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May 10, 2002 · 1:30 AM PM PDT · link

JUST READ and enjoyed Bill Zehme's piece on Johnny Carson in the new Esquire.  An abbreviated version can be read online by clicking right here...but don't expect the full article to tell you much more.  The news about Carson is that there is no news about Carson and there's not likely to be any.  He is content in his retirement and there's darn near nothing that could lure him back into the public arena.  To his credit, Zehme manages to turn that lack of anything to report into a full-fledged, entertaining profile...though perhaps what is most entertaining is merely that we're spending time again with Johnny.  (I just realized that I started reading the piece around 11:35, the moment I used to settle down to watch Mr. Carson's monologue.  Very appropriate.)

A lot of us still miss Johnny and I have to agree with the part of Tom Shales's recent piece in which he said that, "If you add up Letterman plus Leno plus Conan O'Brien, you still don't have a Johnny Carson."

At the same time, I think there's a danger of over-canonizing the one-time Prince of Late Night.  I don't recall Johnny, while he was on the air, ever being as lionized and respected as he is now that he's become a part of history.  I don't recall a single TV critic, Shales included, being mesmerized by anything other than Johnny's sheer endurance.  Only when it became clear that it was about to end did we see the essays about how important he had become to us.  We, the viewers, knew it but not many said it aloud.  When Johnny was present-tense, it was fashionable to knock him for his double-entendres; for the monologue jokes that crashed and burned; for a steady parade of airhead starlets in the guest chair; for not booking guests as erudite as Jack Paar's stable of regulars; for shunning controversy and serious topics.  The typical magazine piece about Carson was not about him being a legend.  It was about him being cold and aloof, taking too many nights off and holding poor NBC up for occasional raises.  From my own observations, I always thought those nits were overwrought and exaggerated...and, from the way they've evaporated, I guess they must have been.  When people today write or speak of Carson, that kind of talk would verge on sacrilege.

Pendulums, however, have that annoying tendency to swing too far in the opposite direction.  There must be some kids out there buying the vintage Carson videos now being sold over at www.johnnycarson.com and via infomercial, watching them and wondering what all the fuss is about.  Some of that would be because Johnny's appeal had a lot to do with how right on top of the latest news and topics he always was, and how shrewd he was about dropping a subject and moving on.  There also has to be a little disappointment in seeing him today because his effect on us was cumulative.  It wasn't that he was great on any given night but that he set a certain standard and never dipped below that standard for three decades.

And one other thing: The video releases seem to emphasize the great stand-ups Johnny had on — fun, but that doesn't show us how good he was — and the sketches, which were not what we loved him for.  We loved him for plain ol' hosting, sitting behind the desk, chatting.  Some of the moments that would truly demonstrate his skill would be those with the least-stellar guests.  No one could "save" a dying spot better than Carson or make a civilian look better.

As I said, I enjoyed the Zehme article, and I suspect Johnny will, as well, for it makes his retirement out to be the wise move that it probably was.  (He might be less enchanted by one photo, which seems to have been taken by a photographer eager to show us how large Johnny's bald spot has gotten.)  The piece won't tell you much more than that Carson is serene in his absence from us and pretty well committed to keeping things that way.  Still, it's a few new minutes with Johnny.  How often do we get that, these days?

May 9, 2002 · 1:15 PM PDT · link

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LAST TIME I posted a photo of Julie Newmar in her costume from Li'l Abner, I got a lot of "tips" so here's another one.  Actually, I have an even better reason than that for the pic (which, by the way, you can see in a larger size by clicking on it).  I wanted to mention that the CD of the Broadway cast album of that show will be released on May 29.  It was already out once a few years ago but hastily discontinued and that CD has been sold on eBay and bootlegged often since.  This new version is better in that it's 21 minutes longer than that one, owing to the rediscovery of some extra tracks.  Also, some of the new one is in stereo.  It's a rather glorious musical in any form and if you want to pre-order the CD from Amazon, you can click here and this site will get a small cut of everything you order during your visit to their site.  And if that, in turn, leads to more income for this site, I'll post more pictures of Ms. Newmar in that outfit...a win/win situation for us all.

May 9, 2002 · 2:00 AM PDT · link

AS IS DETAILED (and illuminated with photos) over in our My Backyard section, I feed a menagerie on my back porch.  It includes several cats, possums and raccoons who amble by on a nightly basis to stuff their furry faces.  For a time, I paid scant attention to what I put in the bowls.  One brand, I figured, is just like another and I always mocked the blurbs where they tout "better taste."  A lot of pet food advertising, I believe, is based on the premise that we purchase it as if we're going to be the ones dining on it.  We look at the label for Alpo Sliced Beef in Gravy and we say, "Mmm...sliced beef in gravy.  That sounds yummy."  As if what sounds good to our palates has anything to do with what our animals will like.  So, in that spirit, I purchased whatever was on sale.

For a while, that's been Friskies Chef's Blend and it seemed to be acceptable to all, disappearing like chopped liver at a Bar Mitzvah reception.  I had no reason to change until one evening, I was out of food and in my friendly neighborhood Sav-On Pharmacy.  They didn't have any Chef's Blend so I bought the cheapest thing on their shelves, which was the store brand of Albertson's, a supermarket chain owned by the same corporation.  I took it home and filled the dish...and they wouldn't eat the stuff.

The cats wouldn't eat it.  The raccoons wouldn't eat it.  Even the possums, which supposedly will eat just about anything, wouldn't eat Albertson's "Original Formula" cat food.  There was a bit of nibbling around the edges but, for the most part, the vittles went untouched.

At first, I thought, well, maybe no animals came by but, the next day, after a trip to the market, I put a dish of Friskies out next to the Albertsons food.  The following morning, the Albertson's food was all there — every morsel of it — but the other bowl had been licked clean.

So what was I to do with the whole bag of the Albertson's food?  I didn't want to waste it so, the next evening, I tried filling both dishes with a mixture of the two brands.  I thought this was very resourceful but later, when I walked through the kitchen, I noticed a raccoon out there, carefully picking the Friskies food out...and with much the same precision I use to take the peas I can't eat out of Campbell's Vegetable Soup.  As he did this, he glared at me with a look that seemed to say, "You're making this very difficult, you know."

I finally wound up putting the Albertson's food out during the day, when starlings and crows sometimes swoop down on the cat dishes.  I'm not sure if the birds actually eat it or if they just "bathe" in the bowls and scatter the food all over so the gardener will sweep it up and throw it out.  Either way, I finally got rid of the food the animals won't eat and I now serve only Friskies Chef's Blend out there.  Earlier this evening, I noticed a raccoon nosing around the dishes, which were empty.  I went out to fill them, scaring him away.  Then, once I came back in and closed the door, I waited to see if he'd come back.  He did.  He snuck up, sniffed the Friskies, tasted a few bites.  Then he looked at me with an expression that could only have meant, "I'm glad to see you've learned something."

HAD A LOVELY TIME last evening at the Gardenia, a club in Hollywood that showcases terrific singers.  The terrific singer we went to see was Shelly Goldstein — successful comedy writer by day, chanteuse extraordinaire by night.  I plugged her appearance here a week or two ago and I was right.  She's very good.  She's also there again next Wednesday.  Hint, hint.

May 8, 2002 · 5:45 PM PDT · link

I RECEIVE a daily e-mail from the Larry King Live TV show that announces that evening's guest.  Here's the heading of the one I got this afternoon...

I never knew Mary Tyler Moore was THAT GIRL.  The things you learn in e-mail...

May 8, 2002 · 1:30 PM PDT · link

CLICK RIGHT here to read an interview with Stephen Sondheim in The Baltimore Sun.  Or, if you don't have time for that, read this quote, which is about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  Before the show went into rehearsal, Sondheim asked his friend, playwright James Goldman, what he thought of the project...

"[Goldman] said he thought the book was brilliant, and he said the score was a delight. He said the only problem was, they don't go together.  I had written a rather salon-like score, full of cleverness and kind of literary puns — I wanted so much to show off as a lyricist — whereas [the book] was a very elegant low comedy," Sondheim says.  "I learned from that to be very careful in the future to write the same show."

I pulled that quote out because, on TV projects I've worked on, I've become kind of a pest about quoting Mr. Sondheim, wringing variations on a similar, earlier quote that went something like, "The most important thing is to make sure you're all doing the same show."  If I had to pay him royalties on every time I've said it, it would dwarf whatever he made off "Send in the Clowns."  (Another allied quote is from Alan Jay Lerner: "More shows fail because of a breach in style between Act One and Act Two than any other reason.")

Anyway, it's always nice to read an interview with Sondheim.  And now I have to return to a script and pray that everyone involved intends to do the show I think I'm writing...

May 8, 2002 · 1:30 AM PDT · link

JACK BENNY accomplished many "firsts" in his career but a biggie was that he was the first radio comedian to ever give credit to his writing staff.  This did not sit well with certain other comedians of the day.  Several went to Benny and urged him to reverse his decision, ostensibly because they thought it would destroy an important illusion.  The public, they told him, wanted to believe that the performers were really that witty.  A comedian crediting writers, they told him, would be like a swashbuckling screen star telling people — or reminding those that already knew — that his most daring feats were accomplished by a stuntman.  They really believed this.  Benny heard their advice, politely rejected it...and went on to become one of the most successful comedians of all time.

And what's amazing is that, even though he credited his writers, most of the public seems to have believed that he actually was that stingy; that Rochester really was his valet; that he lived next door to Ronald Colman, etc.  Telling the world that his shows were written sure didn't hurt those illusions.

He had a great writing staff, too.  Most of them were with him for much of his career and all distinguished themselves in one way or another.  Two are of special interest.  Harry Conn was the sole writer of The Jack Benny Program when it had its initial success.  Later on, Al Boasberg was Benny's "punch-up" guy, getting paid well to add a key joke here or there.  Both men were recently profiled in a couple of articles in Written By, the Writers Guild's magazine, and they have those pieces online.  Read 'em right here.

May 7, 2002 · 10:30 PM PDT · link

ONE OF COMICS' most prolific writers, Robert Kanigher, passed away yesterday at the age of 87.  Early in his career, Kanigher dabbled in all kinds of writing — radio, stage, pulps, short stories — before settling into the comic book industry in the early forties.  He worked for almost every publisher but most notably for MLJ on Steel Sterling and their other heroes before settling in at DC for a very long haul.  Over 40-some-years, he produced hundreds of scripts for their books, creating many of their key characters and also working as an editor for about half that time.  He was known for being incredibly fast and fiercely outspoken, and the best of his writing was very, very good.  Most of it was on DC's war comics but he also wrote (and edited) Wonder Woman for twenty-some-odd years, authored the first episode of the Silver Age "Barry Allen" Flash, scripted dozens of stories of Batman, Flash, Black Canary, romance stories, etc.  If I start listing the comics he authored, your browser will be loading this site for the next hour.

From my viewpoint as a reader, he generally had good ideas and insight, but often wrote far past the point when he had anything to say.  Two of my favorite books of his, Metal Men and Sea Devils, illustrated this mercurial nature of his work.  He created and initially wrote both books and the first dozen-or-so issues of each were terrific, while the remaining issues read like feeble imitations of the first dozen-or-so.  His acclaimed Enemy Ace series was the same way: The same brilliant, fascinating portrait of a German World War I pilot told over and over with diminishing returns.  The big exception to this was Sgt. Rock, the long-running war feature about a hero with whom, you could tell, Kanigher deeply identified.  It had its missteps — Rock and his beloved Easy Company meeting another Kanigher hero, the anachronistic Viking Prince, for instance — but, over the years, it was always worth a read when Kanigher wrote it.  Even late in the game, he retained the capacity to bring something new and oddly personal to a hero of simple premise.  I never felt Rock was quite Rock when anyone else wrote him.

Among his peers, Kanigher was deeply controversial.  About half the artists who worked with him loved the guy; the others fantasized about his painful demise.  Still, it seemed to me, all respected the quantity of his work and a respectable percentage of its quality.  A lot of us who write comics still count him among our influences and I'd sure like to see his better work reprinted in permanent, collectible volumes.  There sure was a lot of it.

May 7, 2002 · 3:30 AM PDT · link

I'VE RECENTLY BEEN worrying that blind people weren't losing enough money gambling.  "When," I've wondered, "will the gaming industry realize that they've been neglecting a potential gold mine among the sightless?"  Well, my worries have been put to rest.  Bally Industries has come out with a line of slots and video poker machines featuring the likeness and music of Mr. Ray Charles.  These devices, which are turning up in casinos the world over, feature Braille labels and special audio assists.  And for the patriotic gambler, the machine also plays a video of Ray singing "America the Beautiful."  Another machine in the line is called, "What'd I Pay?" which I guess is someone's clever switch on Ray's song lyric, "What I say."  Or maybe it's intended to suggest that the machine is blind and doesn't know how much it's paying out.  (On that machine, Ray appears with, not his back-up singers, The Raylettes but with the "Paylettes.")  I have the feeling that, when one of these machines cleans you out, you hear a rousing chorus of, "Hit the Road, Jack."

May 6, 2002 · 7:00 AM PDT · link

HAVE I MENTIONED that this thing is out?  Well, it is.  The Groo Maiden is a collection of four more Groo reprints from way back in the days when Marvel/Epic Comics was making serious money off comics like this instead of penny-ante, nickel-and-dime stuff like Spider-Man movies.  The stories stories in this, our thirteenth collection, spotlight the non-edible love of Groo's life, Chakaal the Warrior Woman and the cover looks like that.  For some reason, as I write this, the Amazon.Com listing is displaying a copy of the cover of the next of these paperbacks (The Groo Nursery, which will by out in July) with the title from this one pasted on it.  I cannot conceive of any reason for that since this cover was done long before that cover but, with Groo, things happen for which there is no logical explanation.  So I've learned not to ask questions about why odd things occur.

In any case, you can order this book from Amazon and if you go to their site by clicking on either of the links in this paragraph, we get a tiny percent of whatever you spend on that visit.  Add this to the tiny percent we make off this book in the first place and you have two tiny percents which, added together, make yet another tiny percent.  Just another mystery of higher mathematics.

May 5, 2002 · 4:00 PM PDT · link

A P.S. on the Bill Maher/Politically Incorrect riff I posted an hour ago.  Two months ago, demon broadcaster Paul Harris did a good interview on this topic with Mr. Maher.  You can hear excerpts from this on-line at Paul's website.  If you're interested, go do this.

May 5, 2002 · 3:00 PM PDT · link

THERE'S A nice article over at CNN on my pal, Brad Oscar, who's taken over the lead in The Producers on Broadway.  The show has been re-reviewed with the new stars and he fared pretty well.

A FRIEND OVER AT ABC tells me that the network is in serious talks with Jimmy Kimmel about doing some sort of talk show to replace Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect.  This bothers me, and not because I don't think Kimmel is funny.  I think he's very funny, especially when he gets off the topics of tits, beer and other fratboy notions of all that matters to our gender.  Alas, the substitution seems to be saying, "We've got to get rid of the guy who occasionally offends people with political comments.  Let's find a guy who'll only offend them with sexual comments."

Maher stirred up a storm not long after 9/11 with a remark that I believe was almost deliberately misinterpreted by folks who already didn't like him.  This seems to be part of the New Rules of political discourse in the land.  It doesn't matter what your foes actually said, or what they obviously intended to say.  If you can convince people that Al Gore actually claimed he invented the Internet...well, that's so much better than trying to debate what he actually says.  That Maher's comment wasn't as outrageous as some later made it out to be is demonstrated by the fact that there was no outcry, no outrage the night he said it or the next day, either.  A few days later, those most reliable of sources — the Internet and talk radio hosts — made it out to be much worse than he'd obviously intended, and sponsors started fleeing.

That is, of course, their right.  It's just regrettable, if only because it can't help but cast a pall on a lot of televised discussion.  Right now, most of those who write for or ad-lib on TV are putting everything through an extra laundering process, asking themselves, "Is there any way this can be misinterpreted?"  Because they know, if it is and there's a protest, sponsors won't hesitate to cast them adrift.  For a time, it looked like Maher might get axed right away.  That did not happen, in part because ABC didn't have anything to stick on in his place.  But they're obviously afraid of the next time and they may be close to having something — if not Kimmel, someone else — for the slot.

This will probably not mean the end of Bill Maher in that format.  If his agents can't parlay this into a secure, long-term deal on a cable channel, he oughta sue them for malpractice.  He could very well wind up with a better deal and even a better show.  Still, I think it's unfortunate that, at a time when network TV seems to be growing up in its vocabulary — when Ozzy Ozbourne can even use the "f" word on The Tonight Show with minor notice — comments about real, important issues still make people nervous.

May 5, 2002 · 2:00 AM PDT · link

I FIND MYSELF strangely disinterested in the new Spider-Man movie.  My affection for the character faded about the time Stan Lee stopped scripting his comics.  (I don't question that talented, brilliant writers and artists have done great stories since.  They're just writing about a guy I don't particularly care about.)  I also have an unrelated, natural reticence to patronize anything with that much advertising and promotion behind it.  What seems to happen with "the new, hot movie" is that I put off seeing it the first weekend because everyone's going to see it, and I don't want to fight the crowds.

Then, by the second weekend, I've seen so many articles and talk show appearances and clips and reviews that I feel like I'll overdose if I go see the film.  (For a time, at parties, I used to discuss current releases with people, just to see if they'd figure out that all I'd seen were the talk show clips.  No one ever did.)

Then, the third weekend, there's usually a new blockbuster opening and I have no desire to go to the theater and fight that crowd to see the previous blockbuster.  Then, week four, they're already talking about releasing the film on DVD and tape, so I figure it's no longer time-sensitive and I might as well wait and catch it on HBO...which I rarely do.  I still haven't seen any of the Batman movies.  Or any of the Superman films after the second one.  I only saw X-Men because I was working for Stan Lee Media at the time and they had a big afternoon screening for the entire staff and passed out free lunches.  (I was bored silly and would have walked out on it, had I not been sitting in front of Stan.)

The maddening part is that every time a comic book movie comes out, people I encounter all assume I've not only seen it but that I camped out overnight to be first in line.  They're already starting conversations by saying, "So, what'd you think of the Spider-Man movie?"  One even asked, "How many times have you seen it so far?"  When I tell them I haven't seen it even once and am in no hurry, they act like I've just revealed some dire illness.  No, I tell them; I just don't see what the rush is.  At the moment, it's not a movie, it's an event.  If it sticks around long enough to become a movie and there's nothing more promising on the marquee, maybe I'll catch a matinee.  Eventually.

MORE ON "Deep Throat," the famed secret source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate investigation...

The question I find most intriguing about this is why Deep Throat, whoever he is, would hold Bernstein and Woodward to their pledge of secrecy for what is now thirty years.  For a time, the assumption was that D.T. had some sort of career in Washington and feared that exposure would affect him; that associates would shun him, distrust him, whatever.  Woodward said, in a long-ago interview, something to that effect.  This was one of the things that made many folks suspect Alexander Haig who, for a while, was chasing the Republican presidential nomination and could ill afford the hostility of old-line G.O.P. leaders.

(The other main bit of evidence which led to Haig — apparently erroneously — was the Bernstein-Woodward book, The Final Days.  Haig was obviously a major source and he comes off as something of a hero in the proceedings.  Some figured it was their payback for previous help.)

But a lot of time has passed.  Haig's candidacy faltered long ago and almost no one on The Deep Throat Suspect List is still in remotely the same job.  Most are completely out of politics or government service.  So why doesn't Deep Throat, who supposedly is still alive, come in from the cold, write a book, reap some rewards?  A friend of mine in the near-Washington press corps sends the following note...

The thinking seems to be that Throat wants the secret kept, not for any political reasons but just because he's old and wants his privacy.  That might indicate Mark Felt, the F.B.I. guy who was on everyone's list of suspects.  He's ill (he had a stroke some time ago) and retired and won't even answer questions about things that are on the record from his career.  He's denied he's Throat but I don't believe Woodstein ever has.  Like you, I've always felt Throat was F.B.I..  Most of those guys have a weird code of honor about leaking to the press.  It's a sin, even if it's for a good cause.  People outside the F.B.I. would hail Throat as a hero but they certainly wouldn't inside the bureau.

That's as respectable a theory as I've seen...which, of course, doesn't mean it might not be dead wrong.  Deep Throat could still turn out to be Joey Bishop, relaying info he got from Frank.

If it is Felt, however, there's an interesting twist to this story.  Felt was convicted in 1980 of ordering illegal break-ins of the Weatherman organization.  He was pardoned shortly after by then-President Reagan.  Wouldn't it be interesting if it turned out that the man who helped expose Nixon's role in one break-in scandal had his own?  Or that one Republican president was pardoned by the next, and then the next Republican president pardoned the man who brought down the first guy?

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