Tuesday, April 29, 2003

The Times Finally Addresses Important Issues

Where's the best pastrami sandwich in New York? Find out here. And don't miss the audio slide show.

• Posted at 9:58 PM · LINK

Venting on Leno

On tonight's show, Jay Leno had one of those "Act Two correspondents" segments which I think are dragging his program down. They involve sending someone (a comedian, one of their "Jaywalking" dummies, or a gay intern) and a camera crew to cover some interesting event, often by asking people awkward, silly questions. Some of the comedians who do these are good ones, and some of the remotes are funny, but they have nothing to do with Leno or The Tonight Show. It's like the program you're watching stops and you're suddenly subjected to five minutes of something else because Jay — who'd be better than any of those correspondents — was too busy doing stand-up in Vegas to tape a spot for his own show.

For tonight's, they dispatched comedian Harland Williams to cover a wedding that took place at last week's Ventriloquist Convention in Las Vegas. The bride was Eyvonne Dee Carter and the groom was my pal Valentine Vox, a fine performer and historian of the art. Both walked down the aisle with their puppets and I assume (I wasn't there) didn't move their lips when they said, "I do." If you looked quickly at the segment on The Tonight Show, you caught a fast glimpse of Maid-of-Honor Mallory Lewis, who was carrying Lamb Chop, the wonderful character she inherited from her mother, Shari Lewis. The Best Man was another pal of mine, Ronn Lucas, but I had to still-frame my TiVo to see him standing there with his puppet, Scorch. There was also a brief interview with Nancy Wible, a name well-known to those of us who know everyone who ever did cartoon voices.

As a fan of ventriloquists, I enjoyed the segment but...come on, Jay. People tune in to see you, and you get the biggest check. Let guys like Harland Williams do their stand-up on the show, and do the remote segments yourself. And Valentine...congrats on your marriage!

• Posted at 9:38 PM · LINK

Attention, Fellow Comedy Writers!

We have our work cut out for us. The Missouri Senate is mulling a proposal to tax — and I quote from this article: "bestiality, masturbation and sadistic or masochistic abuse." Another proposal would add lap dances to the "adult services" that would be taxed.

I don't believe they really mean this. I think they were watching late night TV and said, "Gee, the monologues are getting kinda thin. Let's come up with something Jay and Dave can milk for a few weeks."

A tariff on sadistic or masochistic abuse? Geez. I knew taxes were supposed to hurt but I didn't know you were supposed to enjoy it...

• Posted at 8:05 PM · LINK

Deep Thoughts

If, like me, you have a childish interest in the true identity of the infamous Woodward-Bernstein garage-haunting source, "Deep Throat," here's a link for you. Timothy Noah says the case is very strong for Fred Fielding. And the way he puts it, it sure is.

More on this when I have more time.

• Posted at 4:14 PM · LINK

More Drudge

Several folks have written me to note that Drudge has also been attacking Hillary Clinton's autobiography, spreading the story that it was nowhere near completed and would never come out in June, as planned. It is, of course, already being printed for a June 9 release.

And someone else suggested we all visit The Drudge Report Headline Generator. Fun stuff.

Sidney Blumenthal's as-yet-unreleased book is presently at #4 on the Amazon Hit Parade.

• Posted at 11:20 AM · LINK

Tabloid Journalism

The late Los Angeles Herald Express was quite a newspaper. The Hearst folks put out the Los Angeles Examiner (a slightly classier publication) in the morning and the Herald Express in the afternoon. In the meantime, the Times-Mirror people had the Los Angeles Times in the AM and the Los Angeles Mirror in the PM. The Mirror was a little trashier than the Times but nowhere near as bad as the Herald Express. On Sundays, both companies published only their morning papers, but folded in certain features (including comic strips) from their afternoon papers.

Then in 1961, a deal was made. The Chandlers, who owned the Times-Mirror operation, agreed to drop their afternoon edition if the Hearst people would stop competing in the morning. One day, the Examiner and the Mirror went away. (The Hearsts retitled their surviving paper as the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The Chandlers dropped the Mirror name altogether.)

For us comic strip fans, it was disorienting. The Times took a few strips from the Mirror (Pogo was one) but cast the others adrift. The Herald-Examiner briefly ran two full pages of comics but eventually whittled it down to one. (A few of the strips that failed to make the cut, like the daily of Popeye, continued to run on Sundays.) I suspect some adults were similarly disappointed since the afternoon Hearst paper cleaned up its act and ran less of what we now call "tabloid" material: Fewer crime stories, fewer tearful victims of catastrophes, and such.

I was reminded of the old Herald Express when Buzz Dixon (thanks, Buzz) called my attention to this site which features — and I quote: "Tabloid Pictures from the Los Angeles Herald Express." It's a gallery of photographs that ran in that paper. A few are a bit graphic, though not by today's standard. And what's especially interesting is that this is part of an exhibition for the Los Angeles Public Library. That's almost respectable.

• Posted at 11:04 AM · LINK

The Best?

A Chicago-based store called Atlas Comics has a couple of interesting lists over on their website. One gives their picks of The 100 Greatest Comic Artists. Another itemizes their choices for The 20 Greatest Inkers for American Comic Books. Yet another section features what they think are The 25 All-Time Greatest Covers of American Comic Books, as well as The 12 Dumbest.

Needless to say, I don't agree in full with any of these lists, and you won't either. Lists of this sort are just the opinion of one guy or one small group of guys, and any list you decide to compile will probably be just as valid. No point in getting into specifics but they have artists on their "100 Best" list who wouldn't make my "400 Best" list and vice-versa.

Well, I'll mention one slight specific: They have Carl Barks at #4. Now, even given their stated criteria, I'm not sure I understand a competition that pits Mr. Barks's work against that of Will Eisner and Joe Kubert and "Ghastly" Graham Ingels. But leaving that aside, Barks is the only "funny animal" guy on the whole list. Sheldon Mayer is on it and way, way down (I'd put him much higher) and so is Sergio Aragonés (likewise) but neither is on it for work on that kind of comic. They have John Stanley, who worked on Little Lulu, at #42 and I'm not sure they don't have him confused with Irving Tripp, who did the finished art on most of those comics. But that's it: No Walt Kelly, no Paul Murry, no Harvey Eisenberg, no Warren Kremer, no Frank McSavage, no Owen Fitzgerald, no Jim "Fox & Crow" Davis, no Al Hubbard, no Pete Alvarado, et cetera, et cetera. They don't even include any teen-comic artists like Dan DeCarlo. Are these guys not on the list because someone thought they weren't as good as Dan Adkins? Or is it maybe that the list's compiler(s) wasn't/weren't that familiar with some of those funny artists?

Which would be okay. No one's expected to know everyone and everything. There are probably some great artists I don't know or wouldn't think of if pressed to make up a list. I just mention this because these lists by the Atlas Comics people, while fun, seem to have gotten a number of Internet browsing-folks upset. People look at these lists, forget how subjective they are, and begin debating as if factual errors have been made. The context of a "10 Best" or "100 Best" list seems to bring that out in people. They forget it's just opinions, and that they should enjoy the list on that basis, which is what I did. I sure didn't expect it to match my tastes.

Except, you know, Nick Cardy really ought to be higher.

• Posted at 10:33 AM · LINK

A Wise Person

I'm talking about Augie DeBlieck Jr., who has a good review posted of my book, Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life. And who am I to argue with a wise person?

• Posted at 8:54 AM · LINK