Mark Evanier's Blog, page 117

Another Obit I Missed…

Alex is the one on the left.

Alex Hassilev — the last surviving member of the original lineup of the folk group, The Limeliters — died last April. I always liked those guys and still play their old records once in a while. (Well, to be accurate: I still play MP3s of their old records…)

He was also in one of my favorite movies — The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming — and he produced a helluva lot of great record albums. There are still Limeliters but he was the last of my Limeliters.

Tales of Me Going To See Shows on Broadway #3

Okay, here's a story I'm fairly sure I haven't told here. In late 1998, the hottest ticket on Broadway — the one scalpers were getting actual scalps for — was a revival of the musical Cabaret. It was directed by Sam Mendes, co-directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall and it starred Alan Cumming as the decadent and bizarre Master of Ceremonies. Getting seats to it at the time was nearly-impossible and the time in this case was when my dear friend Carolyn and I were going back to New York for a business/pleasure trip. It would be pleasure for her and a mix of business and pleasure for me.

Naturally, we wanted to see Cabaret on that trip. Here is a commercial that was made for it much later in the run when to get tickets, all you had to do was phone Telecharge and have your AmEx card handy…

But also naturally, I did not want to spend umpteen kazillion dollars for tickets that would, at best, put us in the back row of Studio 54, which is where the production was doing eight shows a week. Fortunately, I thought I might have an "in" to get house seats. In case you don't know what they are, they're real good seats which are sometimes available, often at the last minute, for face value. You generally need to know someone important who's associated with the show to get them.

On this trip, we also wanted to see a revival of the show Little Me, which originally starred Sid Caesar but in revival, it was starring Martin Short. I had a friend in the cast and I called and asked her if she could arrange for house seats to see her in Little Me. She said, "No problem."

Then I asked her if there was any way on God's Green Earth she could arrange for me to purchase house seats for Cabaret. She thought for a second and said, "I'll ask Rob." She was referring to Rob Marshall, who was the director of that revival of Little Me…the same Rob Marshall who, as you'll note above, also co-directed and choreographed the revival of Cabaret.

And ask him, she did. The next day, she called and said it was all arranged — for the date I'd requested — Little Me on the Wednesday evening of our trip, Cabaret for the following Friday. I just had to go to the shows' respective box offices, show I.D. and pay for the tickets. I knew from past experience I should do that as soon as I arrived in New York and not wait for those evenings. The longer those tickets sat in the box office, the greater the chance someone who worked in that box office would take a bribe or crib them for a friend and we'd wind up in worse seats.

On the Sunday before those dates, Carolyn and I flew to Manhattan and checked into my favorite hotel there. Monday morning, I had a lunch appointment with an editor at a comic book company for which I was writing.  As we left the restaurant, I asked him, "Do you mind if we make a slight detour to Studio 54 so I can pick up some tickets they're holding for me?"  It wasn't that far out of the way so he said, "Fine with me."  We went to Studio 54, I told a man behind a window who I was, he found the tickets he had for me…

…and he said, "Wow.  You must know someone."

I paid face value for the tickets — I think they were $75 each — and I took them over to the seating chart to see why he said what he said.  Cabaret, as you may know, takes place in a night club in Berlin during the Nazis' rise to power.  At Studio 54, management had taken out the first few rows of theater-type seats and replaced them with the kind of tables and chairs one finds in a night club, which more or less put the occupants into the show.  My tickets were for AA1 and AA2 — two of the four seats at the front table.  The best seats in the house.

When the gent in the ticket window said, "You must know someone," he was wrong.  I got those great seats because I knew someone who knew someone.  The director of a show would, let's face it, have access to the best house seats.

Later that day, I stopped in at Criterion Center Stage Right. That was the name of the place in which Little Me was playing. I picked up and paid for our tickets for Wednesday night. They were also great seats but nowhere near as hard to get as any seats for Cabaret.

That was a good show and we saw some other good shows on that trip. Friday night was our last night in Manhattan and I didn't tell Carolyn in advance where we'd be sitting for Cabaret. When we got to the theater, I handed our tickets to the lady at the front door. She looked at them and said, "Wow. You must know someone."

Then we went in and I handed the tickets to a lady who was seating people. She looked at the tickets and said, "Wow. You must know someone." Then she led us to the front table where two young men were already seated in AA3 and AA4. As soon as we sat down, I turned to them and I was about to say, "Who do you know?" but before I could, one of them said to me, "We paid $700 each. How much did you pay?"

I stammered out, "Oh, not quite that much."

The first act was quite wonderful — most deserving of all the praise this production had received and its four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical. The second act was equally wonderful but between them, there was a moment with a bit of silly tension.

During the intermission, one our tablemates said to me, "I wonder which one of us Alan Cumming will pick." I didn't know what he meant so he explained, "Before the second act starts, he comes out and chats with the audience and selects a woman from the front to dance with him briefly. Then he selects a man to also dance with him briefly."

The other gent said, "And usually, he picks them from this table. That's one of the reasons we sprung for these seats."

And then the first one told me, "The other night, he picked the man sitting right where you are…and it was Walter Cronkite! A friend of ours who was here than night told us!"

That was an interesting revelation. I didn't think Carolyn would mind the honor but I sure would. As I've probably said somewhere here on this blog before, I am not the worst dancer in the world but I'm certainly in the bottom two. Even being picked by a lady to dance with would have been unbelievably awkward and embarrassing. Being picked by the androgynous emcee of the Kit Kat Club…well, that could easily be the most humiliating moment of my life. And believe me…my life has had some pretty humiliating moments.

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The lights came up for Act II and Alan Cumming came out and began talking and dancing around…and then he strolled over to the table next to ours and selected a lady — one he apparently knew — to dance a few steps with him, ballroom style. He returned her to her seat and then he sashayed over to our table to select his next partner. He headed straight for me…our eyes met…

…and I think he saw the look of sheer panic in my retinas. He gave me a look that I took to mean "Don't worry" and moved instead to the gent seated to my right. They waltzed a bit, the show proceeded and after it was over, Cummings' male dance partner told us that brief moment was one of the great thrills of his life…well worth the $700 at least.

On the way out, Carolyn told me she would have paid twice that to see me selected. And I told her that the next time we came to New York and took in some shows, I was going to skip the house seats and get tickets way in the back.

Today's Video Link

From CBS Sunday Morning for this Sunday morning…

I have several e-mails asking me why there's no mention in the piece of MAD's longest-running illustrator, Sergio Aragonés. I would imagine that he was mentioned in the interviews but the piece only runs six and a half minutes so there wasn't time to include anything about him. Or Jack Davis. Or Will Elder. Or Don Martin, Dave Berg, Antonio Prohias, George Woodbridge, Bob Clarke, Norman Mingo, Frank Kelly Freas, et cetera…

Merry Marvel Music

In 1966, a producer named Steve Krantz and an animation studio called Grantray-Lawrence produced 65 half-hours of The Marvel Super-Heroes — a syndicated cartoon series featuring Captain America, The Hulk, The Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Thor. Years later when I asked Stan Lee, "Did anyone like that show?" his reply was, "Yeah, Steve Krantz. He got all the money." Stan believed that Marvel publisher Martin Goodman had made a rotten deal in order to get his characters on TV in the hopes that (a) a flood of merchandising deals would occur and (b) it would make Marvel look more successful because Goodman was then hoping to sell the company — which he did just a few years later.

The stories and artwork were mostly adapted from the actual comic books, infuriating most of the artists who had drawn and plotted those stories for low comic book rates and now saw their work used on television without a cent of additional compensation. It and a subsequent Spider-Man TV cartoon done under the same deal seems to have been among the main reasons why Steve Ditko left Marvel.

And the animation wasn't very good. When the cartoons aired in Los Angeles, they were initially on a kids' show called Shrimpenstein and the host would introduce they by saying things like "And now, here's another one of those cartoons where nothing ever moves" or "and now, another Marvel mediocrity." (I have been accused of making those lines up but ask anyone who watched Shrimpenstein on Channel 9 back then. They will confirm.)

The voice work was variable — done on the cheap in Canada — but the stories were pretty good. And for comic book experts like myself, it was kinda fun to watch the show and identify the drawings used. If the Hulk was standing in profile, that might be a Ditko drawing and then he'd turn full face and that would be a Jack Kirby drawing and then he'd turn the other way into a Bob Powell drawing.

And you know what else wasn't bad? The music. The cartoons had catchy theme songs written and supervised by a New York composer named Jacques "Jack" Urbont.

There is no good release of these cartoons on home video but bootlegs abound. If you've never seen these cartoons, you can watch some prints of varying quality on this page. Also, someone has come across good recordings of the opening and closing themes and Disney has recently released a vinyl (vinyl!) record of them which may interest you if you have something to play it on. Or you can listen to those recordings in these two online videos…

Personal Stuff

Mark is a little under the weather and also a lot under a deadline so I'm taking a day or three off from this blog. But I have some inventory goodies and a rerun or two to post so you won't miss me. There may be no current events and I'll probably be even lousier at replying to mail than I already am but worry not.

There's nothing wrong with me that sleeping and finishing an assignment won't cure. I just need to figure out how to do both at the same time.

Today's Political Comment

Kamala Harris has agreed to another Presidential Debate, this time on CNN with the same rules as the ABC one. Donald Trump is reportedly considering it but has not agreed. If I were Trump, I'd decline to show up but ask that the debate proceed with Harris debating an empty podium. Donald would do a lot better that way.

What I glean from the news is that just about everyone is agreeing that the "Haitian immigrants eating pets" meme is untrue but some folks think it has some value to them so they're going to keep saying it no matter how much it harms the city of Springfield, Ohio.

Here's another video to remind you what this election is all about…

And another reason is that Trump is getting more and more antisemitic…as Joe Conason notes.

Tales From Las Vegas #1

So one day I was in Vegas, playing Blackjack at the Barbary Coast — a pretty good place to play back then. This was the early nineties and the Barbary Coast was located on the northeast corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard South (aka "The Strip"). Since then, it's been sold and bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and finally remodeled into a much fancier place called The Cromwell. It's probably a much worse place to play Blackjack now but I can't be sure since I gave up the game several decades ago and the city several years ago. I also, on the day I'm describing, decided to never go into the Barbary Coast again.

That day, I was counting cards but, as per my modus operandi, not winning so much that anyone would notice. I'd get a few hundred ahead — enough to cover the cost of the trip and a little more — and then it was on to another casino or back to my room to work. They only stop you when you accumulate enough chips that it might not be sheer luck. I was a few bucks shy of quitting and had just put out a twenty dollar bet when an Asian guy came outta nowhere, leaned over me, called out "Money plays!" and threw ten thousand dollars down on the table.

Translation: He wanted in on the next hand and was wagering cash…a lot of it.

This is a standard move by gamblers who are either card counting as spectators or have been signaled by someone who is counting. You do it when the count is extremely good for the player…but the casinos, for obvious reasons, usually don't allow it. What's odd though was that I was counting and one of the reasons I was about to leave was that the count wasn't especially good. It was a strange time for someone to be doing this.

The dealer turned to the pit boss — the guy in a suit and tie who keeps an eye on all the gaming — and repeated "Money plays" and he checked the stack of bills on the table and announced "Ten thousand." That was over the table limit at the moment but the pit boss nodded to okay it all. I still don't know why. If he'd been playing more attention to our table, I might have thought he was counting and he knew there was no advantage at the moment. Or maybe he knew the Asian gent as a frequent loser. Or something.

The dealer dealt. I got a soft 18 — an ace and a seven — and the Asian gent, who would play his hand after I played mine, got a hard 12 — not a good hand. The size of his wager had caused a small crowd to instantly assemble at our table and they all winced audibly at the guy's bad luck.

Then again, the dealer's up card was a two. So the dealer's going to have to hit at least once. The dealer hasn't won…yet.

With the count near zero, I was playing Basic Strategy which meant doubling my bet, which they let you do on any two cards at the Barbary Coast. That's one of the rules that usually works to the player's advantage, which is why most casinos in Vegas no longer allow it. They've made the game much harder to win in the last few years, which you'd think would make for fewer players. Or at least, you'd think that if you don't know gamblers. For every me who's given up the game, there are a thousand folks who can't wait to play, no matter how bad the rules are.

I hesitated momentarily before doubling. I've seen it happen that a player in my position takes another card and it's a card that might help the next guy win and he gets mad. This makes no sense because I could just as easily be taking a card that would make him lose but gamblers are sometimes illogical about this kind of thing. So I doubled and got one more card — face down. Now it was the Asian gent's turn to play his hand.

Basic Strategy said he should hit. He did and got a ten so he busted out and lost his bet. When the dealer flipped over his own hold card, it was also a ten so he had twelve, which meant he had to take another card. He did and got a ten — so he busted and I won. My face-down card, not that it mattered at that point, was a five.

Everyone looked at the fellow who had just lost ten thousand dollars. How did he feel? What would he do now? He didn't seem all that bothered that he just lost ten thousand dollars on one play of the cards. Instead, showing no particular emotion, he pulled out another ten thousand and announced, "Money plays…again!" There was a big gasp from the spectators.

I decided to stop right there but I had to stay and see how he did. Answer: Much, much better.  He got a Blackjack — an ace and ten-value card — and there was a big cheer from the onlookers. Blackjack then paid three-to-two, meaning that he won back what he'd lost on the previous hand plus 50%. A lot of casinos now pay six-to-five on Blackjacks — another rule change which works against the players but doesn't seem to have made fewer of them play the game.

He threw out a nice tip for the dealer then walked away from the table as I did. We exchanged a few words — me congratulating him, him thanking me for congratulating him — then we parted ways and I never saw him again. But what I did see was two beefy men in suits coming up and briefly detaining me, asking if that man was a friend of mine. Obviously, they thought we might be in collusion — maybe me signaling him that the count was high so he should leap into the game at that moment.

I couldn't say "The count was not good at that moment" because that would have been admitting I was counting.  I did say, "I never saw that guy before in my life," which was true.  They asked me a few more questions: Where was I staying? Where was I from? Did I gamble a lot in that town? There was no reason not to give them honest answers so I did. After a bit more interrogation, they decided they had no reason to hassle me so I went over, turned my chips into cash and never set foot in the Barbary Coast again…just in case the same kind of thing happened again.

In my years of playing Blackjack, that was pretty much the closest I came to getting into trouble but it was not the main reason I quit. The rule changes and my growing boredom with Vegas and Blackjack (even when I won) were of greater importance and those are the ones I've mentioned here in the past when this topic arose. But now that I think of it, maybe that day at the Barbary Coast was a factor. I won about $300 dollars that day there. That wasn't worth having any more trouble with them.

Today's Political Comment

One of the zillion-and-a-half things I don't like about Donald Trump is his mania to have things both ways: "Everyone agrees" he won the debate against Kamala Harris but she cheated with some sort of earpiece that told her what to say and the moderators were biased in her favor. And the proof that he won is that she immediately asked for another debate, which is what you do what you lose…even though after the debate with Biden — which he says he won and probably did — he immediately asked for another debate.

And so on. I understand that there are people who are always going to vote for the Republican over the Democrat, no matter who they are. There are also people who feel they did well for whatever reason during the four years Trump was in the White House. I only wonder if they listen to his incoherent rantings now and wonder what they're going to get this time.

I also understand there are folks who have their pet issues: They're always going to vote for the candidate who seems more likely to keep their lives and neighborhoods free of immigrants, legal or otherwise. A lot of them don't think it makes any difference.

But then I have my pet issues. A big one for me is Health Care. I have real good health insurance and I believe everyone should; that it would not only be more humane but in the long run, both cheaper and better for society. As Kevin Drum and Jonathan Chait both note, Trump has no plan to do anything like that, even though he has for years claimed he did and he was only "a few weeks away" from unveiling it. To the extent Trump has any plan for health care at all, it's to cut people loose, including those with pre-existing conditions and/or who are in need to treatment they cannot afford.

I also think the guy is bad on Abortion, bad on the Economy and that he'd serve Ukraine up to Putin on a very large silver platter. Oh, yeah…and he's nuts, too. Did you know windmills cause cancer?

Anyway, here's another news-type story to remind you what's at stake in this election…

Today's Regular Video Link

Hey, it's a new episode of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live and it's about Season 12 when the show was reborn with a batch of great new cast members, two of whom were friends of mine — Jan Hooks and Victoria Jackson. They also brought in several terrific new writers and…well, it was the first time I'd really enjoyed the show since the original cast left and the first time it seemed credible that SNL might go on indefinitely. No one wrote "Saturday Night Dead" opinion columns and said it was time to put a dying show out of its misery…

Today's Political Comment

I always try to remember — and it isn't always easy — that the Internet is all about clicks and clicks are all about clickbait. In a time like now with an important election looming, a great way to get clicks is to tell people either (a) what they want to hear or (b) what they don't want to hear. And that's why some of those articles get posted to the web; not because they're true but because they'll attract clicks.

Right now, I see a lot of potential places to click that will tell me Kamala Harris is surging and that the latest polls put her increasingly in the lead. That may be so…and Donald Trump is sure acting like she's clobbering him. If I were a candidate right now, I'd absolutely rather have her numbers than his numbers. But I'm going to adhere to the old "It ain't over 'til it's over" mantra. And given Trump's longtime habit of calling every loss or setback a fraud, it may not even be over when it's over.

So my mood is optimistic, not celebratory. You set yours where you want it to be.

I don't expect this website to change a single vote but I am going to post links to a few videos that may remind folks of what this election is about. Here's one…