That's the legendary Cap'n Crunch Bo'sun Whistle that came for a time in Cap'n Crunch cereal back in the sixties. What was legendary about it? Well, someone figured out you could use it to make free phone calls anywhere in the world.
Stu's Show today is about Phone Phreaks. Those are guys who, back when long distance was real expensive, figured out ways to call anywhere for nothing…and an ingenious lot they were. Ripping off Ma Bell became kind of a fad in some circles and for many, it was not so much a way to save money as it was a way to Beat the System and make a statement for civil disobedience. Stu has assembled an expert panel to discuss the matter and you'll want to listen in as they discuss this and also some of the amazing telephone lines you could call to get jokes, alternative news, stock tips…all sorts of things.
Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. 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 way longer. Then, not long after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four shows for the price of three. It's not as good as swindling the phone company but it's something.
I'm sure it will surprise absolutely no one that an evening of John Cleese and Eric Idle in conversation would be hilarious…but it was even funnier than that. To promote Mr. Cleese's new book, the two men took the stage this evening and just talked for close to ninety minutes. There seemed to be professional video being shot so perhaps the whole thing will be available somewhere, sometime. I'd sure like to see it again. And again.
They didn't talk a whole lot about Cleese's book. It actually had the feel of two close friends sitting around, telling stories to each other and to a third party, the third party in this case being a packed audience at the Alex Theater in Glendale. Given some of the rumors that have made the rounds, it's probably worth reporting that the two did seem like very close friends and that many compliments flew between them. Cleese was especially effusive about his fellow Python's skills at musical performing and at programming and supervising the big O2 stage show they did as a Farewell Performance.
The funniest thing said will not seem nearly as funny when I type it here but basically, Cleese told about how Graham Chapman — for some ungodly reason — was invited to participate in a debate at Oxford about nuclear proliferation. Chapman, who knew next to nothing about the topic and had zero to say about it, cheerfully accepted the invite and showed up for the debate dressed as a giant carrot.
Cleese and Idle discussed how they met and how Python came to be, pretty much agreeing on all the details. Both made the point that they always thought of themselves not so much as performers but as writers who got up to perform their own material. Both agreed that while they argued a lot about scripts and what was funny, they never argued over casting and who'd get which roles to play.
Cleese's book, which was available signed but unpersonalized outside the hall, contains the text of several sketches that were written in his pre-Python days. To the delight of everyone, the two men read/performed two of them, which I believe were for At Last, the 1948 Show, a series Cleese did before Python. They had not rehearsed and Idle did not seem terribly familiar with the material but it was very funny and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought, "This must be a lot like how the first reading of a new Monty Python sketch sounded around the table."
Saw a lot of friends there including Paul Dini and Misty Lee, Maurice LaMarche, Billy Riback, Lee Aronsohn, Steve Stoliar, Robert Spina, Jeff Abraham, Howard Green, Arthur Greenwald, Mike Carlin, Eric Goldberg and others I'm forgetting. Kim "Howard" Johnson, who as I mentioned here is traveling with Mr. Cleese, only had a moment to say hi but he did move me and a friend to seats in the third row. I stole the above photo from Kim's Twitter feed which I highly recommend.
About a half-hour after the show let out as I headed for my car, I walked to the back of the Alex and there, not far from my parking space, Mr. Idle was still cheerfully signing autographs for folks and bantering with his fans. I couldn't help but think, "What a nice man."
NBC's live production of Peter Pan airs December 4 and they're now releasing advance clips and behind-the-scenes footage. I don't like to judge something until I experience the finished product but the promotional campaign for this one is going to make that difficult.
To enjoy Peter Pan, the audience has to do a certain amount of pretending. They have to pretend the post-adolescent female in the title role is a boy who never grew up. And they have to pretend they don't see the wires when people fly.
I've probably seen ten different women play Peter, including Mary Martin on the TV versions. Cathy Rigby was the only one who ever managed to make me kinda-forget that I was looking at an adult woman, though Sandy Duncan came close. The shots of Allison Williams make her look to me like a grown lady — or at best, a grown, slightly effeminate man — but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.
(Christopher Walken looks and sounds a lot like Christopher Walken. My pal James H. Burns, who sent me this link, wrote, "Is that Chris Walken, or someone doing a Chris Walken impression?" I think these days, the answer is "Both.")
You can find the behind-the-scenes videos on your own. Everyone who has ever promoted a production of Peter Pan has shown footage and video of the actors rehearsing in their flying harnesses but I don't recall ever seeing it before I saw the people fly. That will just make it more difficult to not see the wires when the show airs. The way it's supposed to work is that if you must let the audience in on how the magic trick is done, you let them experience it once before you show them the secret and totally demystify things.
I also don't get why Christian Borle is playing Mr. Darling (the father) and Smee. Traditionally, the same actor plays Mr. Darling and Captain Hook because the father represents a slightly-villainous authority figure to Wendy, Michael and John. So that connects Dad to the truly-villainous authority figure of Hook they meet in the other reality. Smee doesn't have any corresponding presence in their real lives so why have the same actor double in the two roles? NBC can afford one more SAG-AFTRA member on stage.
Despite it all, I'm still looking forward to this telecast. Here's a peek…
Katie McDonough writes about how Bill Cosby is losing control of the narrative; how stonewalling on the allegations against him will no longer work. I think it might if he continues to do concerts and personal appearances without a lot of boycotting and protest demonstrations…but I suspect those are coming soon.
I don't think there's much chance of him appearing for interviews and talk shows unless and until he's willing to deny, confess to or explain the charges. For years, he was a sure-fire guest, a "get" for any program because he was a superstar and he was beloved and he was very funny. But Letterman, for example, is now not going to have the guy on unless he agrees in advance to talk about that topic. Dave doesn't want to be accused of being a timid or compliant interviewer.
I don't know if it's possible for someone under these accusations to "tough it out" but if anyone can, it's probably Cosby. He has money and loads of good will out there. One assumes his announced new NBC show — which might never have reached the air even if these charges hadn't resurfaced — will not happen. If it goes away, his career will just be personal appearances and even without promotion on talk shows, he may be able to continue filling large performance houses. There are a lot of people in this world who don't want to believe he'd do something like that.
Oh…and shouldn't the trashing of the accusers be escalating about now?
Here's a story I don't think I've told here. For many years, I worked for Hanna-Barbera Studios in two capacities. I was the editor of their comic book department and I was the story editor of the Saturday morning Richie Rich cartoon show. Three capacities, actually, because I also wrote freelance scripts for shows other than Richie Rich.
Those may sound like a few full-time jobs but actually during this time, I was also usually writing a prime-time show or special for (a) Sid and Marty Krofft, (b) Dick Clark or (c) Alan Landsburg and also writing a comic book for DC or a couple for Eclipse or I was working on Groo the Wanderer for whichever company was then publishing it and hadn't yet gone out of business. There were also animation scripts for other studios.
So I was only in the Hanna-Barbera building for maybe ten hours a week, if that much. I actually did most of the comic book work and Richie Rich out of my home (or offices elsewhere) so I told H-B not to give me a big, fancy office. They, of course, gave me a big, fancy office.
That office moved from time to time. At Hanna-Barbera, the floor plan moved more than the cartoons and was often funnier. Where they put me for the longest time was a good office, well situated between the Xerox room and the office of a wonderful producer-artist named Doug Wildey. Mine sat empty and locked much of the time. In fact, most of the time.
I kept suggesting I be relocated to some small, crummy spot upstairs and that the big, conveniently-located room go to someone else. This was not just selflessness on my part. I actually thought it would be better for me to be where everyone wouldn't notice how often Mark Evanier's door was locked and he wasn't on the premises. Certain folks would not think, "Oh, he must be doing most of his work at home." They'd think, "Oh, he sure isn't working very hard on our show."
The certain folks who'd think that way would be the people in Business Affairs who were in charge of saying no when a writer's agent asked for more money. Why give them that as a reason to do what they did so well and so often?
The Office Manager Lady did not move me. I mean, physically but also emotionally. Every so often, she'd assign someone to share the place, which was fine with me. It meant my door wouldn't be locked as much when Business Affairs people passed by. It was also usually fine with my roommate since I was so rarely there. Then they'd move that person out and I'd have the place to myself for a while so the door would again be locked a lot.
It was actually a great place during one season when Jonathan Winters was a regular on The Smurfs. When recording sessions let out, everyone exiting the sound studio had to pass by my office. If I was there — and I tried to be when Smurfs was taping — I usually had a gang of other writers in there with me, plotting against management. Mr. Winters loved an audience so he'd appear in my doorway and I'd say something like, "Hello. You were Atilla the Hun's pool boy, right?" Without missing a beat, Jonathan would slide into the appropriate accent and describe the problems of keeping Atilla the Hun's pool clean. One was that it was always full of dead Visigoths.
But that's not the story I wanted to tell. One day, the Office Manager spotted me in the parking lot on the way in and told me, "We just moved someone into your office to share it with you." I said that was fine with me. She didn't tell me who it was so I headed inside to see which lowly, unimportant figure in the animation business was bunking with me now. And there, occupying the west half of what was now our office was Frederick Bean Avery.
You might know him better as Tex Avery, director of some of the funniest, greatest cartoons ever made.
He had been retired but some combination of restlessness, family problems and money woes had prompted him to get back into the game. He had long had a standing offer from Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to work for them and he'd taken them up on it.
Tex was a great guy and we got along fine. It didn't bother me that absolutely no one was coming into that office to see me anymore. They flocked there from every corner of the building to meet Tex, to praise Tex, to get a sketch from Tex, to learn from Tex and to be able to say, "I was talking with Tex Avery yesterday…" Bill and Joe had him developing some new shows and adding gags to ones that were currently in production and in need of First Aid. I was almost disappointed he was never assigned to mine.
He worked a lot with another clever old-timer who was on staff, a veteran Disney expatriate named Chuck Couch. One day when I came in, Tex said to me, "Hey, I hope you don't mind but I've asked if they can move me into an office I can share with Chuck. We're doing a bunch of projects together and it makes sense." I said, "Hey, you two can have this place." And off I went to the Office Manager to suggest I take one of the small, cramped offices upstairs and that Tex and Chuck share the big one. She said she'd do just that.
The next time I came in, which was a few days later, I asked the receptionist where my office was now. She said it was in the same place. I went to it and, sure enough, there was all my stuff…and none of Tex's. I found him and Chuck crammed into one of those small, cramped rooms upstairs with no idea what had happened. I went to the Office Manager and she had no idea, either. She gave the order to swap us around.
Chuck, Tex and I went to lunch. By the time we got back, they had the big office downstairs and I had the tiny one upstairs…for real. Done and done.
A few weeks passed. I was almost finished with Richie Rich for the season and the Office Manager came to me and said, "We're going to need your room for someone else. The minute you finish the last script, we'll need you to vacate." She'd forgotten I was still editing the comic books but I did so much of that work at home, I decided I didn't need an office there at all. We settled on a date when I would be out of my little cubicle.
She warned me. "Now, if you leave anything in there after that date, we're going to throw it in the dumpster." I said, "Anything I leave behind, you can throw away."
A week or two later on a Thursday, I handed in the last Richie Rich script for that season and took home everything I needed to take home. On Friday, I got on a plane and flew east to spend a few days in New York.
Some time on Friday, the Office Manager turned to one of the young men who ran errands and moved furniture and supplies about and said, "Check to make sure Mark Evanier is out of his office."
The Young Man was in a rush that day to get everything done so he'd be able to leave on time. He was about to go on vacation, too. He looked at the staff list to determine which office was mine. Unfortunately, the list hadn't been updated for a while so he wound up going to the large office, the one that now housed Tex and Chuck. He peeked in and reported back to the Office Manager. "Evanier's office is full of stuff." She told him to throw it all out.
He went back to the office to do so but noticed that the boxes and drawers were full of a lot of original artwork and sketches and scripts. He went back to the Office Manager and told her that the stuff in Evanier's office looked like it was important and maybe valuable. Exasperated, she told him, "Okay, then. Get his home address from the files. Box it all up and take it over to his house."
And that's what he did. He packed the contents of the office — this is the Tex Avery-Chuck Couch office we're talking about here — in about six large crates and drove it over to my house. No one was home so he left it all in my enclosed patio. Then he went back to Hanna-Barbera, finished his other labors for the day and began driving to Yosemite National Park (not Jellystone) to spend a week.
Monday morning, Tex Avery arrived at work, walked into his office and found…
Nothing. No files. No art. No sketches on the walls. No sign of what he and Chuck had been working on all the previous week.
A few minutes later, Chuck walked in and found his partner standing in a bare office. There were two desks, one waste basket, a battered sofa and nothing else. "Tex," he gasped. "What happened?"
Tex said, "I'm not sure but I think we've been fired."
Tex and…well, I couldn't find a photo of Chuck Couch.
They hadn't, of course, but throughout the day, no one could figure out what happened to their stuff. They searched everywhere.
Well, everywhere except my front porch. No one knew that's where it all was and, of course, neither did I. My housesitter came on Saturday and Sunday but she'd gone in the back way to put out food for the stray cats and had forgotten to check out front for mail.
Finally, late Monday, someone figured out where Tex's and Chuck's papers and files might be. A different Young Man drove over to my house, found it all on my porch and since no one was home, just took it all back to the studio. He must have left with it all not long before the housesitter came by and did check outside for mail.
I got back late Wednesday night. Thursday morning, I got a call from Tex Avery. He said, "I have a crate of comic books here that belongs to you. It's from Marvel Comics." At the time, I did get a monthly crate of all the new Marvels but I couldn't figure out why they'd sent it to Hanna-Barbera instead of, as usual, my home address. I drove to the studio to get it and was baffled to see that it had my home address on it. It took us a while to figure out why Tex had it.
You see, when the second Young Man went to my porch on Monday afternoon to fetch the boxes from Tex's and Chuck's office, he took all the boxes he found there…
I actually don't mind #19: "It Must Be Fun To Just Do That All Day." The compiler of the list says, "While [it]…might look like all-day play, it gets just as tedious and is as much of a grind as anything else." I don't feel that way. I enjoy what I do. At times, it's very hard work but, you know, I picked this for a profession because I knew it wouldn't be just as tedious and as much of a grind as anything else I might do.
I'll tell you one that isn't on the list that does bug me: "Hey, I could use some extra money. How do I get into doing that?"
Chris Christie has a dilemma. I mean, besides the ones you may know about. Folks in New Jersey are waiting to see if he'll sign a bill that's on his desk. It's bipartisan with substantial support from both parties and polls say that over 90% of Democrats and Republicans support it. So signing it — whatever it is — oughta be a no-brainer, right?
Here's the problem: It's a bill to ban certain inhumane practices in the raising and butchering of pigs.
This wouldn't have that much impact on New Jersey because there isn't much of a pork industry there…but it would anger powerful forces in Iowa, where there is a huge pork industry. They'd take it as a slap in the face, a bad precedent and a victory for the folks trying to enact similiar legislation in their state.
Last year, Christie vetoed similar legislation. Why? People are saying it's because Iowa is a very important state to someone who wants to win the first Republican presidential caucus in Iowa in 2016. If you have your eyes on the White House, you don't want to piss those people off.
Then again, he may just want to avoid the jokes that he's protecting his own kind.
Last evening, I went to a party out past Pasadena, some distance from my home. I was driving on the 2 North freeway and about to transition to the 134 East when Henrietta said something. Henrietta is what I call the lady built into the Global Positioning System in my car. Her voice is turned off for directions but she does occasionally speak up to tell me, "Five miles ahead on the route, slow traffic" or "Two miles ahead on the route, stop-and-go traffic."
What she said this time was something I'd never heard from her before. She said, "Seven miles ahead on the route, dangerous event."
"Dangerous event?" I thought to myself, "What am I supposed to do with that piece of information? Put on a Hazmat suit?
What was this dangerous event? A fire? A flood? Someone driving a red 1971 Pinto? Maybe a food truck full of cole slaw…
I turned on the radio and I thought, "Well, it's seven miles from me. Maybe before I get too close, either a traffic report or Henrietta will tell me what it is."
I had gone no more than a mile from the first warning when she gave me the second: "Four miles ahead on the route, dangerous event." So not only was the event dangerous, it was coming my way. I decided before it was upon me, I'd better change courses. I got off the freeway at the next exit and took surface streets to the party.
The radio told me nothing so I never did find out what the "dangerous event" was if indeed there was one. Usually, Henrietta tells me if there's an accident. I'm wondering if it was police pursuit — presumably on the other side of the freeway since it was apparently coming in my direction. But those make the news pretty rapidly and I heard nothing. I'm thinking it was a Saturday night so maybe Henrietta had been drinking.
Last night on his show, Bill Maher alluded to the allegations that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist. I take that as a sign that this issue is not going to go away quietly.
In a recent radio interview, Cosby declined to say one word about the matter, not even, "My lawyers have advised me to say nothing at this time," which would probably be a bit (just a bit) less damning than silence. Cosby also canceled a scheduled appearance with David Letterman this week, reportedly without explanation.
So what's the plan here? Does Cosby think he can still have a career doing what he's been doing — stand-up gigs, lectures, talk show guesting — and just pretend these questions aren't being asked? I don't think so. Doesn't he reportedly have a new TV series that is or was soon to go into production?
He's supposed to do a concert tonight at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, Illinois and tomorrow night at the Warner Theater in Erie, Pennsylvania. He probably won't cancel those but I do wonder if there'll be empty seats or if people will be outside with signs demanding he address the charges. At some point, it has to impact his business, doesn't it?
The man is a great talker. If he's innocent or if there are circumstances that might put all this in a different light, he certainly has the ability to go on some talk show and communicate and explain. He also has enough dough to hire (as he probably already has) the best attorneys in the country for this kind of thing…but right now, he's probably worried more about his rep than about lawsuits or criminal charges.
Lawyers can probably keep him out of prison and he could certainly pay vast sums to his accusers and not miss the money…but neither of those things will stop him from losing the mantle of Beloved Entertainer. Much of that is disappearing even as we speak and he doesn't.
I may be wrong but I think there is at least one TV show that I often watch that John Cleese is not appearing on these days to plug his new book. He's blanketing the nation and making a bunch of appearances in Los Angeles each week — I'll be in the audience for one of them — and then he's following me to Florida for the Miami Book Fair.
Traveling with him is an old pal of mine, Kim "Howard" Johnson, who is the undisputed world expert on Monty Python, author of several books about them and even about other great humorists. That's Kim on the right above. He sometimes works as an assistant or collaborator or aide or pimp for one or more of the Pythons and as he journeys with Mr. Cleese, he sometimes writes about it on his blog but more often on Twitter. Should you have even a seventh of the interest I have in John Cleese, you might want to follow Kim around, too.
Hey, Kim! How often does Cleese check into the hotel and the desk clerk or manager makes a remark about how they hope he won't have a "Fawlty" stay with them or some such reference?
