Mark Evanier's Blog, page 242

Today's Video Link

Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone breaks down the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll trial for us. Many Trump supporters won't let this come between them and The Man They Love but with each passing Trump scandal, it becomes harder for them to claim they're the party of "Law and Order" and "Family Values"…

Tales of My Mother #8

It's Mother's Day so here's a replay of a piece I first published here on December 16, 2012 about my mother. In case you haven't read any of the other essays I've written about her, you should know that she was an extraordinary lady who did just about everything right when it came to rearing and mothering me. I did really well in the Parents Department…

My mother was a very intelligent woman and until about the last six weeks of her life, she was in possession of darn near all her mental faculties. As I've mentioned here, I spent much of the last decade hearing many of her many doctors hint or even state that she wouldn't be around much longer. She outlived all those predictions and even outlived one of those doctors.

In the last few months, two things made me realize they were the last few months. One was her primary care physician Dr. Wasserman changing his tone. He never said "Your mother's going to die soon" but he didn't have to. To be a good doctor, you obviously have to know a lot about how the human body works and what kind of pill or procedure fixes this or that. You also have to know how to talk to patients and their loved ones; how not to exaggerate or underplay what you know with reasonable certainty. I once asked my own doctor if in Medical School, he had to attend classes called "Breaking Bad News." He said yes, sort of. They weren't called that and there weren't enough of them…but it was a skill he had to learn just as sure as he had to learn how to stop bleeding or cure migraines or write illegible prescriptions.

Dr. Wasserman is real good at speaking between the lines. What he said and what he didn't say made me realize that the end was near for my mother.

The other indicator was that she was starting to get confused about things that had never confused her before. What day of the week it was. Names of people she'd known for years. I had long since taken over all her finances and bill-paying but about two months before she passed, she wanted to sign a certain check herself. And when she couldn't figure out where to sign, that was a bad indicator.

Before that, I used to tell friends, "She's a smart lady but when she gets sick, she gets stupid." That was why she needed me around. When she was well, she was fine at running her life and getting things done. She might need me or one of her endless stream of caregivers to drive her somewhere and then push her about in a wheelchair but she always knew where she was going and what to do when she got there. It was mainly her eyesight, not any mental deterioration, that prompted me to assume checkbook duties. When alert, she could take care of herself…and did.

Us.

She insisted on living alone after my father died. Other arrangements were proposed and rejected. Throughout four decades of married life, she'd lived by his timetable — and for a long part of that, mine. She got up when it was time to get him off to work and/or me off to school. She ate when we ate…and between his food preferences and my food allergies, it was usually a matter of eating what we would/could eat. When there was but one TV in our house, it was usually set to what he or I wanted to watch. Later, when I got a set for my room, the one in the living room was sometimes tuned to what he wanted to watch but not always.

Shortly after we lost him, I sat her down and told her I wanted her to be self-indulgent; to make wishes that I could make come true. She no longer had to cater at least in part to his needs and since I was living elsewhere, mine were of near-zero concern. It was time, I told her, to reorient her thinking to what she wanted and only what she wanted. She said, "Let me think about this for a few days." A few days later, she told me, "I've decided I want to live on my own schedule. I want to eat when I want to eat, sleep when I want to sleep, watch what I want to watch. Would that be okay with you?"

It was, of course, okay with me. How could that not be okay with anyone? So to the extent her eyesight, limited ability to walk and a few doctor's orders would permit, that was how she lived…and in the same house, with my old room converted to a den where she could smoke and watch TV at any hour.

She couldn't get out of things like having to go to the hospital at a certain time for a doctor's appointment but to the extent she could, she eschewed all demands to do anything when she didn't want. It was understood that when we had a date for me to take her out to dinner, she might just call me at the last minute and say, "I don't feel like it tonight."

For years, she'd loved Cirque du Soleil and I took her to see it whenever one of its traveling companies ventured near. One time, I called her and mentioned that a new Cirque show would be in Santa Monica in a few months and I was going to order tickets. "Don't get one for me," she said — to my great surprise. I was expecting joyous anticipation and when I didn't get it, I asked how come…

"Because the night your tickets are for, I might not feel like going. If you buy me a ticket, then I have to go." She still loved Cirque but she loved even more having no demands on her time.

That was why she recoiled in horror whenever I mentioned the dread words, "assisted living." She accepted the need to have a caregiver around a few hours a day, though she resented having to get up at a specified hour to let one in. She hated the idea of having one on the premises full-time and would often send one home early. The idea of relocating to an Assisted Living Home was even more dreaded. "I'll die before I let that happen," she'll said…and I knew she would. It was bad enough that she had to spend as much time as she did in the hospital with all those strangers around telling her when and what to eat.

Those who observe the time stamps on these postings note that I keep odd hours. In her final decade, my mother's were odder. She was as likely to be up watching TV at 4 AM as at 4 PM. She ate meals so irregularly that she couldn't classify them as breakfast, lunch or dinner. They were just meals.

I arranged with two nearby restaurants to deliver to her and to charge everything — the meal, the delivery fee, the tip — to my credit card. She just had to call one and say, "I'd like chicken tonight" (or shrimp or beef or…) and within the half-hour, a man would bring a freshly-prepared, low-sodium dinner to her door. The problem with this system? She might not feel like waiting the half-hour. Or she might not get the craving 'til after 10 PM when both restaurants closed. So she'd pop a Stouffer's frozen entree into the microwave and that would be dinner…or maybe breakfast.

MSNBC used to air three hours of Don Imus from 3 AM to 6 AM on this coast. Who would be up watching at that hour? Often, my mother. She didn't like Mr. Imus but she liked the lively discussions on his program and enjoyed, she said, when his guests often put him properly in his place. In 2007, he got himself fired because of one particular remark that many took as racially-offensive. My mother was disappointed to lose her middle-o'-the-night entertainment and a bit bewildered. As far as she was concerned, this was like firing Don Rickles for calling someone a hockey puck. Imus, she felt, said something stupid and insensitive about as often as he threw to commercial. Why did that offensive remark doom him when the eighteen the day before hadn't? Or the 143 the previous week?

She never warmed to his replacement, Joe Scarborough. She thought he was just as miserable a human being as Imus but Imus at least didn't pretend to be anything else. Imus also didn't talk so much about the boring minutiae of Congress and he gave his guests a fair shot at telling him he was full of crap. She found her way to other 3 AM programming (often QVC or some other channel via which she squandered my inheritance) and when I later told her Imus was back on another channel, it was like, "I'm over that." In my ongoing monitoring of my mother's mental state, I thought that was a good sign.

Sorry…

ASK me: Good Grief! More Strike Questions!

I'll get back to the topic of Western Publishing and its panel borders soon, I promise. Right now, we start with this question from Mark Palko…

One of the dirty little secrets of Netflix, et al. is that, despite all the hype, viewers spend most of their time watching older shows like Golden Girls or M*A*S*H or NCIS. (I recently rewatched Justified.) How do streaming residuals for a show like Welcome Back, Kotter compare to what you'd see with broadcast or cable?

It's a matter of comparing something to nothing. I have received zero streaming residuals for Welcome Back, Kotter. If and when I do, I'll bet you the check won't be enough to buy me a Milky Way candy bar…not even the fun-size kind.

And here's one from my old pal Jerome Sinkovec…

Mark, I was wondering…if you are writing on your blog, are you "crossing the picket line" of the Writers Strike?

No…the strike is against certain companies for certain kinds of work. I have stopped laboring on a project I had going with one of those producers and I'm instead working on a couple of books and on a comic book or two. One of them is about this really stupid barbarian who wanders around with a spotted dog. A lot of writing is outside the jurisdiction of the Writers Guild of America. Even though it would mean I'd be totally out of work (and therefore, income) during a strike, I wish that it was all covered.

Today's Video Link

Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban and the current casts of Hamilton and Sweeney Todd get together outside the Richard Rodgers Theater on W. 46th Street in New York to merge their musicals. Thanks to Tom Galloway who alerted me to this…

Today's Video Link

I will be the guest live this evening at 6:30 PM (West Coast time) on the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog Podcast. If the show's in progress as you read this, it'll appear in the window below. After the show's over, it'll replay in the window below. Ain't modern technology amazing?

ASK me: Tony Awards Delayed?

My old pal Pat O'Neill sent me this the day after this year's Tony nominations were announced…

The Tony nominations were announced yesterday and the ceremony is scheduled for June 11, to be broadcast by CBS. If the WGA strike is still going on that date (as most seem to be predicting), I assume there will be pickets outside the theater.

This leads to a question: Most of the actors who will be on stage for this show are not only members of Actors Equity, but of SAG-AFTRA. The latter has announced it is supporting the WGA and will honor its picket lines. (For that matter, so has IATSE, representing the technical people who would be involved in the broadcast.) So, what's the likelihood that the Tony presentation broadcast will be canceled or postponed? It's an important question for the theater community, because the Tony broadcast is a big "commercial" for Broadway.

Well, first of all, I question that "most" are predicting the strike will last that long. Writers Guild strikes do tend to last long but a settlement in the near future is not impossible. In truth, no one knows. In the past, they've lasted a long time for two reasons, one being that the producers sometimes have a hard time agreeing among themselves about a new offer.

Secondly, Writers Guild negotiations tend to be the battleground for issues that may eventually lead to increases or rollbacks for some or all of the other Hollywood unions. This is one thing it helps to keep in mind to understand Hollywood strikes. To you, it may look like it's an intermittent battle between The Producers and The Writers Guild. But from the viewpoint of the AMPTP, it's one long never-ending series of battles between them and 58 (that's right — I said FIFTY-EIGHT) guilds and unions. What they give us or take back from us impacts what happens with the other labor organizations.

It's like if you have a big family and you give one kid a bicycle, you're probably on the hook for more bicycles. It's called Pattern Bargaining and they can sometimes manipulate things to their advantage but it can also sometimes work against them.

In past strikes, we did not have the unusual timing of this one. The Directors Guild is commencing negotiations on its new contract tomorrow and the actors begin formal contract negotiations on June 7. I'm not saying this will cause the WGA strike to end sooner or later; merely that you can't look at past years and figure out how that will impact any of the bargaining for any of these guilds.

In the past, there was almost zero chance of all three being on strike at the same time. It's still unlikely but it's not impossible. The current DGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts both expire on June 30. The AMPTP may feel the need to get our deal wrapped-up before dealing with possible strikes from those guilds. Note my use of the word "may." Nothing is certain.

Also, past Writers Guild strikes were at a time when the broadcast networks were frantic to get things settled so as not to disrupt their Fall Seasons. Nowadays, the Fall Season isn't a major "thing" at those networks and those networks are not driving the AMPTP bus the way they used to. So we're really in uncharted territory.

So…as for how the work stoppage may affect The Tonys, this is one of my biggest "I dunno" answers. I dunno…and it's not just about The Tonys. There are a lot of shows that have to decide what they're going to do. And if there is a picket line outside whatever theater will be the location for the Tony Awards telecast, it may be up to individuals to make a difficult choice. Maybe the show will be postponed.

The DGA and SAG-AFTRA can't strike until their contracts expire at the end of that month but a general labor unrest could start well before then. Might it make a difference? It might…but I have no friggin' idea how. No friggin' idea.

Today's News Today

I feel the way most of you probably do about the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll matter.  And it's educational in a way.  If you're the kind of guy who likes to to grab women by their private parts against their will — and I sure hope for everyone's sake, you aren't — it's probably not a good idea to get recorded bragging about how you can grab women by their private parts against their will. It's almost as bad as getting recorded saying you want someone to find you 11,780 votes — one more than your margin of defeat.

The Lazarus Effect

If we're going to mention newspaper strip guys who drew a lot of strips, it's only fair to mention Mell Lazarus, a very funny man who had two long-running strips…

Miss Peach (eventually renamed Ms. Peach) started on February 4, 1957 and ran until September 8, 2002. That's 16,652 days.

Momma started on October 26, 1970 and ended July 10, 2016. That's 16,694 days.

Together, they add up to 33,346 strips…and Mell also wrote but did not draw a couple of other short-lived strips. There seems to be some argument among cartoonists and Friends of Mell as to whether or not he ever had assistants. I seem to recall him telling me that he did at times but that may have been with gags, not drawing. Others say he did it all himself so I'm not sure. Both looked like strips that one guy could draw several of in a day.

But in any case, the record for launching one newspaper strip and drawing it day after day after day, still belongs to Russell Myers on Broom-Hilda. Today's Broom-Hilda strip is #19,378. But it should be noted that Mell Lazarus came close…twice!

Today's Audio Link

On this blog, I often tell you about talented people I know…and I know a lot of them. One of my more interesting friends is the international performance artist, Ptychka…a person who does so many things, it's hard to put them into any one category. Ptychka writes, she acts, she models, she dances, she performs amazing aerial choreography, she makes music, she sings…and she does all these things in English and Spanish and French and Russian and Japanese…

One time when she dropped by, my partner Sergio Aragonés was here and the two of them began talking in several of those languages. I didn't even understand the occasional parts of the conversation that were in English. You can read more about her at this link. It discusses her newly-released Japanese-inspired song, "Ichi" — which you can listen to in the embed below. You're going to hear a lot about this lady…