The Vig

With the exception of the Betty White/Abe Vigoda ad for Snickers, this year’s Super Bowl ads sucked.  All of them.   Well maybe the Tebow ad, which was much better and much less political than anyone expected, shouldn’t be lumped in there, but the rest of them?  Yuck.

The Letterman ad goes into it’s own category.  First, it wasn’t a corporate ad.  It was a CBS house ad, not something created by corporate nitwits.  Second, it was Dave.  Third, it featured Dave’s longtime late-night nemesis Jay Leno.  Their feud, for lack of a better term, goes back almost 20 years now.  Is it all over?  Just like that?  Dave absolutely killed Leno last month during the whole Conan debacle.  And he did so gleefully, I might add.  What in the hell happened?

I sat stunned for a few seconds after the thing aired.  I seriously couldn’t believe everyone was in one room.  I originally thought it had been done as a split-screen thing, like Michael and LaToya at the “We Are the World” sessions.  Not true.

The spot was shot last Tuesday afternoon, under the strictest of secrecy which involved both Mr. Leno and Ms. Winfrey flying in surreptitiously to New York, and arriving incognito at the theater, while Mr. Letterman was in the midst of taping his show for that night. It also involved Jay wearing a disguise: hooded sweatshirt, glasses and faux mustache. If you happened to be on Broadway between 53rd and 54th street last Tuesday about 4:15, you might have seen a man fitting that description slip into the theater by a small entrance under the marquee.

This could only happen because Dave made it happen.  From the outside it almost looks like a Michael-Fredo reunion with Dave as Michael and Jay as Fredo.  Only Leno never got clipped for betraying the family.

The family, you say?  I just finished reading I’m Dying Up Here by William Knoedelseder.  It’s the story of the 1979 comedians strike against the Comedy Store.  ESPN’s Bill Simmons mentioned the book on his Sports Guy podcast last month while talking Conan with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Goodman.  Long story short, in the mid-to-late-seventies, the path to comic stardom went through Johnny Carson and the path to Carson went through the Comedy Store.  While at first comics were happy to work for free in exchange for the opportunity to be seen by entertainment executives, they eventually saw themselves as cheap labor for an establishment which was making loads of money.  They wanted a cut…the Store’s owner Mitzi Shore didn’t want to give it to them…so they struck.

As the story builds, you see names of folks who got their start at the Comedy Store and went on to bigger things.  Names like Robin Williams, Richard Lewis, Andy Kaufman, Elayne Boosler, and Gallagher.  You read about how Kaufman negotiated his Taxi contract so he would only have to be on the set one day a week.  How comics would watch Mork and Mindy in horror as Robin Williams stole borrowed bits from them.  And how Dave transitioned from comic to emcee, the role he was born to play.

For the most part, these folks were all blood brothers and sisters, particularly coming out of the strike experience of 1979.  They’ve all been tremendous boosters of one another’s work.  That’s why, for example, you’ll see Jimmie Walker still pop-up on Letterman a few times a year.  Tom Dreesen too.  And that’s why the Leno-Letterman schism hurt so much in ‘93.  They’d all spent so much time scratching and clawing their way to the top while still looking out for one-another, it was shocking to see Leno come in and take the job Dave had been groomed for for so long.

According to Knoedelseder, prior to last Tuesday, there was one previous moment when Leno and Letterman could have been in the same room.  It was 2003 when  their mutual friend and Comedy Store veteran George Miller passed away.  Leno showed up for the memorial service but Letterman, who was battling shingles at the time, did not.  It was only because he was so ill that he didn’t show.

So is it over?  My initial reaction says probably not.  But there’s a little bit of a thaw there.  It’s nice to see.  It would be an awful thing if they took this thing all the way to their graves.

Growing up my dad was the joke guy.  He had a circle of friends and business associates who seeming always went to him when they wanted to hear the latest and greatest in semi-raunchy humor.

Some of the bits I remember most vividly were things he’d say when answering the phone.  Instead of hello, he’d answer “Monsoon Mona’s Massage Parlor”.  One of my favorites was “Yankee Stadium”.  Simple and to the point.  Raunchy?  No.  Absurd?  Yes.  When I was in college, we had a pay phone on the main floor that we used to communicate with the outside world.  Parents would call in to it every now and then to check in on their kids and we’d call out to order pizza or drunk dial friends up the hill.  Anyway, one day I answered “Yankee Stadium” when it rang.  On the other end was former Oakland Athletic legend Joe Rudi, the father of one of my floor mates.  He got a kick out of that.

Anyway, one of my dad’s more obscure bits, at least to me, was answering the phone “Roman Polanski’s Day School for Girls”.  I didn’t get it.  And at age 7, I probably shouldn’t have.  It wasn’t until years later that I understood the joke and its genesis.

Six or seven years ago when The Pianist was all the rage, I had a couple of my artsy friends who asked me to go check it out with them.  I begged off.  I didn’t want t make a big deal about not supporting the guy.  While I admire some fugitives from justice, I can’t support fugitive rapists.  Especially not fugitive child rapists.  And Polanski is definitely that.

Well he was until this morning.  The easy joke here is “I hope they throw him in with Phil Spector”.  But I think that diminishes both of their crimes.  Rape, as I learned in college, is the one crime for which there is no excuse or rationale.  I had one criminal justice professor who made a convincing case for the death penalty for rapists.  One which I’m still convinced of today.

Spector, of course, wasn’t convicted of rape.  He was convicted of a lesser charge, because that’s how it was in 70s LA.  So I hope he serves out whatever the sentence should be.  And I hope he’s blacklisted by Hollywood going forward.  Nothing, afterall, would make Glenn Beck or Victoria Taft happier than to see him get a lifetime achievement Oscar.  And why give them the opening?

It took me until about halfway through the video to figure out what was wrong.  Listen to the track.  Once your foot starts tapping, notice where it taps in relation to the clapping.  Unless you’re my dad, in which case…nevermind.  Also, note the clapping in the background.  It really is fascinating.

Now I realize Dion was lip-syncing.  I get that.  But the rest of this was live, baby.  And that’s really no excuse for the Belmonts to screw this up too.  Weird.

Did Ringo teach us all how to figure out the beat?  Or was it someone else?  Perhaps someone who was there could enlighten the class.

HT:  The fantastic Streeter Seidell.

It’s going to be tough for James Taylor to top this.  Grab a tissue before you hit play.

Dear God, is The Office excruciating.  As Michael crawled around on the floor tonight, I wondered why the show couldn’t just call it quits today.  Wrap everything up in a nice bow at the end with Jim and Pam happily married and Stanley sailing off to retirement.  Just put the whole damned thing out to pasture.  Sending Michael back in after he’d already been escorted out was just too much.  It was jumping the shark times ten.

But then, of course, the writers surprised me.  Pam quits and joins Michael in his new venture.  The new boss puts Kevin at the reception desk and Stanley in charge of productivity.  Everyone is outside their comfort zone.  Please, please let this new arrangement stick.  And please no more cringing with Michael.

Evidently this isn’t news to the rest of the Internet, but it’s sure news to me.  I must have missed a meeting.

I was thinking about Steve tonight while I was out on my walk.  Actually I was thinking about this post from last July.

Thinking about it today, I thought about my own struggles with mental health. The thing is, no matter how sunny things are in your life, and right now it’s nothing but blue skies and ocean breezes in mine, that little black cloud is always around. And you’re always aware of it. It could be over your shoulder. It could be way out on the horizon. But it’s there. It’s kind of comforting in a way, because you know you can always run to it and find refuge. You can hide inside it and shut out the rest of the world. Sometimes it’s a struggle to keep looking ahead, goodness knows I’ve had my moments.

As recently as December Steve seemed to be foursquare with the group.  I’ve no idea what changed.  I’m guessing they just grew apart, as friends can and do.  Each side seems to have gone out of their way to not trash the other, but it clearly hurts.

So we soldier on.  We’ll watch and see what Steve is up to.  We’ll keep an eye on the band too.  It won’t be the same.  But then, that’s what adulthood is all about, isn’t it?

I can’t get this to embed, but it’s definitely worth it.

HT: Wired.

Double hat tip:  Pete in Parkrose.  He knows why.

Robert De Niro’s character Ace Rothstein in Casino, one of my all-time favorite movies, was based on Rosenthal.  USA just showed the movie yesterday.  Don’t know whether that was planned or not.  Either way, Rosenthal was as much an innovator as he was a bad guy.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has much more here.