Monday, June 16, 2003

Comic Artist Website of the Day

I've said this about others but it's as true of Charles Vess as it is of anyone: He showed up in comics one day and did a few of them in the classic tradition. Then he blossomed into a unique and glorious illustrator. There are several nice examples over on his website.

• Posted at 11:32 PM · LINK

Comic Website of the Day

Hey, you hockey puck! Why don't you sit in a hot tub and watch a duck sink? Go suck sap out of a rubber tree while the wife just lies in bed and goes, "Help me with the jewelry." No, but I kid websurfers...especially those that go over to the Don Rickles website.

• Posted at 11:30 PM · LINK

Live From New York...

My pal Dave Mackey reminds us that yesterday marked the 59th anniversary of announcer Don Pardo going to work for what was then (1944) the NBC Radio Network. Fifty-nine years in any job is impressive. To last that long in the highly-competitive (and high-pressure) world of radio/TV announcing is astounding. How many commercials must that add up to? How many game show prize shpiels and pauses for station identification? It's a skill that is generally unappreciated. To do it well, you have to make it sound easy...and year after year, Pardo has made it sound easy, squeezing awkward copy into tight time slots and sounding enthusiastic about intros and sponsor plugs that must have bored the hell out of him.

Being a network announcer has often been a very political position. Networks are often unbelievably fussy about their images, and it has generally been believed that an off-camera announcer somehow becomes "the voice of the network," especially when delivering promos or station identifications. They've gotten a little less anal about this in recent years but still sometimes insist that a given voice job be filled by someone from their "approved" list. Names come and go from those lists but Pardo has managed to remain on them longer than most people currently active in the voiceover field have been alive. For years, he was known primarily as a game show announcer, most notably on the Bill Cullen The Price is Right and the Art Fleming Jeopardy! Later, Saturday Night Live made him even more famous. He was the announcer on the very first broadcast (where he accidentally billboarded "The Not For Ready Prime Time Players" — a gaffe fixed for some reruns and not others). He quickly became the most "permanent" member of the cast — though there was a brief period where, trying to "freshen" the show, they replaced him with Mel Brand. Somehow, it wasn't Saturday Night Live without Pardo, and they brought him back. Those who decided to get rid of him should have known better. (This was during a period when Michael O'Donoghue had returned to the show and was trying to force a lot of odd ideas into the mix. Reportedly, he not only wanted to dump Pardo but to fire him on the air during a broadcast. Yeah, that would have been real funny...)

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not sure if he's still announcing the show. I gave up watching it some time ago...and the last time I tuned in, I believe the opening announce was cast member Darrell Hammond imitating the sound of Pardo. If he's semi-retired and doesn't want to stay up that late, I could certainly understand. The man is 85, after all. I hope he's around for a while longer but even after he's gone, his voice will be heard, and not just in reruns. A couple of generations of radio personalities, disc jockeys, announcers and voice actors have learned how to do it from Don Pardo. If he got royalties for imitations, he could buy the network.

• Posted at 8:51 PM · LINK

G.O.P. Rifts

A lot of Republicans fear that their greatest electoral danger is within; that the extreme right-wing, having tasted more power with this president than they've known before, will try to drag the rest of the party into positions that will lose moderates and swing voters. Here's Senator Alan Simpson doing what little he can to head that off.

• Posted at 9:51 AM · LINK