Penn & Teller at the Rio ’05
July 24th, 2008
It had been eight years since I had been on the west coast, but it had been even longer since I had seen Penn & Teller perform live, ten years having passed since I last saw them locally at the Fraze Pavillion in Kettering. So the one request I made of Jimmy was that we go to Las Vegas and catch the bad boys of magic live at the Rio – and he obliged. In fact, when Bob heard that we were going to head out to Vegas, he decided to forego his weekend at Lone Pine and go along with us. Maybe he didn’t like his friends venturing out onto his turf without him, or maybe he thought the city would swallow us alive – but nonetheless he decided that we would all go to Vegas together. Read the rest of this entry »
As I walked the ramp from the airplane to customs on the morning of Saturday, July 5, 2008, the first thought that entered my mind was that Germany must be a dunghole. The whole area had been ripped apart for construction and it looked like I had just entered a third-world country. As it happens, this was the only area of the country that made me feel this way. Of the eight European countries I visited, Germany was the nicest of all. Ahead of me were two weeks of traveling via planes, trains, and automobiles (as well as boats, taxis, buses, and subways) throughout the European continent. I had finally popped the pond after 36 years of remaining on the North American continent. 
In the television world, there are a group of sitcoms that I strongly consider to be my shows. Some are obvious, some are not, and a few are very obscure. Among the not-so-obscure are the four major TV series starring one of my all-time comic idols Bob Newhart. The earliest of these series is The Bob Newhart Show, the story of a Chicago psychologist trying to survive amidst a bevy of crazies. Peter Bonerz played the role of Jerry Robinson, orthodontist inhabiting the same office building of Bob’s. Mr. Bonerz also made cameos on two of Newhart’s later series Bob and George & Leo. 
As a huge Honeymooners fan, I’ve always recognized that although Jackie Gleason and Art Carney always portrayed Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton respecitively, there were four actresses each who played their wives Trixie and Alice. I had always been puzzled as to why I had never seen one single photo of Sue Ann Langdon in her portrayal of Alice (nor Patricia Wilson as Trixie) from the time when Gleason performed Honeymooners sketches on The American Scene Magazine. Pictured at right is a rare shot of Frank Fontaine, June Taylor, Jackie Gleason, and Sue Ann Langdon – but obviously not in character. I later learned one reason that shots of her on the Honeymooners set were uncommon (or possibly non-existant): there were only two episodes of this Honeymooners incarnation. I had always assumed that there was an entire season’s worth of episodes.