks stand very little chance of getting nominated. Remember the stink when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to a seat on the highest court?
The left wing wasn't too upset about it. The right wing was because she didn't strike them as a 100% reliable conservative vote…and Bush had to withdraw the nomination and name someone more likely to think the right was always right. Left or right, we don't want a justice who will rule on the merits of a case. We want someone who'll always rule our way.
The other day, I was in a Taschen bookshop and I discovered and paged through a big, beautiful book called The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921-1968 by a whole bunch of Disney experts. It's full of photos and art and facts and commentaries and it took about eight seconds for me to think, "I gotta have this. Even though it's $200, I've gotta buy this." But not then and there. I was walking and it's a heavy book (620 pages!) and I didn't want to carry it home. That was a few days ago.
Today, in the nick o' time, I got an e-mail from my buddy Rick Scheckman informing me that Amazon is offering it now for sixty-five bucks. He just saved me $135 and he can save you the same amount if you order in a hurry because they won't have them forever and it'll probably never be any cheaper. Here's the link. Don't thank me. Thank Shecky.
The Nabisco people have brought out a new line of crackers called Crisp & Thins. They've slapped the Ritz name on them though the crackers themselves have no real connection to what we know of as Ritz crackers. They've just learned that we're more likely to try a new product if we see it as some sort of an extension of an old, popular product. They've also stretched the definition of "Oreo" to include almost anything new they bring out that is even vaguely chocolate.
I warn you not to try Ritz Crisp & Thins, not because they're bad but because if you do, you may never eat anything else. God, they're addictive. They are indeed crisp and they are indeed thin but you will be neither crisp nor thin if you get hooked on them. Take it from me as I am presently working to get unhooked.
They're made with a blend of potato and wheat and are kind of halfway between a potato crisp (the baked kind) and a cracker. They come in four flavors, those four being Sea Salt, Cream Cheese & Onion, Bacon, and Salt & Vinegar. I buy the Sea Salt kind as I'm not fond of Cream Cheese or Vinegar flavors.
I tried one bag of the Bacon and…well, I have a hunch that at some point, the following conversation transpired…
MARKETING GUY: We're about ready to launch our Crisp & Thins line. How's that Bacon flavored variety coming?
TEST KITCHEN CHEF: Not so good, I'm afraid. The best we've been able to do really doesn't taste anything like bacon. In fact, they don't taste like anything in particular.
MARKETING GUY: Who gives a rat's ass? The American people have demonstrated time and again that they'll buy anything that says "bacon" on it. Hell, they convince themselves things taste like bacon when they don't. You ever have turkey bacon? Veggie bacon? Imitation bacon bits? We're putting out a Bacon flavor of the Crisp & Thins, no matter what!
Even those are better than many other chips or crackers but if I were you, I'd stick with the Sea Salt. Or better still, don't get started on them at all. I may buy more of the Bacon just because it'll help my new chemical dependency on Ritz Crisp & Thins to only have in my house a kind of them I don't like as much.
You've all heard of the Friars Club, mostly because you've heard of its infamous celebrity roasts.
The Los Angeles outlet of the organization closed in 2008 and the building that housed it was demolished a few years later. I went there a few times and somehow managed to get on a list of people to be pestered into joining. Based on the frequency with which they mailed and phoned me, I sure got the feeling the club was desperate for cash and not long for the world. It had once been a home for current celebrities (comedians, especially) but by the time I paid my visits it was only enticing if you wanted to overpay for mediocre lunches and watch Milton Berle table-hop and work the room. Oh — and if you ventured into the locker room, you could see a lot of very old men wandering around nude for a lot more time than it takes to get dressed after a shower.
The L.A. Friars Club survived a major scandal in the late sixties when it turned out that members were being bilked of millions (yes, millions) of dollars in rigged poker games. The original Friars Club in New York has survived to this day but now it has a scandal of a different kind. I hope it turns out there's nothing to it but based on articles like this one, you wonder.
Every few years, the contract between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires and a new one must be negotiated. Sometimes, the negotiations are simple and sometimes, they are not. When they are not, it is because someone at the AMPTP — or at at least one of the member companies that comprise the AMPTP — decides he or she can be a hero and advance his or her career by engineering a deal that pays the writers less or at least denies us cost o' living increases.
I joined the WGA on April Fool's Day of 1976 so I have been through many of these and sometimes been fairly close to the negotiations. It is my observation that these dust-ups are never about what's "fair," at least from the Producers' standpoint. And when they say things like, "The business is hurting…everyone needs to understand that and accept some cuts," that is always, 100% of the time, horseshit. For them, these dickerings are only about one thing: Getting as much as possible. The less we get, the more they get.
Whenever Renegotiation Time rolls around, my guild assembles something called the Pattern of Demands — a wish list of things we'd like to discuss. Many times, it is a waste of time because the studios simply refuse to address anything on our list. Their negotiators literally end the meeting if our reps bring out the list. One of the Producers' lawyers in years past liked to say things like, "We are never going to let these sessions be about what you want. They will only be about what we are willing to give you."
If anyone does look at our Pattern of Demands, they'll see items about increased compensation but they will also always see issues that are not directly about money. We want our work to be respected more. We want to be listened-to more on creative matters. We want minorities (including older writers of any color) to be given more consideration. We want our credits to be protected and so forth. Call these the non-monetary issues.
There are people in management at the studios who care about such things but we tend to not negotiate with those folks. The people we deal with only care about the money and with keeping as much of it as possible for their employers. If they address the non-monetary issues at all, it's because they think they can trade one of the unimportant non-monetary issues for an important monetary one. In the '85 negotiations for instance, the Producers demanded a change in credit procedures that would have gutted the WGA's ability to control who received screen credit. They didn't really care about that. They just wanted to be able to say, "Okay, we'll drop our demands about credits if you drop your demands about money."
Because we care (somewhat) about the non-monetary issues and they don't, sometimes that works. Indeed, in '85, they dropped those demands but in the same bargaining sessions, we accepted for other reasons a lowering of the fees we were paid when films or TV shows we wrote were put out on home video. The former cost them nothing. The latter cost us billions. From the Producers' standpoint, that was a wildly-successful negotiation. That year, I don't think they ever even listened to anything we had in our Pattern of Demands.
Even factoring in that our brief strike that year cost them some cash, the guys who engineered that deal for them were superstar heroes. It was like they'd made a dozen movies as lucrative as Star Wars or Titanic. Each time we embark on a new negotiation, there's someone there who dreams of doing that again.
It has been my observation that Writers Strikes all start the same way: Someone at the AMPTP makes an assessment of how strong and united the WGA is at the moment: How willing is the membership to go on strike? If that assessment is way too low, there will probably be a strike. The Producers will agree among themselves to offer us X as a final, non-negotiable offer. They will also agree among themselves that if/when (almost certainly when) we turn down their final, non-negotiable offer of X, they will offer us the really and truly final, non-negotiable offer of Y.
Y will be a tiny bit better than X. The theory here is that maybe, rather than reject that offer and go on strike, we will grab Y and congratulate ourselves on a huge victory, forgetting that Y is still "The Producers get more and the Writers get less."
It's kind of like if someone came to you and said, "We're going to kick you in the crotch ten times" and you said, "The hell you will, I won't stand for that" and they said, "How about if we kick you in the crotch five times?" and you yelled "Deal!" And then as they were kicking you in the crotch the five times, you were yelling between shrieks of agony, "I sure outsmarted them on that one! ARRRGHHHHH!"
When they lowball us on X and we then don't accept Y, that's when you have your long strikes…because the Producers have a great deal of trouble moving off Y. They have a rule of unanimity. The major member companies of that Alliance have to agree on all offers and sometimes, they aren't able to do that.
In '88, they agreed on X and Y — terrible, terrible offers to lower our pay and health benefits at a time when the industry was raking in record profits. But given our spectacular fold in '85, I guess they couldn't resist trying it again. The "X" offer was the equivalent of "Last time, you let us kick you in the crotch fifty times. This time, we're going for a hundred." The "Y" was only slightly less awful.
And that's a lesson we all learned back then: Once you take a bad offer, you're setting yourself up to get an even worse one next time.
But they had drastically underestimated the Guild that time. Owing to better leadership and the lesson of '85, we were much more united, much more willing to resist. We voted down X by a much wider margin than the Producers had expected and we voted down Y by almost as much.
The AMPTP couldn't agree on another offer and there was also a stubborn determination to not let one labor union "win" a strike, lest others get the idea that maybe they too could. So we had a strike that lasted 155 days. That was what it took to get to a deal that they could have given us in the first place if they hadn't figured we'd grab Y or maybe even X.
So now it's time to play this game again. Negotiations are ongoing and the Guild leadership has voted unanimously to ask for a Strike Authorization from the members. This is not a vote to strike. Understand that. It is a vote to empower the leadership to call a strike if they feel it is absolutely necessary.
I am sure they will get that authorization but the magnitude will be critical. If it's by 51% or even 70%, the Producers will figure that the Guild is weak and divided and that a lousy offer will be accepted. They'll assume that even if we do go on strike, it won't last long. If the vote is 90% or over…well, that might make them think a bad offer won't be cost-effective. (The vote will not be 100% or even a few points shy of that because some of those voting will be writer-producers or writer-directors and some of those folks vote in what they see as the best interests of their non-writer functions.)
The voting begins Wednesday and you can kinda figure out what I hope will happen. Some articles on the state of the negotiation can be found here. In the video below, you'll see members of the WGA Board and Negotiating Committee urge a "yes" vote and explain why it's important.
The Guild currently has excellent, responsible leadership and I'm optimistic that they can bring back a deal that everyone can live with without work stoppages, picketing and all the ill feelings and ancillary damage that come with a strike. But they need to have the membership behind them and a strong Strike Authorization would be the measure of that.
There seem to be some new members who, not having lived through these skirmishes before, think we should not threaten to strike so as to show we're "reasonable." That has never been what happens. If you announce you're willing to consider a dreadful offer, that's what you'll get.
Some also seem to think that voting for a Strike Authorization is the same thing as voting to strike. No. A strike results when we get a take-it-or-leave-it offer we cannot possibly accept and we have to leave-it. To give our leaders a Strike Authorization is to give them more power in the negotiation — power that will increase the likelihood that we will get an offer we can accept.
Most of you reading this aren't WGA members who'll be voting but I would hope you'd at least understand that if we strike, it will not be because we enjoy it, or because we want to kick the Producers in their crotches. We just don't want them to do that to us. Listen to some of our leaders…
A rant about stars who haven't started their 8 PM concert by the time on this post.
I have some catching-up to do here…
On a lighter side, Stephen Colbert continues to get high ratings but he says he'd gladly trade them for a better president.
Kevin Kline discusses things going awry on stage…
Several folks have written me about the United Airlines incident to suggest that the passenger, Dr. David Dao, was at fault for not quickly complying with police orders. Others have linked me to this article allegedly by a pilot's wife giving the company's side of it.
She's right that the airlines have the right to just kick a paying passenger off a flight. Back in 2012, United Airlines was in serious P.R. trouble. This is not a new thing for them and back then, my buddy Joe Brancatelli wrote this article. It was about how airlines have all the rights and passengers have none…and that equation has not changed. And she's correct that sometimes, the airlines need seats to shuttle their employees to where they need them to keep the system functioning.
Where she starts to lose me is when she brings up 9/11 and couches matters in terms of security. That's a nice, all-purpose excuse which the airlines could use to justify any kind of misbehavior. ("Trans-Debris Airlines is sorry that we had to lock your six-year-old son in the overhead baggage compartment and give his seat to one of our corporate executives but there were safety concerns which we're not at liberty to explain, especially since 9/11.") I didn't hear anyone claim they needed to remove Dr. Dao from the flight because someone thought he was a hijacker.
And she really loses me when she rebuts the statement, "It's the airline's fault for not planning better!" by writing…
You obviously have no clue about the complexities of aviation travel and should do some research. There are about a million and one things that can cause a crew shortage including but not limited to weather, maintenance, weather, connecting fight delays, weather, FAA timeout regs, and did I mention weather?
In the incident in question, no one has cited weather or any of those other situations as a justification. No one has suggested that if, say, a hurricane was about to hit, an airline might not be justified in making some decisions that inconvenience passengers. I also have this strange hunch that the airlines — not just United but all of them — have been having 'round-the-clock meetings to discuss how to avoid this kind of thing by planning better. Yeah, this whole brouhaha would not have happened if Dr. Dao had behaved better. It also would not have happened if United had figured out they needed that seat before he was told he could board the plane.
It is true that we, as consumers, don't always understand all the invisible-to-us reasons why some businesses do what they do. That does not mean our complaints are wrong or that we should stop making them. I don't really know how my sewage system works but if it starts emptying into my sock drawer, I'm going to at least suspect my plumber has done something wrong. In the meantime, Matt Yglesias has a good, long article on what's wrong the airlines today. [SPOILER ALERT: It's because so many of their customers care about getting the lowest price and nothing else.]
You've all read and heard about the guy who was dragged off a United Airlines flight and injured in the process, even though he'd done nothing wrong except maybe choosing to fly United. You may also have seen some articles that made him out to be not the best human being because, after all, some people deserve whatever happens to them.
You may even have seen some clueless apologies from United for what happened. Rex Huppke tells us what they should have said.
I've gotta tell you: I've never had good luck with United. I stopped flying it years ago after one horrible experience. What made it horrible was not that something went wrong but that when it did, there was absolutely no one to talk to who could or would straighten things out. Ideally, you'd like there to be a department or a counter where you could go and someone there would have said, "That shouldn't have happened, sir. On behalf of the company, I apologize and we'll do everything we can to make things right." But there was no such person to say that. I waited 45 minutes in a line at a woefully-understaffed Customer Service counter to finally be told they didn't have any authority or interest. If they wanna undo the damage to their reputation, they ought to be looking to improve in that area.
Marc Summers has hosted a helluva lot of TV shows including Double Dare, Couch Potatoes, Unwrapped, The Home Show and What Would You Do?, plus he turns up on the Food Network more often than Kosher Salt. He's also been the producer of a good portion of the helluva lot of TV shows on which he appears — obviously, a skilled and industrious guy. Today, he appears on Stu's Show where its host, Stu Shostak, will pry out the story of how Mr. Summers, who got into TV as a page, made it from the second-lowest job in show business to being one of its busiest performers. (First-lowest is hosting an interview show on Fox News.)
Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at that Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are 99 cents each or you can save a ton o' dough with Stu's "Buy three and get a fourth one free" offer. Well, maybe not quite a ton…