Classic Rant #468 (March 22, 2011): YouTube Makes Everybody a Star

Back in 1970, Sly and the Family Stone had a hit record with "Everybody Is a Star." The song, one of the feel-good anthems of the day, reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100. Everytime I hear the song, it reminds me of a different place, a different time in my life.

Well, Sly Stone couldn't have foreseen that the name of that song would come true.

Yes, with YouTube, everybody really is a star.

Andy Warhol once said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, and coupled with Sly Stone's song, that couldn't be truer than it is today.

YouTube gives everyone the potential to be famous. Look what it did to Justin Bieber. And look what it is doing for 12-year-old Jenna Rose Swerdlow.

Who is Jenna Rose Swerdlow?

Her YouTube song, "My Jeans," has now surpassed one million hits. It is pretty bad, a song likening her jewelry studded jeans with those worn by celebrities, including "Hannah Montana" (Miley Cyrus) and Ashley Tisdale, two other performers who have had their careers catapulted via YouTube.

The stuff is trash, but people love it. And they can listen for free, and if they know how to do it, they can capture both the video and the audio and keep it forever as a file on their computers.

Maybe this will start a career for young Jenna, maybe not. But the fact of the matter is that the stuff, as amateurish as it sounds, is out there, and you know that Hollywood is watching and listening.

This is where new stars are being born!

With that in mind, I have added my own YouTube video to the mix. You can see it here, but click onto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuSm3ZS45Ks so it will register as a hit.

It was shot back in 1966 or 1967, when I was just a young pup. I was playing baseball in the Rochdale Village Athletic League (RVAL), and you will see my athletic prowess (really lack thereof) in the video.

Let's get this up to 1 million hits and make it the latest sensation on the Internet!

It has already registered more than 500 views, so getting to 1 million shouldn't be that difficult.

I will be away tomorrow with some medical exams, but I will be back on Thursday.

By then, there's no telling how many hits my video will have!

Rant #1,814: It's a Laugh

Yesterday, I talked about my New Year meanderings on TV, and how I rediscovered "The Joey Bishop Show" sitcom, which is on Antenna TV's weekly schedule now after an absence from being broadcast of about 20 years.

Well, if I am going to talk about that show--which wasn't very good or very funny--I absolutely have to talk about "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," which has seemingly found a home on the Decades channel.

It seems as if Decades is abandoning its four times a day schedule, where they would show the same shows four times during the course of a day. Part of this change is that they will be showing "Laugh-In" twice a day during the week.

I will bet that during its comedy month in December, the airings of the show did so well that the powers that be at Decades figured that they might as well show the hour-long shows on a regular basis.

I just love this show, always have, always will, and I thought I knew everything about it, but I have picked up some tidbits from these airings: the idea for "The Gong Show" came from the popularity of "Laugh-In's" New Talent segment, the one that introduced Tiny Tim to the world. Chris Bearde, one of the writers of the show, evidently liked the segment so much that he thought it could fill a half hour show on its own, and well, holy Chuck Barris and Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine, it did!

Also, the guy riding the tricycle on "Laugh-In," the one that you see only from the back, was most likely Arte Johnson. Even as a kid, I always thought that, but lo and behold, I was right!

Well, I guess I could have looked all of this up in my Funk & Wagnalls!

Anyway, in Rant No. 458, March 8, 2011, I did a pretty good summary of the show, and here is what I wrote, in edited form for those who don't know the show from a palmetto:

"… I used to laugh, laugh, and laugh some more when "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" came on the air for its six year run on NBC, every Monday night in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The show was groundbreaking. Usually, variety shows went at the pace of a turtle, but "Laugh-In" was different--very different.

Jokes were rapid-fire, and just when you got done laughing at one joke, another came on, and another, and another. There were regular bits: The Party, the Farkle Family, Laugh-In Looks at the News, and, of course, the Joke Wall, but most bits lasted little more than a few seconds.

The show was tied together by its hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Rowan and Martin were veteran Las Vegas entertainers who dabbled in both the movies and TV with varying degrees of success. They had made an OK movie, "Once Upon a Horse," which featured an un-named and then very unknown Mary Tyler Moore as one of the dancers in the film. Dick Martin had appeared semi-regularly as the next door neighbor of Lucy on "The Lucy Show." But generally, they weren't that well known outside of Las Vegas.

With producer George Schlatter at the helm, NBC ordered a special from Schlatter starring the duo. The show also featured a pretty much non-descript cast of players who also had had some minor successes in the entertainment field, including Arte Johnson, Joanne Worley, Judy Carne, Ruth Buzzi (she had been seen from time to time as Marlo Thomas's friend on "That Girl") and Alan Seus. All had been around for years, but had never broken through. They probably took this show as a lark.

But little did anyone know that this lark would turn to gold.

The special clicked with audiences, and a series was ordered.

Running during its first season after the equally groundbreaking "The Monkees," "Laugh-In" became the No. 1 show in the country, and stayed there for two or three years.

The cast, which also included Goldie Hawn and Henry Gibson, became megastars overnight.

And who can forget the debut of Tiny Tim?

Everyone wanted to be on this show, and such mega-stars as Sammy Davis Jr., John Wayne, and yes, even Richard Nixon made cameo appearances on the show.

The program ran afoul of the censors during its period on the air, but clever writing often was over the heads of those on the panic button. Alan Seus' wonderful performance as the slightly queer sports reporter was certainly a regular spot which went over their heads, as was the word "bippy," a word planted by the writers (including Coslough Johnson and Jeremy Lloyd) to throw off the censors. The censors thought bippy was something dirty (it wasn't), but they couldn't pull it because they couldn't find any evidence that it was something obscene.

They spent so much time looking for "bippy" dirt that a lot of stuff was left in that they missed.

What they did leave in included girls dressed in bikinis with sayings painted all over their bodies. You couldn't quite read some of those sayings with all the dancing about, but let me tell you, they missed plenty!

And you had oldtime black comedian Pigmeat Markham reaching new heights of popularity with white audiences with the "Hear Come the Judge" blackouts, which I don't think the censors really got as much as the public did.

But what you did get was a "Potpourri" of impressive talents. You literally saw the creation of several enduring stars taking their first babysteps, including Hawn and Lily Tomlin.

And you also had the foundation of "Saturday Night Live," as Lorne Michaels was one of the later writers on the show. He has said that "Saturday Night Live" is a combination of "Laugh-In" and "The Monkees," and I think he is correct.

Anyway, the show had its run, had a few spinoffs ("Letters to Laugh-In" and the later "Rowan and Martin Report"), several records (beyond Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," there was Shorty Long's "Here Comes the Judge" and many others by cast members and other acts), and several imitators ("Turn On," one of the all-time TV bombs).

In the mid 1970s, the show resurfaced, without Rowan and Martin or such a talented cast, but it did launch the career of Robin Williams.

So it is fun seeing "Laugh-In" again. Sure, as an 11 year old, I am sure some of the jokes on the show went way over my head, but looking back, I think I got more than I missed.

What a great show! There will never be another like it."

Yes, it is a great show, and I am happy that it is on in the hour-long version, not the truncated half hour version that ran in syndication in the 1980s. The shorter version didn't highlight the spontaneity and the show's surreal world that the hour long show did, and I am glad that those shorter versions of the hour long shows are not being shown here.

Three wishes: first, that all the seasons of the original program were included in this package (it seems that the shows are only from the first three seasons); and the second, which goes right into the first, that the final season of the show was included. It has never been in any "Laugh-In" syndication packages, and it would be nice to see the show's final cast again, including Moosie Dryer and Sarah Kennedy, along with the one original cast holdout, Ruth Buzzi.

Finally, I would like to see the original pilot, the one that sold NBC on having this show on its regular schedule, which I know I have never seen.

I have no interest in seeing the revived show with Robin Williams, which I watched but which was absolutely horrible, as I recall.

That being said, it is good to have "Laugh-In" back on the air. Check it out if you can--it is still funny!

Classic Rant #467 (March 21, 2011): Hardees Appetite

I heard this morning that the fast food chain that is known for the mega-1,420 calorie "Monster Burger" is going to the other extreme by making available to patrons something that none of its competitors is offering.

The hamburger chain is also offering a low-calorie turkey burger. I am sure it will come up with an "explosive" name for this new item on its menu, but whatever it chooses, no other similar chain offers a turkey burger.

I guess this gives patrons some choices when they go into Hardees restaurants, but the question still lingers in my mind: if you are watching your weight, why eat at a fast food joint to begin with?

Yes, I know that everyone has different needs. Some people like to eat themselves into oblivion, others count their calories. But you simply can't count calories at a fast food joint.

Even if the turkey burger is a calorie-conscious dish, once you pile on the cheese, ketchup, relish and everything else, you just come up with a poor relative of a regular hamburger. And don't forget adding in the fries and the drink, too.

But in today's fast food world, it's about giving patrons the maximum amount of choices possible. People aren't eating out that much anymore due to the economy, so once you've got customers in the restaurant, you don't want them to leave empty handed, so give them enough reasons to stay.

That is what the turkey burger is all about. (And no, the photo is not a picture of their turkey burger, although I guess it could end up looking like this if you pile on everything and order a fries and a drink.)

Other chains have tried low-calorie burgers. I think McDonald's tried one in the 1980s, which was made out of seaweed or something like that. I tried it once, and it was awful, and it was later pulled from the menu.

Here is my take on this: my family and I have eaten turkey burgers at home. They really aren't that bad, but again, once you pile all the stuff on it, what are you getting?

And grilling a turkey burger is a disaster. Grilling gets a lot of flavor off the fat content of whatever you are putting on the barbecue, and since turkey burgers have minimal fat, all you get is a hot, edible piece of flattened turkey. It really doesn't taste that good.

Give me beef any time!

But for those who are watching their weight or are vegetarians, I guess this will do.

But again, don't kid yourself. What value are you really getting from eating this hamburger?

If you are so conscious of this, eat a salad. And eat at home.

Rant #1,813: Hey Joe(y)

This past New Year's weekend was a good time for me to catch up with television.

No, not the trash that is on TV today, but the stuff that was on eons ago, when I was a kid.

I started watching a show that I never watched as a kid, and honestly, did not know even existed until about 20 years ago, when it had a brief run on the old Nick At Nite.

It was "The Joey Bishop Show," and no, I am not talking about his short-lived talk show, which I did remember from my childhood, and which I wish would be brought back from the dead so we all could watch it today.

I am talking about the sitcom that Bishop starred in, a sitcom that somehow lasted four years--on two different networks--and which existed in both the black and white and color world of TV in the mid 1960s.

The show has been exhumed by Antenna TV, and it had a marathon this past weekend to usher it into the network's programming schedule.

It started out on NBC in the early 1960s, somehow got through a horrid first season in black and white--a season where someone named Marlo Thomas made her acting debut as "That Girl" percolated--changed formats for the next season, chugged on for a second and third season in color, and then was picked up by CBS, where I do believe it reverted back to black and white.

And then it left TV forever, never really spoken about again until it was revived by Nick At Nite in the 1990s.

The show was produced by Danny Thomas, was written by some of Lucille Ball's writers and produced at Desilu Studios, and after you watch a few episodes, particularly of the second and third season, you see that the show was sort of a mix of "Make Room For Daddy" and "The Lucy Show"--and a mostly substandard mix of those two hit shows.

Joey plays Joey Barnes, a TV comic with a late night talk show, who has a wife (Abby Dalton), and eventually becomes a father with a son (played by Dalton's real life toddler!). He also has various managers, and the super of the building he and his family live in is none other than Joe Besser--yes, that Joe Besser, of Three Stooges fame.

With all of this rolled together, one would think you would have a sitcom that is really hilarious, but the quality of the material really isn't that good. Bishop looks bored most of the time, basically strolling through his scenes, seemingly barely comatose.

The show does feature a wealth of cameo appearances by some of the biggest stars of the day--including Bob Hope, Buddy Hackett, and Danny Thomas himself--but it just doesn't help much.

Dalton, who during this period became a semi-regular on the original "Hollywood Squares" game show, has a permanent smile on her face that looks like it is painted on, or glued on with spray as her hair appears to be. Barnes' managers/writers--portrayed by veteran comics Guy Marks and Corbett Monica--basically joke their way through the whole thing, throwing one one liner after another.

And also, later in the series, Bill Bixby--less "My Favorite Martian"--appears in several episodes.

The only one who shines on the show is Besser, who is really giving it his all here. He makes the most of his limited screen time, and the running joke on his early episodes is that once he gets into something at the Barnes home, his wife--with her screechy voice, and who is never seen--always calls for him. Yes, probably unknowingly, "The Big Bang Theory" stole this schtick from this show, but whatever the case, Besser is the one standout on the show.

There were, incredibly, more than 100 episodes of the show that were filmed, but I have read that one episode will not be shown by Antenna TV, basically because according to TV historians, it was filmed and quickly destroyed by the powers that be.

Vaughn Meader was an impressionist during the early 1960s, and became very successful through his TV appearances and record albums. He specialized in doing a right-on impression of John F. Kennedy, and the show had him as a guest star on one of its shows slated to run in 1963.

In November 1963, as we all know, JFK was assassinated, and any comedy having to do with the fallen president--he was ripe for parody, with his good looks and accent--went with him to the grave.

The producers of the show decided that Meader's appearance was an insult to the fallen president, and not only didn't the show ever air, the episode evidently was destroyed, never to be seen by the public.

Whether the episode exists somewhere is up to conjecture, but right now, it does not exist, and won't be shown as part of the series.

Anyway, "The Joey Bishop Show" is now being shown as a regular part of the Antenna TV lineup, and it is worth a look, if for nothing else to see what TV was way back when.

Yes,  today's TV offerings are pretty much garbage in my mind, but not everything way back when wasn't that good either, and unfortunately, "The Joey Bishop Show" was not that good.

Give it a look! It does have its moments.

Classic Rant #466 (March 18, 2011): Today's History Lesson

I haven't ever done this before, but since there really isn't much happening today that I want to comment on directly, I thought I would look at "Today in History" and give everyone--including myself--a history lesson on what went on today through the years.

And yes, there will be a test later on this material.

1766: Britain Repealed the Stamp Act 0f 1765: I wish they would repeal the current Stamp Act, or whatever it is; it costs too much to send a letter through the mail nowadays.

1861: Sam Houston Stepped Down As Texas Governor: He refused to accept the state's decision to secede from the Union. If this would have happened, where would the illegal aliens be coming into our country from ... Oklahoma?

1910: The First Film of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" Was Released: And remember, Frankenstein is the doctor, and his creation is "The Monster." Why do people always forget that?

1911: "Alexander's Ragtime Band," Irving Berlin's First Major Hit Song, Was Published: Little did anyone know that this good Jewish boy would later write "White Christmas."

1931: Schick Introduces the First Electric Razor: Thank goodness for this! When I use a straight razor, I cut myself to shreds!

1940: Hitler and Mussolini Meet and Agree that Germany and Italy Will Join Forces To Fight France and England: Probably one of the dumbest moves in history. Italy later learned how dumb they really were.

1959: President Eisenhower Signed the Statehood Bill For Hawaii: Little did anyone know that this would be our last state to joint the union ... Guam anyone?

1965: Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov Makes the First Spacewalk: They are so routine now that it is like taking out your dog to make a poop.

1974: Most of the Arab Oil-Producing Nations Ended Their Embargo Against the United States: Don't you think we should have learned then that we should be looking for our own oil, and stop relying on these crazies to supply it to us? We didn't, and look at the predicament we're in.

2009: Actress Natasha Richardson Dies As a Result of a Freak Skiing Accident: A sad thing, but it happens; remember Sonny Bono? Another reason I will stay away from the slopes.

Rant #1,812: Get Ready

Wow! We are already three days into 2017! Just 362 more days until the year is over ...

And we're right back where we started from.

But I am ready for 2017.

I feel that there will be some big changes in my life and the lives of all Americans, and I am ready for it.

For all Americans, we will have a new president.

Yes, whether he is "your" president or not, Donald Trump takes over the White House in just a few days.

Although I don't agree with everything he says or does, I am willing to give him some time to show what he can do, to make our country great again.

And yes, while I think our country was great during the Obama years, I don't think it was as great as it could be, so I am looking for President Trump to make this country even greater than it already is.

And again, he is our president, whether you accept that or not.

On a personal level, first off, I need a new dentist.

After a year of complete upheaval in my mouth, for the first time in months, I am having no problem with my teeth at all, so now is the time to search for another dentist, because I completely lost confidence in the one I had based on how he handled my case.

He will never see me as a patient again, that's for sure.

And next, I need a new job.

I am in a kind of strange position, because I still have my old job, the one I have been at for over 20 years, but the place is going under, it is only a matter of when, so I must use this time to try to get something else.

Honestly, the odds are against me--because of age, background and salary requirements--to get anything soon, but you never know.

I am plugging along, sending out resumes each and every day, while still fulfilling the (dwindling) requirements of my current position.

It is not an easy job, but my goal is to get something as soon as possible, because the iceberg is right in front of us, and I am determined not to go down with this Titanic.

So what more can I say?

2017 should be an interesting year. I also turn 60 this year, in April, so I will reach another milestone, God willing, in just a few months.

I feel great all over now for the fist time in ages. I can't tell you how good that is to tell you, because as I said, I went through months of anguish due to my mouth.

Anyway, I look forward to 2017 as a great year, a year of hope, and a year of redemption for myself and for our country,

And that is why I posted the picture above, the photo of myself and my wife on our wedding day, and which we will be celebrating our 24th anniversary on June 6 of this year.

Look at those two, so much love and hope in our eyes ... we are both a bit more weathered now, but we haven't lost our love and we still have lots of hope. We had it back then and we have to have it right now.

I hope you had a good new year, but now it is time to get into the nitty gritty of the new year.

I am ready--are you?

Classic Rant #465 (March 17, 2011): Eat, Drink and Be Careful

Today, March 17, is St. Patrick's Day.

It's a real big deal in New York City, always was, always will be.

The parade is the big deal, and every politician worth his salt will be a participant in this parade, no matter what their political or ethnic affiliation is.

Today, everybody is Irish.

However, in some years, the parade has been used as a political tool, banning some from marching the parade.

I know that gays are banned from marching in the parade if they are affiliated and representing a gay faction.

That being said, the parade has turned into a lovefest between New York City and its deep Irish heritage,

But let me tell you, it wasn't always that way.

I can remember in the 1970s and early 1980s, the parade--and the entire holiday--got completely out of hand due to over imbibing and drug use.

I remember the days, when I worked in Manhattan, that you really were taking your life in your hands on this day.

Using the Long Island Railroad to get to work, the ticket takers were drinking from morning to night, and they were allowing anybody to drink wherever they wanted on the train, even in sections where you weren't supposed to drink and smoke. On this day, the train smelled like a sewer.

Once you got into Manhattan, you had to push your way through hordes of people starting to line up for the parade, many of whom began drinking at 8 a.m. or earlier in the morning. I worked right off Fifth Avenue on 40th Street, and take it from me, between the beer and the pot, it was a mess.

Once the parade started, you had to be really careful. I remember that I couldn't even walk out of my building, because of all the public drunkedness that was displayed by both men and women. I recall that one time, I tried to get out of the building, but a young girl was throwing up her guts on the sidewalk right in front of my building's door, blocking my path with her body and her excrement. I stayed in for lunch that day.

My father, as a New York City medallion cab driver, hated to work on this day. He picked up so many drunks, his cab smelled like a bar, and I remember him telling me that one time, a parade reveler jumped on top of the hood of his car as he was waiting at a light near the parade route.

But over the last 30 years, the city has cleaned up the parade, figuratively and literally. You don't see the scenes I described anymore. People are generally well behaved.

The garbage has taken their scene to other places. Hoboken, New Jersey celebrates St. Patrick's Day a week early, and there have been many incidents of not just public intoxication, but attacks against women during their own parade that they have.

This year, there was a major crackdown on this type of behavior by the police there.

I hope it worked.

Nothing like ruining a good holiday with stupid acts, all tied into the stereoype of Irish people always drinking and partying way beyond their limits.

So stay sober this St. Patrick's Day. You will enjoy the festivities more with a clear head.