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January 5, 2002 · 12:00 AM PST · link

FOR YEARS, I've been a member of the Magic Castle...a place so cool, I'll even put on a tie to go there.  I put on a tie last Thursday evening, taking friends to see one of the best acts that plays there or anywhere — The Pendragons, who are just wrapping a two-week stint.  Jonathan and Charlotte are impressive not just because they levitate, disappear, reappear, etc., but because the essence of their act is showmanship and skill, as opposed to cleverly-made props — though they have some of them, a couple of which are their own, patented inventions.  Still, the hardware is less important than what a master magician does with it...or can do without it.  There are tricks in Siegfried and Roy's show that you or I could do without much practice.  It's really the box or the tech crew that creates the magic.

But we could rehearse for years and not be able to do most of what the Pendragons do — especially their traditional closer, which is their unique version of a classic trick, "Metamophosis."  That's the one where (in this case) Jonathan is stuffed in a bag and locked in a trunk...then Charlotte hops up onto the trunk, pulls up a sheet of plastic and — ZAP! — she and her hubby change places so fast, you'd swear you're watching a TV show and someone did an edit.  Only it really happened right before your eyes.

I have seen other, experienced magicians sneak into the back of a Pendragons' performance just to see that one because it's truly amazing.  (In fact, it's so amazing that many in the audience don't even notice a little "extra" that the Pendragons provide:  Charlotte changes outfits in the process, going from one revealing outfit to another that couldn't possibly have been worn under it.  The trick doesn't need that to be stunning but they do it, anyway.  That's one of the reasons they're so good.)

Jonathan and Charlotte play all over the country.  If they're performing near you, run (do not walk) and get a seat as close to the front as you can.  You can also catch them on most TV magic specials and they're terrific on those, too...but it ain't the same.  You've gotta be there.

INTERESTING article over in Shecky Magazine: Comedian Tom Ryan relates what he went through in making his first appearance on the Letterman show.  Here's that link.

January 3, 2002 · 5:00 PM PST · link

I HAVEN'T seen it yet but several friends have previewed and praised Conspiracy Zone With Kevin Nealon — a new series which debuts this Sunday on The National Network.  (The National Network used to be The Nashville Network and, like you, I didn't know about the change until long after it occurred.)  I've never met Kevin but, ever since seeing him at the Improv in his pre-SNL days, I've always thought he was funny and bright.  And, sure enough, he became one of the Saturday Night Live cast members with the longest tenure.

A pal of mine who wrote on the show while he was there used to describe him as "our Maury Wills," meaning that he rarely hit homers but you could always rely on the guy to get a single, steal second and somehow score a run.

After hearing that, I watched the SNL reruns on Comedy Central with a different attitude and, yes, that was an apt comparison.  Mr. Nealon rarely bowled you over with his comedy stardom but he was terrific in everything he did and made a lot of splashier performers look good.  No wonder they kept him around so long.

His new enterprise is basically Politically Incorrect but about things like U.F.O. sightings, folks who claim Elvis lives, E.S.P. and the like.  I'm told there will usually be one passionate believer, one outright skeptic, and then a couple of comedians, plus Kevin, working the topic for laughs but also for truth.  Sounds like good reason for me — for the first time since I got my satellite dish — to figure out what channel TNN is on.  Perhaps you'll want to find out if you get that network and, if so, where it's located on your dial.

January 3, 2002 · 2:00 PM PST · link

THE MANAGEMENT of this website directs your attention to Michael Kinsley's excellent article — "Listening to Our Inner Ashcroft" — over on Slate.  Click right here to read it, please.

January 3, 2002 · 3:00 AM PST · link

WHEN I GOT my satellite dish, I got something like a hundred different channels, all of them — that first week — running Hello, Dolly and/or Guide for the Married Man.  While I can always find something on I want to watch, I am amazed at how limited the selection is; how so many channels run the same shows.  I wish someone would start The Old Sitcom Network and run some old situation comedies that are not I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, Leave It to Beaver, M*A*S*H, Taxi or The Jeffersons.  Where the hell is Sgt. Bilko?  Why is no one running He and She?  Car 54, Where Are You?  Or any of two dozen other great shows we could all mention?  For a time, the Game Show Network disappointed me, rerunning The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and a few other awful ones, ad nauseam.

They still do that but lately, they've made up for it by offering great delights via their Late Night Black-and-White series.  Each night between 1 AM and 3 AM — 4 and 6 in the East — they run three episodes of vintage game shows.  (Putting them in 40-minute time slots mean that they get run relatively uncut, instead of being trimmed to allow more commercials.)  After a brief period wherein they recycled all the episodes they'd run recently in a similar Sunday night slot, they're now running shows that probably haven't been seen anywhere since they originally aired in the fifties and early sixties.

The episodes of Beat the Clock, hosted by Bud Collyer, are as dreadful as I recalled...but the original What's My Line? is enormous fun, especially when it reflects TV history — like guest panelist Johnny Carson being wished well on his new job hosting The Tonight Show, or Julie Andrews popping over from playing in My Fair Lady to be Mystery Guest.  My father always hated the show because, to him, it had a palpable air of snobbery and the arrogance of the New York literati.  I see very little of that.  Mostly, I see people having fun and the occasional wonderful outbreak of utter spontaneity.

Even better are rebroadcasts of old episodes of I've Got A Secret.  Garry Moore took game show hosting to a high art form, and it's amazing how witty Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan managed to be.  There are moments on all these shows — and especially on a forgotten show that GSN occasionally airs called The Name's The Same — where it's obvious that some briefing of the panelists has obviously occurred.  It's not that they were given the right answers but that they were given the wrong questions.  That is, the producers obviously told certain panelists to ask certain questions that would get huge laughs...like Arlene Francis, quizzing a man she didn't know sold mattresses, "Could Bennett Cerf and I use your product together?"  But both Cullen and Morgan got some amazing quips off, seemingly without benefit of such preparation.  There are also installments of I've Got A Secret that show obvious traces of the humor of Allan "Hello, Muddah" Sherman, who was then its producer.

Yeah, they're on late.  But that's why God invented TiVo, right?

January 1, 2002 · 12:00 PM PST · link

HAPPY YEAR, happy year.  And wouldn't it be neat if we could wake up New Year's Morn and things really were different in undeniable ways?  You know: Like, the sky is yellow or toilet water flows in the opposite direction?  Then we wouldn't just have to tell ourselves it's a new time with new possibilities.  It really would be a different world.  Not that I think there's anything wrong with just declaring a Fresh Start and trying to make things better...

I was going to make a couple of predictions here but lately, I haven't seen anyone in any venue make a prediction that was worth the time it took to read it so I figured, why add to the clutter?  Instead, I added another page of Groo Stuff to this site.  You can access this new page by clicking here and it may be the first (and last) smart thing you do all year.

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