Monthly Archives: May 2006

Rumor has it that those of us who have DirecTV satellites are about to find the Sleuth Network on Channel 308…like in the next day or so. This would excite me if I had any interest in watching old episodes of The A-Team, Simon and Simon and The Equalizer.

NBC reruns an old Saturday Night Live episode in the wee small hours of every Sunday morning. These are uncut, as opposed to the hour-long versions that rerun on the E! Network. For a while, they were choosing recent episodes which didn't much interest me but they're now going back a little farther.

This weekend, the featured episode is the one from 5/24/86 with guest host Anjelica Huston, musical guest George Clinton and former Yankees manager Billy Martin somehow appearing in a number of sketches. This was the last episode of that season and it ends with a scene that has all the cast members (playing themselves) trapped in a fire with a cliff-hanger ending: Who will survive? (Which is to say, which cast members will return next season?) You see Lorne Michaels saving Jon Lovitz with the implication that he'll be the only one. Two others did return the following September — Dennis Miller and Nora Dunn — but the rest, including Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall and Terry Sweeney "perished," in that they did not return to the show. Some folks involved with the show felt it was not the nicest way to say goodbye to the performers who were being dismissed.

The following weekend, the episode is the one that originally aired on 2/13/88 with host Justine Bateman and musical guest Terence Trent D'Arby. Not a great show, as I recall. Neither is the one this weekend but at least they're digging up some that haven't been rerun to death.

Here's a brief economics lesson from Ben Stein. I don't agree with all of it but am fascinated by his seeming break from a lot of the bromides that folks in his political camp have long touted.

The folks at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project have dug up more treasures for us. Here are several of the Chiquita Banana animated commercials that were done to be shown in motion picture houses in the late forties.

Not a lot is known about these commercials except that they were produced, beginning around 1947, by a company called John Sutherland Productions that did mostly industrial films and commercial spots. They seem to have farmed the animation work out to the Famous Studios operation in New York — the company that was doing the post-Fleischer Popeye cartoons and things like Herman & Katnip and Little Lulu.

A singer named Monica Lewis may have done the voice of Ms. Banana in these. She definitely was the voice of Chiquita when the character appeared in TV commercials in the fifties but sources differ on whether she sang for the theatricals. And now you know as much about these films as I do.

You can view or download the material here on the ASIFA site.

[UPDATE: I originally had an embedded link here but Steve Worth, who's doing such fine work for ASIFA finding and archiving treasures, asked me to remove it and direct you to their site. I am glad to do this.]

Much of my e-mail is wishing me a speedy recovery and a number of people seem to think I'm still in the hospital. I appreciate the well wishes but I want to assure everyone that I consider myself (amazingly) largely recovered. I got out of the hospital on Sunday afternoon, almost exactly 48 hours after the surgery. I'm avoiding heavy lifting and overtaxing myself…but I always avoid stuff like that. Which is one of the reasons I needed the Gastric Bypass operation. Today, I was out of the house most of the day, pursuing a more-or-less normal routine, minus the eating part. Haven't had solid food since last Tuesday night — a two-day liquid diet is part of the pre-op routine — and haven't missed it. I'm dining on Canter's chicken broth and protein shakes…and probably not enough of either. But I feel fine.

No pain from the incisions. No pain at all, at least since early Saturday. One hundred hours after the surgery, I did not feel any different than I had before except perhaps a bit lighter. There could well be aches and nausea and complications ahead as my system adjusts further and as I eventually reintroduce it to solid foods…but right now, I'm jes' fine.

I'm trying not to "sell" this surgery to anyone because I'm sure others have a rougher time of it. In fact, I saw others at the hospital who did. I'm just telling my friends not to be concerned about me. In fact, I'd like to think that the time to be worried about my health has now been preempted for a couple of decades.

As you've probably seen, cars that are driven in other countries sometimes sport little international license plates. On each, one, two or three letters denotes some code that indicates the country of origin for the vehicle. In the above three examples, "S" indicates a car from Sweden, "MC" indicates a car from Monaco and if you see "GBZ" on the back of an auto, you're following a car from Gibraltar. The codes are not always obvious, at least to those of us who speak English. For instance, "ROU" is Uruguay, "CH" is Switzerland and "CL" is Sri Lanka. I don't know those by heart. I got them off this list.

This afternoon, my friend Sergio and I were driving along and we were behind a car with one of those oval license plates on the rear. It said "DMB."

Now, Sergio has travelled the world over and speaks many languages including, on occasion, English. I have a pretty good memory. But try as we might, we couldn't figure out what country was denoted by "DMB." I kept thinking it was something like "Dominican of Milton Bradley" and that sure wasn't it. So finally, Sergio pulled up alongside the driver, rolled down the window and yelled to the guy to ask him…and the guy told us.

It stood for "Dave Matthews Band."

A number of fans of Alex Toth's comic book art seem to be a little puzzled about his vast body of work in the animation field. Most of it was done for Hanna-Barbera Studios, which was not far from his home and where his wife Guyla worked as a secretary to Joe Barbera. (And I hasten to add that that job description does not do her justice. She was a lovely and extraordinary woman who did a lot to keep that chaotic studio running.)

Alex had several functions for Hanna-Barbera. One was in the designing and selling of shows. H-B was basically in the business of getting networks to buy new programs and, once sold, the production of a given show was almost an afterthought. Alex was brought into meetings with writers and network execs where his skill for rapid drawing was given a workout. He'd sketch what they pitched and shape the melange of ideas into something visual, tossing in ideas of his own. Some people aren't sure if he created shows like Space Ghost, Herculoids, Mightor, Birdman, etc., and the answer is that he usually created the visuals and occasionally contributed ideas to the concepts. So I don't know that the word "created" really applies.

Then Alex would prepare large boards of color artwork — sometimes colored by him, often colored or otherwise embellished by others in the studio — that would be used as further selling tools in meetings. A cartoon show must often be pitched, re-pitched and re-re-pitched, meaning that Joe Barbera (or someone) would pitch it to network guys and then the network guys would pitch it to higher-ranked network guys and somewhere along the way, someone might have to re-re-pitch it to ad agencies. Having good art boards as visual aids can be an enormous aid for any pitcher, and Toth's were among the best.

After a show was sold and they began making episodes, Alex would usually do model sheets to design the characters — both the regulars and the "incidentals." Incidentals are new characters that appear in only one episode…and there would also be model sheets for vehicles, major props, key pieces of scenery, etc. He produced hundreds of these, perhaps thousands, and they are avidly collected by appreciators of fine comic-style illustration. They were a bit more controversial within the studio where some felt that Toth was the wrong guy to have setting the parameters of what everyone else would then have to draw. Everyone admired his drawing ability but there were those who argued that he was either too good or too special.

In most cases, the artists who would have to then draw the characters based on Alex's models had nowhere near his skills, or at least nowhere near the skills for that kind of illustration. H-B did adventure shows but they also continued to produce shows in what one might call the Yogi Bear style. Depending on what kinds of shows were sold each year and how many, it sometimes happened that a "Yogi Bear" artist would get assigned to an adventure show and many of these otherwise skilled artists struggled to replicate the kind of thing Toth was doing on the model sheets. Even a few artists who were solid in adventure-style art found his work too angular at times. Some Toth model sheets were worked over by others — traced and simplified (some would say, "watered-down") — before they went into production. But many artists were also stimulated by the challenge they presented and found that the designs were solid and, as is necessary with animation, designed with an absolute economy of line.

As I mentioned, animators still hoard and trade copies of them. It is not uncommon that an artist assigned to do up a model sheet of a policeman for some new show will haul out a Toth model sheet of a policeman and trace it, making just enough changes to pass it off as new…or not. I have seen Toth-designed characters appear without modification in shows he had nothing to do with, and I expect we always will. It's just part of the grand legacy that the man leaves us.

Several folks inform me — as I guess I should have realized from the lettering style at the beginning — that the Tom Noddy clip is from The Tracey Ullman Show.

And it's now been 91 hours since they wheeled me into surgery and I'm doing fine.

Jonathan Chait on why Al Gore's prospects to be the next Democratic nominee for prez are rising and Hillary Clinton's are collapsing.

For what it's worth, I've never felt that Ms. Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee, at least at the top of the ticket. I think she's a bright woman and one who has been seriously demonized and wronged by a campaign of lies and false charges. That is not enough to qualify one to be president. She's also not a very dynamic speaker and her positions lately have seemed fuzzy and lacking in leadership.

I also think it's way too early to assume Gore will run or is the only alternative. We're still in that stage where what the pundits say, if you ask them who's going to be the nominee, is something like, "It's much too premature for a prediction to have any value…and now, here's my prediction…"

Here's a great act…"great," in part because he's the only guy who does it. His name is Tom Noddy and he invented what he calls Bubble Magic. He comes out and blows soap bubbles.

His first appearance on TV with his Bubble Magic may have been on a show I wrote in the early eighties. I recall that we had a lot of tech problems figuring out how to light him so that his handiwork was visible on camera…and it was also necessary to rearrange the studio air conditioning so that none of it blew onto the stage. The crew rigged little panels to funnel the air towards the studio audience and away from the performance area. Shortly after, The Tonight Show booked Tom — because they'd seen him on our show, I think — and their director called our director to find out how we'd handled it. This clip may be that Tonight Show appearance.

In any case, it's just a sampler of a much longer act that Tom still performs all around the world. I need to drop the guy a line and find out when he's blowing this way because I'd love to see it again and, of course, see how he's built on it in the last quarter-century. And now, we are proud to present a little more than two minutes of Tom Noddy and his Bubble Magic…

Right now, a lot of the Conservative blogosphere is getting worked up over what they see as some discrepancy in a statement by Al Gore. As near as I can figure out, Gore said something about spending a week in France when he was fifteen and his detractors say (a) this couldn't have happened and (b) this proves the guy is a pathological liar or something of the sort. I've received several e-mails from people who are dead certain that there's no such thing as Global Warming and their "proof" doesn't extend far beyond their view that Gore can't be trusted so if he says it's so, it isn't. I suppose if Gore were to say it's currently 2006, they'd take that as evidence that it was some other year.

This is a political tactic that annoys the hell out of me. A lot of politicians lie and when they lie, they oughta be called on it. But all of them — without exception — say things that seem to contradict the record and which can be spun as lies if you try hard enough. It cheapens the whole concept of The Truth to label every seeming discrepancy as a bald-faced lie. Bill Clinton saying "I did not have sex with that woman" was a lie. Bill Clinton saying he read about black churches being burned in Arkansas when he was a kid (when there's no record any were) is not a lie, any more than you're lying when you misremember someone's birthday.

Here's a video clip of George W. Bush caught in what sure looks like a lie about something pretty important. In fact, it's so important that I'm inclined to believe it's not a lie…just real sloppy storytelling. However, if the Democrats had someone like Karl Rove running plays for them, you can bet this would get sold hard as rock-solid proof that not only is Bush a liar but that he has some severe emotional disturbance that makes him incapable of telling the truth.

Here are some things I've learned since I had my surgery last Friday…

• I've learned my bathroom scale doesn't work. I stepped on it this morning and it gave me a weight six pounds higher than my pre-surgery weight. Five minutes later, I stepped on it again and I was eight pounds under. Just for fun, I've stepped on it about ten times today and gotten more random numbers. So I have no idea how much I've lost so far.
• I've learned that a lot of my expectations of pain were for naught. I've had very little. Today, I hurt about as much as I generally do when I have a cold and some of my joints swell a bit, and that isn't much. They gave me a medicine to take for pain and I don't think I'll be opening the bottle.
• I've learned how good the clear chicken broth from Canter's Delicatessen tastes. Especially when that's the only thing you've eaten all day that even remotely resembles food. And no, I'm not the least bit hungry.
• I've learned how odd it feels to shower when someone has shaved your stomach.
• Lastly, I've learned that I have a lot of good friends out there — some of whom I never heard of or from before — who wrote with good wishes and words of encouragement. I also learned that there are a couple (just a couple) of folks who couldn't resist telling me of their friend who had a similar operation and suffered and/or died. Gee, thanks. You're so helpful. But most of you have been very nice and I'll try to answer all your notes.

Well, I've had an interesting couple of days. Friday morning, I checked into Cedars-Sinai Hospital and had a world reknown surgeon reduce the size of my stomach. It's called Roux en y gastric bypass surgery, though most people seem to refer to it as "that thing Al Roker had done to lose all that weight."

I'll write more about it when I can sit here at the computer longer without discomfort…though I must admit, I have surprisingly little discomfort. It was done via laparoscopic surgery, meaning they make six tiny incisions, then go in with special tools rather than to just filet you open lengthwise. The procedure was performed Friday afternoon around 2:00, I was out of surgery by 3:30 or so, then spent a few hours somewhat incoherent in a recovery room where, they later told me, my first words were, "Can we send out for pizza?" Got to my room by 9 PM and spent an uncomfortable but not intolerable night thanks to a few injections of an anti-nausea drug. Saturday morning was rough but by late in the day, I could tell I was getting better…and they took out my staples and sent me home this afternoon around 3:00. My chest feels tight but my biggest problem right now is the sore neck I got from sleeping in one position on an uncomfortable hospital bed.

For those of you who want to know more about the technical end of the process, this page tells you more than I ever could.

As I said, I'll tell you more about my experience when I can, though I have no intention of recommending it to anyone. I don't think it's for everyone and the folks who do elect it have to really, really make up their own minds. I suspect it's in the category of things that if you can be talked out of doing it, you shouldn't do it. One should especially beware of websites that are trying to sell you the procedure. As a general rule of thumb, those who do the process well seem to have all the customers they can handle and don't need to solicit. I spent a year or more studying the pros and cons, and finally chose to go ahead only because I believed I had the right personal physician and the right surgeon. I'm sure with the wrong guys in either role, it could already have been a disaster. I also underwent extensive medical tests that showed I was a good candidate for the surgery because so little was wrong with me apart from my weight.

I'm going to go lie down for a bit in a real bed. It's good to be home. And it'll be good to be skinnier. My thanks to several friends who supported me and encouraged me, and a big thank you to the lovely Carolyn Kelly who did all that and more.

For reasons I'll explain in the next post, I'm a day behind the comic blogosphere in noting the passing of Alex Toth, who died yesterday morning. Alex was easily one of the most admired artists to ever work in comics and animation, envied by his peers for his ability to capture action and human gesture like no one else. Like a great photographer who can sense the split-second to hit the shutter, Alex had a knack for drawing exactly the right second in any sequence of events. His people moved and acted like people and when he drew a car or airplane, you could sense its speed right on the page.

That he designed many popular Saturday morning shows was the least of it. He invented much of the shorthand necessary to do adventure cartoons for television. Other animation artists hoarded and traded his model sheets and swiped off them. You could see Toth designs, slightly changed, on shows he never worked on. You could see other artists strain for the Toth simplicity.

Simplicity was a constant goal of Toth's. He was known to draw an entire comic book page — I saw him do this — decide it was too cluttered and then rip it to shreds and do it over with fewer lines. There was nothing wrong with the first version other than that Alex thought he could do it better. He usually could.

To be around Alex was to be with the ultimate fan. No one loved great comics like Alex. He collected them, studied them, wrote long essays (usually crammed onto postcards) to friends about them. We spent some long evenings on the phone or in his living room talking about the handiwork of Roy Crane or Frank Robbins. It was always fascinating to hear a Toth analysis because he understood other artists from the inside. I'm not sure he ever understood what he did so well but he could talk for hours about what Milton Caniff did.

He leaves behind a legacy of fine work but you always got the feeling with Alex there could have been more. He worked too often for companies that never seemed to know what to do with him and he got into the habit of quitting when he was wronged…and sometimes even when he wasn't. Tonight, I want to think about how much excellence came off his drawing table…but it's hard to not consider how much more he had to give us, to teach us and to leave us. He really was that good.

To my friends who know what I've been up to this weekend: I'm home and things went well. I'll be posting about the experience later.

When I get a moment, I'll also be posting some thoughts about a great artist named Alex Toth who passed away Saturday morning at the age of 78.