Well, dear readers, as I write these here notes there is a problem with the form to which I cut and paste them to post on the site. I cannot access the form. Therefore, I cannot post the notes. I couldn’t even post a comment about it this morning because said comments go through that form address. Therefore, we are in limbo. Perhaps I shall do the Limbo whilst being in Limbo. Have you ever seen a fifty-four year old Jew do the Limbo? They don’t get up afterwards. Well, I sent an e-mail to the errant and truant Mr. Mark Bakalor, who has disappeared off the face of the earth, and also to his tech person. Hopefully they will have it all fixed and working in short order.
I appreciated all the posts of support yesterday, and of course we shall continue unabated. I do know that we are in the dog days of summer and that people are off doing things. But it’s been difficult to watch things slow like they have and I just wanted to make certain that all was well with the haineshisway.com world. We simply have too much fun here and the world needs all the fun places it can get, so damn them, damn them all to hell, we shall stay because there’s always a party going on at haineshisway.com. We shall once again be the most popular site on all the Internet because we shall climb ev’ry mountain and ford every stream. We’ll even Chevy ev’ry stream, and here at haineshisway.com you’ll never walk alone because no one is alone and one is the loneliest number and we are two for the seesaw not one, you gotta have two for the seesaw and seesaws go up, down, up down, and I believe with ev’ry drop of rain that falls a flower grows, we are a brotherhood of man, and we shall be together, wherever we go.
My, that was so inspirational I think I shall have to eat a Ritz cracker. I have now left a rather terse message on Mr. Bakalor’s cell phone, which he, of course, is not answering because he is a lazy loafer who sleeps until noon and eats figs in bed. No, not even figs… raisins… ah, liaisons. What the hell am I talking about?
I’m going to check with some folks, but I do think I shall perhaps make an announcement, an exciting announcement, by the end of the week, if it’s okay with said folks. If it’s not okay with said folks, then I shan’t make an exciting announcement by the end of the week.
Wasn’t that a totally useless paragraph? It has been pointed out to me that I have not provided the address of the book reading and signing for Saturday, so here it is: Bookfellows 238 N. Brand Blvd. Glendale CA 91203. Take the Brand exit off the 134, go south a half-mile and there you are (it’s just north of the historic Alex Theater). We’ll be there from three to five in the afternoon.
Well, perhaps it is time for all of us to click on the Unseemly Button below – hopefully there is an Unseemly Button below, but then again, if you’re reading these here notes that means that Mr. Mark Bakalor has gotten his lazy loafer butt cheeks out of his bed and fixed our problem.
Yesterday I mentioned that today I might tell you about the CBS Television series I did with Miss Leland Palmer and Miss Diana Canova. It was a summer replacement series for Carol Burnett, way back in 1975. The show had been in rehearsal for a week or so and they were about four days away from taping the first show. They suddenly came to the realization that they had no men who could really do sketch comedy (they had loaded the show with comedians who, while funny doing their own thing, could not really deliver in sketches) and they realized they didn’t have anyone who could move or sing well either. Diana suggested they call me, and they did. I ran over to CBS Fairfax and met everyone, I think I sang a song, and they hired me on the spot. This was a dream come true, being a regular in a variety show on CBS – it’s what I’d dreamed of because I used to attend variety shows at that studio when I was a teen. Unfortunately, because I was brought in at the last minute, they couldn’t adjust for me, and we had to tape the first show just a couple of days later. I could not believe how bad the writing was, but I liked the director, Jeff Margolis, even though he was more of a traffic man than a real director. Well, we finally taped that first show – Dinah (as in Shore) and Her New Best Friends. Dinah didn’t show up until the final run-through, and her job on the show was basically to announce the bits – and then there were a couple of segments where we all just sat in a set that looked like someone’s idea of a living room. Somehow we got through the first show. It went downhill from there, in terms of the writing, and they fired the first set of writers and brought in new ones, plus a new director. By the end of the eight weeks, we’d gone through four sets of writers and three directors. It was horrid – the kind of thing where you don’t even want to come out of your dressing room. But I loved Dinah and she adored me, so that was fun.
Here’s an example of what we dealt with. I went to the producers and told them I was a songwriter and that I’d love to do some of my own material – I said I had funny songs, nice songs, romantic songs. They thought that was splendid and slated a slot for me to sing a big song in the next show. So, what did they have me sing? I Write the Songs. I looked at them and said, “But I do write the songs, why do I have to sing I Write the Songs?” They thought that was a good setup and that in subsequent weeks I’d sing my own songs. So, fine, I sang I Write the Songs. I never did get to sing any of my own. They didn’t know what the hell to do with poor Leland, and she never got to strut her stuff. I remember we were all sitting around getting notes, and she just started to cry, it was so hopeless. Diana and I fared a bit better, because we could sometimes make the junk look better than it was, just with our personalities. We did a Sonny and Cher parody that was pretty okay as I recall. The comedians did their own thing, but I only found one of them amusing, Gary Muledeer. Gary was dating a young actress who was just getting her start – Debra Winger was her name, and she used to hang out with us in my dressing room. One week, Cindy Williams was our guest, and thank goodness she refused to do the sketch they’d written for us (it was grotesque) and I quickly wrote a sketch that played to our strengths, and it was really funny, just brought the house down (we taped in front of a live audience). The cue card guys were really impressed, because we actually knew our lines. Anyway, it all mercifully ended. There were a handful of moments that were fun – Cindy, Diana and I did one of the most ineptly performed tap routines (Tap your Troubles Away) ever committed to tape – I’m fond of that. I did receive quite a bit of fan mail, but the funny thing was that at the precise moment of our series, which should have made all of us hot as a pistol, there was another show going on, a half-hour later on Saturday nights, called Saturday Night Live, and there was a fellow on that show who looked like me. Well, that show and that fellow hit big time, and I had a lot of trouble after that, because suddenly I looked like someone else. Mr. Chevy Chase once told me that for the first few years of his career he’d been told he looked like me.
Well, that was a little trip down nostalgia lane, wasn’t it? Don’t forget, tomorrow is Ask BK Day, so I hope you’re thinking of your excellent questions.
We finally had three High Winners in our handy-dandy trivia contest. The question was:
A huge Broadway musical flop. The music was by a legendary composer, and I do mean legendary. The artistic consultant was a legendary lyricist. The cast included a future soap star, a Tony Award-winning leading man, someone who is appearing in a hit musical on Broadway right now, and the husband of someone who is appearing in a hit Broadway musical right now.
Name the musical.
Name the legendary composer.
Name the legendary lyricist who served as “artistic consultant”.
Name the four cast members referenced above.
And the answers are:
The musical: Teddy and Alice
The legendary composer: John Phillip Sousa
The artistic consultant: Alan Jay Lerner
The four cast members: Ron Raines (future soap star – Guiding Light), Len Cariou (Tony- winning leading man), Nancy Opel (currently appearing in Urinetown – there were other answers which would have been correct, too), and David Green (husband of Judy Kaye, currently on Broadway in Mamma Mia!).
Our High Winners are Tim Hedgepeth, Jed, and Michael Shayne (JMK got all the answers save for David Green). Our electronic hat has chosen Jed this week’s Highest Winner, so if Jed will get me his handy-dandy address, he will receive a sparkling prize.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must climb ev’ry mountain and ford ev’ry stream and follow ev’ry rainbow till I find my dream. I shall do that whilst motoring about in my automobile which is not a Ford, so I will have to Infiniti ev’ry stream. Today’s topic of discussion: What is the worst job you’ve ever had? I mean the absolute worst. I’ll start: It wasn’t being an usher, it wasn’t working the concession stand at the World Theater on Hollywood Blvd. and it wasn’t any show business job, although I’ve had a few clunkers along the way. It was the one day I spent selling Bibles when I was seventeen. That was just the worst day ever. We were taken to some awful downtrodden neighborhood where we tried to sell these Bibles to people who could ill afford them. I lasted exactly an hour and then I demanded to be taken back from whence we came. Your turn.