Celebrity Halloween Masks: A Primer

The Point Break gang in their presidential masks. Does this arouse you in any way?

Blame it on Point Break. Without that popular 1991 thriller and its quartet of bank robbers disguised as, respectively, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Lyndon Johnson, the phenomenon of presidential Halloween masks would not be as prominent as it is today, in my opinion. The fad didn't start with Point Break, obviously, but Katherine Bigelow's film kept it going far beyond all reason. As it is, the small-but-vital industry of latex masks designed to look like rubbery, hollow-eyed likenesses of famous people is still dominated to this very day by prominent politicians: presidents, ex-presidents, presidential candidates, and even a couple of powerful governors and congressmen. I wanted to do a little article about "celebrity Halloween masks," but I kept running into the same few faces over and over. It doesn't really matter which site you're exploring. When it comes to masks based on famous people, presidents and presidential wannabes rule all. Pretty much every Chief of State from Kennedy to Obama is represented in this form. The best you can hope for is a really off-the-wall, inaccurate likeness. Take this truly awful so-called "George Bush Sr." mask, which looks to me more like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The thing on the left is supposed to be George Bush, Sr. The thing on the right is Flea.

Aside from anomalies like that, what will you really find if you go shopping for celebrity Halloween masks in 2015? Exactly what you'd expect: a lot of Obamas, Hillarys, and Trumps, a handful of Chris Christies and Arnold Schwarzeneggers, plus some leftover Mitt Romneys, John McCains, Sarah Palins, and even a few stray Newt Gingrinches if you really go looking. Because of his marital proximity to presumptive Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton is back in a big way as a mask this year. Among the other ex-presidents, Richard Nixon is still the most popular, of course, but there are a surprising amount of Reagan masks, too. Dubya's still up there in popularity. Bush, Sr., JFK, and Carter are less common but not unheard of, while LBJ is relatively scarce. And as for Gerald Ford masks? Sorry, Ger, but those are strictly Ebay collectibles in 2015. There are plenty of Rob Ford masks, though, in honor of the buffoonish, crack-smoking ex-mayor of Toronto. In case you're planning to do a hyper-complete Point Break remake with a nine-man robbery team, here are all the presidents from Kennedy to Bush II as Halloween masks.

American History Latex: Nine ex-presidents as Halloween masks.

That'll stick with you for a while, won't it? Yep, it's difficult to get those images out of your mind. Once seen, they cannot be unseen. You'd think that presidential Halloween masks were scary enough on their own, but there is a weird sub-trend happening in this sector of the industry: rendering the politicians as literal monsters from horror movies and TV shows, often zombies, but occasionally vampires and Frankenstein monsters, too. In case you've decided never to sleep again, here's a selection of those types of masks. In this grouping, you'll see zombie Bill Clinton, two different zombie Hillarys, a couple of zombie Obamas, vampire Obama, zombie Dubya, and my personal favorite, Reaganstein. All are available to those with valid credit cards. As Peter Sellers put it in Dr. Strangelove, "It requires only the will to do so."

These monster masks are most definitely NOT a graveyard smash.

Okay, then. There's that. But what about non-political celebrity masks? Do they exist? Eh, sort of. Back in 2010, as you no doubt remember, there was a very messy, widely-publicized power struggle going on in late night television, and this led to a mini-boom in the Halloween mask industry. Of course, the mask makers didn't have the right to use the names of the actual combatants, so a clever manufacturer called Faces by Rubies came up with generic aliases. Jay Leno was "Motor Mouth," David Letterman was "Talk Show Host," and poor Conan O'Brien was "Ex-Talk Show Host." This kind of sly gamesmanship is common in the Halloween costume industry, i.e. "We're not gonna use the real name, but you and I both know who this is supposed to be." The masks themselves were appropriately hideous and bore only a passing resemblance to the real-life comedians on whom they were modeled:

Let this image stay with you throughout the years, my darlings.

Conan O'Brien, in particular, took issue with the appearance of his wizened-looking mask. In a YouTube video uploaded shortly before the debut of his TBS talk show, the ex-Tonight/Late Night host complained: "I look like a burn victim. This is just horrible. This is the face of a 95-year-old man. This is a John McCain mask that they repurposed and slapped some Howdy Doody hair on." O'Brien revisited the mask in his own likeness in 2012, when as part of a Conan segment, he visited a costume shop and found the forlorn "Ex-Talk Show Host" mask among the store's wares. As a clerk giggled and cringed nearby, O'Brien read the description on the package: "Life-like replica of a 66-year-old man-child. Watch him desperately try to win your approval." O'Brien described this text as "very accurate" and then donned the mask himself to deliver a delusional monologue: "I'm still on the air! Why are you all laughing at me? I used to be on network!" This, in turn, led to a bizarre sequence in which the female clerk donned a Conan mask as well and the two Conans pretended to make out as "romantic" music played on the soundtrack.

Apparently, nothing in popular culture has captured the imagination of the Halloween mask industry since the Great Talk Show Wars of 2010. Well, that's not quite true. Charlie Sheen's druggy, hooker-y shenanigans in 2011 inspired a number of masks as well. But that was pretty much it. Frankly, I'm disappointed. There are at least two stores in my neighborhood with a wide variety of Halloween costumes for sale, and I visited both of them hoping to see a fresh selection of celebrity masks. You know what I found? A few politicians and pretty much nothing else. No doubt about it, the industry is in a slump. I was, however, encouraged to see that my local Party City still had a wonderfully creepy mask based on Jim Parsons' popular Sheldon Cooper character from The Big Bang Theory. Spend a good, long time staring at that eerie rubber face. Doesn't that look less like a lovable sitcom nerd and more like someone who would break into your house at night and slit your throat as you slept? Bazinga indeed.

This is supposed to be Jim Parsons, not Sam Donaldson.

P.S. I dug around a little online and found a second Sheldon Cooper mask for sale. This, I'm sure you will agree, is no improvement.

The last thing you see before you die.

Help me ID all the caricatures in the Comedy Store's Twitter background!

The Comedy Store's Twitter background features some vague, tough-to-identify caricatures.

The Store, still on Sunset Boulevard.

Because of Marc Maron's twice-weekly WTF podcast, I've become fascinated with the Comedy Store, a West Hollywood comedy club that for over 40 years has served as a launchpad/proving ground for many aspiring stand-ups and that has also offered established funnymen and women a venue to try out their material in front of a live audience.

Over the years, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, and many more have put in time at the Comedy Store. Marc Maron is a stand-up comic himself, as are the majority of his guests, and "The Store" looms large in their mythology.

The club was founded in 1972 by Sammy Shore (Pauly Shore's father) and Rudy De Luca, who is best known for his many collaborations with Mel Brooks (Silent Movie, Life Stinks, and more). In 1973, Sammy lost ownership of the club in a divorce settlement with his wife, Mitzi Shore (Pauly's mom). Mitzi then used this opportunity to become a self-appointed doyenne of the humor business for decades, offering career guidance to up-and-comers and dating many comedians (including Barney Miller's Steve Landesberg). Now in her 80s and in failing health, Mitzi has ceded control of the Store to others.

But the legend of the Comedy Store continues to grow. Looming largest of all in the mythology is a five-week period in 1979 when many of the venue's regular comedians went on "strike" for nonpayment, including Steve Lubetkin, who expressed his displeasure with Shore's managerial style by jumping off the roof of the building next door, killing himself in the process.

When Maron and other comedians speak of the Comedy Store, it is with a mixture of awe, terror, loyalty, and repulsion. The place seems to have a demonic, semi-seedy vibe to it. What other comedy club has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries? I sincerely hope that Maron someday writes a book called simply The Store. I'd buy the hell out of it.

I've only recently started following the Comedy Store on Twitter, and I couldn't help but notice a picture they were using as their background image. It's a collage of the famous comedians who have played the Store over the years, surrounded by stars and planets.

I'd like to think I'm fairly up on comedy history, but I can't quite identify all the people in this picture. I used the Wikipedia list of Comedy Store alumni, which helped a bit, but there were still a few folks I couldn't place. Maybe you'll do better than I did. Below, you'll see the five "unknown comics" in the constellation. I'm pretty sure the guy on the right is supposed to be Letterman's pal Jeff Altman, but I'm not 100% certain on that. The drawing is so nonspecific that it could be Louie Anderson.

The other four have me stumped. The three guys on the left look like rock stars, and the one woman could be anybody from Elayne Boosler to Roseanne Barr to Gilda Radner.

Look it over and make your best guesses. Thanks.

Here are five famous Comedy Store veterans I can't identify. (Except the last one is probably Jeff Altman.)

Top 10 revelations about J.D. Salinger from that new documentary about him

"Got more stories than JD's got Salinger": The reclusive author is the subject of a new documentary.

The last-surviving cartoon from the
back of one of my Top 10 lists.

One of this weekend's new movie releases is Salinger, a documentary about Jerome David "J.D." Salinger (1919-2010), the late, famously reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye (1951). I thought this was a good excuse to do something I haven't done in about twenty years: write a Top 10 list in the style of Late Show with David Letterman.

My more-recent Internet pals (hello out there!) won't know this about me, but as an adolescent, I was a fiercely devoted fan of David Letterman's talk show, which at that time was running on NBC as Late Night with David Letterman and was much more anarchic and eccentric than his current, more conventional CBS program. Among my most-cherished items of clothing in the early '90s were an official Late Night ballcap and sweatshirt, and I paid tribute to Letterman's show by writing my own Top 10 lists throughout junior high and high school -- never stealing jokes from the show, but writing my own in the style of the ones I'd seen on TV. I'd write them in pencil -- never pen -- on notebook paper the night before school and pass them around class the next day, often in Band and Algebra. (Sorry, Mr. Ayotte and Mr. Maki.)

Over time, they got more and more elaborate. I used the bottom of the paper and the back of the page for cartoons, comic strips, movie parodies, fake ads, etc. In retrospect, that was my first attempt at writing for entertainment rather than for school. Eventually, I started doing them every school day and even began numbering the "issues." There were several recurring characters: Iffy the Troll (an ill-mannered mascot whose only interest was in merchandising), Margin Man (a superhero whose adventures were drawn at the edge of the notebook page), and Flatt & Gumption (two redneck cops). I circulated those lists in many of my classes, and I got into trouble for them more times than I care to count. Some teachers would even confiscate them, which I always felt was social injustice. But the other kids seemed to like them, so I kept doing them.

The whole Top 10 list phenomenon petered out towards the end of my high school years. By then, I was writing for the school paper and didn't need to pass notes in class anymore to disseminate my views to the masses. I once kept a whole stash of the lists in a cardboard box in the basement of my childhood home, but they were destroyed long ago in a flood.

Recently, a classmate of mine named Geoff Scott was kind enough to send me a Top 10 list he had saved from that era. It is very likely the only-surviving specimen of its kind. Thanks, Geoff! Anyway, I'd like to tap into my adolescent mindset and do a Top 10 list in the style of those bygone days. I hope you enjoy it. I'm going to do my level best to write this from my 14-year-old mindset.

TOP 10 REVELATIONS ABOUT J.D. SALINGER FROM THE NEW DOCUMENTARY

10.  The "J.D." stands for "Juvenile Delinquent." He thought it made him sound tough. 

9.  Killed a few hobos in the 1970s but got away with it because the cops couldn't find him. 

8.  Authored the entire Babysitters Club series and most of Goosebumps. 

7.  Had an intense, decades-long affair with Oscar the Grouch, but they could never legally marry. 

6.  Is writing this list now. 

5.  Put out a series of punk albums under the name "Psychobilly Sex Police" and had a brief hip-hop career as "Jay-Z Salinger." 

4.  Thought he held the world's record for eating the most marshmallows in a minute (37), but it didn't count because they were mini-marshmallows. 

3.  Wrote The Catcher in the Rye hoping it would someday be name-checked in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." In 1989, his dreams came true. 

2.  Iconic character Holden Caulfield was almost named "Holden McGroin."

And the number one revelation about J.D. Salinger from the new documentary Salinger...

1. Isn't dead, just hiding where no one will ever find him -- the Oprah Winfrey Network!

Good night, everybody! Drive safely!

(today's zomby) AND KAMARR, THE DISCOUNT MAGICIAN!

This Zomby!!! cartoon has put me in a nostalgic mood. In particular, the reference to Kmart made me think of one of my favorite recurring guests on Late Night With David Letterman.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... KAMARR, THE DISCOUNT MAGICIAN!




And, yes, Kamarr is still at it! In addition to his many appearances on Dave's NBC talk show in the 1980s, the Greek-born illusionist appeared in such films as Ishtar and Scenes from a Mall. Although the "discount magician" nickname was a joke on Dave's part, it seems like it's actually become Kamarr's destiny. His website mentions that the magician is willing to scale back his act to fit your budget.

Interested? Why not book Kamarr the Discount Magician for your next event?

The late night debacle: Wayne's Take

During the latest late-night talk show shuffle, you've probably been wondering: "What is Wayne Kotke's official position on this whole fiasco?" If you follow me on Twitter (and if you don't, shame on you), you may have seen some of the avatars featured above in which I remake my own image into that of carrot-topped Conan O'Brien, gap-toothed David Letterman, and lantern-jawed Jay Leno. Depending on my work and school schedules, I have been a pretty steady viewer of late-night TV talk shows since at least the mid-to-late-1980s. I was able, for instance, to witness the last few years of Johnny Carson's reign on NBC's The Tonight Show, and I can remember when Late Night With David Letterman only ran from Monday through Thursday, making each (rare) opportunity to see the show a special treat. Letterman was muscled aside on Friday nights in those days in favor of NBC's long-gone music show Friday Night Videos, a situation which Letterman routinely parodied.

Ah, but that was many years ago! In the decades since, Leno usurped the Tonight Show throne from Carson's heir apparent Letterman -- prompting much outrage and consternation -- and is now set to reclaim that same post from Conan O'Brien -- prompting additional outrage and consternation. During those middle years, let us not forget, Leno became TV's top-rated yakker by sanding away the rough edges of his comedic persona and aiming straight for the middle (middlebrow, middle class, Middle America) with predictably middling results. Meanwhile, Letterman soldiered on with his crankier, snarkier persona to great success on a rival CBS show, and O'Brien carved out his own niche with his brand of cheerful absurdism -- beloved by many (including me) but apparently not what the Tonight Show audience was looking for. Clearly, what America needs is a talk show host who can deliver the strengths of all three of these men. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the future of late night television:

"Hi. Wanna be my friend?"