About Stuff I Don't Get…

Steve Iverson came up with a good explanation for that graphic on Saturday Night Live that wrongly claimed what you were about to see was Christopher Walken's first time hosting. The previous week, a graphic like that correctly identified that week's episode as Alec Baldwin's first time hosting. Apparently, when someone changed the name and date, they forgot to take out that line about first time hosting.

Several folks have written to me with tales of when some comic book creator was handed a comic to autograph and he or she had to tell the person, "I didn't work on this." To which the person then said, "I don't care…sign it, anyway." Since it's easier to sign than to argue or disappoint someone, the person signed. I think I've done this a few times.

Well, that would explain a kid having Stan Lee sign something he didn't work on at a convention…though given what Stan has been charging for his autograph for several years now, I'm not sure I believe that. If you were paying a guy that much for his autograph, I think you'd make sure it was on something he'd actually done.

This reminds me of an incident a few years ago at a Comic-Con. A person came up to me with a page of original art and asked me, "Was this done by Sam Pencilpusher?" (That's a name I just made up to disguise the true identity of a popular artist who was at that convention.)

I told the fellow no, the page he'd purchased — which its seller had represented as being by Sam Pencilpusher, was not drawn by Sam Pencilpusher. Dejected, the kid wandered off. An hour or so later, he came back to me with the page. "I took it up to Sam Pencilpusher and asked him if he'd drawn it. He said yes so I had him sign it!"

Whereupon I grabbed the page from the kid, marched over to where Sam Pencilpusher was signing things for people, waved the page in his face and told him, "You did not draw this!"

He looked at it more closely and said, "Hey, I think you're right…"