My favorite Super Bowl commercials

Not a lot of great ones to choose from, that's for sure.  And there was the added distraction of a sensational football game, but here are few I liked:

The HOUSE Mean Joe Green commercial parody.

The Tim Hutton Tibet Groupon spot.

And the little Darth Vader for some car commercial.

The sitcom montage was kind of interesting but I had no idea what it was for, and I don't think I get royalties

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The "Lost" CHEERS scene

This is one of my annual blog traditions.


For several years I've been talking about the "Lost" CHEERS scene. David and I wrote it for the 1983 Super Bowl Pre-game show to promote our fledgling series. They ran it just before game time and it was seen by 80,000,000 people. Nothing we've ever written before or since has been seen by that many eyeballs at one time. But the scene was never

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What not to wear at a music awards show

I saw recently where Don Kirschner passed away.  Kirschner was a huge record publisher in the '60s Brill Building era and later he became a celebrity, a la the Donald Trump of popular music.  I never met him personally, but I have a story that relates to him. 

In the late '70s my partner and I were writing a pilot for the very flamboyant film producer, Alan Carr.  He had just produced the film

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Did anyone get the license to that car?

To help get you in the mood for Super Bowl weekend, here are some Friday questions.

We start with Brad:

My favorite CHEERS mystery: Why did that station wagon drive by the bar every week for eleven years?
Seriously, almost every episode, a stock exterior shot was used with a station wagon passing by the bar while the same people walked by. The shot was also used at the beginning of the

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Why I hated COMPANY MEN

There are many little reasons but one big one. Now before I go any further I should, in fairness, state that a lot of critics liked it. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY gave it an A. I generally agree with EW, but in this case I can only assume that the studio gave them a print of THE GODFATHER and just slapped the COMPANY MEN title on it. An A? Really?

The point of this post is not to just rip a

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Random thoughts

... or Attention Deficit Blogging.  

My blog traffic has plummeted since they closed down the internet in Egypt.


Sorry to see the Mystery Bookstore close in Westwood. E-books are killing the bookstore industry. Now I feel even more guilty that I have an e-book of my own coming out in the next few weeks.

They held a last hurrah reception at the Mystery Bookstore Monday night and I got to

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Adventures in bad taste

From time to time I like to look back at my misguided, mercifully-brief radio career as a screaming Top 40 disc jockey in the ‘70s. Today’s stop on the road – KNTQ, Los Angeles. The New TenQ.

It’s late 1976. My partner, David, and I are head writers of MASH. I get a call from Jimi Fox, a radio colleague who worked with me in San Diego. At the time, Jimi had the distinction of having the

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