Monthly Archives: November 2013

For those of you who've pre-ordered the new Criterion Blu-ray/DVD set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World via Amazon…

They've just lowered the price from $34.99 to $29.99. Under the terms of Amazon's pre-release price guarantee, that means you should be charged $29.99 — or less if they lower it further. The way it works (they say) is that you pay the lowest advertised price between the time you order and the time they ship. At the moment, it's $29.99 so some of you just made five bucks. Make sure you're charged accordingly.

Henry Blodget debunks the oft-heard claim that the economy depends on rich people being "job creators." There's nothing wrong with rich people being rich people but we shouldn't give them a free ride on the theory that if we do, they'll make more jobs for the lower and middle class to get.

We seem to have made it through the 50th anniversary remembrance of the Kennedy Assassination. An interesting point I've seen on several blogs is that this is probably the last "round number" anniversary which will involve the participation of a significant number of folks who were in Dallas that day and involved. There's also, of course, been a demographic shift over the years. When we had the 10th anniversary, most of America still remembered that day and everyone had their own memory of where they were when they heard and how it felt to hear that "your" president had been murdered. Today, most of America was either too young for anything to have registered or wasn't born yet.

On 2/9/56, the game show I've Got A Secret had on a gentleman named Samuel J. Seymour, who was then 95 years old, though for some reason he gave his age as 96. Mr. Seymour, who passed away two months after this broadcast when he actually was 96, was the last surviving person who witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Here's the video. It looks to me like the panelists guessed his secret immediately but played dumb for a little while so as to not terminate the segment too rapidly. You can almost sense Bill Cullen trying to draw it out. Then questioning passes to Jayne Meadows, who has nowhere to go but to guess it…

It struck me last weekend that in just a few decades, someone who was a child in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63 is going to be the Samuel J. Seymour of the Kennedy Assassination. And when that person goes at age 105, conspiracy buffs will probably be sure he or she was murdered to keep them from talking.

And at some point, those of us who were "witnesses once removed" — not there in Dallas but following the story in real time on TV — will also be few in number. Everyone will be able to watch the videos of that weekend's news coverage but we're the ones who saw it unfold without knowing what would come next. I remember that as a key element on November 22: No one knew what would come next. For hours there, we didn't know that the shooting of President Kennedy wasn't the first step in a series of attacks. Would Lyndon Johnson be shot next? Would the Russians then attack Washington? A kid today watching that day's news footage knows going in that the Kennedy Assassination was only the Kennedy Assassination. For a few hours that day, we didn't know that.

It was the same on 9/11/01. Many of us awoke to the news of the first plane hitting. Many of us were watching when the second plane hit. How many more would there be? Then came word of Plane #3. Would there be a Plane #4 and a Plane #5 and a Plane #27? The horrors of just watching the World Trade Center fall and the Pentagon hit were bad enough. For an hour or three there, the thoughts of what might come next were even worse.

I watched a lot of JFK-related programming this year on and around the anniversary of his death. Maybe my viewing selections were not typical but I saw less of two things than I have in past years. I saw fewer shows that, while ostensibly about the death of our 35th president were actually just the press congratulating itself on what a brave, efficient job it did of covering the news that day. (For the record, I don't think it was that brave or that efficient.)

More interesting to me is that I also saw fewer shows that gave credibility to the view that Oswald couldn't have acted alone; that there had to be dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of conspirators behind the murder of John F. Kennedy. (For the record, I don't think there were. Yes, the government does lie to us but that's not proof they did in this matter.)

I even saw a few shows that talked about John Kennedy — who he was, what he did and what he might have done had he lived. (For the record, I just plain don't know. I'm skeptical though of the belief that he would have done all the good things Lyndon Johnson did but none of the bad.)

Somewhere in all that, I got the feeling that this was the last time a lot of attention would be paid to 11/22/63 and that it was passing from an important date in "our" history to an important date in history, period. The shooting of Lincoln…the Great Depression…the bombing of Pearl Harbor…these are all events that happened to other people in another era. The ones who were alive to experience the more recent ones in real time are increasingly like ol' Samuel J. Seymour — novelties. Maybe in a way, that's a good thing. I've spent way too much of my life thinking about what happened in Dallas that day.

Another whole Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson with guests Orson Bean, Robert Klein and Erma Bombeck. Most of the music cues have been chopped out, presumably because money would have to be paid to include them.

The episode is from November 17, 1977. Mr. Bean plugs the animated Hobbit TV special which aired ten days later and which featured his voice as Bilbo Baggins. Then around 40:16, Robert Klein comes out to do a monologue which doesn't go very well at first. Klein was one of the best stand-up comics of his day and I think he hasn't gotten his due for braving frontiers and also for inspiring an awful lot of later comedians. In his spot, Klein manages to salvage things and to close strong…

…and then what interests me is that Johnny keeps him on, chatting on the panel, for more than two full additional segments. They had singer Kelly Garrett there, ready to do a number and Johnny elected to bump her and talk more with Klein. I didn't think Klein was doing so well that it warranted it but Johnny obviously did…

I'm not sure why I'm devoting so much space to trashing a movie that I like as much as Goldfinger. I guess I'm fascinated that I like it so much despite the fact that you could drive the Battlestar Galactica through some of its gaps in logic. Here's a message from Douglas McEwan…

All the stuff about the problems of killing Shirley Eaton by painting her gold are on the nose. The ones from the book you mentioned today bothered me when I first read the novel, back before the movie even came out. (My dad, who was given to monitoring my reading, though unlike Mother, he knew better than to try to censor or restrict my reading, also read it, and got caught up in explaining to me how the logistics of moving the gold out of Fort Knox were beyond impractical, even though Fleming devotes an entire chapter to explaining how to do it in great detail. That plot hole the movie fixed.)

But what got me in the movie was the Hood's Congress and the death of the gangster Solo. ("Hood's Congress" is the title of the first of three chapters covering Goldfinger's explanation of the heist to the hoods.) In the movie, he gives the hoods the most-elaborate show-and-tell explanation of his plan imaginable, with giant movie props and that flipping pool table/control panel, and the huge model that rises from the floor. He's spent thousands on this lecture's props, and then he just kills them afterwards. Why not kill them without the lecture? Also, in the book, he doesn't kill them; they all participate in the heist.

And then there's Solo, who gave his name to Napoleon Solo in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (Literally. Fleming consulted on the series's creation and suggested the name from his book.) He wants his million in gold now! Goldfinger gives it to him, Oddjob drives him and a million dollars in gold (Hope that car had super-duper suspension) off, pulls over, shoots Solo, then has the car smushed into a cube, an oddly non-bloody cube given that a human being has been crushed within. I'd expect it to be running blood. Oddjob drives the cube back in a pick-up truck that appeared by magic, and we hear Goldfinger say: "Excuse me, I must extract my gold from Mr. Solo," which, I would think, would be difficult and bothersome.

Why not just take Solo out of the room and shoot him? What possible point was served by crushing him in the car with the gold? All it did was force Goldfinger into a tiresome chore of extracting the gold from the crushed car. It doesn't even constitute getting Solo's body off Goldfinger's property, since Oddjob just drove him back and his remains will be out again as they extract the gold. All Oddjob has accomplished is to make the gold hard to get to and to destroy gratuitously a very nice car. (In the second unit shots of the car driving about, Oddjob was doubled by Michael Wilson, who now produces the Bond movies.)

In the novel, Solo participates in the robbery of Fort Knox. Another hood refuses and demands immediate payment. Goldfinger sends him out of the room and presses a button to signal Oddjob. A few minutes later Oddjob returns and this scene ensues:

[Goldfinger said:] "I have received bad news. Our friend Mr. Helmut Springer has met with an accident. He fell down the stairs. Death was instantaneous."

"Ho, ho!" Mr. Ring's laugh was not a laugh. It was a hole in the face. "And what does that Slappy Hapgood, his torpedo, have to say about it?"

Goldfinger said gravely, "Alas, Mr. Hapgood also fell down the stairs and has succumbed to his injuries."

Mr. Solo looked at Goldfinger with new respect. He said softly, "Mister, you better get those stairs fixed before me and my friend Guilo come to use them."

Goldfinger said seriously, "The fault has been located. Repairs will be put in hand at once."

Vastly more logical, with no one forced to extract a million dollars worth of gold, in 1964 dollars, from a crushed Caddy. The hoods have a laugh about it. And we didn't get: "I have received bad news. Our friend Mr. Helmut Springer has met with an accident. He fell into a vat of gold paint and his pores suffocated."

All true. But let's get to the biggest leap in logic: How the hell does Goldfinger think he's going to get away with Operation Grand Slam? He and his private army fly in, kill hundreds of U.S. soldiers, detonate a nuclear device that will probably destroy most of a city and also render the gold in Fort Knox radio-active for 58 years, thereby enhancing many times over the value of the gold he owns.

Big question: Would it work like that? I mean, the U.S. still has the gold, almost all of which was probably going to sit in the vault for 58 years untouched, anyway. Would it really become valueless until the year 2022?

Bigger question: So, uh, what happens to Mr. Goldfinger when the combined military forces of the United States of America come after him, bomb the bejeesus out of every damn building he owns, kill him and seize his gold? I mean, what's he going to do? Have Oddjob throw his hat at the First Marine Division?

I mean, it's not like Goldfinger can cover up his involvement in all this just by killing James Bond. The authorities already know where Bond is and besides, Goldfinger has way too many employees to keep his role a secret. If China is involved, he might start World War III in the process but there's no way he's going to get away to enjoy his more-valuable-than-ever gold.

I know, I know. It's not supposed to make sense. I think I'm just impressed that the movie "works" in spite of the fact that so little of it makes sense. And I think I like the fact that when you come right down to it, this whole ghastly plan is not foiled by Bond's cunning or courage or expert spy work. It's foiled because Pussy Galore develops a crush on him…

The right-wing American Family Association is commencing its annual scorecard on the non-existent "War on Christmas," rating companies on whether they're properly Christmas-friendly. As Alyssa Rosenberg notes, the ratings aren't based on whether the company is consumer-friendly or whether they give to charity in the spirit of Jesus or even if they pay their employees enough so that Mom and Dad can buy presents and a tree for their kids. It's just about how often they mention Christmas in their advertising and publicity.

We were talking here the other day about the silliness of one particular scene in the movie, Goldfinger. Bond is cavorting (as they say) with the lady, Jill Masterson, played by Shirley Eaton. Bond gets hit on the head and knocked-out. When he comes to, Jill is not only dead but she has been painted, head-to-toe, with gold paint. He later explains she died of "skin suffocation." That is, I noted, maybe the hardest way possible to kill someone. Just how did that work? Did she hold still for being painted? Did he knock her out and then paint her? And how did Goldfinger's Korean assistant Oddjob manage to paint her without spilling gold paint all over? And why kill someone that way at all?

Ihsan Amanatullah went to The Source to get some answers which he sent me. He sent the following from Ian Fleming's original novel of the same name. Jill's death occurs off-screen and Bond learns of it from her sister, Tilly…

She whispered, almost to herself, "He killed my sister. You knew her — Jill Masterton."

Bond said fiercely, "What happened?"

"He has a woman once a month. Jill told me this when she first took the job. He hypnotizes them. Then he — he paints them gold."

"Christ! Why?"

"I don't know. Jill told me he's mad about gold. I suppose he sort of thinks he's — that he's possessing gold. You know — marrying it. He gets some Korean servant to paint them. The man has to leave their backbones unpainted. Jill couldn't explain that. I found out it's so they wouldn't die. If their bodies were completely covered with gold paint, the pores of the skin wouldn't be able to breathe. Then they'd die. Afterwards, they're washed down by the Korean with resin or something. Goldfinger gives them a thousand dollars and sends them away."

Bond saw the dreadful Oddjob with his pot of gold paint, Goldfinger's eyes gloating over the glistening statue, the fierce possession. "What happened to Jill?"

"She cabled me to come. She was in an emergency ward in a hospital in Miami. Goldfinger had thrown her out. She was dying. The doctors didn't know what was the matter. She told me what happened to her — what he had done to her. She died the same night." The girl's voice was dry, matter of fact. "When I got back to England I went to Train, the skin specialist. He told me this business about the pores of the skin. It had happened to some cabaret girl who had to pose as a silver statue. He showed me the details of the case and the autopsy. Then I knew what had happened to Jill. Goldfinger had had her painted her all over. He had murdered her. It must have been out of revenge for — for going with you." There was a pause. The girl said dully, "She told me about you. She — she liked you. She told me if I ever met you, I was to give you this ring."

Bond closed his eyes tight, fighting with a wave of mental nausea. More death! More blood on his hands.

Okay, so let me see if I have this right: Goldfinger gets women to his place, hypnotizes them and when they're in a trance, Oddjob paints them gold…and I guess it's implied Mr. Goldfinger rapes them at some point. They wake up and Oddjob takes the paint off them and they get a thousand bucks and he kicks them out. They don't die because Oddjob doesn't paint their spines. But as punishment for being with Bond, Jill Masterson got her spine painted and then…

Well, I'm not sure. She wound up in an emergency ward. Was she still painted gold? I guess not because the doctors didn't know what the matter was. So the idea here is that Oddjob had taken the paint off but she was still dying from having had it on, is that it? But she was also coherent enough to send a cable to her sister to travel to see her…and she was alive when the sister got there, which was the same night because she died the same night she was painted. And she told the sister what Goldfinger had done to her but I guess she didn't tell the doctors who were trying to save her life. And then she died and…oh, this whole idea of killing women by painting them gold is getting to sound really impractical. It might be easier to just deep-fry a turkey…

Several folks wrote to tell me that if one is absolutely determined to deep-fry a turkey, one should use the Alton Brown technique. Here's Alton Brown to describe the Alton Brown technique…

It looks…like it's more trouble than it's worth so I probably will never attempt this. But I'm curious about a few things, starting with why the companies that make those pots in which one fries a turkey don't make them 6-12" taller than they do. In every video I see, even the successful turkey friers come within an inch or three of having the oil boil over the rim. If you're going to deep-fry a turkey, why not make the pot deeper?

But here's my big question: If deep-fried turkey tastes so incredibly delicious, why aren't there businesses all over that do this for you? You'd think there'd be a huge take-out business but here in Los Angeles, the nearest place I can locate that does this is…well, there's a barbecue place about 10 miles from me but (a) they don't have them all the time and (b) they do a spicy Cajun seasoning and I don't like spicy or Cajun. The nearest place I can locate that does it and doesn't go all Cajun when they do it is 25 miles away and in a pretty bad neighborhood.

You can get a fried turkey via mail-order but I've never had much luck with mail-order prepared food, and the reheating instructions sound about the same hassle as cooking a turkey in the oven to begin with. (And you have to make sure you're home when FedEx delivers it and the turkey costs a lot and delivery costs more and you have to make room in your freezer for an entire turkey and…)

I'm a huge fan of turkey. I eat more of it than I eat of chicken and beef combined…but I've never had fried turkey. I don't think I've ever been in a restaurant that offered it — and you'd figure a lot would if it was truly the delicacy some make it out to be. When I look how much trouble, expense and danger I'd have to incur to fry up one in my yard…and I look at how almost no one's cashing in on frying turkeys and then serving or selling them…I get to thinking: Roast turkey cooked in an oven is great. Fried turkey can't possibly be so much better that it's worth the trouble. No food is.

In 1977, two friends of mine — Don Rico and Sergio Aragonés — and I founded a group called the Comic Art Professional Society. CAPS, I'm happy to say, is still around. Don, I'm sad to say, is not. I should write a piece about Don here someday. He was an important writer, artist and editor in the history of comics, and a terrific guy, to boot.

Because of CAPS, a lot of folks who work in comics or cartoons in the Southern California area met a lot of terrific guys and gals: Others who did what they did. For instance, Sergio and I both met Stan Sakai. In 1982 when we were launching Groo the Wanderer, we needed someone to letter the comic and Sergio thought of Stan, who turned out to be the perfect choice. Stan was skilled at calligraphy…and equally important was that he was utterly professional and reliable. Until you have had the responsibility of getting comic books to press on-time, you don't know how important that is.

A few years later, Stan proved to all he could do a lot more than letter comics. He could write and draw them, as well. The most impressive example would be his Usagi Yojimbo, which he began in '84 and which is still going strong, zillions of pages later. It is a very popular comic book and I never have any qualms about recommending it to people since as far as I can tell, everyone who has ever read it has loved it a lot. Everyone seems to like Stan a lot, too…and also his wonderful wife, Sharon.

Sad to say, Sharon has not been well lately. Recently, Stan summarized what's been going on…

In 2004, Sharon woke up one morning and said, "I can't hear anything out of my left ear." It was traced back to a meningioma brain tumor. It is benign, but large and inoperable. There was no hope of it getting smaller. The most we could hope for was that it would not grow larger. She underwent radiation therapy, and that seemed to control it. She went in for regular MRIs, and no growth was detected.

However, it started growing in 2010, and very aggressively. She has facial paralysis on the left side (everything happens on the left side). The paralysis includes her throat, vocal chords, and it has even deteriorated her neck bones. She had lost almost 40% of her body weight in a year. She is undergoing chemotherapy. Doctors don't see any end in sight for this. There are complications because of the tumor, medications, or just coincidence — diabetes, high blood pressure, rapid heart rate, compromised immune system. She has a tracheotomy tube for breathing and a G-tube connected to her stomach for a liquid diet. She can take nothing through her mouth. She is bed-bound, but we try to give her daily physical therapy — walking a couple hundred feet with a walker and/or sitting in a wheelchair.

She had been in the hospital and nurse care from April to September, but we are glad she is home. She requires 24 hour care, so daughter Hannah and her family moved in with us. This includes 18 month old grandson Leo, and another grandchild due in February/early March.

A lot of you do know Sharon, as she had been a fixture at my booth at San Diego and many other conventions. Thank you all for your help, good thoughts, and prayers.

Okay, this is me again. That all sounds horrible and it's no exaggeration. If anything, what's happened to Sharon is worse than Stan makes it sound, and he leaves out how much of his life has been taken up by taking care of his beloved. I've seen and heard enough of it to want to promote the hell out what CAPS is doing now, which is to raise some funds for them.

They have health insurance but as we all know, there's Health Insurance and there's health insurance, and neither kind covers everything. So this is the first of many postings here that will urge you to participate. Right now, CAPS is seeking donations of artwork for a big auction. If you have something you'd like to toss in, download this form that will tell you where to send items. Shortly, I'll be posting details of the auction, what you can buy, when you can bid, etc. This is a very worthy cause — and who knows? You might get some great piece of art for your collection out of it.

In any case, you'll never get a chance to help better people. More details to follow.

Watch this. Just watch this…

Greg Kelly writes, regarding this discussion of Sarah Silverman…

Hi, I'm glad you addressed that critique and the defense of Silverman.

For what it is worth, she's funny. I don't always laugh at some of the material I've seen her do because it sometimes seems like her delivery involves gently, underhanded, lobbying softballs to a crowd. Do you know what I mean? It is like every time I've seen her, she is saying lines to get a rise out of people and expecting that each joke, each line is worth noting. That delivery and timing messes it up. It would be different if I heard her do anecdotes which rely on funny parts that build up to a big payoff. But, so far, I haven't.

That said, the shock humor doesn't faze me too deeply.

Which brings me to someone whom I should revere because he taught me and my generation so much: Bill Cosby.

I have a problem with the Puritanical, hifalutin', Holy-than-thou-ever-were attitude of Cosby. The Ebonics thing rankles me. In part because I've studied black English/Southern Dialect (to know what we were/are doing) and because I rely on a George Herriman influence for some gags I do/make (it is so much wordplay).

I get what he means and that he means well. My sister meant well, too, when she lectured me on how to present myself to white people so that I don't let them believe I'm stupid. But, another thing I was taught is that if you gonna lecture someone you don't do it in front of people who should not hear you (those would be white people). Cosby did that. Maybe he still does.

He was on The Daily Show earlier in the week, as you may know. He — in defense of himself, which is always the case because he's such a beacon — gibed Jon Stewart for using foul language. He acknowledged when he saw Stewart and Stewart used "those words" which he and Stewart humorously coded as being "Jewish" words, that the audience laughed. And Cosby intimated that the audience seemed to be laughing at the bad words rather than laughing at something funny Stewart said. Obviously, Jon was right there and he didn't take offense and didn't defend himself per se so it seemed like there was no harm or foul.

But, Cosby is cantankerous these days. I've heard Bob Newhart say he still likes to listen to Richard Pryor records. Would Cosby burn those LPs these days? He probably wouldn't. He'd probably turn it into a Good Richard, Poor, Poor Richard example of how one thing can lead to a downfall.

(And, yes, I know the change in Cosby seemed to happen after one of his sons got killed. I get loss and how it changes people and parents. So, I'm not trying to be rude towards him as much as wishing he be more like the Old Cosby, cooler; instead, he's just Old.)

Anyway, it seems fair to say there are still those — in entertainment — who'd have a problem with comedians working blue.

My problem with comedians lecturing others about not working blue is that every older comedian I've ever heard in person make one of those speeches would then, as soon as the camera was turned off or the reporters had taken the advice down and left, tell a really, really filthy joke. Red Skelton told me how shocking it was that "those new comedians" use naughty language and then, without a note of irony, Red told me a joke about a little boy who passed a whorehouse every day on his way to school. I saw Milton Berle tell the Entertainment Tonight cameras about how if you have talent, you don't need to work blue. And then as soon as the camera was turned off, Uncle Miltie told everyone a joke about a nun who got the clap. And so on.

I only met Mr. Cosby once and it wasn't for long enough to add to this discussion. My sense in watching him over the years is that he really doesn't pay much attention to other comedians and that like a lot of folks in show biz, he respects success and doesn't respect or disrespect the work. What others do just doesn't matter to him too much but at times, he feels an obligation to say something as an Elder Statesman of Comedy and particularly as the Elder Statesman of Black Comedy. But of course, what is relevant to someone in Cosby's position isn't all that relevant to a comedian of any color who is under 65 and has yet to attain Legend status.

I didn't sense that he was scolding Jon Stewart that much as acknowledging the breach in their relative ages and styles. I may even have glimpsed a wisp of envy in there. I suspect Stewart is currently the most respected comedian among those who work in the humor business. I know comics who don't like his politics but even they acknowledge how good he is at what he does.

Cosby's new special is on my TiVo, awaiting the time. I'll write about it after I get to see it. I did like Sarah Silverman's special and one of these days, I may find the time to explain what it is I like about her so much.

• Rush Limbaugh thinks the Pope is wrong. This must be maddening for Catholic dittoheads. Which infallible person do they believe?

A group of current top actors sit around and discuss their work for 54 minutes…

A lot of Republicans seem to have convinced themselves that Obamacare is doomed and they're going to replace it with a Republican plan. I think this is the same way that not long ago, the same folks convinced themselves that Obama was doomed and they were going to replace him with Mitt Romney.

I think they've also fooled themselves into believing there is a Republican plan. There are a lot of Republican ideas about how to fix health insurance in this country. Some are barely band-aids. Some are actually in the Affordable Care Act. But none of them really address the problems of poor folks and those with pre-existing conditions, and none of the ideas have been whipped into any sort of shape to be implemented except in a drawn-out, piecemeal process. They're more like theories than proposals. Politifact has a rundown of them.

I still say you can't beat something with nothing, and the G.O.P. is still trying to "repeal and replace" without the "replace" part. I also think that Americans understand if you have a new product and you try to market it through a website and the website doesn't work so well…that doesn't mean the product itself is flawed.

In the Al Plastino obit, I made a point of phrasing this line precisely: "Plastino was, I believe, the only person alive who drew Superman comics professionally before about 1967." There are a few people around who drew the character here and there for DC Comics. Murphy Anderson, who's happily still with us, drew Superman on covers for the Justice League of America comic book and for some merchandise. Joe Giella co-inked an issue of Justice League in which Superman appeared. Irwin Hasen drew a chapter featuring Superman in an issue of All-Star Comics. I suspect there are one or two others but they're in that category: They aren't really Superman stories…or even covers for the comics that starred Superman.

As far as I can tell, there's no one alive now who drew a story for a Superman comic book in the forties, fifties or even the sixties. Neal Adams, who's still around, drew some Superman covers beginning in 1967. Thanks to Bill Ray and others who sent in messages about this.