I've written periodically about my friend Treva Silverman, better known (to me…but also a few others) as "TLT," The Lovely Treva.  I first became aware of Treva years before I met her -- watching the credits at home back in Glencoe, Illinois, for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and seeing an uncommon name that stood out over many episodes, 16 of them.  Later, though, after I moved to Los Angeles for UCLA grad school and then sold a screenplay and joined the Writers Guild, I eventually was in a circle of writers that included Treva Silverman.  ("Oh, I knew you!")  The circle may have changed, but not being friends with TLT.

Treva not only was the first female writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but one of the first writers the show hired, period.  She won two Emmy Awards for the series, including "Writer of the Year" regardless of comedy or drama, an award no longer given.  Her career includes writing for such shows as The Monkees, That Girl, Room 222, and one the TV's best, but little-known most-famous flops, He & She, with Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss.  She was writing partners with Joan Rivers, and wrote a superb, though as yet unproduced play, Scandal -- originally intended to be a musical directed by Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line) with a score by Jimmy Webb (MacArthur Park, By the Time I Get to Phoenix).

So, it wasn't a shock to find that when CNN did its series on the History of Comedy, Treva was one of the people interviewed.  And when HBO did its tribute documentary, Being Mary Tyler Moore, Treva was one of the people interview a lot.

And there's much more.  Including that early in the career, she played honky-tonk piano in bars.  (Oh, okay, that wasn't exactly what it was, but I always like to describe it that way.  It adds so much to her character.  Not that she needs much to be added.)

I bring all this up because yesterday -- I'm guessing timed for Sunday's Emmy Awards broadcast -- the Los Angeles Times had a wonderful article and interview with Treva written by Whitney Friedlander.  It focused on this being the 50th anniversary of when she won that rare Writer of the Year Emmy Award, and her memories about the episode.  (How rare was her Writer of the Year Emmy?  It's the only time that the award was ever given!  Meaning TLT is the only person ever to be named Writer of the Year at the Emmys.)

By the way, it should be added that when Treva won her second Emmy Award that night for Best Comedy Writer -- for the episode "The Lou and Edie Story," about when the Grants separate -- it was the first time in Emmy history that a woman won a solo comedy writing Emmy without sharing the credit with a male.

​And here's the episode, "The Lou and Edie Story" --
​

Periodically, I've posted songs that I've written.  I thought I've posted this one, but I was talking about it with a friend and went to look for it on the site, but couldn't find it.  I'm surprised, since it might be my favorite I did in the songs I wrote with Andy Marx, who did the music.

It has a bit of an odd history.  We wrote it, but then for a variety of reasons, it took a very long time to get it recorded, so that we could send it around.  (And whatever number you're thinking, you're low.  In this case, "a very long time" shall be defined as three years.  Yes, really)  But all's well that eventually ends well.

No, the song is not about me.  But when I wrote the lyrics, I was thinking about two couples very close to me who I knew.

Anyway, here's the song, with Andy singing and playing.  The lyrics are below, so that you can sing along.  All that's missing is the bouncing ball.

The world was born the day we met.
Tomorrow would shine on forever.
We made such plans, we dreamed such dreams.
And the way we'd reach them was together.
But no one's said 
That what we want is what we get.
Someday the rules may change,
But it hasn't happened yet.

     We did the best that we could do.
     We felt for sure somehow we'd make it.
     The power of hope's so strong, it almost pulled us through.
     We did the best that we could do.

The Winter fire is safe and warm.
A Summer alone's the coldest season.
I wish I knew what turned out wrong.
And I wish to God I knew the reason.
I've been with you through heaven,
And I'm without you now in hell.
I can't help feeling angry, 
But I'll always wish you well.

     We did the best that we could do.
     We felt for sure somehow we'd make it.
     But one plus nothing can never equal two.
     We did the best that we could do.

But no one ever said 
That what we want is what we get.
Someday the rules may change,
But it hasn't happened yet.

     We did the best that we could do.
     We felt for sure somehow we'd make it.
     Two different stories, and both of them were true.
     We did the best that we could do.

     We did the best that we could do.

     We did the best that we could do.

     We did the best that we could do.

The Democratic Convention starts on Monday in Chicago, and this story popped into mind, that made it seem oddly timely.  I know it won't appear that way at first, but bear with me.  It requires some background which might seem to make no sense, no matter how unlikely.

Northwestern University has an annual student-produced revue that began life as a written sketch show, but has morphed into a very popular, successful improv-based production, the Mee-Ow Show. (It started out as a barebones alternative to the big, famous, meticulously-produced Waa-Mu Show that's coming on its 94th year.  While student written, there is faculty involvement.  And a sort of hierarchy structure.) 

The Mee-Ow Show, though, did catch on, and it just had its 50th anniversary a couple months ago, and there was a big reunion.  Among the show's alumni that I'm aware of are Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seth Meyers, Craig Bierko (who starred on Broadway as 'Harold Hill' in a revival of The Music Man), Dermot Mulroney, Josh Meyers, Kristen Schaal, and SNL's Ana Gasteyer, Brad Hall and Gary Kroeger.  (Well, also, the Lady Shellington, who I've oft-mentioned here, Shelly Goldstein.)  Stephen Colbert has said he auditioned for the show, but wasn't cast.  Man, the competition must have been tough that year, or the producers fools. 

I mention all this because I wrote for the very first Mee-Ow Show.  Not sketches, though -- rather, I wrote the music and lyrics to two songs.  One was called "Ma Bell," a sweet ode to the kindly, endearing lady who wanted to involve herself into every aspect of your life for the good of America.  However, I insisted they drop the other song.  What happened is that I went to a rehearsal near opening night, and discovered that they had cut the middle out of the song, and the number now made no sense.  (Their explanation was that the show was running long.  "So, you cut out 30-seconds from a song??"  I noted that the sketch that preceded it ran over 12 minutes.  "You couldn't find something to cut there?"  But no, the producer wouldn’t put the missing 30-seconds back it in, though he gave me a choice – leave the mangled song as is, or if I was unhappy, they’d take it out.  Since my name would be in the program as having written this now-jumble of a song, and I knew that writing was my intended profession, I told them to take it out.

(The concept of deletion apparently lingers on.  The website for the 50th reunion has a page listing everyone who participated in every production.  Well, almost everyone.  I can't speak for others, but I wasn't listed among them.  There is a Facebook Group page for the reunion, and I politely mentioned the omission there, and fortunately still had the original program to attach a copy as proof.  I was added back in, and the fellow writing a book on the history of the show, to be published later this year, said it's now been updated, as well.  O huzzah!

Which gets us the point.  That first Mee-Ow Show was done in 1974. In the news at the time, both political parties were trying to decide where to hold their next convention in two years.  As I'm sure most people know, Northwestern is in Evanston, which borders Chicago to the north.  So, the song I wrote was a look back at the previous convention, the first after the 1968 debacle in the city with what was later called in the official study a "police riot," and the number suggested how a group of civic leaders had tried (to no avail) to get either party to bring their convention back to the city, which had hosted so many political conventions throughout U.S. history and give it another chance, called “Why Not Chicago?” 

See!  I told you there was a connection!

Needless-to-say, with the news tomorrow and Chicago finally getting a political convention again -- after 56 years, and especially a Democratic one -- the old song came to my mind.  I went through my files and actually found the lyrics.  I recall that the music was very chipper and upbeat, somewhat of a “soft shoe” number. 

(By the way, on that Facebook Group page, when I mentioned something about the two songs, to my surprise some fellow responded that he had been one of those rehearsing this one.  I apologized to him after all these years for cutting his number…  Happily, he was okay with it.) 

So, 50 years in the making, here finally is the first public appearance of at least the lyrics of the song, "Why Not Chicago?"!!
 
Why not Chicago?
What’s the matter with us?
We are friendly
And we’re cheerful.
Why are both of the parties so fearful
To go meet in Chicago?
Do we deserve all this hate?
We promise to run the convention
Like we handled it in ’68.
 
Why not Chicago?
Tell us what we did wrong.
We had total
Peace and quiet.
Well, except for one small, minor riot.
So, what’s  wrong with Chicago?
We promise that we’ll do our best
To help all the people who like us,
And then go out and beat up the rest.
 
What is the dreadful disease we’ve contracted?
What have we done to instill all this fear?
Just because some of us over-reacted
Please, can’t we have a convention this year?

So, why not Chicago?
Give Mayor Daley a chance.
He is honest
And respected,
Just make sure that his man gets elected.
Oh, give us a convention
To show off the things we can do.
If you like how we handled the last one,
Just you watch us in ’72.
​

We spend most of the day watching the Olympics, so you don’t have to.
 
And it’s come down to this.  The last day of competition.  And there were still a few major events left to finish.
 
First though, to follow-up on something from a few days ago.  That’s when I wrote about how there was a challenge from the Romania women’s gymnastic team about Team USA’s Jordan Chiles being raised up to a Bronze medal after a U.S. challenge over a judging mistake.  A panel has ruled for Romania, saying that the challenge by the United States occurred four seconds too late, after the one-minute period allowed to make a challenge.  The U.S. response has been how unfair this is that a gymnast should be penalized because of what was the judges’ error.  Though the Romanian gymnast will now get a Bronze medal (despite the IOC acknowledging previously that there was a mistake and Jordan Chiles, in fact, did score higher), there is no word yet on whether Chiles will be able to also keep her Bronze medal.  I wouldn’t hold my breath, but we’ll see…
 
Which returns us to the final events.
 
The women’s basketball Gold medal final was far more intense than I’m sure most watching expected.  But U.S. women’s basketball has won 60 games in a row.  And this team had won all its games by double digits.  In fairness, the French team they played in the finals is very good and physical, and playing before a raucous home crowd.  The result is that this game was a nail-biter, literally down to the last shot.  The U.S. team was sloppy on offense, missing layups and missing more free throws than in previous games, with many turnovers.  On defense, they let France get repeat offensive rebounds throughout.  At halftime, the score was 25-25.  The U.S. didn’t score for four minutes into the second half.  At one point, France took a 10 point lead.  The U.S. team came back, thanks in large part to Kaleah Cooper off the bench.  The gam was tied with 3:45 left.  Their lead was only one point with just over one minute left.  With four seconds remaining, France needed a 3-point shot to tie the game – and they made the great shot…but the players foot was about two inches over the line, so it only counted for two points, as the buzzer sounded.  And so the U.S. won the Gold medal 67-66.
 
I meant to write this yesterday, but it slipped through the cracks.  But excellent interviewing by NBC’s Lewis Johnson, talking with the U.S. 4x100m team that had had the disastrous baton pass.  Lewis has been doing this job at the Olympics for years – it’s a fairly thankless task, getting comments from exhausted athletes right after their event, usually track and field.  He’s very genial, though the interviews are usually pretty surface, in part because he’s not trying to dig deep at that emotional moment, in part because the athletes have no interest in going deep.  But in this case, because of the total collapse of the run, he wouldn’t take, “It just didn’t happen,” as an answer.  “Why didn’t it happen?” he asked pointedly.  And again got, “It just didn’t happen.”  All four teammates were there, including the runner who had trouble receiving the baton, but it was the runner supposed to pass the baton that Johnson focused on.  They all probably figured Johnson would accept the non-answer and move on, but it was too much an evasion of a big problem.  So, Johnson tried another tack, becoming more specific.  “Did he leave early, or were you not able to catch up to him?” he asked.  The runner tried it again, muttering a standard kind of “We didn’t get it done.”  But still Johnson didn’t give up.  “What went wrong?”  Finally, the runner realized he had to say something.  Because (whether he knew it or not) Johnson is a former athlete, even competing in track at two Olympic trials (as well as playing college football at the beloved Northwestern!), and this was too incompetent a race on the biggest audience stage to accept Generic Athlete Avoidance.  So, the runner at last gave a sort of weak reply, something along the lines of how they practiced and all support each other, but at least Lewis Johnson – not giving up – got a reply.  And made it clear that “It just didn’t happen” was not only obvious, but not an acceptable answer.
 
Paris organizers had a fun event after the men’s Marathon – they created a “Marathon por Tout”, a marathon for all.  The marathon route was left intact (since it would be run the next day for women) with the streets blocked off – and it was opened in Paris at night for anyone in the public who wanted to run.  An estimated 20,000 people showed up.
 
As for the women’s Marathon, temperatures were five degrees hotter than for men, which sounds small but is a big deal when you’re running 26 miles.  So, there was a lot of hydrating.  It was the same beautiful route through Paris out to the Versailles Palace on the outskirts of the city, where runners turned around and at about the 17 mile mark hit the crushing uphill climb.  This was a 10-degree grade that went on for about 600 yards.  Five runners were in the breakaway pack, later dropped to four runners with a couple miles to go, which always strikes me as so difficult – imagine running for 26 miles, only to lose out on the top three medals by just four seconds (as was the case here).  Then it was just two fighting for the Gold – and watching Marathon runner sprint for the finish, the final 200 yards is always remarkable.  The winner, Sifan Hassan, an Ethiopian-born runner representing the Netherlands, had a great Olympics – she also won Bronze medals in both the 5000k and 10,000k races.  She won the Marathon with an Olympic record time of 2:22:55.
 
This was the 40th anniversary of the first-ever women’s Marathon, held in Los Angeles.  And I attended the start of that race, which was held early on a Sunday morning at the track of Santa Monica City College, complete with a special ceremony to honor the occasion.  After which the runners left the stadium and took off on their 26-mile journey around the city.  That's American Joan Benoit -- the ultimate Gold Medal-winner -- in the front and center, in gray, with her white hat on backwards, right above the man's head intruding into my shot.

Which takes us to the Closing Ceremonies.

Beginning it out in the courtyard with an à​ capella choral version of "Under Paris Skies" is not what I would have expected. I think the standard expression is "What a bold choice."

Once they entered the stadium, I was a bit confused for a while, but phew, I finally figured it out. It's a promotional ad for the upcoming movie, "Alien: Romulus."

But what a joyful way to end the Games. A dystopian look at George Orwell's "1984" as performed by H.G. Wells' Morlocks.

If George W. Bush was in the crowd at the Stade de France, he'd turn to Michelle Obama and say, "This is some weird sh*t."

Let the Games continue in 2026.  Then back here in Los Angeles in 2028.  I'm starting to get my rest for that...

We spend most of the day watching the Olympics, so you don’t have to.
 
I believe the official display of the 2024 Olympics for athletes (though mostly women) is what’s known as the “Taylor Swift,” putting one’s fingers and thumb together to form a heart shape, replacing the previous choice of waving, blowing kisses or tapping one’s chest.  I don’t say this pejoratively or in praise – just that it’s something (after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of watching) that I’ve noticed.
 
What a tremendous Gold medal women’s soccer match between Team USA and their big rival Brazil.  At the half, 0-0.  And then twelve minutes into the second half, Mallory Swanson scored her fourth goal of the games, and the U.S. held on to win 1-0.  As I’ve noted, I’m especially biased, too, because Mallory Swanson is married to the Chicago Cubs' shortstop Dansby Swanson (and she plays for the Chicago Red Stars in the National Women’s Soccer League).
 
Side note:  The Chicago Cubs are pretty good at promotion, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes place, but this is my hope for the team -- That in a week or two, they have a pre-game ceremony, first sending out the team's shortstop, and we hear  to Public Address announcer say:
"And to catch the first pitch is Mallory Swanson's husband." (Huge cheers.)  "And to throw out the first pitch, please welcome...Mallory Swanson!!" (Massive roars.)
 
My love of long distance running paid off again with the men’s 5000k race.  Very close for most of it, but Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen took his fluid, graceful kick to run away with the Gold.  But also worth noting is that not only did USA’s Grant Fisher come from far behind to get the Bronze medal, “from far behind” must be described as – when Ingebrigsten made his fluid kick from second place on the shoulder of the leader…Fisher was all the way back in eighth place!  And further, he became the first American to double, with medals in both the 5000m and 10,000m race (for which he also got Bronze).
 
In the premier middle-distance race, Faith Kipyegon of Kenya set Olympic history by becoming the first person to win the 1500m race three Olympics in a row.  She just did.
 
But there was an abundance of tremendous middle-distance races.  Like the U.S. women blowing away the field in the 4x400m relay.  The U.S. men winning their 4x400 relay – with a neck-and-neck amazing final leg run by Rai Benjamin, the U.S. Gold medal winning in the 400m hurdles, holding off Botswana’s 200m Gold medal-winner Letsille Tebego.
 
But of course, the granddaddy of long distance running is the 26.2 mile Marathon, and the men held theirs today.  (The women will be on tomorrow on the closing day.) It was wonderful to watch, through historic quarters of Paris, out of the city past Versailles Palace, through the outskirts of beautiful woods. It also had a grueling long uphill climb, followed, of course by a challenging downhill descent.  And then, back in Paris, running alongside the Eiffel Tower and ending outside the renowned Palais des Invalides The race itself was close for a while, but then Tamirata Tola of Ethiopia broke away with perhaps 3-4 miles to go and ran with a 20-second lead most of the rest of the way, setting an Olympic record of 2:26:34.  To put this in remarkable, that’s a pace of running a mile at 4:34…but doing it every mile for 26 miles!  (Not terribly long ago, during the lifetime of many people today, the magical standard for running a mile was 4 minutes -- for one mile.)  His win stood out for two reasons – the first is that he wasn’t even supposed to be in the race, but was an alternate who had to take over when another Ethiopian runner got hurt, and the second is he had earlier won the 10,000k race, and so became only the eighth person in Olympic history to accomplish this double.  Two Americans impressively finished in the top 10 – Connor Mantz in eighth place, followed by Clayton Young, who was so excited with his position finishing and charmingly stayed around at the finish line as a sort of unofficial greeter, congratulating the runners who came in after.

I have a fond spot for several Olympic events, having attended them at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.  One is the Marathon – both the men’s and women’s which was the first-ever in Olympic history.  For that, I drove to nearby Santa Monica City College where it started.  For the men’s I walked a couple miles (to avoid traffic and parking) to the neighborhood they’d be running through.

​Let the Games continue – for one more day…

We spend most of the day watching the Olympics, so you don’t have to.
 
In answer to many inquiries – okay, none – yes, I have a music file I created years ago with the Olympic theme, and I listen to it every morning during the Games.  It sets to the tone for the day and is part of my pre-competition preparation.  This all takes years of training, you understand.
 
Yesterday, I mentioned Rai Benjamin almost jogging to win his heat in the 440m hurdles.  The finals were much closer, but he pulled away the last 75 meters or so to win the Gold against his longtime rival from Norway, Karsten Warholm.  This was Benjamin’s chance for redemption since the 2021 Tokyo Olympics when he finished second to Warholm by .23 seconds.
 
Of all the track relays, the one I like the most (I’m not a big track relay fan, as I’ve noted, particularly in the shorter races) is the 400m relay, and there were two interesting heats.  On the women’s side, the USA team crushed their heat, running away (literally) with it and winning their heat by a massive 3.3 seconds.  This doesn’t guarantee success in the finals, of course, though it’s an event the U.S. women have won since 1996.  The men’s heat was very different.  The first leg was run by the youngest runner ever on U.S. Olympic track, 16-year-old Quincy Wilson – and he was seriously off and was left far behind in last place.  Fortunately, the other three Americans cut the margin and on the final stretch broke through to finish in third place and make the finals.  I’m sure they’ll have a different team for that race. 
 
By the way, what’s always amazing to me about the 400m run (whether as a relay or individual) is that it's basically sprinted -- and it's the length of about four football fields!!  That's some sprint.  I don’t know if NBC Primetime will show the heats, so here’s the women’s commanding race.  It’s impressive.
 
I can't embed it on the website, but the video can be seen here.

​As for the shorter women’s 4x100m relay, it was extremely exciting. After a slow baton pass (which has become an American Olympic track tradition) on the third leg, Sha’Carri Richardson had to come from behind on the final leg to win the Gold.  Interestingly, because the announcers’ attention was on the U.S. baton pass, they totally missed seeing an even worse pass by Great Britain, and didn’t ever comment on it.  A huge and significant oversight given that Great Britain finished second by just .07 of a second.  (By the way, I hope NBC Primetime shows the ground-level, side view replay of the last 30 yards – it’s tremendous.  Not only do you get a great look at Sha’Carri Richardson far-enough behind that she’s out of sight that close to the end and then exploding out of the pack past everyone, but you also get a hilarious view of her turning her head near the very end to find out where everyone else is, sees she’s ahead of them all and then blasts past the finish line.)
 
And once again, the U.S. men’s 4x100m relay team (who seem even worse than the U.S. women at this) had a major screw-up on the baton pass, and finished far out of the medals.  In fact, it was so dismal that they were disqualified.  I was going to call it “inexplicable,” but since it’s happened so often, I think the problem has transcended that.  It’s now five consecutive Olympics that the U.S. men haven’t even medaled in the event.  I don’t believe all have been because of a terrible baton pass, but many have.  And five times in a row out of the medals speaks for itself.
 
The 10,000m race is high on my list of favorites, since I love long distance races.  And the women’s didn’t disappoint.  The three Americans held close for about 9,700 meters, but faded.  However, what a battle for the Gold.  Sprinting the last couple hundred yards.  Finally won by Kenya’s Beatrice Chabet – the first woman to ever win both the 10,000m and 5,000m races in the same Olympics.  And she’ll be running in the Marathon, too.  But high praise to Italy’s Nadia Battocletti, who finished second by only .1 of a second.  Her Silver medal was Italy’s first-ever medal in the race, and she was in tears of joy afterwards.
 
Wonderful Gold medal soccer match between Spain and host France.  With the local crowd going crazy, France closed a 3-1 deficit in the final minutes to tie and send the game into overtime.  But Spain scored twice in the extra period and won 5-3.
 
Some afterthoughts about yesterday’s great, exciting basketball game between the USA and Serbia.  The only thing I’ve haven’t liked about the U.S. Team (and haven’t liked for 28 years) is that they always call themselves “the Dream Team.”  And, no, sorry, there is only one “Dream Team.”  The first one.  This isn’t an old curmudgeonly rant about the old days – but about reality and perspective and understanding history.  In 1992, pros were allowed to play Olympic basketball for the first time.  And so it was a special honor, not just for the NBA but virtually for the honor of the country to play on the team.  And so all the very best legendary players agreed to be on the team.  They didn’t call themselves “the Dream Team” because they were NBA stars (like all subsequent teams), but because it was a team put together of future Hall of Famers, including those sitting on the bench!!!  Some of the greatest players in the history of the game.  That’s why someone gave them the name “the Dream Team.”  It was an ethereally remarkable team.  Since then, including this year, the Olympics squad has always been a great All Star team.  But it’s not the Dream Team.  Yet they always call themselves the Olympic Dream Team.  Here’s the deal:  when you can have the equivalent of a team with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson…and you could stop right there, but then add Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, Scottie Pippen and Chris Mullin – ALL of them now in the NBA Hall of Fame!!!! – you can ask permission to call yourself Dream Team 2.  But that is “the” Dream Team.
 
Kudos to the Olympic Zone show – that’s syndicated and runs the half-hour before NBC Primetime -- for running a segment with Andrea Joyce on the subject I wrote about yesterday – how insanely high the 10m platform dive is, but we rarely see it from the proper perspective to make it seem as horrifying as it is.  The whole piece was about showing that perspective.  At one point, as a U.S. diving official lead slowly Joyce along the platform to the edge, Joyce – still about 15 feet from the edge – said, “Why are my knees already shaking?”
 
I had to go out on an errand and so had to figure out what was the best time.  I checked the broadcast schedule, and at one point on NBC and the USA Network there were okay events, but ones that would be going on for a long while, so I could catch some of them.  And on the E! Channel, they had Rhythmic Gymnastics…immediately followed by Break Dancing (sorry, I mean “Breaking”).  I laughed and thought, okay, that’s a great time to go out!
 
(Later in the day, NBC showed a Gold Zone segment from Peacock -- their Olympics version of the NFL Red Zone – with the screen divided into four blocks, a different event in each block.  And one of them was Break Dancing.  I couldn’t avoid seeing it for a few seconds before having it seared into my eyes, and changing the channel.  But it was as awful an Olympic “sport” as my worst fears.)
 
Let the Games continue…