Category Archives: Television

Dr. George

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(2015)

Dr. George Fischbeck, RIP. What a classic character (and what a classic character’s name….) Dug up this clip from 1987. Hard to believe how simple it is, more 1950’s than now. The pace is so relaxed, the technology so sparse and free of busy clutter. He’s not competing with anyone. He’s not stacked out to yar. There’s no futuristic Mega Ultra Ultimate Gnarly Weathertrackingthing Plus spinning and glowing and promising rain. And dig that list…it’s paper. It’s wrinkled. Remember paper? Remember wrinkles?

Bakersfield was 97 degrees that day. Boise was 92. He got as far as Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 96. Record breaking heat. Then he turns to some little black and white photographs right out of 12 O’clock High and explains why. The pointer waves and twirls like a conductor’s baton in a John Philip Sousa march. Stars and Stripes Forever. I remember thinking that way back then.

Dr. George was to L.A. weather what Seymour was to monster movies and Cal Worthington was to dogs named Spot. I stopped tuning into local forecasts when Dr. George moved on. Not even the Pinay with a 100% chance of pulchritude kept me watching.

Well, a couple times she did. But only because it was raining. And not men.

Dr. George

Dr. George and his pointer. (Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.)

Lawrence Welk

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Wow. Lawrence Welk.

I’ve never been able to watch The Lawrence Welk Show long enough to see if that’s Eddie Miller blowing sax. But this was one of Lester Young’s favorite shows. Yes it was. He loved Perry Como too. A friend of mine lived next door to him. Every time he dropped by Prez’s pad, he was listening to a damn Perry Como 78. Listening to it over and over. Obsessed with it. Said he was trying to learn it. My friend couldn’t hear what Prez was hearing and went back upstairs and listened to bebop. I wish I knew what Perry Como song it was that Lester Young was listening to over and over. No doubt it slipped into one of those airy, lazy solos of his, perfect and gorgeous and so square but you’d never know it. Lester Young, a bottle of gin, a saxophone and this, The Lawrence Welk Show. Geniuses can be so strange.

Uh oh, the tap dancer.

One of those records nobody talks about.

One of those records nobody talks about.

Eddie Albert, sentient tumbleweeds, and the ramblings of a deranged mind

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“Thought has no language. We think in pictures and sensations. And then we translate these ideas into our own words and sentences.”

–Andy Thorne, played by Eddie Albert, in the “Cry of Silence”, Outer Limits (1964)

To be honest, I had never gotten past Eddie Albert and wife being attacked by sentient tumbleweeds. What might have been a workable idea in Louis Charbonneau‘s original story looks beyond ridiculous on TV. Tumbleweeds creep up, creep back, hurl themselves at Eddie. At one point he grabs one and smooshes it all over his face as if he’s being attacked. After a struggle, he wins. Did you see that honey? he asks. That thing attacked me! You actually feel bad for Eddie Albert, the actor, at this point. Eddie Albert, who wrote and starred in the first ever teleplay on television way back in 1936. Eddie Albert, hero of Tarawa. Eddie Albert, anti-hero of Attack. And here he is battling a crazed tumbleweed. There are hundreds of the things. Vast hordes of murderous tumbleweeds. We get back to town, Eddie tells his wife, and l’ll give up the idea of living on a farm. That usually did it for me right there.

This time I stuck it out but nearly gave up after they were attacked by hundreds of frogs. The scene lacked even the production values of the Ray Milland opus a decade later. Here, someone appeared to be hurling basketfuls of frogs at them. Worse yet, they were apparently living frogs, big bull frogs. You’ve never seen so many bullfrogs. The frogs squirmed, the wife screamed. They retreated back to the farmhouse. Their next foray out almost made it to the car but was driven back by deadly sentient rocks. It looked liked Buster Keaton in the avalanche scene in Seven Chances except Arthur Hunnicutt, playing a farmer named Lamont right out of Green Acres (and whose house they had sought refuge in) is struck and killed. That never happened in a Buster Keaton movie. Continue reading →

Oklahoma City

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(2010)

The most fervent local news coverage I ever saw was in Oklahoma City, where all four networks had local news and the competition was so intense that L.A. looked bush league. In fact, the level of TV news competition in many of the cities we’d stayed in throughout the Great Plains for a night or two was incredible, all these young reporters and anchors trying to make a splash and get the hell out of their television backwaters and into the big time. But Oklahoma City was by far the best. The coverage of a house fire in one of the suburbs was every bit as intense as the coverage of a hellish fire season in Southern California. We saw the distant column of smoke while driving into town. Apparently if we hadn’t been a good ten miles away–or actually been inside the house–we could have been killed. A night I shall never forget. Actually, I haven’t. I couldn’t. Every station on TV seemed to be reporting live from the scene of the conflagration. They must have been tripping over each others’ wires and in and out of each others’ shots. KOKH bumping into KWTV blocking KOCO in KFOR’s way and the fire crews trying to avoid all of them. The house was destroyed, gutted, a total loss. The fortunate circumstance that no one was living in the house or was inside the house or even out in the yard when the conflagration erupted kept casualties to a minimum. To zero, actually. All this was reported, over and over and over, on all four stations. The coverage was breathless. The footage unforgiving. I felt sorry for the neighbors, with CBSNBCABCFOX crowding them, looking for the story, that human touch, that Pulitzer. There was more media than onlookers. I saw a neighbor lady interviewed four different times, and by the last interview she was almost a pro. Please shoot me from my good side, I hoped she’d said. Get out of my light. What is my motivation here? Continue reading →

Tonight Show

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I went to the Tonight Show once. 1975 or 1976. Johnny Carson, of course, took the night off. John Davidson was the host. I was so disappointed. Then they announced Davidson couldn’t make it. A surprise host would be filling in. Out comes Steve Allen. He brings out Tom Poston, then Louie Nye, then Bill Daily. It was the original Tonight Show all over again. Sheer anarchy. At one point they’re all doing an out of control Chinese Fire Drill around the desk. Half the jokes were off camera. No guests got on. They kept going right through the commercial breaks, like they couldn’t stop. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw in my life. Later that night, watching on television I realized that only a fraction of what was going could be seen, let alone understood, by the TV audience, which made it even funnier. That was the only time I ever saw the Tonight Show in person. Never did see Johnny Carson, to my infinite regret, but I saw Steve Allen doing it old school, like it was live television all over again. Beautiful.

Steve Allen at rehearsal, 1954. A great photo from the Associated Press, no idea who took it.

Steve Allen at rehearsal, 1954. A great photo from the Associated Press, no idea who took it.

 

The King Family

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Turned on the television thinking there was a hockey game. Nope. It’s the King Family Christmas Special. Severe flashback time. Blondes everywhere, blondes with big hairdos and perfect children. Harmonies without even a tinge of funk. Alvino Rey smiling like a goofball. White people used to be way white.

Thirty six of the thirty seven members of the King Family. Where's Grandma? Behind the tree?

Thirty six of the thirty seven members of the King Family. Where’s Grandma? Behind the tree?

I was once forced to watch the Lawrence Welk Show on PBS–a fundraiser, getting old people’s money before they die–and the young singers and musicians made an obvious drug reference that went a mile or two over Lawrence’s head. A one an’ a two he said, smiling blissfully, and the accordion played and then tap dancer tapped but I knew that backstage somewhere reefer was being blown and Eddie Miller told dirty stories. That made me feel better. And we know now that no matter how happy the Andy Williams family appeared every Christmas, his wife Claudine was boinking somebody else and thinking about guns.

But the King Family? Were there secrets therein? This squarest of the squarest of the squarest of all that was good in America? Well, the King Family was actually the King Sisters, who’d sung with the big bands. Lots of big bands. Artie Shaw, Billy May, Frank Devol (aka Happy Kyne), you name it.  And big bands were full of jazz musicians. Jazz musicians with issues. Well, who knew how to have a good time, anyway.  And their good times were not fit for a King Family Christmas Special. Obviously there were dark secrets under all that blonde hair. Drunken bus rides, nights in hotels, drummers, vipers, ducking from the cops. If you could have gotten the King sisters liquored up oh the tales they could tell.

But no one ever got the King Sisters liquored up.

So here’s some facts about the King Family you never knew. When ABC cancelled Outer Limits they replaced it with the King Family. Harlan Ellison threw an extraordinary tantrum. When ABC cancelled the legendary Turn-On after one terrifying episode, they replaced it with the King Family. Timothy Leary threw an extraordinary tantrum. And when Nixon resigned the presidency he was replaced by the King Family, at least until Gerald Ford could get settled in. Pat Buchanan threw an extraordinary tantrum.

And there was a spell there around 1966 and ’67 when you got thirty minutes of Shindig! followed by thirty minutes of The King Family. It was only for a couple weeks but at one point The Who played My Generation and Keith Moon got all crazy and mere anarchy was loosed upon the world. Moments later it was the King Family. Right then and there the generations were sundered, the culture war declared, LSD dropped and girls got naked in public. Acid, incense and balloons. Not even the Four King Cousins could stem the tide.

The Four King Cousins tripping out of their minds.

The Four King Cousins tripping their brains out.

Funny how thirty seven nice white people can change the course of world history, accompanied by an accordion. OK, they didn’t. Dylan had already gone electric. Coltrane was already blowing free jazz. San Franciscans were already experimenting with LSD. And Viet Nam was already totally fucked up. The King Family had nothing to do with any of that. Nothing to do with anything, really. Though they did scar the childhood of many a kid forced to watch it with the folks. If you wanted to watch Shindig! you had to watch the King Family. And then an hour of Lawrence Welk. Before you know it you’re hanging with Charles Manson. The King Family messed with people’s minds.

And there they are on TV now, the whole King Family, and I can feel my mind going. So I change channels. Barbara Stanwyck is all over Dennis Morgan like a cheap suit, the vamp. It’s Christmas in Connecticut. Only Barbara Stanwyck could turn a sweet Christmas story into pure sex, even if only for a scene or two. She was a bad girl. She vamped and screwed for money and wore anklets. A real bad girl. Something that never comes up in essays about the King Family.

Miley Cyrus

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(Written whenever it was Miley Cyrus outraged America.)

So looking at the Miley Cyrus video that every grown woman I know is posting on Facebook this morning, with commentary, I’ve made several observations.

1) Miley Cyrus could hold a fork with that tongue but it would be hard to eat anything.

2) You can’t hear the song with the volume down so I just pretended it was “Achey Breaky Heart”.

c) Women will not bend over like that if you are just a writer. I’ve asked.

d) I have no idea who Miley Cyrus is other than the picture of her pumping gas at a gas station and it wasn’t all that, as all that goes, unless all that goes is all went already and where have I been.

5) I only watched this because I thought Robin Thicke was that Canadian guy who tells jokes and plays hockey with the Hanson Brothers.

6) Doesn’t VMA stand for the Virginia Military Academy? Except the Virginia Military Academy doesn’t have teddy bears, at least not huge scary ones.

There was a seventh point but I left it out because it was more sad than funny.

All that being said, however, I will hold back on any personal opinion until I read what the intellectuals have to say in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. Because they will. Over and over and over. Smart people being what they are today.

Thank you.
.

(I was very disappointed, later, to see that neither The Atlantic nor the New Yorker wrote about the greater meaning of Miley Cyrus. No Beyoncé she, that Miley Cyrus.)

Jack Benny

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Jack Benny was some act, man. He walks out on stage to applause and immediately begins insulting the audience. Goes into a weird riff that winds up with him claiming that he lets seals in for free because they applaud so well. The audience applauds. Jack thanks the seals. Then he introduces a character named Finque (“that’s Fin Kay in French”) played by Mel Blanc who begins insulting Jack Benny and doing weird animal impressions. Then out comes Don Wilson in tux and tails and top hat and Jack makes fat jokes. Don Wilson brings out his son Harlow (played by the brilliant Dale White) and Jack makes more fat jokes. Jack dislikes Harlow. Harlow dislikes Jack. Don and Harlow do the old Ted Heath number “Me and My Shadow”. Jack makes a fat joke and accidentally busts the windowpane that had been surgically installed in Harlow’s stomach for an aspirin commercial. Don gives Jack an evil look and leads Harlow offstage. Next up is Louie Nye as part of a bizarre acrobatic shooting act.  Louie shoots the acrobat. End of act. Then up comes an old lady hot jazz band  (the Sentimental Sweethearts) who seriously tear it up on Sweet Georgia Brown. Jack is out front on fiddle. Trumpeter blows hot. Weird bass solo. Zany antics. Jazz could be really funny back then. Imagine that. The ladies make their exit. The audience applauds. Jack thanks the seals.

Jack Benny with dog

Jack Benny with dog