Monthly Archives: August 2010

Here's the New York Times obit for Gloria Winters of Sky King fame.

But then, you didn't know I was gone, did you? Well, I was. Wednesday morn, I flew to Indiana. Why did I do such a fool thing? For meetings to plan the third season of The Garfield Show, a cartoon-type series I write, produce and voice-direct.

"Third season?" I hear some of you asking. "Isn't Cartoon Network still running the first season?" Well, yes, they are…several times a day on account of it's their number one show in daytime. The second season is just now starting to come off the assembly line. It'll be airing soon in France and other nations, and they're telling me we'll see 'em in America around October but I'm not sure that's definite. October, by the way, is also the tentative release date for the first DVD of episodes from The Garfield Show. It'll have six cartoons all featuring Odie, and I'll post a link for ordering when it's possible.

Some of you may have noticed that there's a list of episodes for Season Two over on the Wikipedia page for The Garfield Show. And what you don't know is that those aren't the real episodes. Someone — I have no idea who — made up a bunch of plots and put them up there. And what that person doesn't know is that he or she did some good guessing and got two or three close-to-right. I'm not going to correct Wikipedia just yet. I kinda like leaving it there as a reminder that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Anyway, on Wednesday I hopped a Southwest flight to Indianapolis — and up to a point, it was a darn near ideal flight. Took off twenty minutes late but got in fifteen minutes early…the plane was half-full so we could all spread out…and there was a very funny flight attendant. Southwest apparently encourages their crew to "dress up" the little speeches they have to give about turning off your cell phone and not disabling a smoke alarm in the lavatory. I didn't catch this lady's name but I've paid a two-drink minimum to hear people who got fewer laughs. The plane had a stopover in Las Vegas and as we neared that fair city, she got on the P.A. to announce that those of us on the right side of the plane were about to get a glimpse of an important landmark. Everyone strained to watch as she said, "Not yet..it's coming up…almost…there it is! That house with the pool and the tile roof! That's my house!"

Well, it was funny on approach.

Just as I reached the baggage claim in Indianapolis, our bags started rolling out for claiming and mine was the first one off. I thought, "Boy, everything went perfect on this flight. I don't have anything to blog/bitch about." Then I noticed that one of the four wheels on my suitcase was missing and the whole section around another was cracked and caved-in, rendering the entire piece o' luggage eminently discardable. Spoke too soon.

Hertz promised me a full-sized sedan but instead gave me something larger…something that suggested they thought I planned to spend my time in Indiana moving sofas. It had that special feature they build only into rental cars: At least twenty mysterious dashboard lights, warning displays and audible alarms that cannot in any way be identified and which go off at random. There was a little flashing blue light that I finally decided meant either "low on windshield washer fluid" or "this vehicle is about to explode." I checked into an Indianapolis Hyatt that had nice rooms but a "high speed" Internet connection that Barney Rubble would have complained was antiquated. Then I went out to buy Drinking H2O and supplies at a nearby Kroger and stopped off for a burger.

Invariably when I carry on here at newsfromme about my favorite fast food hamburger, which is at Five Guys, eleven people write to say that I've obviously never been to a Steak 'n' Shake. And when they said that, they were right. I hadn't. So I stopped into one Wednesday eve and had a steakburger and fries. Very good. The burger was terrific — maybe a shade less tasty than Five Guys but only a shade. The french fries were a far cry but hey, if they had Steak 'n' Shakes where I live, I'd go to 'em. If I was still drinking milk shakes, you probably couldn't keep me away because theirs looked mighty tempting, even to a guy who's given up that kind of stuff.

Thursday morn, I headed for Muncie, which is where Garfield HQ is located. I made two stops along the way. One, for a mid-day meal, was at a B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue in Northeastern (I think) Indianapolis. This is another one of those chains that is maddeningly unrepresented in my neck o' the woods. Then I went to a store that you can find in L.A. — a Costco, wherein I purchased a new suitcase to replace the one Southwest Airlines used in a game of Bocce Ball. I almost didn't go there because I was afraid that at Costco, they'd make me buy a package of twelve. I must say it felt odd walking out of that store without twenty-seven items including the obligatory case of toilet paper.

Spent Thursday evening and all day Friday in Muncie, which is a lovely little town. (If you ever go there, e-mail me and I'll tell you a great place to stay.) It was all business meetings and socializing and I'm not sure where or if one left off and the other began. Then Saturday morn, I packed my old belongings in my new suitcase and hit the road, Jack. I stopped off for lunch at a Five Guys in Fishers, Indiana…right across the street from a Steak 'n' Shake. It's not fair that Fishers has one of each and Los Angeles has neither. If Barack Obama is truly a Socialist, I expect him to do something about this right away, redistributing the wealth of good burgers. Then it was on to Indianapolis International Airport where I turned in that Rose Bowl float the Hertz people gave me. Then I checked my new suitcase and found a table to set up my laptop, then wrote everything in this message up to this point.

Now I'm home after an uneventful flight…which is to say nothing bloggable occurred. If I owe you an e-mail, and I probably do, I'll try to catch up soon. Right now, it's just nice to be back in L.A., even if we don't have anything better than In-N-Out.

My then-partner Steve Sherman took the above photo in 1970. We had one of those Don Post full-head rubber masks they used to sell in the back of Famous Monsters and we spray-painted it red and took it out with us to Jack Kirby's house. This was a few months after he'd hired us to do, as it turned out, very little on the new comics he was producing for DC. But we thought (correctly) it would amuse him to have the head of one of his favorite villains, the Red Skull, in his studio. That's me wearing the mask. And as I recall, just before Steve snapped the shutter, I said — in a very bad German accent — "So, Kirby…I am told you are a Jew." Jack waited until after the flash had gone off to burst out laughing and reply, "Only my hairdresser knows for sure." Whatever that meant.

Jack would have been 93 today. If you got to meet him, you probably treasure that encounter. If you never got to meet him, I'm sorry you never got to meet him. He was a delightful man with a mind that galloped off in all directions, all of them charging irrevocably towards the future. Even when Jack hauled out an anecdote from his bottomless stash of World War II experiences, he was speaking about the future. I'm sorry he didn't get to spend more time in it. I think he would have liked most of it and I know we would have liked having him around longer.

And as a dozen of you have told me, 64 episodes of Sky King can be viewed online over at this webpage. When I get a moment, I'm going to watch a couple and see if I still like whatever it is I once liked about that show.

People often ask me, "Where did you get your sense of humor?" Depending on my mood, I may give them the real answer, which is that I ordered it from a supply house in Pittsburgh…which reminds me: Mine wore out around late 2003 and I'm overdue to send off for a new one. Or I may tick off a list of influences that includes Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, MAD magazine, Jay Ward cartoons, Warner Brothers cartoons, a whole bunch of other stuff and, usually in first position, Stan Freberg. The comedy records Stan Freberg made in the fifties are still brilliant and I can still recite darn near every word in every one of them from memory.

Every now and then, I have to prove it…to Stan. He likes to hear that I really do know them and I like to show off and prove it to him. If you're familiar with his work, you know what I love about them, and you may be able to recite a couple, yourself. At the very least, lines from them probably turn up in your everyday speech often.

The last album Stan made of new material was in 1996 and the last one before that was 1966. So it's not like he's been flooding the market with them. I am pleased to say that he and his wonderful partner (in life and work) Hunter Freberg have a new one out. It's called Songs in the Key of Freberg and it features ten brand-new silly songs they composed and which Stan performs with an assist from Hunter. You can sample them on this page. You can download them for a modest fee from that page. You can even order them on a CD from that page…and as far as I know, that's the only way you can get Songs in the Key of Freberg at the moment.

I am delighted that Stan is still creating new musical humor and as you can hear, he's still wickedly relevant with his satire. Stan and Hunter played some cuts on their panel at the Comic-Con a few months ago and the audience roared with guffaws. You'll roar as they did…and you'll have a very special album. So don't delay. I plan on ordering several just as soon as I send off for my new sense of humor.

Half the Internet — the half that isn't busy downloading porn — is speculating why the increase in the number of Americans who think Barack Obama is a Muslim. (I'll leave it to you to fill in the snotty-but-true comment on which half is doing something more productive.)

Kevin Drum thinks it's simple: More people believe the lie because Obama's political enemies are spreading it with increasing gusto and frequency. And I'm sure Kevin's right. But shouldn't we append that Obama's opponents are also becoming more and more nutso about the economy and paranoid about everything? No one in this country cared much where mosques were built a few years ago. The more paranoid you get, the more you're willing to believe (or at least tell pollsters you believe) any stupid thing that might weaken your foes.

Also, they've been running out of insults. They called him a Communist and a Socialist and now that's getting old. They called him Hitler but, hey, these days everyone is Hitler at one time or another. For a while, they were calling him the Anti-Christ. So why not try calling him a Muslim? Hell, by this time next year, they'll be telling us he's a broken table lamp, the resurrected corpse of Jeffrey Dahmer and The Brain From Planet Arous.

Many moons ago today, a fella named Walt Kelly went and got himself born. Folks didn't know it at the time but he was going to grow up to become not only one of the great cartoonists of the world but one of its great humorists. People still quote him left and right, often without knowing from whence the witty thing they're saying came.

I always appreciated Mr. Kelly. Liked him even before I met and started liking his daughter. Both appreciations have only grown lately as I aid her in prepping a classy, much-desired reprinting of his Pogo newspaper strip, in full and in hardcover and (where appropriate) in color. Volume the First is taking longer than anyone had expected because the earliest strips need extra loving care and this is one of those projects that you just don't want to not do as well as it can be done. But it's coming soon and when it comes, you too will appreciate him even more than you already do, even if you already think (like most smart folks), he was the best. Roger Ebert agrees.