Mark Evanier's Blog, page 64

In the News (Sadly)…

There is much tragedy to be found in the mysterious deaths of Gene Hackman, his wife and one of their three dogs. And one of the tragic aspects is that no matter what the official explanation is, some folks won't accept it strictly because it is an official explanation. And some of the non-accepters will insist it must be something far more sinister…and also more world-wide significant. Like they were killed to prevent them from exposing some vast conspiracy fomented by whoever the theorist thinks is the current Root of All Evil in the world.

Less attention will be paid to the fact that Mr. Hackman was a magnificent actor with a magnificent body of work.

FACT CHECK: Social Security for Centenarians

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are still claiming that a lot of Social Security payments are going to people who are 100, 200 and even 300 years of age. This is, of course, not true and it's debunked here by the Associated Press, the only major news service in this country that knows the Gulf of Mexico is still the Gulf of Mexico.

Today's Video Link

We'll get back to stand-up comedians tomorrow. Here's my longtime pal Scott Shaw! on MeTV the other day…

FACT CHECK: Trump Speak at CPAC

Last Saturday, that president of ours spoke to the friendliest audience he could possibly have — at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Still, he said an awful lot of things that were demonstrably false. Daniel Dale goes down a long list of them.

Pantry Panic

Photo by Downtowngal

The Original Pantry, a landmark Los Angeles restaurant, is on the verge of maybe/possibly shutting down after operating in this city since When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. I mean the Age of Man, not the movie. It was (note the past tense) a wonderful 24/7 place to grab a steak or other very American entree and an especially great place for breakfast. That was true until a slow but an almost-tangible downslide began in 1980 when a gent named Richard Riordan purchased the place.

Mr. Riordan was the Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993 to 2001 and not, in my opinion, a particularly good one. That didn't matter much because the way Los Angeles is set up, the mayor has about as much power as one of those 25-cent batteries they used to sell at RadioShack — the kind you could put into your transistor radio and hear about half a song before you had to swap it out. We used to say, "His skill as a politician put him where he is today — in the restaurant business." He also ruined a great eatery called Gladstone's out by the ocean in Santa Monica.

Mayor Riordan was a nice man — I ate with him once and liked him despite Trumpian politics — but all his businesses suffered or shuttered. He passed away two years ago.

I'll tell you how great the Pantry was, once upon a time. You usually had to wait a long time to get in — and we did. And then once you were seated at a table, they immediately served you an unasked-for dish of cole slaw…and I still went there. The food was good, the food was cheap and the place was kind of legendary. It was open 24/7 and its owners, including the former mayor, bragged that they never, in all its seeming centuries of existence — actually since it opened in 1924 — were closed or without a customer.

Then COVID hit and they closed…and I think they were also once or twice to correct health code violations. Lately, they've been open not every day at every hour but Wednesdays through Sundays from 7 AM until 3 PM on weekdays and 5 PM on weekends. You'd think that if they could only turn a profit during those hours, someone would say, "Hmm…maybe we're doing something wrong."

So I don't go there anymore and neither do enough people for the place to be open at night. I feel bad for its employees, some of whom have been there since it was a great place to dine but I'm already seeing on the Internet, people who haven't eaten there for decades saying, "This is a landmark…we need to save it." And my thinking is that it's a little late for that. Someone should have begun applying corrective measures before it turned into a Denny's — and not a very good one.

Today's Second Video Link

A Ricky Gervais stand-up comedy special…

Scott Watch

The cable/streaming channels MeTV and MeTV Toons run this cute li'l show called Toon In with Me hosted by Bill Leff and his finny friend, Toony the Tuna. They run classic cartoons and talk about cartoon history and on tomorrow's episode, the subject is the great animation director, Tex Avery. They will be joined in this by my longtime friend and co-conspirator, Scott Shaw!, who worked with Tex at Hanna-Barbera. You can tune in or you can toon in but don't miss it.

The schedule says it airs on MeTV at 7:00 AM on MeTV and 11:30 PM on MeTV Toons but with streaming channels, it's best to double-check what time things air in your area.

FACT CHECK: Condoms for Hamas

No, despite what Trump and Musk are saying, $50 million of government funds was not sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. The Associated Press people set the record straight.

Today's First Video Link

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart cut his hand when a breakaway (I guess) cup didn't breakaway (I suppose) as it was supposed to. This was not the first time Stewart has drawn blood with his comedy…

Missing Mike

That's a photo of my pal Mike Schlesinger, who left us in early January and has been much-missed since then. He was a filmmaker and a very important person in the field of preserving motion pictures and their history. A lot of great movies might not exist today — or at least exist in good and complete prints — were it not for Mike. He was also a helluva nice guy.

On April 6, a bunch of us who miss him will converge on a movie theater in Santa Monica to miss him together. We'll talk about him and all he did…and then we're going to run his favorite movie (which also happens to be my favorite movie) the way we all feel it should be seen — on a big screen with a big, appreciative audience. If you knew Mike and/or want to help us celebrate who he was and all he did, click below for all the details.