Thursday, March 31, 2005

Today's Political Rant

I awoke this morning to the news that — and I quote from the AP story — "...America's spy agencies were 'dead wrong' in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows 'disturbingly little' about the threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries." Also, Terri Schiavo died. Guess which one the news channels are giving almost non-stop coverage. (Hint: It's the one that will be the subject of a live 3-hour CNN special tonight hosted by Larry King.)

I'm sorry about Ms. Schiavo, just as I'm sorry when anyone dies. I felt there was something wrong with allowing her to go the way she did, though I was at a loss to explain why she mattered any more than anyone else, nor could I disagree that the real tragedy in that life occurred fifteen years ago. I just heard someone on one of the news channels say that it "demeans the concept of life" to not have done everything humanly possible to save Terri's life. I wish the interviewer had asked — not to be argumentative but because I would have liked to hear the explanation — why folks who feel that way seem so unconcerned about all the other preventable deaths that occur every day in this country. I'd sure be on the side of the so-called "Culture of Life" if I saw more being done under its auspices to help more people. I also think it demeans the concept of life to define it down to merely having a pulse.

In the meantime, we're learning more and more that the entities that led us into war and which continue to lead the War on Terror were and continue to be largely inept and uninformed. I think, if we're going to care about the sanctity of human life, that ought to be the bigger story. I'll bet most people think that. But Larry's still doing the 3-hour special on the Schiavo matter.

• Posted at 10:01 AM · LINK

Piece Offering

Guess I'm on a kick of recalling near-defunct restaurant chains. I was thinking today about Piece O' Pizza, a string of eateries that once decorated the Southern California landscape...an amazing reach considering the awfulness of their signature product. Do you like pizza where the crust tastes like matzo, the toppings have the thickness of carbon paper and you can't decide whether to eat the pizza or the box it came in? If you do, you'd have loved Piece O' Pizza pizza. Just awful. What kept them in business, it seemed to me, was their great, racy slogan ("Had a piece lately?") and the fact that there then weren't a lot of other places where one could grab a fast pizza to take home.

Also, they served a decent meatball sandwich and a more-than-decent (and very cheap) spaghetti plate. Many of the Piece O' Pizza stands were in "Skid Row" style areas, and I bet that spaghetti plate kept a lot of homeless people alive.

Like I said, they were all over L.A. There was one on Pico just east of Sepulveda. The building's still there but now it's a Numero Uno. All the other ones I know of were torn down completely. There was one at Beverly and Fairfax, another on La Brea just south of Hollywood, another on La Cienega near Airdrome...and (I'm guessing) at least 200 more. As far as I know, there's only one remaining. It's down on Venice Boulevard about a half-mile west of Sepulveda. A year or two ago, I was in the neighborhood and in need of rapid lunch, so I decided to go in and have the spaghetti plate, just to see if it was still the same. Since there is no parent company now to supply the preparations, I was expecting totally different cuisine...but the meat sauce was more or less what I recalled, or at least it seemed to have evolved from the same recipe.

I probably won't go back since I now have better places to eat. I suspect that's what killed off the Piece O' Pizza chain in or around the late eighties. As Numero Uno and Pizza Hut and even Domino's spread, everyone had a better place to get a quick pizza or to have one brought to their door. Speculating further, I'd guess that too many of their stands were located in depressed areas, which made it difficult for them to upgrade their product. It would have been awkward to simultaneously improve their menu (making most items more expensive), advertise that they'd done this...but still service the crowd that just wanted the cheapest-possible plate of pasta.

I don't exactly miss the places since they weren't that good. On the other hand, I've been to fancy Italian restaurants where I enjoyed a $20 entree a lot less than I liked the Piece O' Pizza spaghetti plate. Even in the early eighties, it didn't cost much over two dollars...and that included garlic bread.

• Posted at 1:09 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Dinosaurs of Dining

Well, as you may remember, I mentioned the other day here that the chain of Love's Barbecue Restaurants seemed to be down to one in Chula Vista and one in Lakewood (both in California) and the one in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am now informed that the Lakewood one recently closed and I'm guessing that since half of Indonesia ain't there no more, that Love's is probably gone, as well. The Chula Vista Love's is still open — or, at least it was as of an hour ago when I phoned to check. When I'm down in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International, I may swing by for a meal. It's a little less than nine miles from the convention center, and this could be my last chance to taste Love's beans. That is, if the place is still there come July.

Meanwhile, another of my favorite restaurant chains is now completely extinct. The last outpost of Woody's Smorgasburger, which was down on Sepulveda just South of LAX, is currently being turned into an International House of Pancakes. In the sixties, there were a number of Woody's around Southern California, including a wonderful one in Westwood Village, a block or three from UCLA. I could often be found there between (and once in a while, even during) classes. Woody's was the first chain I know of where you could get a hamburger and then carry it over to a little self-service counter stocked with ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, salsa, barbecue sauce, etc., and do what you wanted to it. Today, there are chains aplenty like Fuddrucker's that offer this but at the time, it was something rather special.

Woody's burgers were pretty darn good, too...and they also had a "make your own sundae" bar: You could buy an empty dish at the counter, fill it full of soft-serve vanillla ice cream, then slather it in a diverse selection of syrups and sprinkles and crushed nuts and such. My old comic club buddies and I would practically have a contest to see how much sundae we could get in one dish, building structurally-unsafe vertical arrays, then having to walk them back to the table and eat them before they collapsed. One of the guys once asked if he was allowed to put the toppings from the sundae bar on his burger and when they told him yes, he began speculating on what hot fudge or whipped cream would do to a hamburger, and whether the maraschino cherries would blend with the mustard or if he should leave the mustard off. Each visit to Woody's, he'd say, "Next time, I'm going to try it," but he never worked up the courage. Or wanted to spoil a good smorgasburger.

• Posted at 11:18 AM · LINK

School Days

It no longer exists but Once Upon a Time, there was an institution of learning known as the Hollywood Professional School. It graduated hundreds of students who went on to become well-known performers including — this is a random, very-partial list — Barbara Parkins, Lance Kerwin, Melanie Griffith, Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal, Peggy Lipton, Connie Stevens, former SAG president Barry Gordon, Sue Lyon, Patty McCormack, Peggy Fleming, Annette O'Toole, Jill St. John, Donald O'Connor, Yvette Mimieux, Tuesday Weld and many, many more.

On June 25, an "all-years reunion" is being held at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City. No contact lists exist for the school's many former students so the organizers are having a bit of trouble locating and notifying them all. Click here for more info, especially if you went there.

• Posted at 10:37 AM · LINK

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Set the TiVo!

Commencing April 1, Turner Classic Movies is offering a month of terrific comedy classics, many of them rarely seen. Here's the entire schedule and as you can see, Friday is Laurel and Hardy Day and next Monday belongs to Charley Chase and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. That's just for starters. It's really an outstanding month for movies on TCM.

• Posted at 9:59 PM · LINK

Coming Soon to DVD: Everything!

Ever since I posted about the upcoming DVD releases of The Yogi Bear Show and The Huckleberry Hound Show, I've received a slew of e-mails from folks asking me if this or that classic series will be coming out on DVD. The answer to that question is that darn near everything will be coming out on DVD until such time as it starts to look unprofitable.

At most companies, there is a "wishful thinking" kind of master plan to keep putting stuff out until the vaults are empty. I've seen some pretty long lists of planned releases...but it would be wrong to say that any particular show or film is definitely coming out on DVD in the near future until it's formally announced. Up to that point, and occasionally even after, it's always subject to changes and postponements, usually based on the way the market seems to be skewing at any given moment. The sales on the Huck and Yogi DVD sets will in some way determine how swiftly we see the rest of the other early Hanna-Barbera shows released...but we will probably see them. In most cases, these decisions are not a matter of "if" but "when." And of course, two other questions are what kind of special features will be included and what source materials can be located and used.

Lately, I've found myself talking with various folks about how some DVDs are full of extras and deleted scenes and wonderful commentary tracks and "making of" documentaries, whereas on others, you just get a trailer or two...if you're lucky. The forthcoming DVD of the 1959 Li'l Abner movie has, like most Paramount Home Video releases, almost nada in the way of bonus material. This may be laziness but it's more likely a matter of "price-point" strategy. By not investing in adding material to the DVD, the Paramount folks are able to price it very cheap. The Abner DVD is ten and half bucks at Amazon, and I'm guessing someone figured that would be more profitable than adding features and having to sell the item for a few dollars more.

But there may also be another strategy involved, which is the notion of getting us all to buy the same movies again. As anyone who has collected comic books in the last few decades knows, companies spend a lot of time trying to figure how to get us to buy variant and upgraded editions. First, they put it out on cheap paper and we buy it...and maybe they also put out an edition with an alternate cover — and we buy that, too. Then they collect a bunch of issues into a deluxe paperback and we buy that. Then they reissue the same stuff that was in the paperback, only in hardcover and we buy that and...well, you see how this goes. I must have twenty publications in my collection that reprint the first Green Lantern-Green Arrow story by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, ranging from the first (which cost 15 cents, I think) to the fancy deluxe hardcover for seventy-five smackers. DVD companies are already starting to employ the same tactics.

I've ordered the Li'l Abner DVD. And a couple years from now, when they put out a Silver Medal Edition or a Collectors' Series or whatever they'll call it with interviews and extra footage, I'll buy it again and so will a lot of you. Don't think we won't. That's above and beyond the fact that we may have to buy it again when the DVD format becomes outmoded and we all have something better in our video rooms. As I explained here, I think the entire science of improving home equipment is just a sneaky plan to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger. (Which reminds me: There hasn't been a new, upgraded release of that in over a month. What the hell is wrong with these people?)

If this is anyone's conscious plan — and I know it is in some cases — they're being both farsighted and nearsighted at the same time. It's shrewd to figure on doing these extras and special features a few years from now...but they're forgetting that potential interviewees get older and die. The folks putting together a lot of the material for animation DVDs lately have had to cope with the fact that in some cases, everyone who worked on the original cartoons is deceased or too ill. There's also the unpleasant realities that a lot of material that one might like to put on a DVD was thrown away or allowed to rot because someone, years ago, did not see an immediately financial benefit to its preservation. In some cases, a release date is selected and then the hunt for negatives and prints commences, often with insufficient time or funding. With the general exception of Disney, most studios have not been good about spending money to preserve and catalogue their library unless there was a specific and immediate market for the material.

The home video revolution has taught us that just about every movie or TV show ever made has some value. If it doesn't now, wait a year or three. In 1985 when the Writers Guild went on strike over revenues from videocassettes, several industry figures loudly predicted that there would never be a market for old episodes of shows like M*A*S*H and I Love Lucy because anyone who wanted them would just tape them off the air. That has not proven true. In fact, I've heard very few predictions that included the phrase, "no one will ever pay good money for that" which haven't been disproven, insofar as home video is concerned. You'd think companies would spend more money to preserve their old TV shows and films, and to prepare commentary tracks and interviews with the performers and creative personnel who are still available to be interviewed. Yeah, you'd really think that.

• Posted at 2:29 PM · LINK

Animated Discussion

Over at the fine Cartoon Brew site, Amid Amidi has put up what he calls his monthly "things-could-be-so-much-better" post. This one waxes longingly for the days when Leon Schlesinger ran the Warner Brothers cartoon operation. Here's an excerpt...

Schlesinger recognized talent. He had the good sense of hiring Avery away from Walter Lantz. And then he built a team, partnering Avery with like-minded individuals such as Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. But then he did one more thing that today's execs don't — he trusted his talent. He created the environment in which his talent could flourish; Avery, Clampett and Jones were willing to work all night because they knew their work wouldn't be trashed the following morning by Schlesinger. Sure, Leon may have spent his weekday afternoons playing eighteen holes or chasing the pretty secretaries around his yacht, but he'd already laid the foundation for the creation of great animated entertainment. The results of Schlesinger's business acumen? Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and some of the finest cartoons ever made.

I agree, natch, with the concept that good creative talents should be left alone to create. No argument there. But Amid has left out one other thing Schlesinger did. He allowed Jones and Clampett and Avery to make cartoons their way but he also paid them rotten money. And not only were the directors poorly compensated...so were the animators and inkers and background painters and storymen and everyone. Like many people who joined the work force during or around the Great Depression, they were all willing to work long hours for lousy pay and to not demand a piece of their creations, just to have any kind of job. They even, for a time, went along with the fiction that Leon Schlesinger — who couldn't draw or animate or write gags — was the head cartoonist there. Someone had to sign his name, a la Walt Disney, on the covers of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comic books.

So I'm not sure I'd salute Mr. Schlesinger under a heading of "Animation's Greatest Executives." The freedom he afforded his people was great...but couple it with the niggardly compensation, and you couldn't get anyone good to work for you for very long today. (And even back then, Schlesinger lost two of the three directors Amidi mentions. Avery left for MGM and slightly better pay before he did his best work. Clampett left at or around his creative peak and pretty much stopped making cartoons altogether. He instead went looking for a similar work situation, except with himself in the Schlesinger role.)

Ol' Leon enjoyed a position not available to most (any?) Animation Executives today: He owned his studio and had a sweetheart deal with his distributor so he couldn't be fired. As long as he kept his costs down (i.e., paid his people poorly enough), he couldn't not make a ton of money every month. Give any "boss" those terms today and, sure, he'd let the directors have all the freedom in the world, especially if they were handing him billion-dollar properties in exchange for minimal pay. Unfortunately, these days, creative types usually wind up working not for one Animation Exec but for many layers of them, all piled one atop the other in corporate America, all looking to climb over one another's body to higher positions. I concur that they micro-manage to an unhealthy degree but perhaps that's in large part because they get micro-managed...and tossed out if they don't get quick results.

This is not so much a disagreement with Amid as an add-on. Yeah, Schlesinger got wonderful results from his management style but I'm a little leery of holding him up as a great role model for today. For one thing, I'm afraid the people who now run the animation companies would learn the wrong thing from his example: Just the part about paying your staff poorly.

• Posted at 8:20 AM · LINK

Perfectly Frank

I almost didn't attend the premiere last night of Frank Miller's Sin City, the new movie based on the graphic novel of the same name by the same guy. I like Frank and I like his comic book. What I don't like is violence and bloodshed in my movies, and a faithful adaptation promised to have oodles of shootings, busted limbs and even decapitations. I'm also leery when someone says, as they did of this one, "We're going to put a comic book on the screen."

Never seems worth the effort to me, and usually results in a lot of bad acting and phony special effects. But Sergio and I went to the premiere, which meant standing in endless lines, fighting our way through crowds of photographers and autograph seekers, and eating popcorn that seemed to have been popped back when Frank was just starting on Daredevil. And despite all that, it was worth it. I enjoyed the film for any number of reasons, not the least of which was the uncanny cinematography and the perfect transfer of Miller artwork to the screen. It really is the comic brought to life...and done so convincingly that about five minutes in, you forget how much of it is CGI and matte paintings, and just accept that it's all happening for real before your eyes. The violence is a bit numbing in places, but most of it's done with style and even, in some cases, extraordinary humor. When you live in Sin City, you can get shot fifty times, stabbed through the thorax and have a few body parts chopped off. And then, if you're not careful, someone might try to kill you.

I won't go into the plot. If you've read the graphic novel, you know it. If you haven't, so much the better because the surprises are the best part. Besides, I'm sick of reviewers who tell you the storyline instead of letting you discover it for yourself. One of the reasons I had a good time was that I haven't read reviews, seen clips, heard the actors discuss their roles on talk shows, etc. It's film noir to the nth degree, it's an anthology, and the blood and testosterone flow freely. That's all you need to know.

So was there anything I disliked? Yeah, and it probably bothered me more than it should have. The second the end credits started, everyone was applauding and about 90% of the audience was in the aisles, heading off for the post-screening party. They were not watching those credits and they made it impossible for those of us who did to sit and watch them.

Now, I'll agree that in this era when the assistant secretary to the insurance underwriter gets her name up there, end credits in movies can be hard to sit through...but this audience didn't even linger through the actors' names. And besides, this was the premiere. Some of the credits they walked out on were for people who were in the room. That's doubly rude. I wanted to yell at all the people streaming into the lobby, "Hey! You got in free! You got free Sierra Mist and free antique popcorn, and most of us are invited to a party after. The least you can do is to watch all of the movie and show respect for the folks who made it!"

Since they left, most of them missed one nice touch. At the end, Frank acknowledged the contribution of many comic creators whose work inspired him — Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Frank Robbins, Wally Wood and several others. In fact, Jack got a better credit on Sin City than he did on the first X-Men movie. I suspect he would have been prouder of the former, as well.

• Posted at 1:02 AM · LINK

Monday, March 28, 2005

Writers' Wars

Those of you interested in the squabble between the Writers Guilds East and West, which I discussed here, might like to read an article by Walter Bernstein [Los Angeles Times, they make you register]. Bernstein is a fine screenwriter — he wrote The Front, chronicling a tumultuous era in his own life — and a member of the WGAe leadership.

I agree with him that the most recent WGA deal was insufficient, though I'm not sure he's realistic about what it would have taken to get a better one. The little suggestion he makes about linking arms with directors and actors in negotiation strikes me as pure, never-gonna-happen fantasy. In any case, the arbitration is going forward and Mr. Bernstein's op-ed piece reads like he does not expect the WGAe to emerge unscathed. Note his statement that "...one union is more interested in fighting and even taking over the other." I told you that's what this was all about.

• Posted at 8:19 AM · LINK

Simon Legree Lives!

Several times here, I've complained about the term "support the troops," as in the accusation, "You're not supporting the troops." I think that charge is usually a bunch of emotion-loaded hooey...but there are those out there who literally are not supporting our fighting men and women. They include those who have cut back on pay, pensions, health insurance, etc. — but also, it turns out, finance companies looking to foreclose on their homes. I'll quote the first part of this article in the New York Times...

Sgt. John J. Savage III, an Army reservist, was about to climb onto a troop transport plane for a flight to Iraq from Fayetteville, N.C., when his wife called with alarming news: "They're foreclosing on our house."

Sergeant Savage recalled, "There was not a thing I could do; I had to jump on the plane and boil for 22 hours." He had reason to be angry. A longstanding federal law strictly limits the ability of his mortgage company and other lenders to foreclose against active-duty service members.

But Sergeant Savage's experience was not unusual. Though statistics are scarce, court records and interviews with military and civilian lawyers suggest that Americans heading off to war are sometimes facing distracting and demoralizing demands from financial companies trying to collect on obligations that, by law, they cannot enforce.

I'm quoting this because it makes me angry but also because I couldn't help noting: How many comic book characters have there been now named Sgt. Savage or Captain Savage or darn near any first name or title plus the surname of Savage? No disrespect at all to the gentleman in the above piece, but I did have to check the article's byline and make sure it wasn't by Stan Lee.

• Posted at 1:19 AM · LINK

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Secret Love's

As I explained in an article that's no longer posted on this site, I am/was a big fan of a chain of almost-defunct barbecue restaurants called Love's. There used to be a lot of them, at least throughout California, and we're now down to just three, one of which is in Jakarta, Indonesia. I like their ribs but not enough to make that trip.

The other two are in Chula Vista and Lakewood, both in my home state, though they seem about as far as Jakarta. So I pretty much have to be content with Love's barbecue sauce, which I order from their website and employ in my expert gourmet cooking...which means I sometimes pour a little on a chicken or beef sandwich. I use the mild, and I should warn you that it's rather sweet. I usually prefer a smokier, less sweet sauce but for some reason, I really like theirs and why am I telling you this? This is not an ad for Love's restaurants, or what remains of them. This is a posting about a little mystery that just occurred in my life.

I recently installed the 2005 edition of Microsoft Streets & Trips, which is a map program, especially handy because it notes hotels, points of interests, restaurants and so forth. Sergio and I are going to an event tomorrow night in the Westwood part of Los Angeles and I thought I'd look up the area, even though I know it well, and select a place to maybe get a bite to eat beforehand. Here's a piece of a screen shot of the map that came up for me...

As you can see, one of the dining establishments they pinpoint on Westwood Boulevard is a "Love's Wood Pit Bar-B-Que," just north of Olympic. This is a shameful lie. I have studied Love's restaurants for years. I also know Westwood very well, having grown up in that area. (The little label that gives the name is right over Westwood Elementary School, which is where I learned to play Dodgeball.) There has never been a Love's on Westwood Boulevard or anywhere close by. There once was one on Pico about two miles away, but that went out of business long ago and is now a Ford dealership. There was also one on Olympic, a mile the other way, but the building has been empty since the Love's in there closed more than five years ago.

Microsoft Streets & Trips...you are so full of it.

The program gives an address and a phone number for the hypothetical Love's on Westwood. I called the number and got the voice mail system for a company that I'm pretty sure has nothing to do with Love's. I cross-checked the address via a search engine and it seems to be that of a large office building...and no, the corporate offices of Love's are not in that building. I thought of that. They're in Diamond Bar and before that, they were in Beverly Hills. Further experimentation shows that if you ask Microsoft Streets & Trips 2005 to map all the Love's restaurants in the nation, it shows you five — the two which still exist, two that closed long ago (at least five years) and the wholly imaginary one. I can understand a map program being way out of date about something...but how does it pinpoint a restaurant that never existed?

Maybe this isn't a big deal to you but for one brief second there, I thought Divine Intervention had occurred. I was looking for a place to eat and cosmic forces had suddenly placed an outlet of my favorite, long-lost restaurant chain in the perfect place. But it was not so. It was just Microsoft Streets & Trips screwing with my emotions. That dirty, lying program.

• Posted at 10:15 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

If anything positive comes out of the Terri Schiavo case, it may be that it's prompting a vast amount of Americans to draw up Living Wills or other documents that will specify what they want done with their bodies when they can no longer decide. I was amused to see my pal Daniel Frank say, "I want tubes; I want machines; I want Definitely Resuscitate orders; I want heroic efforts; I want Superman to make the world spin backwards on its axis and save me in time."

Which is, of course, his right. I have a somewhat different wish. I don't recall exactly what I signed a few years ago, but my Business Manager is getting it out of the safe deposit box and I'm going to make sure it declares the following: That I don't want to be kept "alive" by a biological technicality. If I can't have thoughts and communicate them, it's over, insofar as I'm concerned. Pull the plug, yank the tubes, put me in the largest-size Hefty Bag and leave me out on the curb.

One of the reasons most of us don't want to be kept alive by artificial means or in the much-discussed Persistent Vegetative State is that we don't want to be a burden to our loved ones. Even a level slightly above P.V.S. would horrify me. I once watched a beloved neighbor go so utterly senile that his spouse of 50+ years had to dress him, feed him, carry him to the bathroom, wipe him...and at least five times a day, pick him up off the floor when he fell. Some nights, she was so exhausted that she had to call me to come over and help her, often because he'd slipped off the toilet and was wedged between it and the sink.

For the last year or so of his life, he never uttered one intelligible word or showed the slightest sign of knowing who or where he was. If he'd had a second of awareness, I'm sure he'd have killed himself on the spot, the same way he'd have taken a bullet for his wife. He loved her dearly, and caring for him was occupying her every waking moment, destroying her health...and because of expenses not covered by their medical insurance, driving her towards poverty. When he finally stopped breathing, every single person who knew them said, "Thank God." Sadly, she did not live much longer after that, and I'm sure the main reason was all she'd gone through to take care of him.

When I hear people say that life by any definition must be maintained as long as possible, I think of that couple and disagree. In at least that case, the "pro-life" position would have been for the rest of him to die when his brain did. If his heart had stopped beating a year sooner than it finally did, the woman he loved might have lived another ten.

If you'd rather define your life like my friend Daniel, fine. I can certainly understand that, and you should have it the way you want it. But I wanted to throw one other thought out there...

All the talk about Ms. Schiavo seems to go to the issue of What She Wanted and to the extent that's been reasonably determined, that's what should be done. But your decision as to when you wish your life declared over doesn't have to just be about you. For instance, if I wind up revising my instructions, I'm going to try to put something in there about what's best for my loved ones. If and when they have to decide to discontinue life support, I don't want them thinking only about What Mark Wanted. I'm going to order them to turn me off when I become a threat to their health and their lives. If I can't feel anything, don't worry about making me comfy. Do what's best for the living.

I'll tell them if I ever reach Persistent Vegetative State — and some who read Groo have sensed that may not be long — I won't matter anymore, so discontinue feeding. Or if you prefer, keep feeding me, dress me up as Elvis and sell tickets to people who'll think that's where he's been all these years. If it would make you feel better, have me stuffed and put on display in the foyer. I think I'd make a nice fountain...posed on one foot, with a continuous stream of water trickling out of mouth. Whatever. I just don't want someone obligated to wipe drool from my chin because I can't, or to pick me up every day when I get wedged between the crapper and the bathroom sink. So my Living Will says (or will say) that I want the wires pulled, and not just because that's what I want. I also want my guardians to be able to decide when it's time for them to be rid of me, and to be able to avoid legal problems or even anyone accusing them of murder. I want them to be able to say, "This is what he wanted," even if it's what they also want.

I don't know if Michael Schiavo is an unfairly vilified man or if any of the denunciations of his morals and motives have some truth to them. What I do know is that I'm appointing people I trust and care about to make that decision about me. And should it someday be necessary for them to do that, I don't want anyone else getting involved or even having an opening to express an opinion.

• Posted at 1:55 PM · LINK

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Fairness Doctrine

Here's a question from Rick Mohr...

I was just wondering something. Is it just me, or have Jay Leno's monologues become meaner as of late? Calling people stupid and idiots, making fat jokes, and attacking Robert Blake and Michael Jackson in what are to me, very mean spirited jokes, not social commentary. Do you think his involvement in the Jackson mess has made him more cynical?

I don't think it's cynicism so much as a decision, not necessarily incorrect, that it's what works with the viewers. Leno is darn good at monologues and in connecting with his live audience, maybe even better than Mr. Carson. Which is not to say Johnny was not better at any number of other things. One suspects Jay may also be reacting to the criticism of him that he's lost his "edge" as a comedian and that, as host of The Tonight Show, he became too puppy-dog nice.

Some of Leno's Robert Blake material did strike me as unfair, and I said so a few times on this page. Blake may well be guilty but it struck me that an awful lot of people — and not just Leno — leaped too quickly to that position, not because they'd examined the evidence but because it was too irresistible a position for joke writers to assume. At one point, there was something almost tragic about Blake; like, innocent or not, we were starting to see him crack up way beyond what seemed usual for him. I love a lot of what some would call Bad Taste Humor, but there's occasionally a point where I feel like it's picking on someone who's on their way down and can't stand up for themselves. I don't feel that's true of Blake now but for a while there, I did.

In the case of Michael Jackson, he may not be guilty of the crimes alleged in his current trial but he sure seems reponsible for his image as a pedophile, and that's Jay's main point of attack. He's also a very public figure with the means, if necessary, to defend himself.

Back in the Carson era of Tonight, there was a period where Johnny was doing a lot of jokes about the sleaziness of The Gong Show and its producer-host, Chuck Barris. Mr. Barris was a nice, likeable guy if you met him, but he wanted it both ways: He wanted the large sums of cash that were his for creating shows like The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, but he didn't want the King of Schlock reputation that came with those offerings. At one point, he got very vocal within the industry, and I believe he even authored an article for National Lampoon on his thesis, which was that Johnny Carson was a bully, using his monologues to slander people who couldn't fight back. Barris did not get much sympathy because, first of all, most felt that he had access to the airwaves and to the press, and more than enough loot to hire an attorney if he'd been genuinely slandered. In other words, he could fight back. More to the point, he was to a large extent the architect of his own reputation. A member of his staff I knew once said, "Chuck doesn't know it but he really isn't mad at Johnny for telling those jokes. He's mad because the audience recognizes enough truth in them to laugh."

I don't think comedians are always blameless in what they do to popular images. There have been personal vendettas pursued that way, though they are rare. It is also possible to help spread false news that way and to give rumors more credibility than they deserve. But quite apart from Leno, Michael Jackson has done a superlative job of convincing the world that there's something creepy about him and especially about his interactions with young boys. I might wish that Jay seized a bit less often on the topic but I can't blame him for exploiting it.

• Posted at 1:46 PM · LINK

Friday, March 25, 2005

SNL Flashbacks

The weekend late night Saturday Night Live reruns have begun jumping around from season to season again. Last week, they had one with Charlton Heston from the 1993-1994 season. This weekend, they hop back to the tenth season, which was the one with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest and (briefly) Harry Shearer. The scheduled episode is from 11/17/84 with guest host Ed Asner. I seem to vaguely recall that Bill Murray was originally announced to topline that episode but that at the last minute, Mr. Asner appeared. The musical guest was The Kinks and the most memorable sketch was the 60 Minutes parody where Shearer did his uncanny replica of Mike Wallace looking into a potential scandal in the area of novelties and party tricks. Martin Short played a nervous lawyer named Nathan Thurm.

The following weekend, the scheduled rerun is Show #4 from 11/8/75 with Candice Bergen. This was the episode a lot of folks around NBC thought was the first real good one — so much so that some of the network execs wanted to sign Ms. Bergen as permanent star of the series. The show included the first "land shark" sketch and a very funny film by Albert Brooks previewing alleged new NBC shows. Also, Andy Kaufman did his "foreign man" character doing bad impressions. It's probably worth TiVoing just for those three segments.

• Posted at 5:00 PM · LINK

The Two and Only

It's getting to be fun to watch those old The Name's the Same episodes on GSN. It's still a lousy game show and I still wince at some of the phony planted questions. (The other night, the panel had to guess that guest star Joan Alexander was going to display a photo of her new baby. Someone obviously told panelist Audrey Meadows to ask, "Is this something a woman would show off proudly if she'd just gotten engaged?" Ho-ho.) But the program's getting steadily more amusing thanks to the presence of hosts Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding.

For years in this country, every city had a radio station with at least one team of disc jockeys — usually the morning men — doing Bob and Ray. Sometimes, they did actual Bob and Ray material, shamelessly burgled. Other times, they just did funny interviews and soap opera parodies...though it's doubtful that all of them put together were half as funny as the genuine articles. I have about thirty hours of real Bob and Ray radio stuff on CD and it's quite brilliant, in large part thanks to a clever writer named Tom Koch. What Mssrs. Elliott and Goulding did seemed so effortless that a lot of people just assumed they ad-libbed it all. Not so. Most of it came from Mr. Koch, whose byline you may also be familiar with from decades of Mad Magazine. Not long ago, a small but overdue book came out about his career and you can purchase it here.

But to get back to Bob and Ray: Ray is no longer with us, sad to say, but I am reminded by Don Brockway that Bob Elliott will be 82 years old tomorrow. Don further reminds me that loads of vintage Bob and Ray material is available at The Official Bob and Ray Website. Moreover, he says, one can send Bob a Happy Birthday e-mail via that domain. I don't want to post the address exactly because that will cause them to receive a lot of Spam so do this: Address your e-mail to "Bob," then put an "@" sign. Then type "bobandray.com" and you'll have it. Don says all mail sent that way will be forwarded to the Birthday Boy.

I've always loved Bob and Ray. I've always thought they were good but I never realized how good. Not until I saw them actually make The Name's the Same entertaining.

• Posted at 11:15 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Have you noticed that for about the last week or so, no matter what the latest development may be in the Terri Schiavo case, the news stories are usually headlined either,"Judge Denies Request to Reinsert Feeding Tube" or "Terri's Parents Low on Options"? For people who were low on options seven days ago, they sure seem to have found a steady supply.

I may have erred in posting anything here about this sad dispute. It prompted a flood of e-mail, some of it even from people who fully understood my position, which is that I don't fully understand my position. After hearing more about this case than I have about any number of more important issues, I've come hesitantly to a viewpoint which some will think is contradictory but, hey, that's how these things sometimes go.

To some extent, this whole debate has been about process. Terri's parents, the Schindlers, have lost petition after petition, court decision after court decision. They have lost at different levels of government and they have lost before Democratic-appointed judges and Republican-appointed ones. (One of the 11th Circuit Judges who voted against them is William Pryor, who was recently and stubbornly appointed by George W. Bush over fierce Democratic opposition.) Now, our courts are fallible and there should be a multi-level appeals process, especially when a matter of life and death is involved. But our courts also can't work if a perpetually-losing party can keep getting do-overs for all infinity, demanding endless new hearings in new venues, desperately trying to find some judge who'll see it another way. At some point, in the absence of better "new evidence" than the Schindlers seem to have, the appeals process has to end.

So I must be in favor of pulling the plug on Terri, right? Well, no. First off, I don't think it's my decision, nor is it yours. In fact, one of the things that bothers me here is the vast number of people who have injected themselves into a case that should involve the lady's immediate family and the appropriate court...and no one else. Terri Schiavo has not been helped by all these strangers weighing in, since strangers bring with them other issues, unrelated to her actual welfare. They also, as should be obvious by now, bring in a lot of bogus information and needlessly inflammatory rhetoric. What's my vote? I don't think I have a vote. I don't think I should have a vote.

If I did, I'm not sure what I'd do. Against my own logic, something about ending Terri Schiavo's life feels wrong. When those who stand with her parents (including both Bushes) say they believe in compassion and erring on the side of life, they almost convince me. Where they lose me, I guess, is when they try equating this with pure murder and dragging in inadmissible religious arguments. I also don't see them "erring on the side of life" regarding so many other people in this world — many of them, more "alive" than Terri Schiavo will ever be and perhaps a better investment of our limited national compassion. Which is another reason I don't think I should have a vote on Terri's fate. I don't know what it would be. but it would probably be something impractical like, "I vote to feed Terri Schiavo if we don't stop there. Let's pass a law that we feed everyone who's in danger of starving to death."

Three things interest me about this case. One is watching how dysfunctional the public debate has become, littered as it is with grandstand plays, questionable data and people arguing against the positions they press for on non-Terri matters. The most meaningful medical care Ms. Schiavo has received was funded by a large medical malpractice award and by Medicare. Now, we see people who have always opposed large medical malpractice awards and who wish to slash Medicare arguing that everything possible must be done to keep this woman alive.

The second aspect that interests me is the Strange Bedfellows factor. Positions have not divided on a straight Right/Left axis so, for example, you have people who have always loathed Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson now welcoming their support. This kind of thing is always amusing.

Lastly, we have yet another example of folks who attempt to use a situation for political advantage probably achieving the opposite of their goal. Some of the loudest voices in this argument have come from those who want to roll back or eliminate the "right to die." As a result of their efforts, millions of Americans are scurrying to write Living Wills and to declare inarguably to their mates and friends that they want the plug pulled if they ever get anywhere near Terri Schiavo's condition. I'm specifying that I want my breathing terminated if my continued existence ever becomes a topic on Hannity and Colmes. Once a matter of life and death gets to those forums, there's zero chance of a decision that will focus on what's best for me. Just as we long since passed the stage where the Schiavo case is about what's best for that poor woman in Florida.

• Posted at 10:41 AM · LINK

Comic Book Commentary

An article in the New York Times by Brent Staples raises the old question of how much of the credit Stan Lee deserves for the Marvel Superheroes...but doesn't supply much of an answer. Mine, as you may know, is that the characters should be described as co-creations.

• Posted at 8:10 AM · LINK

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Pole Cat

Michael Palin is sitting on top of the world. [Los Angeles Times, registration needed]

• Posted at 8:05 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Writers Vs. Writers

Neil Gaiman wrote me last night asking me to explain what's going on with the current rift between the Writers Guild of America, West (hereafter referred to as WGAw) and its Right Coast counterpart (WGAe). That's right, Neil. Give me the impossible assignment. I'm almost afraid to tackle it because the dispute sounds so petty and childish, but it may explain why these affiliated organizations do not achieve more for their members, and why some of us have opted to excuse ourselves from Guild politics. I did my time, thank you, and this is yet another example of why I don't go back.

As briefly as I can tell it: The two Guilds have existed for decades as parallel, largely-united entities. They are closer than sister organizations but not quite Siamese Twins. They negotiate together, they do many things as one...but they have separate leaderships. They also fight a lot. No matter who's running the WGAw, they always seem to be fighting the same battles with WGAe and forming uneasy compacts when the two must link arms in some crusade.

The dividing line, by the way is the Mississippi River. If you're on this side and you write TV or movies, you're under the jurisdiction of the WGAw. If you're on the other side, you're WGAe and proud of it. But of course, some writers are bi-coastal. Some productions go back and forth. And there are many services, especially in the area of screenwriting, which the smaller WGAe is unable to provide...so the WGAw provides them for all. The constitutions of both organizations require a screenwriter living in the east to join the WGAw and specifies that half of those folks' dues will go to WGAw. If I understand my history correctly, this was the practice until some time in the seventies when it stopped.

Why did it stop? No one seems able to explain, but things have been pretty volatile in the WGAw since that approximate time. We've spent a lot of time and energy battling with the Producers...and when we're not battling the Producers, we attack each other. Every so often, someone out here has tired of fighting Management or Ourselves, and they raise the issue of the WGAe allegedly not living up to the agreement. Nothing has ever been resolved or seriously pursued until just recently when the current WGAw board made a major issue of it and things got very nasty. Let's see if I can fairly summarize both sides...

The WGAw contends that the WGAe is waaaay in arrears on paying bucks to the WGAw for services and that a lot of its screenwriter members were long ago supposed to join WGAw and that all this needs to be mopped up. The WGAw maintains that this is all spelled out unambiguously in the similar (but not identical) constitutions of the two organizations.

The WGAe responds that, first of all, the wording ain't that clear — there are questions — and that those parts of the constitution haven't been enforced in 30-some-odd years so why start now? The WGAe is currently involved in an important negotiation regarding newswriters and in an election dispute. They say that even if the WGAw is right (which they aren't conceding), the WGAw has picked the worst possible time to raise these issues and is doing so to harm the WGAe.

The WGAw has replies to all that, but the important thing is that there is an arbitration process, described in both Guild's constitutions, that can bring in a neutral party to play Solomon and carve up the baby. The WGAw invoked the clause that triggers this process and it specifies that the arbitration must commence in 60 days, which in this case means April 10. First order of business is for the two sides to agree on an arbitrator. After some delay and an accusation of stalling tactics, they agreed on a Justice Joseph Grodin...though the WGAe told the WGAw not to contact him until there was further communication. Then there was no further communication.

Worried that the 60 days was being frittered away, WGAw President Daniel Petrie composed a letter over both his signature and that of WGAe President Herb Sargent. Addressed to Justice Grodin, it merely asked if he was available to serve as mediator. Petrie sent it to Sargent and said, in effect, "if you have no objection, I'm going to send this." There was no reply so Petrie sent it. Sargent became furious that it was sent at all, but also that it was sent with his signature since, for one thing, he hadn't written or okayed it. The WGAe therefore withdrew its approval of Grodin as mediator. A new one has been selected and since I haven't heard anything in a week or so, I assume things are on track for the arbitration to begin...but that something will soon arise to get everything off-track again. Betting on WGA discord is like laying money that the Milwaukee Brewers won't be in the World Series.

So what's really going on here? My expert analysis, which is worth about a dime on the open market, is that it all goes to the defensive posture of the WGAe, seeking to maintain its independence. It's a much smaller entity and given the way Show Business has migrated steadily west over the years, it will only get smaller. There are a lot of folks who have suggested that the WGAw go all-out to absorb the WGAe, and the WGAe probably sees all this as laying groundwork for such a takeover. I don't know if that would be better or worse for writers as a whole but I can certainly understand how some WGAe members fear getting lost in a bigger labor organization. The WGAw expends its best efforts on screenwriting and whatever kind of prime-time TV is currently hot. The last 30-or-so years, WGAw members who write game shows or variety shows, to name two categories that don't have big constituencies, have felt that their Guild does not pay enough attention to those areas. It's easy to imagine that the localized concerns of WGAe members could get the shortest kind of shrift if, officially or unofficially, they become a subset of the WGAw. On the other hand, there are those out here who think a merger or takeover would end the squabbling and help writers on both coasts, and that the primary obstacle is that the WGAe's paid staff enjoys high salaries and wants to keep enjoying them.

How this will all play out, I dunno, but I doubt it'll be healthy in the long run. In the short run, it may just be a temporary Cease Fire, which is sometimes all you can hope for in Guild disputes. The expectation seems to be that the arbitrator will work out a compromise that will say neither side is wholly in the wrong. That's kind of what arbitrators do, especially in a case like this.

The WGA, when it works the way it's supposed to, is a grand and vital organization that has made it possible for creative folks to swim with sharks and not get too badly mauled. Even when it doesn't work, it's preferable to no representation at all...and I say that as someone who has written loads of teevee shows with WGA coverage and without. The "without" jobs have been animation projects. Cartoons were once wholly outside the WGA's purview but they're slowly-but-thankfully moving under Guild protection. There's a reason that darn near every single person who has written animation the last thirty years wants that to happen.

Still, the WGAw is too often a dysfunctional organization that splinters along a wide array of party lines — haves versus have-nots, militants versus statesmen, young versus old, hyphenates (writer-directors or writer-producers) versus full-time writers, etc. It's an enormously democratic institution but at times, letting everyone have their say can be quite immobilizing. Most committees are "open," meaning that any members can be on them, and I once chaired what I think was the largest Guild committee ever. It proved rather tidily that when you get enough opinionated people in a room and they all get to speak and vote, nothing can ever get done. As more than one WGA member has commented, "Management doesn't have to try and divide us. We do a fine job of that, ourselves." The current WGAw/WGAe dust-up is yet another chapter and the end of the book is nowhere in sight.

• Posted at 10:38 AM · LINK

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Bear Necessity

I dunno the release date yet but Warner Home Video is preparing DVD sets of the first seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show from 1959 and The Yogi Bear Show from 1961. That is to say, one set of Huck, one set of Yogi. These are some of my all-time favorite cartoons, especially due to the superior vocal performances of Daws Butler, but also because the timing and gags are often quite wonderful. So I was delighted that they asked me to appear for an interview that will be part of a documentary for the Yogi set. Also appearing in supplementary material on one or both will be Earl Kress, Nancy Cartwright, Charlie Adler, Corey Burton and Tom Kenny, plus some other folks. That's what I did today: Drove through pouring rain to be videotaped for this project.

(Confidential to Fred Hembeck: Tom "Spongebob Squarepants" Kenny told me to tell the world that your review of the songs he co-authored for the Spongebob movie and/or CD — the review is somewhere on this archived page — was uncanny in that you nailed all the "in" references. Nice job, Hembeck.)

I have another public appeal to animation buffs here. As you might just recall, The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Yogi Bear Show once featured little segments (they call them "interstitials") of Huck and Yogi and everyone before, between and after the cartoons. They were discarded later when the cartoons were repackaged a dozen different ways for syndication...but when they were part of these half-hour shows, these short segments were part of the experience.

Warner Home Video would like to include as many of these bridges as possible on their forthcoming DVD sets of those programs. Problem: They can't find all the interstitials. Even as I blog, grown men are combing through warehouses for this footage which hasn't been broadcast in umpteen years. They've found a number of them...and in a few cases, they've located the audio but not the video of one, or the video but not the audio. Anyway, this is a real longshot but does anyone reading this have any old 16mm prints or VHS tapes of whole episodes of The Yogi Bear Show with the interstititials? They've located all or most from ol' Huck's show but some of the Yogi spots are missing in whole or part. Even if you just have a bad quality videotape, the audio may be usable to dub over footage that is lacking a soundtrack. If you have anything of this sort, please drop me a line and I'll forward it on to the appropriate folks...but hurry. There isn't much time before the DVDs have to be finalized. Thanks — and if you're on an animation discussion board, please copy this paragraph and the one before and post it, or just direct people to this item.

• Posted at 9:15 PM · LINK

Amazing Bagdasarian Fact

Came home from something I'll describe in the next posting to find no less than fourteen messages reminding me (or asking me if I knew) that Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) had a nice role in Mr. Hitchcock's esteemed Rear Window — playing a songwriter, no less. Yes, indeed.

• Posted at 8:19 PM · LINK

Alvin's Dad

A couple of folks wrote to ask if I was kidding when I said that "David Seville" created Alvin and the Chipmunks. One wrote, "He was a cartoon character, wasn't it?" Well, yes, he was...but he was the alter ego of Ross Bagdasarian, the songwriter-singer responsible for the Chipmunks records. Even before Alvin squeaked into existence, Bagdasarian had hits (like "Witch Doctor") under the Seville name. He used the two monikers rather interchangeably — I have an autographed Chipmunks album he signed as D.S. — and that's how I was using them. So, no, I wasn't making a joke...and yes, he was also Ross Bagdasarian...and, hey, isn't it about time for a CD of his non-Chipmunk recordings?

• Posted at 2:29 PM · LINK

Just in Time

Warner Home Video has finally issued a DVD of the 1960 movie version of Bells Are Ringing, starring Judy Holliday and Dean Martin, complete with a glorious hunk of bonus material. There's a short "making of..." documentary, there are cut numbers and alternate takes...and if you have any fondness for this film adaptation of a hit Broadway show, you'll want to order it, which you can do from Amazon by clicking here. I always found the film quite entertaining, if only because it captured the wonderful performance of Ms. Holliday. I never got to see her on stage but there was something so delightful about her screen appearances that I'm sure I missed out on something.

I have two special interests in this movie. One is purely nostalgic: In 1960, I was eight years old and my mother took me on a two-week trip to New York, Hartford and Boston — the first two towns were because I had relatives to meet. In Manhattan, we stayed at the Taft Hotel, went to the Statue of Liberty, attended a live broadcast of the game show, Concentration...and took in two movies. One, which bored me silly, was The Nun's Story. I think my mother didn't like it either, and we walked out on it. The other, which I enjoyed, was Bells Are Ringing, which we saw at the Radio City Music Hall. I liked the film and I liked the fact that there were scenes of walking around New York City, and then when the movie ended, we went out and walked around New York City. When you're eight, as I was, that kind of thing can impress you.

I'm also, as you can see from this site, fascinated by the contribution of great voiceover actors, and Bells Are Ringing has fine, uncredited performances by June Foray, Paul Frees and Shepard Menken. You all know June and Paul from their many appearances, most notably in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, but the late Mr. Menken was equally ubiquitous. (He did almost all the extra voices on The Alvin Show, including the great inventor, Clyde Crashcup.) In Bells Are Ringing, Shep was the announcer in the opening fake commercial, and he's heard in a few other spots. Paul and June provided most of the voices that are heard in phone calls, of which there are many in the film. In the "Drop That Name" musical number, there's one point where two on-camera actors are dubbed by Paul and one actress is dubbed by June. This may not matter to you but when you're fifty-three, as I am, that kind of thing can impress you.

• Posted at 9:38 AM · LINK

Rich and Happy

At least, we hope Stephen Sondheim is both on this, his 75th birthday. He should be. I mean, he's only our greatest living Broadway composer, and a lot of people think he's the best ever. He probably won't read this but maybe, if we all think good thoughts in his direction, he'll sense them, enjoy the day...and then go back to writing his next show. We can't get enough out of this man.

• Posted at 12:05 AM · LINK

Monday, March 21, 2005

Music Men

Just wanted to note the passing of two great musicians who probably never played the same room...

Bobby Short was the King of Cabaret Performers, logging four decades at the Cafe Carlyle in New York. I once had the pleasure of enjoying his smooth blend of jazz, old standards and show tunes, and it was a fine (if pricey) evening. There was something very beautiful about the sight and sound of Mr. Short in his tux at the piano. It was just so...right. Here's a link to a piece about him in the New York Times.

Lalo Guerrero was a fine singer-writer of Mexican-American tunes, many of them glorious parodies like "There's No Tortillas," which he composed to the tune of "There's No Tomorrow." His biggest hit was probably "Pancho Lopez," a parody of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett." (The New York Times obit errs and gives its name as "Pancho Sanchez.") And Guerrero was not only the Allan Sherman of Mexico. He had a line of kids' records starring "Las Ardillitas," a band of squirrels who sang with sped voices. If that sounds to you like The Chipmunks...well, Mr. Seville, the creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, thought so, too. He sued...but Guerrero managed to convince a judge that he'd been making the records before Seville started his series. I never got to see him perform but just last year, I attended a play based on his life and music. He was a very talented man and an important voice for his countryfolks.

• Posted at 10:13 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Still busy, but I wanted to direct your attention to this article by Eric Boehlert. It's in Salon so non-subscribers will have to watch an ad or something if they want to read it. But it claims something about the Terri Schiavo case that I hadn't realized. (That's assuming it's true. If it isn't, I would imagine it would be pretty easy to rebut by citing the correct numbers.) Here are two key paragraphs...

Recent polling data, in outlets from Fox News to the Washington Post, shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans back the position of Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, that he, and not his wife's parents, should have the final say about removing the feeding tube of his wife, who has been severely brain-damaged and incapacitated for the past 15 years. The polling data seriously undercuts the notion that Americans are deeply divided on the Schiavo case. Yet ever since March 18, when Republicans began their unprecedented push to intervene legislatively in a state court case that had already been heard by 19 judges, the press has all but disregarded the polls.

The Schiavo episode highlights not only how far to the right the GOP-controlled Congress has lunged — a 2003 Fox News poll found just 2 percent of Americans think the government should decide this type of right-to-die issue — but also how paralyzed the mainstream press has become in pointing out the obvious: that the GOP leadership often operates well outside the mainstream of America. The press's timidity is important because publicizing the poll results might extend the debate from one that focuses exclusively on a complicated moral and ethical dilemma to one that also examines just how far a radical and powerful group of religious conservatives are willing to go to push their political beliefs on the public.

I'm guessing that if you polled people on the question of whether Congress should decide who wins on American Idol, more than 2% would think that was appropriate. So is there any reason the Schiavo matter is in Congress at all?

My gut is split two ways on this matter, though neither thinks most of the folks riding the Terri Schiavo bandwagon are out to do anything but demonstrate their power and/or fealty to the Religious Right. On the one side, I think there is a state-level process in place that decides this kind of thing and that Ms. Schiavo's defenders have shown no reason to depart from that process, other than that they don't like what it has repeatedly determined. The other side says that we should err on the side of compassion and giving "life" (such as it may be in her case) the benefit of the doubt. But even there, I don't think that should stop with Terri Schiavo. If we're going to do everything possible to keep her breathing, let's make the same effort for everyone else whose death could perhaps be prevented with more human effort. One Republican I saw on C-Span the other night made what I'm sure he didn't intend as a great argument for National Health Care and increases in Medicaid, Medicare and access to cheaper prescription drugs. Or is anyone out there so disingenuous as to deny that people who are much more "alive" and salvageable than Terri Schiavo die due to lack of affordable health care and medicine?

I kinda like a lot of what I'm hearing from the G.O.P. about denying "the culture of death" and about doing everything we can to prolong life. I just think it oughta apply to everyone who might actually be helped instead of just one poor lady who, sad to say, is probably never going to get any better...and maybe didn't even want this kind of "help."

• Posted at 11:36 AM · LINK

Sunday, March 20, 2005

One More From the E-Mailbag...

Here's this one from Dennis Donohoe. I'll reply and then I have to get back to paying work...

I too am conflicted about this case. However, I see a distinction (as did your e-mail correspondent) between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube. Consider the sad case of Karen Ann Quinlan. She had life support cut off, but proceeded to live another ten years. Clearly she still had a feeding tube. I think it is grotesquely cruel to let someone slowly and painfully starve to death by cutting off their food. If the courts (and her husband) want her to die, why not give her a quick acting injection and bypass the suffering? The answer seems to be that this would offend the public's sense of propriety.

This is a sad situation. I agree with you, by the way, that this Congressional intervention is crazy.

Even if there is a difference between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube, I don't see how it matters to the debate currently going on in this country. Either way, people make a decision and it leads to the patient dying.

When I first read about the Schiavo case, several elements of the story had me conflicted, and one was this notion of someone painfully starving to death. In such a situation, I would sure rather go via lethal injection. However, I then read in a couple of articles like this one [Miami Herald, subscription may be required] that what is now being done to Ms. Schiavo is peaceful and painless. The right-wing news sources all say otherwise...and I think this all dovetails with the article by Dana Milbank to which I linked last night. We have competing sets of facts here, perhaps on at least one side, tailored to fit the readership.

Don't anyone write and tell me which one is correct. I know who I want to ask about this, and I'll accept what he tells me. But we don't read the news so we can get "facts" that cancel one another out, and then have to go out and do our own research. News exists to tell us things with some authority, even the things we might not want to hear. Or at least, it used to. We don't have to believe everything we're told, and we shouldn't. But we also ought to have some sources that won't fib or sugar-coat to appease their key demographic group.

Incidentally, I think the argument for letting the patient starve as opposed to administering that lethal injection is that in the latter, it seems more like humans are taking a life, whereas in the former, it's like we're stepping back and letting God work His or Her will. But I also think that's one of those distinctions without a real difference.

• Posted at 1:45 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

This just in from John Thomas...

Terry Schiavo is not on life support. She is not suffering from a "fatal congenital disease." If her feeding tube was not removed, she would continue to live, much like if Christopher Reeve's breathing tube was not removed, he continued to live.

There's way too much conflation of the different kinds of medical status to compare Schiavo's case to a myriad of other things, but it's apples and oranges, and just serves to confuse people who might not know what's going on. The insinuations in your recent blog post are part of that confusion.

Why not declare to people that Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" any more than Christopher Reeve was, and that she is not suffering from a fatal disease like the child referenced at the blog you linked to.

You're right that the two cases are not exactly alike but I think you're wrong, at least in a conversational sense, that the term "life support" does not apply in the Schiavo situation. I just did one of them nifty Google searches and found well over 3,000 news stories and headlines that disagree with you. A lot of folks, including doctors on both sides, seem to think she was on "life support."

In any case, the rhetoric and arguments that people are using to demand that her feeding tube be reinserted could certainly apply to darn near any instance where human action or inaction leads to the termination of a life. And without taking sides on the Schiavo matter — because I'm conflicted on many aspects of it — I have to wonder what larger principle her defenders think they're fighting for. Tom DeLay is convening emergency sessons to make sure this one woman has "every opportunity to keep living" but there are plenty of people who don't get that opportunity and I don't see him spending five seconds on them. And just last week, DeLay was trying to cut $40 billion from the Medicaid program, and that would certainly hasten a lot of deaths...and in people who are alive in more than the technical sense that Terri Schiavo is still alive.

If you read the article about the child in Texas, you'll see that it's also about a 68-year-old man who, like Schiavo, is in a "persistent vegetative state." Texas law apparently allows the hospital to turn off his ventilator, which will end his life just as surely as yanking Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will end hers. That man's family is fighting to keep him alive and there isn't even anyone in the case saying, like Terri's husband says of her, "this is what (s)he wanted." Why isn't Congress convening emergency sessions to give that man "every opportunity to keep living?" If we want that to be our national goal, great. Let's apply it to everyone.

• Posted at 12:30 PM · LINK

Cartoonists Convergence

The National Cartoonists Society has done a major upgrade of its website. Of interest to all will be the member listings where each NCS member (with a few holes) has done up a little bio of him- or herself. And even more interesting are the ones done in the past by those no longer with us.

As you may note over there, the NCS is having this year's Reuben Awards Weekend in Scottsdale, Arizona from May 27 to 29. The festivities are generally open only to members but they've invited me to be there in order to roast my friend Sergio Aragonés and to emcee a rousing game of Quick Draw!, the cartoon improv game we play at conventions. This should be a lot of fun, except that the dinner requires formal wear. I own two tuxedos, one of which is too big for me now and one of which is too small. I've been losing about four pounds a month since I got a new doctor. (Good news because I was afraid my family was going to petition Congress to remove my feeding tube.) If this keeps up, by the end of May, I might be to the point where my tailor can take in the jacket of the too-large tux and let out the pants of the too-small tux, thereby creating one tuxedo that will fit me. We would then take the coat and trousers that remain and use them to dress Jabba the Hut.

• Posted at 10:53 AM · LINK

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Highly Recommended Reading

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post says that...well, here. I'll quote one key paragraph...

Partisans on the left and right have formed cottage industries devoted to discrediting what they dismissively call the "mainstream media" — the networks, daily newspapers and newsmagazines. Their goal: to steer readers and viewers toward ideologically driven outlets that will confirm their own views and protect them from disagreeable facts. In an increasingly fragmented media world, ideologues have already devolved into parallel universes, in which liberals and conservatives can select talk radio hosts, cable news pundits and blogs that share their prejudices.

An excellent article it is...but I think Milbank misses one key point. It's that a large part of the press, in a misguided quest to attract more customers, has abdicated their responsibility to print things that some might consider "disagreeable facts." I do think he's right though that too many people are now seeking out "news" that will spin reality their way. If you think otherwise, read a wide range of stories on the Terri Schiavo matter. It's almost like the Liberal and Conservative sites are talking about two separate cases.

Speaking of which: I have now decided that there's something lower than being in a Persistent Vegetative State. It's being in a Persistent Vegetative State and having Tom DeLay watching out for your interests.

• Posted at 11:38 PM · LINK

Friday, March 18, 2005

Set the TiVo!

Starting tonight, GSN (née The Game Show Network) is running episodes of The Name's the Same hosted by Bob and Ray. I have not seen these. I don't think they've ever been rebroadcast since they first aired around a half-century ago. But nothing Bob and Ray ever did was without interest, and I'll be eager to see how much they could improve what was basically not a very good game show.

• Posted at 8:28 PM · LINK

Soup's On!

For the first time in many months, I invoke the long-standing Internet Tradition that I invented and which hardly anyone else follows. The way it works is that when the proprietor of a weblog is too busy to update said weblog, the proprietor posts a photo of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. I have deadlines and things that must be done, and I have to pay for the new roof on my garage. (They should finish tomorrow afternoon, about the time it's supposed to start raining.) I shall return to you when work is done and the roof is paid-for.

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Memory Lane

The annual TV Land Awards debuted the other night and will rerun a few times throughout the coming weeks. These shows are a bit too self-congratulatory for my taste, and you sure get the idea that the winners — and even the categories in which they "win" — have everything to do with who's willing to show up for the taping. Nevertheless, there are fun moments, and it was very nice that they did a little salute to our boy, 100-year-old Charles Lane.

To put Mr. Lane's long career into a bit of perspective, try wrapping your brain around this fact: At the time Charles Lane began his professional acting career, Joe Barbera was still in school, studying for a career in banking.

• Posted at 11:06 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Wall Worthy

About 95% of the Los Angeles Animation Community gathered today at the headquarters of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood. The occasion was the unveiling of a wall sculpture honoring Joe Barbera and the late Bill Hanna. I took some photos and wrote up a little report, which I've posted over here in the NOTES from me section.

• Posted at 6:51 PM · LINK

The Verdict

Like (I'm guessing) a good many of you, I thought Robert Blake was guilty of murdering his wife...though this is not an opinion I came to by scrupulously examining evidence, hearing all sides and deliberating the matter for more than about ten seconds. I felt he did it the way I feel it will rain this weekend. A lot of folks are saying so...and since a lot of them seem to know more about it than I do, I go with the flow. Even after the verdict, I'm not sure about Blake, nor do I have the interest to study up on it. Maybe he didn't do it or maybe there just wasn't sufficient proof that he did it. Not the same thing.

I did follow the O.J. Simpson case closely enough to have an opinion about which I felt strongly. I think the first jury — the one that acquitted him — had their heads up their judicial posteriors. But about the Blake case, I dunno. I feel like I was lied to by several articles I read. They said not just that he did it but that the evidence was undeniable and overwhelming. Clearly, it was not. He may have murdered his wife but the evidence could not have been as airtight as those articles made it out to be.

The Blake case differs from the O.J. case in a number of ways that may make it possible for him to function in society and — who knows? — even get some acting work again. Blake and his lawyers did not seem arrogant the way Simpson and his Dream Team appeared. There was no Race Card for them to play, nor did they particularly demonize the police. Blake was not turned loose despite a mountain of forensic evidence. Blake's supposed victim did not seem as innocent and mourned as the two people Simpson hacked to death. A lot of those who got mad at the O.J. verdict were mad on behalf of the highly-visible families of the deceased, Fred Goldman especially. There have been no conspicuous mourners of Bonny Lee Bakley. (Her sister phoned in to Court TV after the verdict and seemed mainly distraught that they now will probably not get anything from the civil suit they've filed against Blake.) Most of all, Blake seems rather sad and beaten, almost like he's already paid a fairly stiff penalty for a crime he may or may not have committed. If he's guilty, of course, it's insufficient penalty. But maybe we're so cynical by now about rich 'n' famous murderers getting properly punished that we'll settle for this much.

• Posted at 5:25 PM · LINK

L.A., My Way

I love photos of Los Angeles, especially historic Los Angeles. This site has some great current photos of places that have been around for a long time.

• Posted at 12:29 AM · LINK

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

TiVo Reborn?

My skepticism over reports that TiVo is doomed seems to be justified. This is good news for the company...good enough to put some of the Deathwatches on hold for a bit. They're still some distance from showing a profit but if the Comcast people are going to be equipping their zillions of subscribers with TiVos, there's going to have to be some sort of long-term support there. So things are looking up a bit.

I wonder if anyone has done any sort of study on Technological Frustration, which is my term for the restlessness of consumers to see their software or hardware improved. I use a program called Forte Agent for most of my e-mail, and I'm convinced that the only thing that prevented it from dominating the market is that it took its various makers (the company changed hands a few times) ten years to make improvements that could/should have happened in two. Its remaining users are still sitting there, wondering if certain promised new features will appear this year or next or the one after...but many have given up on it, the same way a lot of folks gave up on Betamax back when all the sexy new developments were over in the VHS column. One can understand a company being overly-cautious about perfecting a new feature before releasing it — that seems to have been what delayed Sony with its Betamax advances. One can also understand that some techological advances just take time...more than anyone could anticipate. Still, at some point, you just get impatient.

TiVo was introduced into the marketplace in March of 1999. I ordered my first (of many) a month later and it was really quite a wonderful invention. I demonstrated it to everyone who came by my house for about the next year because that's how long it took before most people had even heard of the thing. The company sold at least a dozen more of them because of my efforts but I didn't want a commission. I only wanted TiVo to improve its product...and they have. Just not fast enough. The new "TiVo to Go" feature is disappointing for reasons I explained here, plus many are finding the picture quality unsatisfactory. But the whole thing is probably a greater disappointment than it could have been because it took so long to arrive. For months and months, we heard, "It's coming, it's coming." That kind of thing increases expectations and breaks down brand loyalty.

A few of my friends have given up on TiVo and assembled their own, homemade versions using computers and some software like Media Portal or Snapstream. One said to me, "It took me two days to build a Personal Video Recorder that can do everything I want. Why has it taken TiVo five years?" There are plenty of reasons, of course, including the fact that TiVo keeps being sued or threatened with suits for the supposed damages it will wreak on the television industry. But the point is that in this era of Immediate Gratification, a lot of folks aren't willing to wait...or to trust TiVo to improve itself at a satisfying clip. If they could only manage to do that, we could get rid of all the Deathwatches, once and for all.

• Posted at 4:09 PM · LINK

Monday, March 14, 2005

Drug Humor

The other day, I linked to an extremely funny/clever video cartoon about prescription drugs. Here's a better link, direct to the page of the folks who commissioned it. I hadn't realized that it was Consumers Union, which is the organization that puts out Consumer Reports. I am a big fan of Consumer Reports, which has always struck me as one of the few truly untainted voices for consumers...especially now that Ralph Nader only seems to be crusading for Ralph Nader. You might want to read this page they've posted about some of the recent outrages in the field of prescription drugs. It's one of those areas where, I think, too many people shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, there's nothing we can do."

• Posted at 10:23 PM · LINK

Since I Found My Rosie...

I can't make a whole lot of sense out of Rosie O'Donnell's weblog but perhaps you can. This woman is well-paid. Can't she afford a Shift key?

• Posted at 11:17 AM · LINK

Will the Critics Say "Ni?"

Nice article by Bill Zehme on the soon-to-open Monty Python musical, Spamalot. A half-dozen different folks I know have seen in it in previews and all predict it will make The Producers look like a one-night flop.

• Posted at 11:15 AM · LINK

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Trial Watch

Isn't it interesting that the jury has now been deliberating for a whole week in the Robert Blake case? I have no idea whether they'll deadlock or vote to convict or what. But all the commentators covering this trial thought it was one of those cases where the jury would be unanimous for conviction on the first ballot and would only stay out for a token interval to make it seem like they'd really, really considered every nuance of the case. I didn't follow all the details but it seems to me that a week is more than enough time to really, really consider every nuance.

As I understand it, they have to decide on one count of murder with a special circumstance of lying in wait, and two counts of solicitation of murder. Several different men testified that Blake talked to them about killing his wife so I'm guessing the jurors aren't re-enacting Twelve Angry Men over the solicitation charges. But there does not seem to have been any forensic evidence — i.e., no identifiable prints on the murder weapon — that the actor actually pulled the trigger. The jury requested a read-back of testimony from the owner of Vitello's Restaurant about how the Blakes were acting just before the shooting. So one might assume that the jurors are debating just what happened that night, which goes to the first count...and maybe on that, one or more isn't convinced beyond that reasonable doubt.

But maybe not. Perhaps it's just that the jurors are taking their mission very seriously and are reviewing every syllable of every bit of the testimony several times over. That would not be a bad thing, even if they eventually vote Guilty, right down the line. It would also not be a bad thing if this triggered a moment of reflection in everyone who decided early-on that Blake was guilty as a body could be. Maybe it's not quite as open-'n'-shut as a lot of people figured.

Then again, maybe one of the jurors brought in a deck of cards and they've got a Bridge Tournament going. You never know.

• Posted at 6:52 PM · LINK

Face Time

Jay Mohr is a pretty funny stand-up comedian and a not-unsuccessful movie actor. It may surprise some folks to learn that he did two years on Saturday Night Live as a "featured player," an unusual job classification. It means you're in the cast but you're not a cast member. You're kind of on probation, auditioning in front of America to move up to full cast member status. Neither position means you automatically appear in sketches and neither guarantees you won't get fired at the end of the season. Full status just confers a bit more prestige and the presumption that you deserve to be on the show. Mohr did his two years without graduating to the senior class.

He sometimes went for weeks without getting into a sketch and when he did, it was often a one-line part or something that required so much make-up, you didn't realize it was him. His struggles are recounted in a book that I just read, Gasping for Airtime.

It's a disarmingly candid account of his life during that period, much of it focusing on a series of horrendous panic attacks that occasionally prompted him to bolt from the office, run the 42 blocks to his home and dive into bed. Eventually, medication ended these, though he had panic attacks that he would be caught without the pills to prevent his panic attacks. He also confesses to other matters that someone else might have omitted...like the time he was so desperate for a sketch to submit that he ripped-off an entire routine from a fellow stand-up comic. The bit went on the air, the other comedian sued, Mohr lied and swore he hadn't seen the other guy's act, and NBC settled the suit by paying money and cutting the sketch from reruns. It's not amazing that this happened; only that the perpetrator would admit to it in print.

There are anecdotes about others who worked on SNL at the time — Farley, Hartman, Franken, Lorne Michaels, et al. Some are flattering. Others are anything but, and some of those stories do not speak well of Mohr, either. The most interesting part of the book to me was following the dilemma of a guy who'd been handed this great opportunity and was never quite able to capitalize on it. Mohr's career later took off, to some extent in spite of his SNL gig, not because of it. You wonder if he'd have written this book if things had gone any of several other ways. In any case, it's a good, short read and a nice reminder of how difficult comedy can be, particularly in a high-pressure, competitive environment like Saturday Night Live. It ain't as easy as it looks.

• Posted at 9:20 AM · LINK

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Dumb Dora Lives!

If you're a fan of the Match Game TV show — the second version with Gene Rayburn, the one where celebrity panelists had to fill in the blanks with semi-naughty words — have we got a website for you!

• Posted at 11:27 PM · LINK

News Watch

I'm watching a little of the news coverage of the arrest of Brian Nichols, the Atlanta courtroom shooting suspect. It's another one of those situations, so familiar in the age of 24/7 reporting, where everything the reporters know could be summarized in about three minutes...but they have to keep stretching and repeating and wringing variations out of the information. I'm surprised no cable news channel has tried selling itself the way a lot of all-news radio stations promise to give you the whole world in 20 or 22 minutes. There are times you don't want in-depth coverage. You want the three-minute version.

I am amused by the occasional appearances of the words "alleged" and "suspect." Everyone is unhesitatingly discussing how Nichols grabbed a gun and shot this person or that person. Every ten or twenty mentions of his brutal crimes, someone — usually a law enforcement official — feels they're being responsible to toss in an "allegedly." On CNN, and I guess this is some sort of style guide thing, they also keep referring to him as "Mr. Nichols." Glad to see they're protecting the man's dignity and, every once in a while, the pretense that there is any presumption of innocence anywhere.

• Posted at 10:02 AM · LINK

An Evening With Michael Palin

That's what a lot of us enjoyed last night, courtesy of the Museum of TV and Radio: An evening with a member of Monty Python. The museum is having its annual William S. Paley Festival which, once upon a time, was all about classic TV shows of the past. Now, it almost exclusively honors current shows (Lost, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, etc.) with Mr. Palin's appearance being a notable exception. That's the bad news for some of us. The good news is that after years of poor interviewers from the museum's staff, this year's seminars have more qualified, usually famous moderators. Palin was interviewed by Harry Shearer, who did a fine job of it.

Clips were run, not just of Palin's days with Python (The Argument Sketch, the Spanish Inquisition, et al) but of his work before and after. The excerpts from his travelogues for the B.B.C., to which I paid not enough attention when they first aired, looked especially wonderful.

Palin did not offer much encouragement to those yearning for a Python reunion of some sort. There has intermittently been talk of a new stage tour but Palin is against it because, says he, it wouldn't be the same without Graham Chapman. He also thinks the probable success of the new Broadway musical, Spamalot, will fill any possible need there might be to see Monty Python on stage. He said he had been interested in a movie idea that Eric Idle proposed — a sequel to Monty Python and the Holy Grail with them all playing the same knights several decades later — but the idea has never gone anywhere.

Mostly, he told wonderful stories and to the delight of the audience, kept lapsing into characters from Python routines — although when one lady asked, "What's your favorite color?", he and Shearer both seemed to miss the reference to a key scene in Holy Grail. He impressed most of us as very humble and very, very nice. When we left, he was still there signing program books for people and he looked like he was going to stay until he'd signed for everyone who wanted an autograph. For all I know, he may still be there.

• Posted at 1:33 AM · LINK

Friday, March 11, 2005

A Bitter Pill to Swallow...

Before you take any more prescription medicines, you might want to watch this nice bit o' animation. (If that doesn't play, try this link.)

• Posted at 5:18 PM · LINK

Breaking News

This morning, a man on trial in Atlanta grabbed a gun from a deputy and shot his way out of the courthouse, killing several people, including the judge. Obviously, a great tragedy.

However, I have to share this with you. I hadn't heard about it when I turned on CNN and the first words out of my TV were: "...and he seized a weapon in the courtroom and shot at least three people, including the judge, before getting away."

My immediate thought, for about three seconds, was: Oh, no! Was this Michael Jackson or Robert Blake?

• Posted at 11:49 AM · LINK

Whither TiVo?

I've pretty much given up linking to articles on the future of TiVo. There are hundreds of them out there, many employing the phrase "death watch," which is never a good sign. There seems to be no doubt that TiVo has suffered from the kind of technological lag that doomed the Betamax. For whatever reason, its makers simply have not advanced the product at a sufficient rate to remain competitive, and TiVo is taking body blows from the many breeds of Personal Video Recorder now being offered by local cable companies.

I remain mildly skeptical of claims that TiVo's demise is a foregone conclusion. We've heard that about too many things that are still around, including the Democratic party, and if TiVo is acquired or comes through with a breakthrough upgrade, it could be a brand new ballgame. Even as matters stand, the company's fourth quarter earnings report (this one) contains a fair amount of encouraging news. Hidden in there though are details of the vast amounts of cash that have been spent to buy much of that good news via rebates and giveaways. You can get long lines outside your restaurant if you're giving the food away...but only for so long.

Many futures are possible, including TiVo merging into some other computer-based product. There's talk of acquisition by Apple, which could make TiVo an adjunct to its iPod line, the two devices interfacing and morphing into one another. At some point soon, we're all going to be buying or upgrading to some sort of omnipotent Media Machine that will reside in our homes, connected to all sources of entertainment: Satellite TV and/or radio, cable, the Internet, maybe a DVD library, etc. Such devices will capture everything we wish to listen to or view and output it to DVDs or CDs or MP3 players or route it to various players around our home network. It remains to be seen whether TiVo will be a component of a leading brand of one.

Worst case scenario, of course, is that TiVo goes under, which it well might. What that will mean to those of us who own one (or in my case, three) is probably a brief period of chaos as it goes Open Source, releasing the necessary codes so that new companies can sell us the programming information guides that we now download from TiVo. Then we can all continue to use our TiVos until we give up and switch to those fancy-shmancy Home Media Machines. Or maybe someone will be wise enough to market one that will interface with your old TiVo and allow you to continue to use it. I just hope they keep that cute little TiVo logo guy around. I've grown accustomed to that fellow. He's on my TV more often than Regis Philbin...and he's a lot funnier.

• Posted at 10:14 AM · LINK

Roast Hef

In his current column, which I linked to yesterday, Frank Rich makes mention of a roast for Hugh Hefner that was taped not long after 9/11. I see that Comedy Central is rerunning the TV version of it on Monday night or Tuesday morning, depending on which time zone you're in.

It's an odd show, indeed. At one point, Sarah Silverman is roasting Hef and she makes a comment about how he has no idea where he is. At times, it sure looked that way. For most of the show, he sits there quietly and acts like he's enjoying a steady stream of jokes about his age, his declining sexual abilities, his use of Viagra and the low I.Q. and morals of a bevy of blonde lady friends who escort him about. Some of the jokes will make you cringe but there are moments of brilliance, and an occasional oblique reference to the tragedy that was still hanging over New York on the night they taped the thing. You'll get frustrated at all the bleeps and at a number of bad edits that hint that much material (probably dirtier and funnier) has been excised.

If you want to really enjoy it, do this: TiVo the show and watch it with remote in hand. Catch a little of Sarah Silverman, then skip ahead to watch Ice-T, not because he's any good but because what he does is the set-up to Gilbert Gottfried. Then leap to the end and watch Gilbert, who is absolutely hilarious. (On second thought, you might want to miss the part where Ms. Silverman says to Alan King that a nursing home in Florida just called to say, "The last person who thought you were funny just died." It kind of loses something since Mr. King's passing.)

• Posted at 1:39 AM · LINK

Possum Sale

As I'm sure we all agree, there should be a whole series of books in print of Walt Kelly's classic newspaper strip, Pogo. One of these days, there will be...because Pogo was maybe the wittiest, liveliest comic of all time. And you know what? It hasn't dated. Even though it was at times political, everything old is new again and its commentaries are frighteningly relevant today. Plus, it's funny and filled with some of the best-drawn comic characters ever. The good people of Italy found out some or all of this recently when one of their leading newspapers sponsored a new paperback reprinting material from two of the American paperbacks of yore.

Okay, so it's not the kind of Pogo book we crave. But it is a new Pogo book, and Pogo completists have been eager to get their mitts on a copy of what may turn out to be the rarest Pogo item in this country.

The management of the Official Pogo Website (which includes me) has managed to get hold of, and is now selling copies of this book. We don't have many, and they're in Italian. But we know some folks who'll have to have one, and they can order them over on that webpage. If you've seen the way prices skyrocket on Pogo collectibles, you know what a big-deal bargain this is. If you want to hold out for something in English, we certainly understand...but it may be a while.

• Posted at 12:40 AM · LINK

Thursday, March 10, 2005

News Briefs

I turned on the news this morning just in time to watch it erupt with reports that Michael Jackson was not showing up in court and that the judge had issued a warrant for his arrest and a time limit. One could hear the newsfolks practically salivating at visions of helicopters tracking him as per the infamous O.J. Simpson freeway chase. Unfortunately for that dream, Jackson did show up...but as a consolation prize to the media, he arrived in pajamas, thereby providing them with plenty to talk about, at least for a while. For some ungodly reason, I'm watching Court TV, where people who've never met Michael Jackson are constructing a psychiatric profile of him based on this morning's actions.

This whole thing is like a traffic accident: You hate it but it's hard not to look.

Hold it. This just in: The jury deliberating in the Robert Blake case is having lunch. They're in a private lunchroom at the Van Nuys courthouse and they're having pizza and lasagna.

I'm not going to wait around for someone to try and connect this information to the fact that the murder occurred outside an Italian restaurant. Someone will. But I'm turning off the TV before they do.

• Posted at 12:38 PM · LINK

Star-Spangled Style

My friend/mentor Jack Kirby co-created Captain America and did more stories of the character than anyone else did. From time to time, articles pop up that attempt to define Captain America's position on some real issue of the day...or someone claims that their view on some controversial topic is the view Captain America would hold. And hey, there's a meaningful endorsement: "I have a comic book superhero on my side!" created his adventures. I wrote a listing here about this but it's been moved to the NOTES from me section of this site.

• Posted at 8:58 AM · LINK

A Rocky Reception

June Foray got a warm reception last evening when she appeared at a Barnes & Noble to sign her new book, Perverse, Adverse and Rottenverse. A lot of her fans turned out to hear her talk about her career and read from the book, and it was just a very nice time. I even learned something I hadn't previously known about June. When director Arthur Hiller was assembling the movie, The Hospital, he needed some dialogue looped by co-star Diana Rigg. Unfortunately, Ms. Rigg was back in England and the release date was drawing near...so June was brought in to do an imitation. I'm going to dig up the DVD and see if I can figure out which lines are June.

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Garage Mahal

Okay. So when we last left the saga of Mark's Garage Door, the top of its frame had suddenly and tragically split in two, rendering it useless insofar as opening and closing was concerned. In other words, the thing was broken. This occurred the evening of February 28. The afternoon of March 1, a man came by from the garage door company and — with the kind of perception that distinguishes a true craftsperson from the rest of us layfolks — looked at the split wooden frame and ventured the professional opinion that the door was broken. Following a bit of math, it was further determined that, given what it would cost to repair, I might as well kick in a few more bucks and get a whole new door. I've been arranging for the garage to be re-roofed so a new door would fit right in. (The new sign of status in Southern California is no longer that you have a development deal or a hit movie or series. It's that you have a roofer coming.)

I wanted the door installed as soon as possible. In my neighborhood, there are all sorts of complex rules: You can't park on the North side of the street between 8 AM and 10 AM on a Wednesday unless you have a certain sticker on your car, in which case you can park on the South side on Tuesdays and Thursday between Noon and 2 PM except during a total eclipse or if you bought the car from a guy named Artie...something like that. Anyway, it's much simpler for me, to say nothing of convenient, to be able to park in my garage. This, I could not do until the new door was installed. The Garage Door Man assured me this could be done the following Friday (3/4) or, at the latest, the Tuesday after that (3/8). I gave him a deposit and he said that as soon as they knew when the new door was ready, they'd give me a call — like, the night before — so I could be here then.

All week, I played the little, annoying game of parking on the street, figuring out where to leave my car at night. Thursday evening, I received no call. I cancelled an appointment on Friday so I could be here, just in case, but I didn't hear from them all day...which meant that parking on the street would continue throughout the three-day weekend. Monday, I called to ask if, as promised, I would be receiving my new garage door on Tuesday. No one at the garage door company seemed able to tell me yea or nay.

First thing Tuesday morning, I phoned and politely demanded to know if and when that day, my new garage door would be installed. I spoke to a succession of people who did not know, each of whom transferred my call to someone else who did not know. When finally my query arrived at the owner of the company, I was informed that they had no record of my order. The new door had not been made. No one was scheduled to come out to my place that day. They didn't doubt that I had ordered it and paid a deposit but, frustratingly, they would have to send someone out to re-measure the door and begin the process of making me a door and it might take another week and...well, you can just imagine how delighted I was with the situation. Fume, snarl, pout.

Five minutes later, the proprietor called me back with a wild theory. They had no current paperwork on my order, true. But was it possible that this was because it had already been filed? That the door had already been installed? I told them this seemed unlikely since no one from their company had ever phoned to say they wanted to come over, and I had not been away from the house much in the previous week. Still, it was not a metaphysical impossibility. My house is on a corner and my garage does not face the same street as my front door. I realized I had not driven past or walked by my garage in several days.

So my friend Carolyn and I went out and looked...and sure enough, there was a new garage door on my garage. Further consultation with the company yielded the data that it had been installed the previous Friday, perhaps even while I was home. Instead of calling ahead or even knocking on my front door when they got here, the installers had just gone in, taken the old door off and put in the new one without telling me. I'd been doing the park-on-the-street shuffle for days when I could have been opening my new door and parking in my old garage.

I felt an odd mix of emotions: Pleased was I that the garage door problem was behind me...but annoyed was I that it had been resolved four days earlier and no one had told me. The gent at the garage door company was embarrassed, and also puzzled to find himself apologizing that his men had done a job when they'd said they were going to do it.

So anyway, let this be a lesson to you all. I'm not sure what you might learn from it but let it be a lesson of something to you. Maybe it's that before you complain that they haven't installed your new garage door, you ought to go out and check to see if they've installed your new garage door. Or something like that. Anyway, today's the day when a different outfit is supposed to begin putting a new roof on that garage. But I haven't heard a word from them so maybe they've already done it.

• Posted at 9:17 AM · LINK

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Starr Reporter

Last night, GSN ran an episode of What's My Line? from 1955 (I believe) where one of the contestants signed in as Mrs. Dale Strom. She was introduced that way because one or more of the panelists might have recognized her maiden (and professional) name, Dale Messick, as the creator of the comic strip, Brenda Starr. Dale, who will be 99 years old in April, began drawing the adventures of the intrepid lady reporter in 1940 and, it is said, never missed a deadline — not even to birth her children — until she handed the strip off to others in 1980.

Brenda Starr was a popular feature that never quite made it onto the radar of comic strip buffs. I'm not sure why. It was drawn with great energy and humor, and the writing stands up far better than many strips of its era. Years ago, afforded the opportunity to read long runs of classic funnypage faves, I found some were readable and some were not. Li'l Abner was, Flash Gordon wasn't...though with Flash Gordon, looking at the pictures was sometimes enough. The Phantom, I could read. Mark Trail, I could not...and Harold Gray's talky, preachy Little Orphan Annie actually induced some form of Attention Deficit Disorder in me. I would read Panel One and literally forget everything about it while making the brief trip over to Panel Two.

But like I said, Brenda Starr was fun and while it's probably not on anyone's short list of Comic Strips That Deserve To Be Republished In Their Entirety, the way Peanuts is now being reprinted, you could do a lot worse. Seeing its maker on What's My Line? last night prompted me to suggest that there's a strip worthy of more attention. (The current version by June Brigman and Mary Schmich ain't bad, either.)

• Posted at 8:34 PM · LINK

Jacko Justice

"Stavner" (that's how he signs his e-mails) writes to ask the following...

RE: Michael Jackson: Could you please be more specific about why you think he'll walk?

I can't be that much more specific about why I think The King of Pop will go unconvicted...and it's certainly not something about which I feel certain. (There could still be one of those startling Perry Mason-style revelations, either way.) It's more of a hunch, taking off from the fact that there seems to be no paucity of evidence that the parents of the allegedly-violated lad are of low moral fibre and perhaps not above trumping up a molestation charge to get cash. That doesn't mean Jackson didn't molest the kid but it goes a long way to helping his attorneys cast reasonable — or maybe unreasonable doubt.

The case against O.J. Simpson (you remember him) was an overwhelming case. For God's sake, his blood was found at the murder site. Still, a well-financed defense squad managed to sell the idea that there was "something wrong" with that case in unspecified ways. They never offered a coherent theory as to how and why all of this evidence could have been phonied up and planted. No one ever has. In fact, the most serious attempt I ever saw didn't even come from Simpson's lawyers. It was a website — no longer up — that tried to explain every damning exhibit and circumstance in pro-O.J. spin. It yielded a conspiracy wherein about a hundred different people with no motive whatsoever decided to frame Simpson and made a series of incredible guesses as to how to accomplish this...and, of course, were damn lucky that no evidence of the "real killers" was found and that O.J. just happened to not have an alibi for the time in question.

Simpson's actual legal team didn't even do that. They just convinced the jury that a frame-up was in the air, and if the facts said Simpson did it, the facts could not be trusted. It's starting to smell like something similar is happening in the Jackson case. His lawyers can't possibly explain every bit of evidence against him but they can come up with questions on some, alternate theories on others...and for the rest, they've got the argument that the D.A. is pursuing a personal vendetta and that the parents are just the kind of people who would phony-up a case.

Today, the brother of the supposedly-molested boy testified about Jackson giving them alcohol and playing sex games with them. Then, on cross-examination, Jackson's side got the witness to admit he'd lied in a lawsuit the parents once filed against J.C. Penney. So now the argument will be that if he'd lie in that case, you can't trust what he says in this one. That raises a doubt and if the jury decides to give Jackson the benefit of that doubt, he'll go free. I'm not suggesting it's inevitable; just that it's starting to feel like things are drifting in that direction. And who knows? Maybe that's the truth of the situation. Maybe Jackson is innocent, at least of this particular accusation. I just think it's unfortunate that if he goes free, it will be because they put the parents on trial, the same way the O.J. lawyers turned things into a trial of the L.A.P.D. Over the years, studies have shown that a lot of rape victims decline to report the crime or testify because they fear their morals will be impugned and misinterpreted. Somewhere out there, there's a set of parents who will feel much the same way if their child is abused, especially if it's by someone rich and powerful. They won't even call the police because they won't want to find themselves in a trial that's all about them and their motives.

• Posted at 7:16 PM · LINK

Good News

The Internet Movie Database has decided that Joe Barbera did not pass away last year and has removed the date of death from his listing.

In other non-dead news, I see Abe Vigoda is still alive.

• Posted at 10:30 AM · LINK

Monday, March 7, 2005

Half-Century Cartoonists

The Animation Guild is holding its Golden Awards Banquet on April 9, 2005, 6 pm at the Pickwick Gardens in Burbank, California. This event honors those veterans who've logged fifty (count 'em — 50) years in the field of animation and certain related fields. This year's honorees began their careers between 1943 and 1955, during the heyday of Warner Bros, UPA, Disney, Walter Lantz, etc. Tickets are still available. You can order and see a list of the honorees here.

• Posted at 9:02 PM · LINK

The Saga of Stan Lee Media (Cont.)

For those of you following the saga of Peter Paul and the now-defunct company he set up for Stan Lee, another chapter is unfolding.

• Posted at 10:47 AM · LINK

Today's Useless Comment

I've tried — Lord, how I've tried — to pay zero attention to the Michael Jackson case. This is not easy. I could easily avoid seeing any sign of the War in Iraq (that is still going on, right?) and the proposed evisceration of Social Security. But to venture anywhere near a source of news is to glimpse Circus Jacko, and there's no way around it.

A few days in, it's already beginning to look like Jackson will moonwalk. Ironically, Jay Leno — who has done so much to convince the world that Michael is a pedophile — may testify and become be a key contributor to Jackson's freedom. And sadly, it looks like if the King of Pop does go free, the reason will be that his lawyers have convinced the jury that the parents of the allegedly-molested kid are money-grubbing sleazeballs. This will be sad because if Jackson does go free, it would be nice if it was because he actually didn't commit the crime. But I'm not sure that kind of thing matters much anymore.

• Posted at 12:47 AM · LINK

Sunday, March 6, 2005

Soupy Sez

Speaking of Rhino Handmade, as I did a few items ago, I should mention that they still have copies availlable of their superb Soupy Sales CD set. It contains the full contents of his 1961 record, The Soupy Sales Show, which I played the hell out of when it first came out. It also has the entirety of his '62 follow-up, Up in the Air, plus a few singles and oddments, and the best thing is that Clyde Adler is also heard on it. (You can learn why this matters to me by reading this article.) Soupy's not the greatest singer, and I'd rather see him than listen to him...but his records were still fun.

My occasional items here about the Soupman bring me two or three e-mails per week from folks who fondly remember watching his program, so I know we have a lot of Soupy fans logging in here. If you're one, you might want to order this thing quickly, since they only pressed 2500 copies and can't have very many of them left. Go to the Rhino Homemade site and search for "Soupy."

• Posted at 5:18 PM · LINK

Dan and Dave

This may seem a tad tardy but I just got around to watching last week's episode of The Late Show With David Letterman with Dan Rather in the guest chair. Having read on many a blog that Letterman did a great, incisive interview and that Rather came back with good, dignified answers, I must say I felt let down on both counts. One can forgive Letterman for lobbing softballs since it is a comedy show, since Rather is a fellow CBS asset, and since Dave seems genuinely fond of the guy. I think "real" reporting has gotten so bad in this country that when a David Letterman or Jon Stewart asks something that's the tinest bit challenging, people fall all over themselves to praise it, either because it's such a novelty or because it slams reporters to note that comedians are often doing a better job of covering the news. One of the few comments of Rather's that impressed me was when he talked about the new softness of reporters who don't challenge those in power for fear of losing access.

But for the most part, Dan Rather continues to be a man who disappoints me every time I see him, and who should have left the anchor chair about half-past the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush. He really was a good reporter at one time...or, at least, he resembled a good reporter enough to remind us what that meant. He asked tough questions and he challenged the answers he received. Some folks hated him because they only think it should be done to the other side; that when you do it to theirs it's bias or disrespect or whatever you have to say to discredit the messenger. But I think the press should always be at least slightly hostile to those in power, and to the extent Rather represented that in his pre-anchoring days, I thought he was a good newsman. Back then.

The centerpiece of the man's visit to Letterman was, of course, the discussion of the infamous Bush National Guard Memo flap. Rather admitted error and hid behind the findings of the CBS internal investigation that said it was a screw-up but not one motivated by political objectives. I think that's probably true, but I also thought Rather was dead wrong when he tried to argue that America was not about to turn out an incumbent president in a time of war, and that Bush was going to get in again, no matter what. Did Dan not notice how close that election was? How even midway through Election Day, some of the pollsters thought Kerry was going to win? Even if true, "Bush was going to win anyway" is not an excuse for anything, and I thought Rather said it to respond to a charge that Letterman did not raise but others have: That the CBS screw-up took the focus off Bush's actual, probably-damning National Guard record and instead made him look like the victim of a smear.

Rather also defended himself by noting that the makers of the CBS internal report said they were unable to prove the documents were forgeries. Some bloggers were outraged at this comment, noting that the burden of proof should be on CBS to establish legitimacy, not on anyone's ability to prove the opposite. They're right...and one might note that one expert consulted by the internal investigators was pretty adamant that the alleged National Guard papers were bogus. Still, I think Rather was trying to say that despite what some have claimed, it was not inarguably obvious that the documents were phony. In fact, he still seems to be taking the position that while they should not have been used, there remains some question as to whether or not they were fakes. One wonders if he truly thinks that's so, or if he just figures that it's a less embarrassing stance to hold. Based on his sorry defense of sorry actions, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Still, I'll make a prediction here that in his new assignments, Rather will return to hands-on investigative reporting; that he will move mountains to come up with some big, sensational scoop that will eclipse the recent, sorry escapade and not leave "Rathergate" as the final chapter of his career. I'm not saying he'll succeed in this. It's been a long time since Rather has been known for anything other than quirky bromides and arousing the ire of the political right. But if somehow, he can tap into the part of him that he lost when he left the White House beat, he just might pull it off.

• Posted at 11:22 AM · LINK

Hackenbush Live!

Gary Sassaman reports on what he did last night, which was to spend An Evening With Groucho. Well, actually, it wasn't Groucho. It was Frank Ferrante. But these days, Frank is a lot funnier.

• Posted at 9:47 AM · LINK

Saturday, March 5, 2005

My Son, the Collector's Item

As you can see over in our Allan Sherman section, we're big fans of America's foremost parodier of songs. And that section has prompted a lot of e-mails from folks asking me where they can get Allan Sherman recordings, especially the rarer items.

There's no announcement up yet on their site but I have it on good authority that Rhino Handmade is prepping a boxed CD set of Allan Sherman goodies. It will not include his RCA album with the Boston Pops, but that's available on CD now. It will also not include his few early, obscure recordings for Jubilee Records. But it will include all eight of his albums for Warner Brothers, including some leftover material and alternate takes that didn't make it onto the original releases. It will also include all his singles for that company, some earlier unreleased recordings from parties, and two albums that he did as industrial/commercial jobs — Music to Dispense With, his ultra-rare album for the Dixie Cups company, and one he recorded for a carpet company. In all my years of collecting Sherman, I've never been able to score a copy of the Dixie Cups record, and I never even heard of the other one. So this is all very welcome news.

My Son, the Box is supposed to be out around June of this year. Rhino Handmade does limited pressings that actually sell out and become unavailable, so we're going to keep an eye out for this, and I'll let you know when to order. Or if you see an availability before I do, you tell me. But I thought I oughta let you know before any of you spend any more bucks on eBay for this material.

• Posted at 3:28 PM · LINK

Spelling Misteaks

This is interesting...I think. I mentioned yesterday that if one does a Google search, one discovers how few people who write about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster know how to spell either or both of their surnames. I was going to point out how this is also true of Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts — so many people insist on spelling it "Schultz" — but I see that Google compensates for this. If you search for "Schultz AND Peanuts," it just assumes you mean "Schulz" and proceeds accordingly.

I'm used to Google figuring out typos. If I go to search for "David Leterman," it asks me if I meant "David Letterman." But in the case of Schultz/Schulz, it doesn't even bother to ask.

I'm guessing — and will probably find out for sure, since at least one Google employee reads this site — that Google builds some sort of database of common spelling errors, noting how many people take it up on its suggested corrections. When the volume reaches some specified level, it just starts taking people directly to the correction. Is that how it works?

• Posted at 12:53 PM · LINK

June in March

Here's another reminder that if you live in the Los Angeles area, you have the rare opportunity to meet June Foray, buy her new book and get her to sign it to you. A goodly chunk of the local animation community will turn out this coming Wednesday evening to salute the First Lady of Cartoon Voicing...the tonsils behind Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Granny and so many more. Your objective is the Barnes & Noble shop in The Grove at Farmers Market, and June will appear at 7:30 PM. Don't miss this one.

Speaking of appearances by animation's greats: On March 16, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the Emmy people) will be unveiling a wall sculpture at their headquarters out at 5220 Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood. Only a few TV legends have been so honored and on that morning at 11 AM, they'll be adding Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to their Hall of Fame Plaza. Mr. Barbera is expected to attend, even though the Internet Movie Database has somehow decided he passed away in 2004.

I've just sent in a correction. Let's see how long it takes them to change it.

• Posted at 9:04 AM · LINK

Today's Useless Comment

I will not be running in the Los Angeles Marathon this Sunday. There are many reasons for this but a good one is that on the marathon website, it says that Tylenol 8 Hour is — and I quote — "The Official Pain Reliever of the Los Angeles Marathon." I don't participate in anything that requires an Official Pain Reliever. This is why I stopped working for Disney.

• Posted at 12:17 AM · LINK

Friday, March 4, 2005

Set the TiVo!

Late Saturday night (aka early Sunday morning), NBC is rerunning the full, 90-minute version of the third-ever episode of Saturday Night Live. Actually, as you'll note from the above ticket, it was still called NBC's Saturday Night at the time. I believe this was the last episode before they changed the name.

This is the one hosted by Rob Reiner who, it is said, freaked out after a disastrous dress rehearsal and almost walked off the show. It was good he didn't because the show miraculously came together for the live broadcast. It was not only a decent episode but it represented a giant step forward in the program finding its format and identity. The first week was a jumble of disparate segments with occasional appearances by host George Carlin. The second week, Paul Simon hosted and it turned into a long Paul Simon special, including a reunion concert with Art Garfunkel. The third week, with Reiner, it actually began to look like a sketch comedy show.

There are some nice moments in there. Andy Kaufman does his "Pop Goes the Weasel" routine. John Belushi does his Joe Cocker impression. Near the end, there's a brilliant film by Albert Brooks in which he attempts to perform open-heart surgery on someone.

The Brooks film was the subject of much upset. He was contracted to produce films of a certain length and that week, he handed in one that was more than double the agreed-upon running time. No one at SNL questioned its cleverness but already, they were beginning to sense that long film pieces did not work on a live show, and members of the cast and writing staff resented that Brooks was usurping so much of their screen time. There was a strong push to chop it down or even dump it but the host, Mr. Reiner, was one of Brooks's closest friends and he insisted it air without cuts...which it did. The whole matter pretty much soured the relationship between the show and Brooks, and one might note that after he delivered the remaining films on his contract, he disappeared from Saturday Night Live forever. He never appeared on it again, and has gone largely unmentioned in the various histories and retrospectives.

Anyway, you might want to catch the episode...or at least, Brooks trying to become a surgeon. It's buried at the end, right after a spot with the Muppets. Their "Land of Gorch" segments, though done live in the studio, were otherwise in the same category as the Brooks efforts — another good idea at the outset that didn't fit as the show found its form. As it did, everyone wanted to dump everything besides the host spots, the musical guests and the sketches. (John Belushi reportedly lobbied to dump the hosts and everything else that didn't feature John Belushi.) I always thought it was a shame Jim Henson didn't do more with Gorch. The bits didn't fit into SNL but the characters were funny and oddly appealing. I'm guessing there was some contractual problem where he had to share revenues with NBC and/or Lorne Michaels, so he opted to invest his time and energy in projects he could own outright.

• Posted at 9:45 PM · LINK

Super Men

One other thing I should have mentioned about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. If you want to research them on the Internet, it may help to remember that though they were two of the most important creators in comic book history, an amazing number of comic book fans and scholars cannot spell their names. Sometimes, it's Siegal. Sometimes, it's Schuster. Often, it's Siegal and Schuster, and there have been other permutations. I have a magazine here somewhere that says that Superman was created by Simon and Schuster.

Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at this Google search.

This probably shouldn't bother me as much as it does...but I lived through the period when DC Comics pretended Jerry and Joe had never existed...when they even published histories of the character without mentioning their names. I recall vividly sitting in the Writers Guild Theater for an early screening of the 1978 Superman movie, which gave them their first on-screen "Created by" credit after Time-Warner management came to its senses and gave them that, plus pensions. I didn't particularly like the film but that moment in the credits — when their names came up and a huge cheer erupted from the audience — was one of the most thrilling moments I can recall spending in a movie house. Considering what it took to get those names on their creation, it seems like we oughta make an effort to spell them correctly.

(The story of how Jerry and Joe waged that battle, and how master cartoonist Jerry Robinson acted as their representative, is told in the new book by Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow, which I reviewed/plugged here.)

• Posted at 9:04 PM · LINK

Today

Spent all afternoon at the dentist having old, cracking fillings drilled out and replaced with new ones. This is about as much fun as...well, as spending all afternoon at the dentist having old, cracking fillings drilled out and replaced with new ones.

Came home to find the entire neighborhood was without electricity. I called up the Department of Water and Power to inquire if anyone had reported it (someone had) and to inquire as to when it might be restored. The lady on the phone gave me an answer that roughly translated to "Sometime between now and the next time the Red Sox are in the World Series." Her tone of voice seemed to favor the latter so I spent the next few hours trying to find a flashlight without dead batteries and wagering whether the power would be on before the Novocain wore off. The Novocain beat the electricity by about an hour. I'm going to hurriedly post a few things before it goes off again...

• Posted at 8:46 PM · LINK

Super Story

As a few of you may know, the families of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster have taken legal action to reclaim the copyright to Superman and certain allied characters. I think this is the most important news story to hit the comic book industry in decades but most of the sites that report on the business take the Jeff Gannon approach to news and just print press releases, so they're a lot more interested in who's signed a long-term contract to ink Iron Man. In fairness, some fans are more interested in that, too...but I think it's Big News. The business was largely founded on the success of Superman, and many companies thrived on the concept that you could lock up the rights to someone's idea, boot them out and then make all the money there was to be made off it. Because some decent folks at Time-Warner and DC Comics came to power, Siegel and Shuster did not live out their declining years in poverty and humiliation.

The two men received a respectable pension, and Jerry was at great peace the last time I saw him, which was only a few weeks before he passed away in 1996. Nevertheless, if he can see what's going on, I'm sure he's cheering on his widow and children as they pursue legal avenues that were not open to him for most of his lifetime.

As I said, a lot of the comic book community has not heard about this legal action, and some of what has circulated is in the Erroneous Rumor category. Some more of it has taken the form of panicked fans, worrying that Superman will be plucked out of the DC Universe, rupturing the precious continuity of the Legion of Super-Heroes or otherwise disrupting their collections. (It is highly unlikely that Superman will ever not be a Time-Warner property. The squabble is pretty much about how the super-millions of bucks the character grosses will be rewarded, and whether the saga of Siegel and Shuster will have a happier, albeit posthumous, ending.)

One of the few places where you can get solid info is the news site, Newsarama, where Matt Brady has been going beyond cut-and-pasting press handouts and filing stories like this one. Some of it's a bit complicated but Matt's presentation seems to be both fair and accurate, and I wanted to call your attention to it. Keep your eye on his site for further developments.

• Posted at 10:40 AM · LINK

TeeVee 4 Me

Starting March 18, TV Land will be airing two hours of SCTV every Friday night. A year or so ago, this would have come as glorious news...and it's still not bad news, I suppose. But now that many of those shows are readily available on DVD, it's like, "Oh, that's nice."

If it is bad news, it's only because some of us would like to see the many TV channels we receive resurrect some old shows that are not otherwise available. I remember that when I got my DirecTV satellite dish, I thought I was in for more of a feast than I got. I figured that with all the channels I could now receive, surely one of them would be running old Sgt. Bilko episodes...or Car 54, Where Are You? It turned out they were all running The Andy Griffith Show and M*A*S*H, sometimes many times a day, instead of more obscure shows that I think I'd like to see again.

You never know. Sometimes, you see something again after many years...and the main fascination is to wonder what you ever saw in the program and if maybe they've refilmed them since then. So while I think I'd like to see certain old favorite shows again, maybe not. I recently watched some old episodes of Hennessy, The Good Guys, Calvin and the Colonel, and a few others I'd once enjoyed. In each case, there was a small "nostalgia rush" and the fun of seeing how well my memory stacked up against what it was remembering. Beyond that though, there has usually been a slight letdown. I felt more like a distant spectator of those shows than I did, back when I used to look forward to them.

But then, maybe that's me and not the shows. As I get older, I find that TV is more and more something I watch while I do something else. I'm running last night's What's My Line? rerun right now as I write this, and I'm watching with about 20% of my concentration. That's just enough to scan for things that are worthy of my full attention and if one of those pops up on the screen, I'll stop writing this and watch for real. This is one of the luxuries of the TiVo. I can easily record things to watch when I feel like it, and I can watch them with this kind of divided attentiveness because I can always rewind if need be.

I wish we had available to us, a wider array of old TV shows — and old movies, for that matter. But I'm not sure I'd watch most of them with more than about a fifth of my attention.

• Posted at 9:19 AM · LINK

Thursday, March 3, 2005

Game Show Goodies

I haven't mentioned GSN's Black-and-White Overnight bloc lately. They've been running old episodes of What's My Line? for the eight-jillionth time and Beat the Clock and The Name's the Same for what I believe are the first reruns ever. I find Beat the Clock to be largely unwatchable. I thought the show was stupid when I was six years old and nothing has changed since then. The Name's the Same is not without interest, however, largely because of its panel which over the years included Carl Reiner, Abe Burrows, Gene Rayburn, Meredith Willson, Joan Alexander and — in episodes reaired recently — comedian Arnold Stang and the creator of Droodles, Roger Price.

Mr. Price, who passed away in 1990, was a comedy writer of some renown in the fifties. He did the foreword for The Mad Reader, the first paperback collection of Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comics. Later on, Price edited a short-lived, little-known (but very funny) humor magazine called Grump, and co-created with Leonard Stern the party game, "Mad Libs." He was also a cartoonist of sorts, doing his "Droodles" on TV shows, books and even for a time, a syndicated newspaper strip. The Droodle at above left is entitled, "A ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch" and the one at above right is "Man playing trombone in a phone booth." Well, what else would you call them?

The Name's the Same was a never-quite-successful attempt by game show mavens Goodson and Todman to replicate their own What's My Line? but with odd names instead of occupations. The show came and went and came back again and changed rules and hosts and panelists but never achieved the stature of the original. Robert Q. Lewis was the moderator for much of its run and he managed to be everything you wouldn't want in a game show host. He was cold, he was bad at ad-libbing and he was very bad at (or perhaps disinterested in) setting up the panelists to be funny. As a result, the show depended heavily on "gambits" for its humor. "Gambit" was the behind-the-scenes term for a question that was planted with the panel so they would "inadvertently" ask something very funny. The other night, for example, they had to guess what was in a box that, we knew, contained baby clothes. One of the lady panelists asked, "Is this something a woman might get as a wedding present?" The audience howled but it was pretty obvious the exchange was planned. Some weeks, the show did this to excess.

Lewis was replaced as host by Dennis James, who was even worse, and other emcees were tried. Coming up in about ten days or so on GSN should be a run of episodes that were hosted by Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. They just about closed out the show's run because, I guess, someone figured that if two of the funniest men ever on TV and radio couldn't make the program work, no one could. Anyway, I've never seen the Bob & Ray episodes so I'm looking forward to them.

We don't yet know what GSN will put in the slot when their inventory of The Name's the Same runs out in seven or eight weeks. Odds are it will be another run of either the I've Got a Secret or To Tell the Truth libraries. I'd like something that hasn't been rerun but I'll settle for either of those again. Anything...just so long as it isn't increased airings of Beat the Clock.

• Posted at 1:37 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 2, 2005

Gag Gag Order

Jay Leno may be called as a witness in the Michael Jackson ~~Circus~~ Trial. His lawyers are trying to make sure the gag order affecting those involved in the trial doesn't impact his ability to mine the subject for monologue jokes. Here's the story.

• Posted at 9:39 PM · LINK

We Have a Winner!

I love how I can just ask a question on this weblog and, nine times outta ten, someone will e-mail me the answer within the hour.

The fine cartoonist, Nate Butler — who I haven't seen since we had lunch at the WonderCon — writes to note that in one edition of the National Cartoonists Society album, Al Smith wrote and even hand-lettered his biography. It says in there that he was born on March 21...so that's a pretty good source of info. Thanks, Nate. Next lunch is on you.

• Posted at 8:26 PM · LINK

Over at Toonopedia...

My ol' pal Don Markstein notes my birthday over on his Toonopedia site (thanks, Don) and adds in a page about DNAgents, the comic I co-created with Will Meugniot.

And Don has a question. Once upon a time, there was a cartoonist named Al Smith. He drew the Mutt and Jeff newspaper strip for a measly 48 years. Some sources say that Mr. Smith was born on March 2 while others say March 21. Don would like to set the record straight. Does anyone reading this have any definitive info? Write him or write me if you do.

• Posted at 7:52 PM · LINK

Wednesday

Those of you who live in Southern California and have been concerned about further rainfall can breathe easier. I've just arranged to have a new roof put on my leaky garage. Once I get it on there, which will be some time next week, there will be very little chance of more precipitation...not unless I do something dumb and get the car washed.

I'm also getting a new door for the garage. It's a two-car garage and I have this metal door on there now, with a wooden frame all the way around it. A rod from the Genie automatic garage door opener is connected to the top of the wooden frame and when you push the button, that rod is pushed or pulled by the motor to open or close the door. The other night when I pushed the button, the rod pulled on the frame and instead of opening the door, it split the frame in two, causing the whole door to buckle and flap out of shape. This is not a good thing.

Applying the strength of ten men, which I have, I managed to get the door all the way open and to move my main driving-around car to the street. Then, applying the strength of ten more men (which I also have), I managed to get the door closed, which is how it will stay until the garage door people come by to install its replacement. This all costs money, so I'll soon be inaugurating the Garage Sale feature on this site. I decided to start it a few months ago, but I didn't figure I'd be using that income to pay for my garage.

Thanks to all of you who've sent Happy Birthday wishes. I'm spending most of today on a script so posting here should be light for a while, but I do appreciate the e-mails. If someone wants to send me a new garage, that would be nice, too.

• Posted at 1:25 PM · LINK

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Dead Python

Here's a video of two excerpts from the memorial service for Graham Chapman, the deceased member of Monty Python. [CAUTION: Contains language.]

• Posted at 11:46 AM · LINK

Morning P.S.

And I should have mentioned that that neat page on the Oswald the Rabbit cartoons is the work of David Gerstein and Pietro Shakarian. Individually and collectively, David and Pietro have been responsible for digging up much valuable info on classic animation and have selflessly put it up on the web for all. The Classic Felix the Cat Page is one example. The Columbia Crow's Nest is another.

• Posted at 8:35 AM · LINK

The Other Great Cartoon Wabbit

These are posters from the Oswald the Rabbit cartoons. As you may know, Walter Lantz's company inherited the character when Walt Disney, who started the Oswald series, lost the rights to the character in a dispute with his distributor. What you may not know is that after Walt and before Walter, another studio produced more than two dozen cartoons of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It was the Mintz Studio, composed largely of Disney artists who'd been hired away behind Walt's back. How were the cartoons they made? I don't know. I've never seen one...and neither have a lot of animation buffs. But I have seen a terrific new wing of Jerry Beck's website that documents what is known about this "lost" body of work. This is another one of those Internet projects that make you say, "Boy, I'm glad somebody did this." And who knows? One of these days, I may even get to see one of these cartoons.

• Posted at 1:00 AM · LINK

April 1, 2005 • Current • February 1, 2005

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 10:01 AM · LINK

Piece Offering

• Posted at 1:09 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 10:31 PM · LINK

Dinosaurs of Dining

• Posted at 11:18 AM · LINK

School Days

• Posted at 10:37 AM · LINK

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Set the TiVo!

• Posted at 9:59 PM · LINK

Coming Soon to DVD: Everything!

• Posted at 2:29 PM · LINK

Animated Discussion

• Posted at 8:20 AM · LINK

Perfectly Frank

• Posted at 1:02 AM · LINK

Monday, March 28, 2005

Writers' Wars

• Posted at 8:19 AM · LINK

Simon Legree Lives!

• Posted at 1:19 AM · LINK

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Secret Love's

• Posted at 10:15 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 1:55 PM · LINK

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Fairness Doctrine

• Posted at 1:46 PM · LINK

Friday, March 25, 2005

SNL Flashbacks

• Posted at 5:00 PM · LINK

The Two and Only

• Posted at 11:15 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 10:41 AM · LINK

Comic Book Commentary

• Posted at 8:10 AM · LINK

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 9:37 AM · LINK

Pole Cat

• Posted at 8:05 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 2:52 AM · LINK

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 11:38 AM · LINK

Writers Vs. Writers

• Posted at 10:38 AM · LINK

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Bear Necessity

• Posted at 9:15 PM · LINK

Amazing Bagdasarian Fact

• Posted at 8:19 PM · LINK

Alvin's Dad

• Posted at 2:29 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 12:54 PM · LINK

Just in Time

• Posted at 9:38 AM · LINK

Rich and Happy

• Posted at 12:05 AM · LINK

Monday, March 21, 2005

Music Men

• Posted at 10:13 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 11:36 AM · LINK

Sunday, March 20, 2005

One More From the E-Mailbag...

• Posted at 1:45 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

• Posted at 12:30 PM · LINK

Cartoonists Convergence

• Posted at 10:53 AM · LINK