The Long and the Short of It - My Memories of Mickey Rooney

The Long and the Short of It

            Andrew and I have had the honor of working for three legendary geniuses during our higgledy-piggledy writing career.  One was Johnny Carson.  The second was George Carlin.  This is the story of the third.

            The Beginning:

Once upon a time, two young and impoverished Canadian writers were sitting in a cramped, cockroach infested apartment in Van Nuys (The Oshawa of L.A.) with no prospects and virtually no hope.  They had bravely ventured down to this mystical land of tinsel and broken dreams a scant six months earlier and were now facing the ominous fate of having to go back to Oshawa (the Oshawa of Oshawa)…and it was all their own fault!

Invaluable back story:

            It had been our utmost dream to work in Hollywood since before we were born and trying to scrounge out a living as writers in Canada had done nothing to quell that desire.  Our home and native land at the time produced a mere two sitcoms, both run by a primordial ooze with a beard named Jack Humphrey.  (Andrew, many years later, would dance on the Variety announcement of his death in our agent’s office.)  As I recall, Jack had the appearance of Roger Whittaker but could scream like Roger Daltry when brought to a boil.  Alas, a relatively innocuous comment in his office one ill-fated afternoon brought our sitcom career in the Great White North to a screeching, screaming halt.  (Musical trivia:  Jack had a son in Blue Peter and another son in Savoy Brown. – but he was still an untalented prick) 

            One dreary day, while moping around my shitty little apartment in Oshawa (the Oshawa of Oshawa), busily not writing for any of the two sitcoms in Canada, I got a call saying that Alan Thicke was looking for material and would we like to submit?  Amazingly, we did, and he bought some of our jokes.  In fact, he liked us so much; he brought us down to L.A. for three weeks to write for his Canadian show, “Fast Company.” 

            It was everything we’d ever dreamed and more (except for the money).  There were naked girls, trips down sunset and an interview with Gary David Goldberg (Growing Pains) at his Broad Beach home.  We literally almost crashed our car into Jackie Coogan (Uncle Festus on The Adam’s Family) trying to make a u-turn, on the way there.  And, as if nearly killing a former child star who has an entire law named after him wasn’t pie-in-the-sky glitz-tastic enough, we were invited to bunk at Alan’s home on Mulholland Drive and at his beach house in Malibu.  But there was yet another healthy dollop of tangy hollandaise sauce being plopped atop our big steaming plate of Eggs Benedict.  The Fifth Estate was following us around for a segment they were doing on “Joke Writing”.  Hallelujah and rejoice, for all of mankind will be forever warmed by the light of our glory! 

And then after three weeks, we came back to Canada and…it was everything we’d dreaded and more.  We were unemployed for about 9 straight months.  Instead of being impressed that we’d gotten the magical call to “go south” most producers seemed to be pissed off.  Petty little shits.

 

            Luckily, Alan called again.  Now, he had an American show “Thicke of the Night”.  He wanted us to come down to the big town and work as researchers plus write monologues for the version that aired in Canada on Global (all for one researcher salary, of course…split between us…at a very bad exchange rate).  Hey, I was 25 and eating fish cakes (I can still taste those fucking things) and frozen peas for calories and gnawing on my apartment’s hideous shag rug for fiber.  I really didn’t see the downside.

            We landed back in L.A. on June 5^th, 1983 sporting righteous career boners and got our first taste of staffing a real live American television show. 

            I will cover the depthless flailing pit of hell that was “Thicke of the Night” another time.  Let’s just say for now that the experience wasn’t all refried beans and chocolate pudding and it maybe advisable to put the children to bed and hide the womenfolk before giving it a read. 

            We lasted 6 months (which meant we had outlived far better men than ourselves) on that black-hole-of-souls but unfortunately, we had a personal sense of honor (In show business, having a “personal sense of honor” will kill your career deader than a Pioneer Chicken.).  We were promised certain things by Alan and he didn’t keep his side of the bargain so we stupidly, stupidly, STUPIDLY quit the show.  Of course, in subsequent years, we learned that someone keeping a promise in the entertainment business is about as likely as the Queen of England getting caught having unprotected sex with a balloon animal.  The young have so much to learn.

            So there we sat with the cockroaches, watching a twenty dollar television set and hoping that some rich eccentric would cruise down Burbank Blvd. soliciting humorous one-liners from the window of his stretch limo.  It didn’t happen.  But something nearly as surreal did.

            Legendary Genius Number 3:

            One dreary day, while moping around my shitty little apartment in Van Nuys, busily not writing for any of the 47 sitcoms in Hollywood, our ten dollar phone rang.  It was Janie – a girl we’d spoken to about twice in our lives.  She was briefly Alan’s personal assistant but now worked for legendary Hollywood crazy woman and agent Ruth Webb.  “Hi, Mickey Rooney is looking for a new writer because his old one just died.  He’ll be calling you in 20 minutes.”

            “Huh?!”

            I think we drew straws and I lost, so it was my anxiety-ridden job to answer our thriftily-priced phone.  I didn’t know what I was going to say.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about that.

 

            Ring Ring.  “Hello, this is Mickey Rooney.  So I hear you’re the new hot shots.  Well, I do this bit see, in Sugar Babies where I come out as a woman.  A dame.  Do you hear me, kid?  I’m a woman and I do local jokes, topical jokes.  You understand?  I’m going to be in Philadelphia.  So I need Liberty Bell, The Eagles, cheese steaks.  The Super Bowl is coming up, it’s Christmas time.  New Years Eve, hangovers and brotherly love.  Can you do me up some jokes like that?”

            “Ah, sure.”

            “Where the hell are you?  You sound like you’re talking from the bottom of a toilet.”

            “It’s the phone.”

            “Doesn’t matter.  Get me the stuff and we’ll take it from there.  I need it in a week.  And make sure it’s funny.  Lots of yucks.  Do you hear me?  So what do ya want to get paid for this?  One thousand?  Two thousand?”

            “Ah, that would be fine.”

            And then he was gone. 

            This was big doin’s!  Two thousand bucks in 1983 was a real chunk.  Our cockroaches wouldn’t have to go hungry, after all! 

Now, you can write the very best George Carlin monologue ever but if you’re writing it for Red Buttons, it better have “Never had a dinner!” in the punchline.  In short (pardon the pun), you write for the customer.  Sugar Babies was pure pie-in-the-face, seltzer-down-your-pants Vaudeville.  So Andrew and I set to work writing a passel of Catskillian gems.   

For the next five or six days we bashed out a Liberian tanker-full of one liners that would have made Henny Youngman blush.

            “I asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas.”

            “He said, ‘surprise me.’”

            “I said, ‘Okay, they’re not your children.’”

            You get the idea.  Oodles and oodles of jokes of that seemingly antique ilk.  We filled up the pages and we sent them off via snail mail (This was way, way before the internet was even a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye.) and we waited.  And we waited some more.  Eventually, we contacted Ruth Webb’s agency and asked what was going on.  They put us in touch with his lawyer.  His lawyer said he’d talk to Mickey.  Was our seemingly miraculous rescue from penury and ignominious deportation a mere illusion?  Turns out, when the lawyer talked to Mickey it spurred him to actually read the stuff we’d written…and he flipped for it.  We got our money and another call from the Mickster telling us how great we were. 

            Thus began a ten year roller coaster stint as Mr. Rooney’s personal scribes.  An unpredictable period of time when the phone could ring at any moment of the day (usually very early in the morning or even earlier), depending of where in the world Mickey was calling from.  Each time he excitedly wanted something written that instant, which meant we had to call his lawyer during business hours and find out whether he had any money to pay for it.  Along with the Sugar Babies material we were commissioned to write a Broadway play called “Wait Till the Swelling Goes Down”.  He called us one afternoon from God knows where to find out how it was going.   

“Well,” we informed him. 

            “Has it got any jokes in it?”
            “Thousands.”

            “YAAHHOOOOOOO!” came the reply.

And then there were the projects that his lawyer wisely managed to talk him out of.  Among the dozens of middle-of-the-night phone calls we didn’t get paid to write were movies like “Saturday Night Dead” and a film about a women who comes to Holllywood, gets used and abused and ends up dying in a horrible fire with her illegitimate baby in her arms.  “Ya hear me kid?”   The latter idea came to him after he’d been shown some great “burn victim” makeup that involved gluing strips of bacon to the actress’s face (I’m not making this up).  We were also tantalizingly close to creating a sitcom with him called “Maple Leaf Rag” for the U.S.A. Network but he signed a huge deal to do Sugar Babies in England and killed it. 

            We also have files for a one man W.C. Fields show (I don’t even recall that one – it was also going to be a musical film), The Drunkard, Maggie & Jiggs, Sugar Babies: The Movie, something called “Belly Laughs” (these were to be live shows, videos, TV interstitials and books), something else called “Winner’s Weekend” with Martha Raye, “Jowls” (a parody of Jaws with a gigantic dog, starring Nathan Lane and a one hour mystery “Professor Crime”.   

            And then….

            Andrew and I got yet another call.  “Come out to Thousand Oaks.  Mickey wants to talk to you about a movie.”  It was an amazing experience getting to meet the short, tubby legend in the short, tubby flesh.  Upon arriving at his office, Andrew took out a pad to take notes.  Mickey put up his hand and said, “Stop!  Put that away.  You’re going to remember this story for the rest of your life!”  And, for the next forty-five minutes, he proceeded to act out the entire film from memory.  After announcing the credits, he said, “Now go!  And write!”  And we did.  “The Picture Nobody Should See” was a pretty good idea and has since been done (sort of).  A short, fat old guy (Mickey Rooney) decides that he’s going to quit being a milkman and write and star in his own porno film with his equally rotund and unattractive wife.  

            It didn’t sell but it was a lot of fun to write and we did get paid for it.

            There was also a two man show with Donald O’Connor and a one man show “Mickey Rooney in Mickey Rooney” (talk about a tight fit) and numerous years of the Bob Hope Golf Classic dinner speeches.  I’m exhausted just thinking back on it all.

            Mickey made a lot of money but he spent it in equal measure and then some.  The last project we were contracted for was a series of one man shows he was going to do in Australia and New Zealand while filming “The Black Stallion.”

            “I want Down Under, Shrimps on the Barbie, Kangaroos, Criminals, Sheilas and those big cans of fucking beer.  You hear me, kid?”

            It was in December of 1996 that we got a legal looking piece of paper in the mail.  Mickey was filing for bankruptcy.  I think he still owed us 500 bucks from the Australian tour and Andrew and I were among the crowds of people who had a legal claim on his assets.  We wrote back and thanked him for a great ride and relieved him of his remaining debt.  He’d been there for us when we needed him most and it would have been churlish in the extreme to stand in line to scrape the last bits of meat from his bones.

            Sleep well, little man.  With the crazy life you have led, I’m sure you could use the rest.

 

Some Jokes From Our Decade of Rimshots.

            Halloween:

            “When some kids came to our house trick or treating, I asked my husband what I should put on to scare the children at the door.  He said, “The porch light.”

             “Down Under” when he was filming Long John Silver:

           

            On the flight out here, my flight attendant said, “Mister Rooney, would you like to stretch your legs?”  I said, “I’d love to, but this is as far as they go.

            I should have come out to Australia years ago.  It’s so remote.  You have women out here I haven’t married yet.

            I worked with Ann Miller in Sugar Babies.  Ann had her legs insured with Lloyd’s of London for a million dollars.  I saw them unshaved, and all I have to say it, I sure hope is was fire insurance.

            His two man show with Donald O’Connor in Vegas:

            “Donald did six movies with Francis the talking mule and I did the last one.  He may have done the more famous films but I was there for the barbecue.”

            “I saw a terrible show in Vegas the other night.  David Copperfield is a great magician but his assistant was Rosanne Barr and it took him 13 hours to saw her in half.

            “I finally figured out why Mr. Rogers doesn’t have any kids.  Look how long it takes him just to get his sweater off.”

            “I was just thinking what a good thing it is that men hold women above their head in ballet and not in opera.”

             

            Mickey as a woman:

            “Last night my husband and I ordered a prune pizza and were up all night with pizzeria.”

            “Christmas time makes me think of chestnuts.  And believe me, with this girdle, that’s just about where they are.”

           

           

Tags – Mickey Rooney, Johnny Carson, Alan Thicke, Sugar Babies, Darrell Vickers, Black Stallion, Donald O’Connor, Hollywood, Oshawa,

           

Duncing With the Stars - An Opinion Piece

Duncing With the Stars

Having been employed in the entertainment industry since Netflix personally drove the actors to your house to perform your order, I have become friends with a small cadre of practicing thespians.  Additionally, having spent a regrettable amount of time wallowing in the fetid, festering spiritual cesspool that is children’s animation, I am acquainted with a number of talented individuals who make their living giving voice to artistic renderings of cute furry animals and intense do-gooders wearing capes.  For nigh on a decade now, these flexibly-larynxed entertainers have lamented their industry’s perplexing penchant for hiring celebrities.  In effect, they’re employing people with memorable faces to do voice work.  Why, that’s brilliant!  Talk about thinking outside the box.  Why pay dedicated professionals, who’ve spent a lifetime perfecting their craft, to weave their paralinguistic magic when you can pressgang some sitcom-star-of-the-week or pre-arrest cinematic idol to do it?   That’s like hiring the handsomest waiter at a restaurant to cook all the food.  

“Garcon!  This Liberty Duck Breast avec Confit tastes like shit!” 

“Oui monsieur, but it is made by our most popular waiter.  Everyone just loves him.  Would you like our waitress with the big tits to mix you up a Pisco Sour?”

To see if the cavils of the cartoon community had any credence – I checked out an animated movie at random.  I selected “Frozen” – for no other reason than I Googled “3D animated movie” at its name came up.  So, why don’t we check out the cast of this high profile cartooned “gem” and scan their mile long voxographies.

Idina Menzel – Voice credits – 1 – Frozen

Kirsten Bell – Voice Credits 2 – Frozen and guest spot on The Cleveland Show

Jonathan Groff – Voice Credits 1 – Frozen

Josh Gad – Frozen and two or three other credits. (One other movie)

Santino Fontana – Voice credits -1 Frozen

Alan Tudyk – Voice credits - Frozen and one or two other parts.

Hmmm.  To think these frigid freshman beat out every available voice actor in North America and beyond on shear talent would be a feat akin to Rob Ford showing up sober to Toronto’s Festival of Beer.

But, perhaps this is just an anomaly.  A kooky quirk.  A misleading defect in the time/space continuum.  Let’s look at the cast of Monsters University and see what it has to offer in the way of insight.  

Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buschemi, Helen Mirren, Joel Murray, Dave Foley and Alfred Molina.

Now, do you suppose these fine actors were hired because they brought a depth and reality to their computer generated characters, never even dreamed of by the creator, or because they are Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buschemi, Helen Mirren, Joel Murray, David Foley and Alfred Molina?

It’s enough to make Mel Blanc burst out of his grave, throw up and then die again – because let’s face it, Mel didn’t look that good, even when he was alive. 

And for what?  The audience they’re aiming these 3D buckets of pabulum at wouldn’t know Steve Buschemi if he blew their head off during a contraband whisky dispute.  Now, Mr. Buschemi is a fine, fine actor (a personal fave) but is he better at voicing cartoon characters than Danny Mann, Maurice LaMarshe or Jan Rabson?  No, he is not.  Is Julia Roberts a better voice actress that June Foray, Nancy Cartwright or Candy Milo?  Let me put it another way…Ringo Starr is an excellent, excellent Beatle, but if you need a really good drummer, for Christsakes hire Bill Bruford!

Alas, this celebrity psychosis among the entertainment executive elites is not just limited to brightly-colored, ridiculously round-eyed, steaming piles of cute. 

An example:

When I toiled under the acrid scowling eyes that ruled Warner Brothers Television back in the day, my partner and I sold quite a few pilots.  Once a pilot is sold, you have to do two things.  1: Remove any imagination, originality and humor from the script. 2: Cast it.

The casting process is long and heartbreaking.  You see literally dozens and dozens of actors (many of them deserving of the part and even more whom I’ve admired for years).  After we’ve auditioned our brains out, we take our 3 or 4 top choices to the studio brass for their invaluable input. 

The casting director prepares 4 pages of names for our confab with the big wigs: Actors we have auditioned and liked, actors who will only audition for the network, actors who will meet but not audition at all and actors who are unavailable or not interested.  When you get in the room with these mega-mogals, they invariably flip to the “Unavailable/Uninterested page and start asking, “What about Leonardo DiCaprio?  Will he come in for a read?” 

“Why, yes he will, Tony!  Thank God we have your wisdom and insight to lead us through these confusing times.  Just because he’s unavailable and uninterested, he’d love to drop whatever he’s doing for a lengthy chat with a balding, ass-licking halfwit who wouldn’t be trusted to hand out free-steam-cleaning coupons in the real world.  Let me go get him on the phone!”

It was like this for every role – no matter how small.  The more unattainable an actor was, the more their saliva glands bubbled-over with desire.  If we’d have had a fifth page with dead actors on it, they would have been begging us to bring in Lillian Gish to read for the grandma.  

Andrew and I were once dragooned into saving a sitcom starring Faye Dunaway – an actress of magnificent ability but a human being who took the phrase “totally fucked up” to a level inconceivable to mere morals.  We valiantly turned down their generous offer three times but were pushed and pushed and pushed until we eventually acquiesced.  Faye could hardly remember her own name, never mind half an hour of dialogue to be regurgitated in front of a live audience.  Movie productions can last forever.  They’re the natural breeding ground of prima donnas.  Television is a meat grinder.  You cram shit in one end; crank it day and night until even shittier shit comes out the other end.  And then, after an incredibly short weekend of wishing you were never born, you start the whole shit-cramming process again.  After working with David Steinberg and a dialogue coach for three whole days during a long weekend, she walked on stage, during the pilot, and got her very first line wrong.  

After several weeks of unimaginable suffering on the part of those around her and ratings dropping like a herd of buffalo of a cliff; someone asked the obvious question.  “Why would anyone put this crazy woman in a sitcom?”

The answer was very revealing.  “Because Mr. X (a CBS exec I actually liked) wants to be sitting in his office and hear, ‘Faye Dunaway, on line two.’”

They pumped millions into “It Had to Be You” and it lasted 4 episodes.  Ms. Dunaway’s TVQ (a rating of likeability) dropped from 55 in the pilot to minus 17.  Until Faye, I didn’t even know the number went below zero. 

The pilot in question was actually shot the year before (and tested quite well) with Twiggy but not picked up because CBS didn’t think Twiggy was a big enough name.  It isn’t about who was right for the part or even what the public wants – it’s about “star fucking”.  About flipping to that back page of the casting list and imagining getting invited over for weekend barbeques with Kate Blanchett and Michael Caine, taking their kids for play-dates over at the Brad Pitt compound or just rappin’ to Jennifer Lawrence about “stuff” while she shaves her legs in the shower.  

The cult of celebrity has corrupted the entire system.  Every actor with the slightest clout now has a production company.  Tom Cruise, Sandra Bullock, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore, Penny Marshall, Bette Midler, Wesley Snipes, Jodie Foster, Billy Crystal, Michael Douglas etc, etc, etc.  These “companies” are selling shows all over town.  Now, these people don’t write the shows they sell.  They won’t direct them.  And they certainly won’t lower themselves to be in these shows.  So, what possible contribution could a “Star” make to a production that a run-of-the-mill writer or regular producer couldn’t?

The Answer:

Those writers and producers can’t get some soulless jack-off executive to scream into his Android, “Guess what honey!  I have Tom Fucking Cruise in my outer office!”

So now, instead of having to convince a lowly studio executive to convince a higher studio executive to buy a project to take it to the network to get it on the air, you have to go to a celebrity’s development executive who takes it to the celebrity who takes it to the lowly studio executive who convinces a higher studio exec to sell it to the network to get it on the air (and guess whose money the Celebs slice of the pie comes out of).

In Conclusion:

These Gods and Goddesses of the silver screen who shit pure gold and piss the healing celestial light of heaven have it pretty darn good already.  They’re paid millions of dollars to half remember words somebody else wrote for them.  They get to sleep with whomever they want.  The snort the finest of drugs.   

They get their ever-so-glamorous dicks sucked (figuratively and literally) by everyone they deign to meet.  They never have to wait for a table at a restaurant or line-up at a club.  They live in fabulous mansions and party on yachts and overdose in the very finest of hotels.  Large brutish men in their employ roughly remove the unsightly from their gaze.  They have minions pre-light their cigarettes and pre-chew their gum.  I mean, isn’t that enough?

Do they really need to take jobs off hard working voice actors, who are so lowly, they have to cook their own food at restaurants?  Isn’t the writer’s demeaning lot in life demeaning and lotty enough without having to drag their soon-to-be butchered masterpieces before yet another layer of smug, disinterested cunts? 

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I dream of a world where pilots fly, doctors heal and policeman taser people ahead of them in line at donut shops.  But alas, I fear it’s in only a matter of time before we hear someone screaming into his Android at a Starbucks, “Unbelievable news!…They got Lady Gaga to do my brain operation!”

And just because…here are two attractive women in bikinis kissing an eggplant.

If you like the writing, then check out my serial novel at the link below.

There is a new chapter every Monday.

Chapter 12 is now available.

http://chateaudietrich.blogspot.com/

On The Isle of Caprice

 If you like the writing, then check out my serial novel at the link below.

There is a new chapter every Monday.

http://chateaudietrich.blogspot.com/

On the Isle of Caprice

           

Right off the top, I’m going to categorically state that I’d rather stick my head in an Asplundh Whisper Chipper than get into a discussion about Woody Allen and his present ex-familial travails.  So, for the purposes of this sociological treatise, let’s all pretend that the Woodster never drew his first neurotic breath. 

That being said…this bespectacled “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named”, this nerdy non-gentile who does not exist anymore than The Perth County Conspiracy, does shine a bright light on a peculiar and startlingly capricious aspect of the human condition.  I.E. the separation of the artist from the art. 

Celebrities, for the most part, are an ill-behaved lot.  Reprobates of the highest order.  Drunken, wanton, unwashed, and uncouth ne’er-do-wells who feast upon narcissism and eschew the accepted norms of public decorum.  Multiple marriages, bewildering affairs, arrests, sincere contrition, proud reformation, more arrests and drugs, drugs, drugs leading to an early and ignominious death next to a toilet.  

Back in 1957, Jerry Lee Lewis severely dented his career by marrying a 13 year second cousin.  Today, Papa Duck of Dynasty fame is filmed telling a large crowd of guffawing sophisticates that it is imperative that they wed a girl by the time she’s 15 and it barely rates a mention.  Really?  15?  He has things living in his beard older than that.  

Chuck Berry likes to watch women poop into buckets and got arrested for taking a 14 year old waitress across state lines for unbridled naked frolicking. 

Likewise, R. Kelly seems to find very, very young women as irresistible as people find his records. 

And it’s not just underage girls!  Michael Jackson had invited half the male children in Southern California to his house for sleepovers and no one ever got suspicious until... 

Rick James kidnapped and tortured a woman and forced her to perform deviant sex acts on his girlfriend while he was performing sex acts on his crack pipe.  Rick may have added one or two entirely new volumes to the “Totally Fucked-Up Encyclopedia” before he gave everyone a break and cacked it. 

Courtney Love was proudly photographed breast feeding an aspiring rapper in a New York Wendy’s.  (After eating a Dave’s Hot ‘n Juicy Triple, one often pines for a complimentary beverage.)

Vince Neil killed Hanoi Rocks’ drummer when, in a whimsical state of mind, he mistook and oncoming vehicle for a liquor store.

And let’s not forget the God fearin’ country folk like Glen “Attractive Mugshot”  Campbell, Randy “Lying Naked in the Road in Front of a Church” Travis and Billy Joe “I Shot Your Face Off” Shaver.  The trick in the South seems to be, if you can get banjaxed to the point where you can’t even remember who God is, then you’re free to do whatever the fuck you want.

But it’s not just the Johnny-Rotten-Come-Latelys.  Frank Sinatra did not shy away from acts of unabashed naughtiness and criminality.  Elvis had his share of icky habits.  Hank Williams, Sam Cook, Eddie Fischer, Phil Spector and Spade “Wife Murderin’” Cooley all put lobster and au gratin potatoes on the plates of the gossip mongers of their day.  Why even a guy as squeaky clean as Nat “King” Cole had a torrid affair with a bouncy young Swede named Gunilla Hutton.  

The whole hollow, self-centered industry is replete with rakes and rounders.  Celebrities aren’t so much entertainers as they are soccer hooligans with microphones. 

And now that I’ve run dry of musical miscreants to savage, I can finally get to my oh-so-round-about point.  Why is it that we can disregard some performers’ ghastly deeds and not others?  Rick James was being cheered on at the House of Blues a few months after he was released from the hoosegow.  Chuck Berry can now afford to record women defecating on hi-def video with surround sound.  Michael Jackson was about to embark on a billion dollar tour when he took one too many horse sedatives. 

What exactly separates the tolerable from the unforgivable?

Is it talent that makes us look the other way?   In far less forgiving times, uber-despicable characters like Bing Crosby, Art Linkletter, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Buddy Rich, Paul Anka, Jerry Lewis and Red Buttons didn’t suffer public ostracism.  This sordid sack of surly celebrities was guilty of all kinds of ethical and behavioral malfeasance but their fan base cared not. 

Yet, back in the day, Fatty Arbuckle’s career was ruined by the “Coke Bottle” scandal and he was found innocent.  Was it that he’d been accused of a crime so horrific that people couldn’t forgive him, even though he didn’t do it, or were they just tired of laughing at the tubby actor?

It wasn’t enough that Mel Gibson insulted the entire Jewish race to the constabulary while driving drunk.  (I mean, who hasn’t done that?)  He also had to punch out his girlfriend’s tooth while she was holding his baby before his admirers started to question paying $17.50 a seat to see his movies.

And speaking of men who have had the incalculable courage to beat a woman half their size black and blue…Jason Kidd has often taken his extra-large-sized knuckles to a member of the opposite sex but he could still shoot a three-pointer and that was all that seemed to matter.  And now he’s coaching other young and impressionable enormous men.

But, perhaps you don’t even have to have talent to survive self-induced shame and humiliation.  Kim Kardashian started out with a scandalous sex tape and then got famous.  It’s hard now to think back to a time when I didn’t know exactly what Paris Hilton’s vagina looked like.  And who hasn’t Naomi Campbell bludgeoned insensate with a cell phone?  Perhaps a nice pair of hooters helps smooth over life’s little indiscretions regardless of one’s thespianic gifts.  I know that I myself have forgiven any number of outrageous transgressions against me due to a healthy pair of Bristols.

The question is…would we have forgiven Gary Glitter it he’d written “Beat It”, “Johnny B. Goode” or “I Believe I Can Fly”? 

How far does the Biebster have to go before little girls stop buying his peppy-poppy records?  Manslaughter?  Murder?  Singing without auto-tuning?

And speaking of taking another life – All the people below took someone’s life and it was their damn fault.  I’ve divided them into two distinct categories.

Seemingly Forgiven

Matthew Broderick, Keith Moon, Laura Bush, Ted Kennedy, Brandi, Don King, William S. Burroughs, John Houston, Howard Hughes, Snoop Dogg, Lead Belly, Charles S. Dutton, John Landis, J.R. Smith.

Forever Damned

Sid Vicious, O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, Phil Spector, John Wilkes Booth, Jayson Williams.

If we acknowledge the precept that all entertainers and politicians are basically woefully wayward infants, then it becomes incumbent upon the public, as the adult in the room, to set appropriate boundaries for them.  But, what the fuck are these behavioral lines in the sand?  I don’t see any sort of consistency here.  If a rock star accidentally kills his babysitter while fucking her tied to the hood of his Bugatti Veyron, does he suddenly think, “Christ, I better write a major hit song before the police get here or I’m totally up the shitter.”

Perhaps there is no answer.  Bankers don’t go to jail, why should famous bass players?  Perhaps we’ll just keep deciding, on a case by case basis, which luminaries we are willing to allow to kill our neighbors, brutalize our women and have sex with our children.

People get the government they deserve, and just maybe, they get the celebrities they deserve. 

 If you like the writing, then check out my serial novel at the link below.

There is a new chapter every Monday.

http://chateaudietrich.blogspot.com/

Radio Vickers Speaks It's Mind no. 2

Guess Who’s Not in the Hall of Fame

Anytime anyone has put pen to parchment or thumb to I-phone to craft a well-intentioned list of things meritorious, people have lined up for days to ladle the cold and lumpy vomit of their disgust down the back of that individual’s shirt collar.   Today is no exception.  Pull out your shirt collar, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, because I’ve got my whisky-barrel-sized ladle and it’s full to brimmin’ with the icy cold sick of my discontent.

 

Let’s start with The Guess Who, shall we?   Is it because they’re Canadian?  That they eat round instead of strippy bacon, so they can go fuck themselves?  Surely, no other plausible explanation can be proffered for this find exemplary band’s inexplicable snubbing at the hands of that strangely shaped building in Cleveland.  Obviously, those American bastards still haven’t forgiven us for setting fire to their goddamn White House or dropping Celine Dion on them.  It really boils my garters when I think of some of the musical lightweights that have been joyously, and with much ceremony, trotted into that big glassy pyramid.  One cannot help but wonder whether Wavy Gravy is handing out Syd Barrett levels of the leftover Brown acid from Woodstock during their selection meetings. 

A Case in Point:

 

Sure, the Dave Clark Five and Donna Summer had their moments in the sun – but do either of them have the hits or the staggering catalogue that Bachman, Cummings, Winter and Troiano bestowed upon the world?  This is not a close call, folks.  NOOOO, they fucking don’t!  The Guess Who were pumping out top notch rock albums from the mid 60’s thru 1975.  Now, I know that Donna Summer is dead, but that’s no excuse.  Being dead is not a body of work.  It’s just a body.  By all means, put her in the Disco Hall of Fame or the Over-Produced-Ass-Wag-Music Hall of Fame but Rock ‘n’ Roll?  Really?  Can you even name a Donna Summer song that could honestly be described as rock ‘n’ roll?  And her horrifying reinvention of McArthur Park made about as much sense as the song’s lyrics.  That’s got to be worth a few demerit points.  

 

But perhaps I’m being unfair.  I can sort of buy the “Apples and Oranges” argument.  Why not compare a bunch of white guys with instruments with a different bunch of white guys with instruments?  

Yes the Dave Clark sold a few billion copies of Glad All Over, Bits and Pieces, Do You Love Me and….and…well, you name another song of theirs that’s lasted more than a week or two in the bowels of the Charts.  Does anything spring to mind?

Whereas The Guess Who Tallied…

1965 Shakin' All Over

1969 These Eyes

1969  Laughing

1969 Undun

1970 American Woman

1970 No Sugar Tonight

1970 No Time

1970 Share The Land

1970 Hand Me Down World

1971 Rain Dance

1971 Albert Flasher

1971 Hang On To Your Life

1972 Heartbroken Bopper

1972 Sour Suite

1972 Running Back To Saskatoon (live)

1973 Follow Your Daughter Home

1974 Clap For The Wolfman

1974 Star Baby

1975 Dancin' Fool

            Most of these songs are Classic Rock radio staples.  When was the last time you heard “Over and Over” coming through the car speakers on a clammy summer’s night? 

And the Guess Who weren’t just a singles band.  How about Orly, Glamour Boy, Rich World/Poor Word, Dirty, Nashville Sneakers, All Hashed Out, Bye Bye Babe, Glace Bay Blues, Truckin’ Off Across the Sky, Those Show Biz Shoes, Hoe Down Time etc. etc. ??? 

 But, receiving “the big invite” is obviously not just about being great songwriters.  Worthy inductees Jackie Wilson and the Supremes didn’t pen their own tunes. 

What if performing prowess is a large portion the nomination equation?   Imagine, if you will, that you had to wager a large dollop of your procreative appurtenances on whether the Dave Clark Five were a better and more rockin’ band live than The Guess Who.  Would you even entertain placing the wellbeing of your nut sack or growler on the former Fab Five for a second?  Have you heard Live at the Parmount?  

Well, if it isn’t the hits, songwriting or performance that put the DC5 way out ahead of the GH, how about musicianship?

Is Lenny Davidson a better or more inventive lead guitarist that Randy Bachman, Kurt Winter or Domenic Troiano?  Grow the fuck up.

Is Mike Smith a better singer than Burton Cummings?  Mr. Smith is a workable warbler but Burton Cummings in one of the very best rock singers of his generation. 

We’re running out of possibilities here.

Is Dave Clark a better drummer than Garry Peterson?  Not even if Garry had as many arms as that guy from Def Leppard (and possibly a few toes on his hi-hat foot missing). 

So, what is this mystical metric that these mavens of the music biz are utilizing when they pick these nominees? 

And here’s a further puzzler.  What drunken evil warlock spell made them decide to induct Frankie fucking Lymon?  He barely had a career!  Let’s face it, being found dead next to a toilet is as close as this guy will ever get to being Elvis Presley.  Deep Purple were eligible to be nominated that year.  Can you, in any universe or hitherto unknown dimension, picture a scenario where Frankie Lymon gets on a stage and out-rocks Deep Purple?   

 More Cavilling:

Since we’re happily slopping the frigid and lumpy regurgitations about, let’s take a quick gander at the career of Status Quo.  So, is Cleveland home to “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame” or is it “The American Only and Nobody Else Rock and Roll ’n’ Hall of Fame?”  Quo started recording in 1967 and continue putting out top-selling, head-boppin’ albums to this very today.  They’ve had 63 chart hits in the UK (more than any other group).  They have 22 top 10 singles.  They’ve sold 128 million records worldwide.  I saw them live in a sea of screaming Mexicans in Hollywood and they blew the roof off.  Why, I don’t believe even a rock god the magnitude of oh, say…FRANKIE LYMON could have put on a better, more rockin’ show.  They’ve been eligible to be nominated for 23 years, Goddammit!  What do these guys have to do, short of shitting Beatle wigs, to get in to the Hall? 

I don’t even get me started on Cliff Richard. 

 

My Final Chunk Puddle of Irritation:

I know there’s been a lot of talk about the questionable methodology of the Hall’s decision makers.  Apparently, these industry big wigs have been accused of casting a very kind eye on artists connected with their own record labels.  Say it isn’t so!

Even Murray the K. was somewhat covert about his corrupt practices.  He didn’t get on the air and announce, “The only reason I’m playing this single is because I just received a trunk full of Jacksons from the record company and the lead singer’s wife jerked me off into my silly straw fedora.”  The nominating board isn’t even that subtle in their monetarily rewarding selection process.  But, let’s put aside the sordid and unpardonable history of this ethical No Man’s Land where talent and merit hold about as much weight as the helium in Katy Perry’s tits. 

Let’s take a look at this year’s nominees and see who is worthy?

 

Yes – Abso-fucking-lutely!  These guys should have been inducted in their first year of eligibility.  They invented art rock as we know it today.  So what if Jon Anderson couldn’t find a decent lyric if someone nailed it to the end of his Nous Sommes Du Soleil.  When one takes a look at their body of work and the staggering musicianship…

Bill Bruford?  Steve Howe?  Rick Wakeman?  Heard of any of these rhythmically advanced fellows?  Musically, they are the best of the best and every prog band out there has stolen from them.  This is their first nomination.  Chic have been nominated 8 times.  Society has gone mad, I tell you.  Is it any wonder that our children turn to drugs and violent I-phone games involving fruit. 

 

Kiss – Again: pure insanity these guys are not already in.  They may not have written more than three good songs in a 40 year career but who cannot marvel at their contributions to the stage craft and spectacle of rock.  Sure, Gene Simmons is a world class jerk but Chuck “let me videotape you while you’re taking dump” Berry isn’t?  

 

Linda Ronstadt – Sadly, she will probably get in because she is ailing.  That’s no reason to put someone in the Hall.  The reason Ms. Ronstadt should have been welcomed in a decade ago, is because she’s damn fine singer and she’s had a massive career.  Her mega-successful albums with Nelson Riddle sent every fading rock star in sight scrambling in search of an orchestra.  Plus, millions of today’s middle-aged men grew up masturbating to that poster of her sitting with pigs.  Even the great Neil Diamond can’t make that sort of boast.

 

Hall and Oates – Not really my cup of tea but they probably deserve it.

 

NWA – No fucking way.

 

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band – Yes.  

 

Peter Gabriel – It’s lucky it isn’t the Prolific Hall of Fame because he wouldn’t even get a single vote.   Peter is so slow; he couldn’t even come up with titles for his first three solo records.  But he definitely should be in the Hall.  

 

LL Cool J – No.

 

Chic – No. No. No. No. No.

 

Nirvana – A short career but (like the Velvet Underground and the Stooges) one which spawned a whole generation of admirers and imitators.   Perhaps they shouldn’t get in on their first nomination but one day. 

 

The Meters - They should definitely be in the mix.

 

The Replacements – I have a soft spot in my crusty heart for this band.  I’m a huge Westerberg fan and they probably deserve to be in.  Plus – they have a dead member – that seems to hold some sway with the board (See Lynyrd Skynyrd).

 

Cat Stevens – To me, he’s borderline.  Some nice songs but a short career of quality work, followed by some real drivel before he quit music to call for the religious assassination of Salman Rushdie and to educate little children. 

 

The Zombies – Probably too small a canon to warrant their inclusion. (See Dave Clark Five)  Perhaps Rod Argent should be admitted for the Zombies and Argent combined.

 

Link Wray – As sidemen go – he probably deserves it.  However, I don’t see him making the top five in this mega-talented group.

 

Deep Purple – A touching personal story.  When I was in Nobby Clegg – we had the pleasure of warming up for Ian Gillan at the El Mocambo for two nights.  The legendary rocker and former Jesus was a superstar asshole to us.  First, he made us change in the El Mocambo kitchen because we weren’t worthy of being in his presence.  Then, during the performance, his tech crew refused to give me monitors.  Huh?  Was the singer of “Smoke on the Water” and “Space Truckin’” actually afraid that I was going to wipe the vocal floor with him, if I were allowed to actually hear myself?  Probably not.  He was just being a fucking overweight, drunken prick.  But…even having suffered such shoddy and reprehensible treatment at the hands of this steel-tonsiled, criminally inconsiderate troubadour, I still believe he should be in the Hall of Fame.  (And I hold on to grudges.)

My five top picks for the Hall from this year’s nominees. (Obviously, the Hall chose to disregard these sage words.  That's why they're soulless bums.)

1.      Yes

2.      Kiss

3.      Linda Ronstadt

4.      Peter Gabriel

5.      Deep Purple – Even including that son of a bitch they’ve got singing for them.