Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Comic Website of the Day

If you ever get the chance to see David Brenner perform live, go. If you can't, you'll have to settle for a visit to his website.

• Posted at 10:58 PM · LINK

Fast Food Memories

Odd how some of us get nostalgic for fast food restaurants. I remember Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich restaurants in L.A. in 1968. When I started working with Jack Kirby in 1970, there was one not far from his home in Thousand Oaks. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, everyone in the Kirby house would caravan (usually took two cars) down there for lunch, where Jack would drive his wife Roz crazy by dipping his french fries in barbecue sauce. "You're supposed to put ketchup on french fries," she'd tell him — as if the police were likely to come by and bust him for Improper Use of a Condiment.

At the same time, there was a competing attempt to launch a chain of Lone Ranger Restaurants. Locally, there was one in Santa Monica and another at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood — where now there's a huge mall called The Westside Pavillion. The Lone Ranger Restaurant was right where the Barnes & Noble is now situated. I recall the burgers at the Lone Ranger being amazingly close to inedible, which may be why the whole chain went under in less than two years, but the places did have one thing going for them. The Lone Ranger himself appeared often at the ones in Southern California...and I don't mean some actor in a Lone Ranger suit. I mean Clayton Moore himself. You could go, eat a terrible hamburger and meet Clayton Moore and get an autographed photo. He also had a little stash of silver bullets which he passed out to anyone who seemed to know a little Lone Ranger history. It almost made up for the food.

• Posted at 7:18 PM · LINK

Earl Has a (Roast) Beef

Turning to more important matters, my buddy Earl Kress writes...

Hey, now just a minute! At least on the east coast, Roy Rogers' Roast Beef Sandwich was actually good! As opposed to Arby's which served something gray with little holes in it that they called roast beef. I haven't eaten in an Arby's since 1978.

To which I tell my buddy Earl Kress: Yes, once upon a time, Roy Rogers' Roast Beef Sandwich outlets did serve a great sandwich. Back in the early seventies when they were all over Los Angeles, they were just about the best of the fast food places. But things change. Their L.A. outlets all closed. I think they all turned into Bob's Big Boy Jr stands, and then some of them were bought by the Golden Bird Fried Chicken company. I missed them.

Around 1983, I was flown to an outta-town comic convention and as I was driven from the airport to the hotel, we passed a Roy Rogers. "You have them here?" I asked my driver with great excitement. He told me the whole town was lousy with them — and I guess the word "lousy" should have been a dead giveaway. The next day, I arranged for a group of us to lunch at one and, boy, what a disappointment. It was nothing like the old Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich places of Southern California. It was even a cut below Arby's, where I've always thought they had one large lump of synthetic meat and no matter what you order — beef, ham, turkey, a milk shake, an Arby's t-shirt — they carve it from that lump. A few years later, for I am a fool who doesn't give up easily — I tried a Roy Rogers place in New York and had much the same reaction. Apparently, the chain has changed hands a few times over the years and, legalisms aside, the current Roy Rogers empire has nothing to do with the ones in which I dined in my late teens/early twenties. This is why we prize places like In-n-Out Burger, which still have the same owners and management they've always had. Some things just shouldn't change.

• Posted at 12:46 PM · LINK

Comic Artist Website of the Day

Here's another guy who started out doing comics that looked a lot like his predecessors — in his case, Neal Adams — but quickly became a unique and welcome presence in comic art. Bill Sienkiewicz soon became one of my favorites and if you visit his website, you'll see why.

• Posted at 10:42 AM · LINK

TiVo is Watching...From Afar

The other day, I linked to an article not unlike this one that said that the TiVo people are selling, or are about to start selling, data about the viewing patterns of TiVo users. My initial reaction was negative but on reflection, I don't think it's that big a deal. The information at issue is only identified by zip code, meaning that someone will find out that some guy in the 90036 area watched Leno and Conan O'Brien tonight, then skipped through Letterman and watched the late night block on the Game Show Network. That's not much of an invasion of privacy, so I withdraw any concerns I may have implied.

If even that much prying into what you watch bothers you, you can opt out by calling TiVo Central at (877) 367-8486. But I can't imagine that anyone would care that much.

• Posted at 2:03 AM · LINK