Friday, April 29, 2005

Zeke Zekley, R.I.P.

A great cartoonist named Zeke Zekley died yesterday at the age of 90, and others in his field are sadly phoning one another to ask, "Have you heard?" Zeke was born in Chicago on February 11, 1915 and grew up in Detroit. His first cartooning job was at age 18 for the Detroit Mirror which, he used to joke, promptly went out of business. He freelanced for a time, then moved to California where he quickly got a job at Disney...only to be laid off two weeks later when the studio shut down for the summer. Broke and desperate for work, he happened to be doodling on the tablecloth in a restaurant one night when a man noticed his work and introduced himself as the brother of George McManus.

McManus was one of America's most widely-read cartoonists with his newspaper strip, Bringing Up Father, and he was in desperate need of an assistant. Zeke was quickly hired and the two men became close friends, with Zeke eventually drawing and even writing more of Jiggs and Maggie than McManus. (Well into his eighties, Zeke was still able to draw those characters in a manner most would find indistinguishable from their maker.)

Zeke worked with McManus for years and it was assumed that when McManus died or retired, Zeke would take complete control of the strip. This did not happen. In 1954, McManus died and King Features Syndicate elected to give the job to an outsider — a move that was unpopular with other strip cartoonists and which caused some of them to make contractual demands about who would take over their strips after they passed away.

Zeke recovered from the disappointment and went on to create his own strip for the McNaught Syndicate — a Blondie clone called Dud Dudley. More than a few people could not remember if the comic strip character Dud Dudley was drawn by cartoonist Zeke Zekley or if the comic strip character Zeke Zekley was drawn by cartoonist Dud Dudley. Either way, the strip only lasted a year, which was a shame since it was one of the cleverest of the many strips that attempted to emulate the success of Blondie and Dagwood. Zeke tried a few others — Peachy Keen and a panel called Popsie — which also never caught on.

After that, Zeke devoted most of his energy to his own company, Sponsored Comics, which produced comic books for commercial and advertising purposes. He produced comics that were given out at McDonald's and at regional stores, and many other venues. For a time, he handled PS Magazine, the Army's semi-educational book that Will Eisner had done for years.

Zeke was a great guy, generous with his time and talents. He employed a great many cartoonists but was not above sitting down at the board and drawing or lettering pages himself. Funeral services will be held on Monday afternoon in Los Angeles. Drop me a note if you'd like details.

• Posted at 4:20 PM · LINK

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Senator Al?

Here's a nice piece over on Salon about Al Franken and the possibility that he will run for a Senate seat in Minnesota in the not-too-distant future. Of note is this quote from Jesse Ventura...

The moment [Franken] declares his candidacy, he has to go off the radio. He has to look forward to having his entire past exposed. He'd better come clean and be honest with it. If he's done drugs in the past, he better be honest about that. He better be honest about things he did at Harvard, if he has anything in the closet.

You know, I wonder how much stuff like that matters anymore. I mean, certainly "things in the past" get used by your opposition to try and convince people that you're a bad, immoral person. But how much did reports of past drug use and orgying hurt Arnold Schwarzenegger? How much did rumors of past cocaine use and dirty business dealings hurt George W. Bush? It's been a long time since Ted Kennedy had any trouble getting re-elected. And if Bill Clinton were to ever run for Mayor or Governor of New York, he'd win in a walk. For that matter, Jesse Ventura managed to get into office without being faulted for past steroid use and his violent past and all the lying and fakery that's involved in professional wrestling.

I'm wondering if the Conventional Wisdom isn't coming down to this: If you have a history of questionable deeds, a certain group will yell a lot about them and argue that it disqualifies you from public service...but those are people who weren't going to vote for you, anyway. Another group, who've decided to vote for you if for no other reason than your party affiliation, might not like what you've done but they'll decide it doesn't matter. (I am talking here of misdeeds that can be said to be truly in the past and largely victimless, like sexual escapades or drug use. I don't mean something like you killed a guy...) Given the choice of two, wouldn't you rather vote for the reformed drug addict and male hustler who shares your views, as opposed to the clean-cut ex-minister who wants to make everything you like illegal?

That leaves the middle...the otherwise undecided. Bringing up your sordid past might sway a few votes but does it make a huge difference to voters? I suppose in some parts of the country, some past deeds would matter a lot, but I sense the trend is moving towards people not caring. Arnold carried some pretty Conservative/Pat Boone districts of California. I think in some cases, it's a matter of us being so cynical that we presume everyone on our ballots has something shameful they're concealing. If it comes out that the candidate sold drugs to school kids and was sexually involved with a sheep, we say, "Well, that's not so bad...unless, of course, the sheep was a minor."

Two other things about the Salon article. One is that in it, he tells a joke that Buddy Hackett told him. It's the exact same joke that Buddy told me once at a party and which I quoted in this piece. Buddy sure got a lot of mileage out of that joke.

And the other thing is that it's on Salon. If you don't subscribe, they make your purchase a day pass or sit through tons of ads or trim someone's hedges or...well, I don't know what they make you do to read articles there. I subscribe. There's lots of great free stuff to read on the Internet but I still feel Salon is well worth the bucks.

• Posted at 12:56 AM · LINK

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Keeping Tabs

Hey, isn't it about time we checked in to see if Abe Vigoda is still alive?

• Posted at 6:32 PM · LINK

Somebody Loves Me?

A few years ago, I had a flurry of odd calls at my home. The phone would ring on one of my many incoming lines, I'd answer it and I'd hear a woman's voice say, "Oh, sorry. I have the wrong number." And then the party on the other end would hang up...only the party seemed to be a computer of some sort. The woman's voice was recorded. I theorized that this was some sort of "fishing" expedition on the part of some firm that was compiling phone numbers to sell to someone. Perhaps they were looking for phone numbers that would be answered by fax machines. Perhaps they were trying to separate data lines from voice lines...something like that. But obviously, the mere fact that I answered the phone gave them whatever information they were seeking.

Recently, I have begun getting odd text messages on my cellphone. First off, it's odd that I'm getting text messages at all since only a few people have my cellphone number and none of them are set up to send a text message. But these communications come in every day or two, usually in the evening, and they say things like, "Going to bed. I love u" and "Cannot do lunch tomorrow. I love u." They are not from anyone I know.

The text messages are accompanied by the sender's phone number. I tried voice-dialing that number but it goes to a modem/data line, which is even odder. In theory, it should go to someone's cell phone. I thought of sending a text message back but the modem line thing made me suspect it might be a scam to locate cellphone numbers that are set up to receive text messages. I'm afraid that if I write back, I will validate my number and it'll be sold to hundreds of companies that will send me text messages offering to refinance my home or enlarge my breasts or enlarge my home or refinance my breasts or something. I'm assuming that if some real human being is text-messaging their loved one at the wrong number, they'll find out about it soon enough.

It reminds me of a time about 15 years ago when some guy kept phoning my house and asking for Donna. I did know a Donna then, but she wasn't here and I quickly determined that the caller was passionately in love with, and desperate to talk to some Donna I did not know. Something had gone wrong between them and he was certain that if he could just talk to his Donna, they could straighten it all out and get back together and eventually marry and have kids, etc. At first, he called over and over, refusing to believe that he had the wrong number. He was certain I was lying to him and that his Donna was in the next room, avoiding him. I thought of saying something like, "Yeah, she's here but she's in the pool having sex with a bunch of midgets," but he sounded so serious, I was afraid he'd open his wrists.

I finally convinced him he really and truly had the wrong number, and he read me the number he thought he was dialing. It was one crucial digit different from mine. He apologized and hung up to dial the correct number...and sure enough, he got me again. This happened three or four more times in a row, like he was accidentally dialing not only the wrong number each time but, oddly, the same wrong number. Finally, I told him something was probably wrong with his phone dial. The two was registering as a three. He said, "No, it's this damned faulty redial button. Every time I push it, I get you."

Donna was smart to get out when she did.

• Posted at 6:21 PM · LINK

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...

Tomorrow night's 60 Minutes Wednesday will have a feature on the new Monty Python Broadway musical, Spamalot. And tonight's Charlie Rose Show, which runs tomorrow in some parts of the country, includes an interview with its director, Mike Nichols.

• Posted at 6:26 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

As mentioned earlier, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has introduced a bill that would make it illegal (!) for the National Weather Service to make its forecasts available for free on the Internet. The National Weather Service is supported by those of us who pay taxes, and its data is the foundation of all weather forecasting across the continent. There are private weather services that take the NWS info and supplement it with additional data, as well as processing the NWS data through different computer models. There are others that do a fair amount of their own forecasting but even those firms have derived their computer models by studying NWS data, and their forecasts are always done with one eye on what the NWS says. So basically, what the private weather services sell is information derived from the work of the NWS. Santorum's bill is based on the premise that it is "unfair competition" for the NWS to give away this information because it might make it harder for private companies to charge money for their versions of it.

The most prominent of the private companies is AccuWeather, which is based in Santorum's alleged home state of Pennsylvania. (He actually lives in Virginia, a fact you'll probably hear mentioned often as re-election time draws near.) Is anyone surprised that the top execs of AccuWeather have donated a couple thousand bucks to the "Santorum in 2006" campaign?

This is out-and-out, unabashed bribery. Sometimes, when a representative takes money from the cheese industry and then pushes for a law that benefits the cheese industry, there's a rationale: The legislation was long overdue. Others have noted the problems it's intended to fix. The beneficiaries are just supporting that benevolent cause. Something like that. But in this case, no one was pushing for this change. In 50+ years, no one thought it was bad for the National Weather Service to be making its findings available to the public. It's just Santorum taking money for screwing the public...and his price is darned cheap, at that.

Yeah, this kind of thing happens all the time, and about bigger issues than the weather forecast. But it still ticks me off.

• Posted at 6:12 PM · LINK

The Kreskin of Komix

The other day here, I noted that Garry Trudeau has a tough job in Doonesbury, writing topical material that has to go to press way in advance. As noted, he's had a pretty amazing track record of not having his "projections" go awry. What happens between the time he sends a batch of daily strips off to his syndicate and the time they see print rarely renders them untimely.

As Ray Arthur noted to me in an e-mail just now, the Trudeau Luck is holding: Today's Doonesbury strip is about George W. Bush pledging his friendship and support to the embattered Tom DeLay. And today's developments in the DeLay situation are being summarized in news stories with headlines like Bush Gives DeLay Show of Support. A nice bit of prognostication there, in a strip that was probably drawn two weeks ago.

• Posted at 11:53 AM · LINK

Monday, April 25, 2005

Special Two-Way Wrist Radio TiVo Alert!

Here's a nice picture that my pal Ruben Arellano took a few months ago when visiting Pawnee, Oklahoma. As you can see, they're proud that it was the birthplace of the creator of Dick Tracy, Chester Gould. Or at least, they're proud enough to paint something on the side of a building.

This is a good way for me to alert you to an upcoming What's My Line? treasure on GSN. Mr. Gould was a guest on the 4/22/56 episode of that venerable game show, and I think it's the one GSN is airing early Wednesday morning.

Also, if you're a fan of great ventriloquists, you might want to watch or TiVo the following night's (day's?) show, which should be the one from 4/29/56. Paul Winchell is on the panel, with Jerry Mahoney popping up every now and then from under the desk, and the mystery guest is Edgar Bergen with Mortimer Snerd. Winchell was always in awe of Bergen and was genuinely thrilled when he figured out who it was.

A lot of fascinating people popped up on What's My Line?, which is one of the reasons I enjoy watching these hoary reruns. If you watch over the week or two, you'll see appearances by Frank Lloyd Wright, Ronald Reagan, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Liberace, Bob Hope, Margaret Truman, and the bodybuilder whose torso adorned many a comic book advertisement...Charles Atlas.

• Posted at 1:12 AM · LINK

Sunday, April 24, 2005

The Saga of Stan Lee Media (Cont.)

For those of you following the Peter Paul/Stan Lee Media story, here's yet another chapter.

• Posted at 9:17 PM · LINK

Public Appeal

My pal Ken Plume is looking for something and I'll bet someone reading this can help out. It's a cartoon by the famous pre-war British editorial cartoonist Paul Crum (real name: Roger Pettiward). It depicts two hippopotamuses, their noses above water, and one is saying something like, "I keep thinking it's a Tuesday." A collection of his work was printed in '85 entitled The Last Cream Bun and we assume it's in there. Ken needs a scan and he's a good guy...so if you have access to this and would like to get thanked profusely in an article, drop a note to me and I'll forward it on to Ken.

• Posted at 8:46 PM · LINK

Possible TiVo Alert!

Early tomorrow morn — 8:30 AM on my satellite dish — TV Land is running the episode of I Dream of Jeannie that guest stars Dave Barry. This alert is for those of you who want to see the late comedian and cartoon voice actor in action. See this earlier posting for background details.

• Posted at 9:33 AM · LINK

3 Down, 22 To Go...

Just came across a box that UPS delivered Friday and which my cleaning lady apparently brought in. How nice to find the third volume of The Complete Peanuts, which takes us into the 1955-1956 period. This was when Mr. Schulz really started figuring out what he wanted to do with his characters. Charlie Brown starts to act like Charlie Brown, Lucy starts to act like Lucy, etc. He's still fiddling with their relative ages but as soon as Linus gets a few years older and Sally Brown miraculously develops, we'll be through that era of indecision.

Another nice thing about the strips in this volume is a personal one. As a kid, I avidly collected the Holt, Rinehart and Winston paperbacks of Peanuts strips. They were a dollar each at a little shop called Bookhaven that used to be on Westwood Boulevard, about halfway between Wilshire and Santa Monica. It was a folksy little bookstore run by two older women and it looked like someone's living room. On all but the hottest days, they'd have a fire going in a fireplace, and their dog would be sound asleep next to it. Bookhaven dealt mainly in rentals of current best sellers — books too new to be obtainable at the public library — and my parents went there almost every Saturday to take something back and get something new to read. I'd usually go and if there was a new Peanuts paperback out, or a B.C. collection or anything of the sort, it would be purchased for me, and it would be read over and over and over. I can recall enjoying many of the strips in this new third volume of The Complete Peanuts while sitting in one of those easy chairs in Bookhaven, waiting for my folks to make their selections.

Also nice to see ol' Pig-Pen on the cover. Pig-Pen didn't appear often in the strip, even back then, and it seemed like Schulz would later forget about him for decades at a time. I always liked the character...though I must admit that as a youth, I guess I was laboring under a misperception. Around '68, Schulz introduced Franklin into the strip and the press noted that Peanuts was now integrated; that there was finally a black kid in the neighborhood. I recall reading that and realizing that when I was younger, I'd kind of vaguely assumed that Pig-Pen was a black kid. I'm not sure where I got that impression. Maybe it was the way Schulz drew his hair. Maybe he appeared somewhere in color and they put a lot of brown on him to represent mud. Non-Caucasians have endured some enormously clumsy representations of their skin colors in comic books and strips, including being colored the same as Caucasians, so you never know about some of them. Anyway, I had my great moment of racial awakening when I realized I was mistaken about Pig-Pen, and whenever I see one of those movies where in the last reel, it's revealed that someone has been "passing for white," I think of him. I believe there were one or two early Peanuts strips where I wasn't sure Pig-Pen wasn't a girl, too.

Is there anything I can quibble with about this book? Well, I still think the art direction is a little too much the style of the books' designer, Seth, as opposed to Charles M. Schulz, but I suppose that ship has sailed. Also, the promotion on the Fantagraphics website says that this edition is supposed to contain "an epilogue by series editor Gary Groth," but I can't find one in my copy. Still, the book's a must-have, so I'll just throw in an Amazon link and suggest you click on it.

• Posted at 12:06 AM · LINK

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Gas Guzzling

And how much will it cost a resident of Los Angeles to drive to the new Zankou Chicken? Find out here.

• Posted at 8:09 PM · LINK

Important Stuff

My friends who live around the west side of Los Angeles will be thrilled to know that as of this morning, Zankou Chicken has opened their latest outlet. It's on Sepulveda, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, in an area that had no decent restaurants when I worked over there in the early eighties. Zankou serves exquisite rotisserie chicken which most diners slather with the garlicky Zankou sauce.

Right around the corner is a shopping center with a Koo Koo Roo Chicken...so in one block, you have my two favorite places in the world to devour poultry. I may just camp out on the block from now on.

• Posted at 2:45 PM · LINK

Funny Discs

This article over on Slate says that Jeff Foxworthy is the best-selling comedian of all time, at least in terms of selling record albums and CDs. A couple of folks have written to ask me if this is so.

Well, maybe. Foxworthy has sold a lot more records than you'd imagine. The problem is that no one can say for sure how many were sold by the only other real contender. Redd Foxx made and sold a ridiculous number of comedy albums, many of them for obscure companies whose sales were never charted via mainstream measures. In many cases, Mr. Foxx didn't know how many he sold. He did them either for flat fees or for dishonest companies that never paid him his royalties. Some of those records were revived, repackaged and reissued over and over with different jackets, especially after he became popular on Sanford and Son. There's no way to ever prove it but it wouldn't surprise me if all those Foxx "party records" collectively sold well over the fifteen million total that Slate reports for Foxworthy.

And actually, there's another contender, depending on your definition of a comedy record. Some of the albums by Ray Stevens would probably qualify. Some, obviously, would not. Still, if you counted singles and compilation albums, there have probably been fifteen million records sold that contained Stevens' recording of "The Streak"...and that's just one of many. The guy's been making records for 48 years and he still sells millions of his "comedy classics" videos.

I can't think of anyone else who might be near the 15 million mark...so I'll just mention that if you want to read an article I wrote about Redd Foxx, click here.

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK

Friday, April 22, 2005

Friday Afternoon

A hovering grey cloud of a deadline will probably keep me posting very much here the next few days but I wanted to link to two items, both of which I came across on Talking Points Memo, a fine political weblog maintained by Joshua Micah Marshall.

One is this item where he's quoting Andrew Sullivan and...oh, here. I'll save you all that mouse-clicking effort and quote it myself...

QUOTE FOR THE DAY I: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials." — President John F. Kennedy.

At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn't the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn't Bill Frist see President Kennedy as an enemy of "people of faith"? Just asking.

Good point. Someplace — I wish I could find it — I once read a fine article by Kurt Vonnegut which said, of various religious-based political movements, something like, "They don't understand that in America, we allow different religions to co-exist not by denying their worth but by agreeing to set them aside in matters of public policy." I even find a certain amount of arrogance in the very term, "People of faith," because it presumes that people who are not of your faith — or even of the way you spin a political matter as an expression of your faith — are people of no faith at all. Anyway, on to the other item...

I feel like everyone who lives in the state of Pennsylvania owes the rest of the country an apology for making Rick Santorum a Senator. And don't write and tell me you didn't vote for him. You should have tried harder to keep this guy from getting into office. This is the man who compared consensual homosexual sex to someone having sex with a dog. This is the man who is taking outright bribes from Wal-Mart to push legislation favorable to a company that already thinks it's above the law. This is the man who tried to gut medical malpractice awards even though his wife recently won a large one. His latest gambit is that he wants to block the U.S. Weather Service from making its weather data available for free on the Internet. This is the weather data that is paid for by our tax money. Santorum has introduced a bill — and apparently, a vague and sloppily worded one, at that — that would stop that because it cuts into the profits of private services like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. Do I even have to explain what a rotten, unfair-to-us idea this is? Hope he got paid well for this one.

I'm going back to that assignment. I'll check in from time to time over the weekend.

• Posted at 4:23 PM · LINK

Bidding on Pope Futures

Rogers Cadenhead is a clever writer. We've crossed paths a few times — I don't recall if I interviewed him or he interviewed me but it was one of those — so I was surprised to see him on Countdown With Keith Olbermann yesterday on MSNBC. (And by the way, that there's just about the best news-type show on TV these days, as far as I'm concerned.)

With a bit of foresight, Rogers managed to grab up the domain name, www.benedictXVI.com before some porn huckster or online casino could get to it. Very swift. And he doesn't intend to keep it; not unless they don't want it over at The Vatican. On his weblog, he explains what he intends to get out of this, and I'm cheering him on. I'm hoping they go for the World Peace but I'll settle to see him get the hat. Can't believe that some people apparently think he's doing something wrong here.

• Posted at 1:44 AM · LINK

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Game Show News

My spy at GSN says that the new (old) show going on in the late night black-and-white slot is another run of the old To Tell the Truth episodes hosted by Bud Collyer. Not a bad choice. And in case you haven't noticed, the GSN morning schedule now includes the 1990-1991 daytime version of To Tell the Truth, which was hosted by Gordon Elliott, Lynn Swann and then Alex Trebek. No matter who hosted, this one never caught on.

• Posted at 12:01 AM · LINK

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Yokumberry Video

Given how much I've mentioned it on this weblog, I feel like Paramount Home Video owes me a commission on their new DVD of the 1959 movie of Li'l Abner. (Actually, I'm receiving a small one. You folks out there have ordered enough of 'em through the Amazon link on this site to pay for the copy I purchased.) I received mine today and it looks like a good (not great) transfer and of course, there are no extras. I'm guessing it'll be at least 2-3 years before they bring out a more expensive version with bonus features.

It would have been nice if they'd lassoed a couple of cast members for interviews, especially Peter Palmer, who was so perfect in the title role. I interviewed Mr. Palmer a few years ago for this article and this one, and recently a reporter in Tampa, Florida interviewed him for this article about what he's up to, these days. Not mentioned in that article for some reason is the fact that he's been working with a little theater group in his neck of the woods, directing (among other plays) a production of Li'l Abner last year. You will note that he's annoyed about the mislabelled DVD of the other Abner movie, which we told you all about here.

For those of you who buy the new Abner DVD, here are the answers to the questions you'll otherwise send me: Yes, that's Valerie Harper (of Rhoda) and Beth Howland (of Alice) among the chorus ladies. Yes, that's Donna Douglas (of The Beverly Hillbillies) with one line as a Dogpatch resident. Yes, that's Paul Frees doing the voiceover of the newsman. Yes, Leslie Parrish's singing voice was dubbed...by Imogene Lyn, whose voice you know from many Tex Avery cartoons. (See here for details.) Yes, it's true that Ms. Parrish married Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, then pretty much disappeared from Hollywood. Yes, that's Jerry Lewis in a brief cameo. No, that is not Jamie Farr playing Evil-Eye Fleagle. Yes, the movie is very similar to the Broadway show but with some songs cut or altered. No, although there have been rumors in the past that a Broadway revival was planned, one does not seem imminent.

The oddest plan I heard of to bring the show back to the Great White Way was a few years back. It was optioned by some group with which Tony Curtis was affiliated and as I understood it, the idea was that Mr. Curtis would serve as a producer and play several small non-singing roles in it. The late Elliott Caplin, who was Al Capp's brother and a manager of the property, told me about the deal. I asked him what he thought the odds were of it actually reaching New York. He said, "Oh, about one in a thousand." Then he paused and added, "If they get rid of Tony Curtis, maybe one in five hundred."

So don't hold your breath. Just enjoy the film version.

• Posted at 9:15 PM · LINK

You Blockhead!

Charlie Brown really gets no respect.

(By the way: The reference in the article to a "1957 Peanuts storyboard" is misleading. A storyboard is something created for animation or film, and '57 was before Peanuts was ever animated. What was involved in this story was obviously the original art for a Peanuts newspaper strip.)

• Posted at 1:07 PM · LINK

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

DeLaying Tactics

With the rise of the Internet and 24/7 cable news, reporting in this country is getting more immediate. Something happens at 1:00 and it's unthinkable that we all don't hear about it before, say, 1:01. More than ever, this makes me admire the guts and wisdom of Garry Trudeau, who has to address topical events in Doonesbury, a newspaper strip that is written and drawn a minimum of 10-15 days before publication. (The Sunday pages have to be done even farther ahead than that.) A lot can happen in those 10-15 days, and strips have occasionally been yanked or altered because of unexpected events...but not as often as one might expect. For the most part, he's been pretty good with his projections.

Last June, he had a sequence going about George Tenet taking the blame for CIA errors when Tenet resigned. A few lines of dialogue had to be changed at the last second but Trudeau wasn't really wrong. Tenet's downfall just occurred a little sooner than expected. This week, Doonesbury is holding a "Tom DeLay Deathwatch," based on the premise that the House Majority Leader can't possibly retain his job for long...I guess. I mean, Trudeau may have already drawn strips in which it's revealed that this Deathwatch was premature on the part of the press, but I don't think that's where he's going with it. I think he's operating on the premise that DeLay's going down.

Is he right? We'll see. What I find interesting here is that of the many pundits one can read in the daily newspaper, Trudeau is the one who's in the most trouble when his predictions don't pan out. He has to work a week or so ahead of everyone else, and with the knowledge that if he's wrong, he may have to throw out a lot of work and dig himself out of a deep hole. In politics, a lot of things that seem certain turn out to not be so certain.

I thought about that today when things took an unexpected turn in the John Bolton confirmation hearings. Columnists and reporters of all political persuasions have said that the Bolton nomination is a lock to be voted out of committee, which will presumably mean he gets in. The few who've hedged their bets have suggested that if there is a defection in Republican ranks, it would come from either Lincoln Chafee or Chuck Hagel. But today, both indicated they would vote for Bolton, and it was Senator George Voinovich of Ohio who caused the vote to be postponed to allow for more investigations. No one — but no one — saw that coming ten minutes before it occurred.

• Posted at 8:49 PM · LINK

Useless Breaking News

Here's what's currently up at over on the Fox News site...

• Posted at 9:07 AM · LINK

Paperback Rider

When a performance artist makes a deal to play some auditorium or other venue, there is often a document called a Contract Rider. This is the section of the contract that itemizes special conditions the artist has — how the stage must be arranged, how the publicity must be handled, how the dressing room must be configured and stocked, etc. The folks over at The Smoking Gun have assembled a fascinating online library of these, and it's amusing to see that this band demands a certain wine and that act expects cherry-flavored LifeSavers and so on.

Well, they've just added a most interesting Contract Rider to their collection: It's for the 1965 tour of the U.S. by The Beatles. Things were a lot simpler in those days. Tickets were also $4.00-$6.00.

• Posted at 8:53 AM · LINK

Monday, April 18, 2005

Barely Edible Delights

For those of you who've been looking for a good website devoted to airline food...here you go.

• Posted at 5:37 PM · LINK

Black Tie Event

My favorite current stand-up comedian, Lewis Black, was the featured entertainer at the 61st Annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner where he drew the kind of spot that is every comic's dream: Following Dick Cheney paying tribute to a dead Pope. Talk about your great warm-ups. He was also required to wear a tux and to avoid the use of naughty words or inflammatory rhetoric. In his regular act, Black has been known to describe Cheney as "pure evil" but I guess you don't want to use that material when the guy's seated on the dais about five feet from you.

You may or may not be able to view video of the event over at the C-Span website, where things don't seem to be working too well. What you'll want to do is go there and do a search for "61st annual." Then if the site's functional and you have Real Player installed, the whole 80 minute event just might load. Mr. Black goes on around 36 minutes into it and you'll probably want to Fast Forward to him.

It's an odd performance and Black spends much of it discussing how it's a bad place for a comedian to work. The audience is not well-miked so I think he got more laughs than the video would seem to indicate, but it's still far from him at his best. I just mention it because if you think Lewis Black looks uncomfortable on The Daily Show, you oughta see him trying to amuse the Washington elite. I try to watch these every year and I don't recall any comic doing all that well with this crowd.

• Posted at 3:00 AM · LINK

GSN News

This is for those of you watching GSN's late night/early A.M. broadcasts of old Goodson-Todman game shows. They've gone through all the episodes of The Name's the Same. Tomorrow morning, they air the first of four episodes of What's Going On?, a short-lived program that Mark Goodson used to cite as the worst show his company ever did. It's nowhere near that. As a matter of fact, it was probably a better show than The Name's the Same and it was certainly better than Choose Up Sides, which will take its place on the GSN schedule after the four episodes air.

Goodson's negative view of the show may stem from all the production problems involved. The show used live remote cameras, which were a big (but not bug-free) feature of television in 1954. The producer of What's Going On? was Allan Sherman, who was later known for brilliant song parodies but who was then a producer for Goodson-Todman. It is said that when things weren't going well, as was apparently the case with this show, Mr. Sherman was difficult to deal with. (What's Going On? was cancelled after five shows aired. Only four episodes still exist.)

While I've got you here: Thursday morning, GSN should be running the 3/11/56 episode of What's My Line?, which as originally broadcast featured two Mystery Guests — Dinah Shore and famed clown Emmett Kelly. The segment with Ms. Shore is apparently lost so the episode has awkward continuity and GSN will probably have to pad out the half-hour with ten or eleven commercials for the Rascal Scooter. More significantly, that episode represented Fred Allen's final appearance. He died six days later, on Saturday, March 17. The following night, a rather glum episode of What's My Line? was broadcast, and GSN will presumably run that on Friday morning.

• Posted at 1:32 AM · LINK

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Still Finishing the Hat

Front Row, which is a radio show on BBC4 in the UK, recently did a nice half-hour interview with Stephen Sondheim. Go to this page and select the broadcast from last Thursday...and do so before it's displaced by next Thursday's show. You'll need to have Real Player installed to listen in.

Speaking of Mr. Sondheim: If you're a fan of his and you're in Southern California, you might want to get tickets to be at the Hollywood Bowl the evening of July 8. Here's why.

• Posted at 3:55 PM · LINK

A Great Time-Waster

If you live in Los Angeles or think you know it, try to find your way around on this.

• Posted at 3:40 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert welcomed congressguys Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Barney Frank (D-MA) for a "blunt and frank" (ha ha) discussion of certain controversies involving Tom DeLay's ethics, or the lack thereof. The quick summary would go something like this: Frank asserted that Republicans keep changing the rules so as to make it impossible for a complaint in this area to be seriously pursued. Blunt insisted that the changes are necessary because without them, your political opponents could keep a meritless investigation alive in an effort to smear you. Neither said this but it seemed to me they were jointly making a strong argument that Congress cannot set and enforce its own codes of conduct. But of course, this will never change.

George W. Bush's approval ratings are way down, but America's opinion of Congress is even lower. Does anyone wonder why that is?

As we've all come to expect, Russert did not ask any questions which really challenged his guests on their interpretations of reality. One I'd have put to Blunt involved his insistence that DeLay has done nothing wrong. Is it that he has really done nothing wrong? Or is it that he has artfully navigated (and Congress has amended) the rules so that conduct which should be against the rules is not, by some technicality, illegal? And I'd have asked Frank if he was prepared to say that no Democrats have engaged in similar transgressions. But those questions might have made his guests a wee bit uncomfortable and we can't have that on television's oldest news/interview program, can we?

• Posted at 10:09 AM · LINK

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Will Eisner Remembered

Peter Sanderson attended the recent memorial service in New York for Will Eisner. Here, he supplies the first part of a detailed play-by-play account.

• Posted at 3:35 PM · LINK

Friday, April 15, 2005

Funny News Items

Every so often, I get the feeling that some cosmic force is watching Leno, Letterman, Conan, Craig Ferguson, The Daily Show, Bill Maher and everyone else who does topical humor and saying, "Hmm...I'd better give them a great news item to write jokes about." The whole Michael Jackson trial is, of course, a direct result of this cosmic force, as was the Monica Lewinsky scandal of yore. This one won't last as long but it's going to be good for a couple of monologues.

• Posted at 2:29 PM · LINK

Recommended Listening

My pal Paul Harris does a fine talk/interview radio show on KMOX radio in St. Louis. I've mentioned it here before and lamented that his station didn't stream to the 'net. Ergo, I couldn't listen to his program. Well, things change and now I can listen to KMOX via a link on its website, and so can you. Paul is on weekdays from 2 PM to 6 PM, Missouri time. If you can't listen live, Paul puts audio clips of some of his best interviews over on his website. Good stuff.

• Posted at 1:29 AM · LINK

Thursday, April 14, 2005

"New Rules" Rules!

I enjoy watching Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, in part because Maher asks tougher questions than most interviewers. But he's also funny, especially in a segment they do at the end called "New Rules." It's not quite as good as seeing them performed, but there are transcripts of all the "New Rules" spots over on this webpage. Go see.

• Posted at 9:44 AM · LINK

Happy Birthday, Sheldon Moldoff!

85 years ago today, Sheldon Moldoff was born. Talk about a guy who was present for a lot of comic book history: Sheldon had artwork in the very first issue of Action Comics. He drew the cover for the first issue of Flash Comics, introducing The Flash and Hawkman, and was the artist for many early stories of Hawkman and The Black Pirate. He also drew the cover for the issue of All-American Comics that introduced Green Lantern. He was Bob Kane's first assistant on the Batman strip, and drew many stories for All Star Comics. In the late forties, he was one of the first creators of horror comics, and even approached EC publisher William Gaines with the idea of doing them, years before Gaines launched his own Tales From the Crypt.

He is probably best known to a generation of comic fans as "Bob Kane." Throughout the forties, Kane turned more and more of his Batman art chores over to assistants, to the point where he was doing virtually none of it. In 1953, he hired Moldoff as his ghost, and for fifteen years, the artwork that DC (and many fans) thought was being done by Kane was actually done by Moldoff. Sheldon also worked directly for DC Comics, often as an inker of Curt Swan's art for Superman, and worked for Kane as a designer of his 1960 cartoon series, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.

For the last decade or so, Sheldon has been a frequent and welcome guest at comic book conventions, usually selling wonderful sketches of the many classic characters he's drawn. I've enjoyed interviewing him on panels and chatting with him away from panels. He's a wonderful source of historical info about comics and a fine gentleman. I hope he has a happy 85th birthday day with many more to follow.

• Posted at 12:18 AM · LINK

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Disconnected

Comcast, the company that routes me into the Internet, has been cutting in and out for the last few days. If you can read this, it's back up...but probably not for long.

So I may not be posting much and I'm also having trouble receiving and answering e-mails. This will pass.

• Posted at 9:06 PM · LINK

Early A.M. Thoughts

Back here, I predicted that Michael Jackson would probably moonwalk (i.e., be acquitted) in his current child molestation case. I would like to reverse my prediction. It was made at a time when it looked like the judge would not allow evidence and testimony relating to other cases wherein the King of Pop allegedly put his hands where they didn't belong...and hey, how's that for a euphemism? And if the judge had indeed ruled that way, my prediction would stand. There's enough to tar the parents of the supposed victim as money-grubbers who are not above ginning up a phony charge, that I figured the jury would give Jackson the benefit of the doubt.

But the judge is allowing a parade of other victims or witnesses to victimization, and that changes things. I figure if I'm on the jury, I'm thinking, "Well, he may not have been wholly guilty in this case but he's gotten away with too much for too long." In that case, I don't think I could live with myself if I let Jackson go and then, six months or a year from now, read about him paying off more molested kids to keep quiet. Conversely, if we all vote to convict, the worst that can happen is that a pedophile has been stopped, albeit for the wrong instance.

On the other hand, I can't imagine M.J. actually going to prison. Hmm...you know what I think? I think I oughta go to bed. Good night, all.

• Posted at 3:12 AM · LINK

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Recommended Buying

Here's an easy review: If you have any interest in EC Comics, you need a copy of Foul Play, a fine new book by my pal, Grant Geissman. It's an overview of the artists who worked for the company. There's a bio, art samples and one complete story for each of them, plus you get a lot of little extras, like drawings done for company stationery and office parties. There's also one story that was never published 'til now. I just received my copy, sat down to read a little and got hooked, working my way through the entire thing before I put it down. Grant knows the topic well and quotes liberally from interviews with the men (and one woman) who did such lasting work. Click here to buy it from Amazon.

• Posted at 10:31 PM · LINK

Monday, April 11, 2005

A Plug for Porky

Master voiceover artist Bob Bergen is arranging a sea cruise for folks interested in joining his profession. Check out this page on his website for info. And check out his entire website for lots of good tips on the field, and demos of Bob's outstanding work.

• Posted at 7:18 PM · LINK

In the E-Mailbag...

Several of you have written to call my attention to this article on the use of Digital Video Noise Reduction. This is a handy process that cleans up the image when a live-action movie is transferred to digital format, such as is seen on DVDs. However, when used injudiciously on animation, it wipes out portions of the image that should be retained. We need to make more of a stink about this. (For further research, consult this article from a few years back by Amid Amidi.)

• Posted at 1:02 PM · LINK

Today's Political Thought

We are about to see a flurry of investigations of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay...a man who's in enough trouble that his Republican colleagues had to pass a rule that said he would not lose his leadership post if he were indicted by a Texas grand jury. I have no idea if he will survive or not.

But don't you get the idea that once all the inquiries are done, the real scandal will be not what DeLay has done that violates the law but all the things he was able to get away with that didn't violate the law?

When the Enron investigations started, a friend of mine predicted that no one of any importance would serve any real time behind bars. I asked why he felt that way. He said, "Because guys like that have done such a good job getting laws amended their way and working the loopholes that they could rob a liquor store and shoot the manager...and it still would not be, in some technical sense, illegal."

• Posted at 7:20 AM · LINK

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Suite Dreams

For no particular reason, other than that I just made reservations for an upcoming trip, I decided to jot down some things that I wish hotels did differently...

I've rarely been in a hotel room where I didn't wish I had a foot more of space in the bathroom even if it meant a foot less in the rest of the room.
A promise of "High-Speed Internet Access" can mean a lot of different things, including the fact that it's there but priced way too high. It can also mean the television has some kind of WebTV add-on which lets you play some online games and read a few news and weather sites...but you can't hook up your laptop or check your e-mail. It can even mean they have High-Speed Internet Access for guests in the hotel but it's in a Business Center that's only open during limited hours. The term "High-Speed Internet Access" should mean a wired or wireless Ethernet connection in each room, and if there's a charge, it should be no more than the popular going rate of around ten bucks for 24 hours of access. There are hotels that have rates for 15 or 30 minutes of access, and that's just cruel, given that it will often take a few minutes of configuring to get and keep a proper connection.
Hotels sometimes put up signs cautioning guests not to hang things on the fire sprinkler outlets. That's fine, but it would help if we had other places to hang things. How much would it cost to put some strong hooks up here and there around a room?
I would much rather have a soda dispenser and a snack machine down the hall than a well-stocked mini-bar in my room. And yes, I know: The point of it is that you wouldn't pay that price for a Sprite if it came out of a vending machine. But I wonder if those little in-room, overpriced convenience stores really make that much more for the hotel, given how they cause us all to buy drinks and snacks elsewhere, or to do without.
Have you ever tried to plug in something that you want to place on or around the bedside table? You usually find that there's one outlet on that wall and it's hidden behind the bed. You have to move the mattress and box springs to get to it and often, it's only a duplex and both slots are full. The bedside lamp is plugged into one, the clock is plugged into the other, and unless I remembered to bring an octopus adapter, I have to decide which to live without.
Speaking of that clock: At least three times in my life, I've been prematurely awakened in a hotel because the alarm was set for some ungodly hour by the guest who had that room before me. I've learned to check this, but wouldn't it be great if hotel alarm clocks could only be set for one night at a time?
Too many of those who design hotel rooms decide you'll watch TV from bed or not at all.
There's such a thing as too many mirrors in a bathroom. There are things you do in there that you'd rather not have to look at yourself doing.
I've never liked those showers-in-a-tub because the mat you have to stand on is always too slippery. Once in a hotel in Arizona, the room had something which I wish all hotels had. It was a wooden platform you could place in the bathtub. It locked into place in little brackets and you stood on that if you were showering or took it out if you were using the tub as a tub. Very efficient...but I've never seen this in any other hotel.
Here's something I've never understood. When I go to Costco and buy in bulk, I can get normal-sized 4.5 ounce bars of soap for about forty cents each. That means a hotel probably could buy them for around a quarter each — less if the manufacturer saw a promotional value to having its product sampled by hotel guests. So if you're a hotel charging a couple hundred bucks a night for a room, why not give your guests two of those in the bathroom for their entire stay — one for the tub, one by the sink — instead of all those little micro-bars which are hard to manipulate, which have to be replaced every day, and which some of us larger folks can actually manage to lose in some crevice of our bodies while showering?
Last one: Drapes that close. Why can't we have drapes that close? I've learned to take along a couple of those large clips that you use to close a bag of potato chips. If I forget them, I resort to makeshift fixes. You usually get one or two clothes hangers in the closet that have clips on them for pants-hanging, and I put the hangers up and use those clips to keep the damn drapes shut. But it should be easier than all this. The drapes should just close. All the way.

That's all the thoughts on this I have at the moment. Don't send me yours. I'll probably think of another bunch on my own in a day or two.

• Posted at 2:53 PM · LINK

Saturday, April 9, 2005

More on Gene Hazelton

Here's a newspaper obit for Gene Hazelton. From it, we learn his real name was Wesley Hazelton Sr., that he was born in Fresno on June 3, 1919 and that he died on Wednesday. Services are next Tuesday in San Diego.

• Posted at 9:30 PM · LINK

Gene Hazelton, R.I.P.

Sorry to report the recent passing (I don't know precisely when) of the great cartoonist, Gene Hazelton, whose career stretched from Fantasia to Flintstones. Gene was born in 1919 and by his teenage years, he was a good enough cartoonist to get a job assisting Jimmy Hatlo on the popular newspaper panel, They'll Do It Every Time. In 1939, he took a low-level job at Disney and set some sort of record for working his way up to gag man and animator. He animated the goat kids and cherabims in Fantasia and a number of sequences in Pinocchio.

When a strike was called at Disney in 1941, Gene moved on to other studios, including Warner Brothers where he did the main designs for the legendary short cartoon, Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, directed by Bob Clampett. He also began doing a lot of magazine gag cartoons and commercial art assignments. Here's a link to a piece by his friend, Scott Shaw!, reporting on the one comic book Gene drew.

Gene spent many years working with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM on their Tom & Jerry cartoons and with Tex Avery on his highly-acclaimed shorts. When Gene Kelly wanted an animated sequence for his feature, Invitation to the Dance, Hazelton designed the "Sindbad the Sailor" sequence. There were also commercials and commercial jobs: The animated titles for the I Love Lucy TV show were also designed by Gene Hazelton — one of many such projects he handled for the studio.

When Hanna and Barbera started their own studio, Gene was a key artist in the establishment of its style and the development of the early H-B programs. He is often credited with the main design work of certain important characters, including Pebbles and Bamm Bamm. (It is said he based the image of Bamm Bamm on his own son.) Beginning in 1961, one of his main duties was to supervise the production of — and occasionally write or draw — the syndicated newspaper features of The Flintstones and Yogi Bear. Around 1974, he took over the writing and drawing of both strips full-time, doing them until 1988. (The distinctive inking on them was usually the work of Lee Hooper.) Following his retirement, he drew many of the Hanna-Barbera "sericels" that were sold through animation art galleries and also did some teaching, but his main interest became his golf game, which he honed until illness forced him to quit.

Gene was enormously well-respected by his peers and by many younger cartoonists who cite him as a personal and professional inspiration. I'm sure there will be more obits and tributes that will list his many other impressive credits. I'll try to link to them as they appear.

• Posted at 5:53 PM · LINK

Onna White, R.I.P.

The great choreographer, Onna White, has died at age 83. She won an Oscar for her fine (and much-imitated) work in the movie, Oliver, and probably deserved them for Bye Bye Birdie, Mame, 1776 and The Music Man. She was also the choreographer of the last three of these when they first appeared on Broadway, plus she also staged the terpsichore for many other shows, including Finian's Rainbow, Half a Sixpence and Take Me Along. Her list of credits says it all, so I'll just add that I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. White on two occasions and I found her just as delightful as her choreography. Which was always pretty delightful. Here's a link to an obit.

• Posted at 9:38 AM · LINK

Recommended Viewing

Hey, if you get a chance to catch this week's installment of Real Time with Bill Maher, catch this week's installment of Real Time with Bill Maher. It reruns a number of times on HBO, and it has two good interviews — one with former New York governor Mario Cuomo and another with former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle. Mr. Maher dares to ask tough questions of both and the answers — or evasions, in Perle's case — are quite interesting.

• Posted at 1:41 AM · LINK

Host Roulette

Here's a silly article — silly because it's way premature — discussing who might be asked to host the Academy Awards next year. But hey, I'm in a silly mood tonight so I'll join in. The names mentioned in the article are Chris Rock, Billy Crystal, Mike Myers, Ellen DeGeneres, Robin Williams, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, Conan O'Brien and the idea of multiple hosts.

You can start by eliminating the multiple hosts concept. It hasn't worked well in the past. I think every time they tried it, they went scurrying back to a single host the following year. Besides, the way the show has evolved the last few years, you don't need more than one host. After about the first half hour, he or she has very little to do.

Cross off Chris Rock. I liked him but he wasn't an earth-shaking success in any particular sense. He brought a certain suspense to the proceedings because there was the possibility that he'd say something outrageous. But that trick won't work again, and the folks who run the show will probably write him off due to the slightly weak performance of this year's show in urban states. (Actually, I think it's ridiculous to credit or fault the host too much for the tune-in numbers. That kind of thinking presumes that there aren't a lot of other variables that contribute to the ratings. Maybe the interest in this year's nominees was so low that the broadcast would have done much poorer with any host besides Rock. But that's not how the people who make this kind of decision think.)

Cross off Ellen DeGeneres, David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien because they aren't movie stars. The Oscars ought to be hosted by a movie star. Mr. Carson was the only TV personality who was a big enough celebrity to transcend that rule. True, they had Letterman host in '95 but none of those four talk show talkers, including Dave, is currently "hot" the way he was at the time. (Rumor has it that Leno's name appeared on a list of hosts under consideration around 2000 but that he heard about it and let the Academy know he was not interested.)

And you can probably cross off Whoopi Goldberg because it's been a long time since she was big in a movie, and her last hosting was not well received. And strike Robin Williams from the short list because he doesn't seem like the "host" type. He's the guy you slot as a presenter at whatever time you think the broadcast will need a jolt of energy.

That leaves Myers, who's never done it, and Crystal and Martin, who have. Everyone seems to have liked Steve Martin's stints in 2001 and 2003, and I would guess he'd be at the top of the list. Myers is a possibility, but he's really only a star when he's deep in a character, not when he's Mike Myers. Crystal is a safe choice, and I'd figure his name will be not far below Martin's on that list, though there may be a few others above or between them. One would be Tom Hanks.

He's really the perfect choice: Huge movie star. Loved by everyone. Can deliver a funny line. No, he probably wouldn't do a monologue but that would save time on a broadcast that's looking for every way to chop its running time. I'm guessing the only reason he hasn't hosted is that he's been asked and turned it down.

How about Jamie Foxx...especially if he isn't in contention for an Oscar next year? How about Ben Affleck? Does anyone think Albert Brooks wouldn't be terrific? And if the movie version of The Producers musical is a success, Nathan Lane will be a big enough movie star to be considered for Oscar host. I think he'll do it and he'll be wonderful, but that's probably some time in the future.

For now, don't believe rumors that the host has already been picked. They don't need to decide until August or September, and since things can change so rapidly in show business, you don't want to decide too much before you have to. There's still time for Regis Philbin to make a movie and walk off with the gig.

• Posted at 1:26 AM · LINK

Friday, April 8, 2005

First Look

A review of the new Li'l Abner DVD, my copy of which has not arrived. Thanks to Earl Baucom, who called it to my attention.

• Posted at 7:29 PM · LINK

Chico Alert!

This is for those of you who are watching the dusty reruns of The Name's the Same on GSN. The episode that ran this morning was the one from August 1, 1955 with guest star Hoagy Carmichael. I assume tomorrow's will be the August 8 episode, which had Chico Marx on it. It's not a great episode but how often do you get to see Chico?

After tomorrow night, we have one more week of The Name's the Same episodes before it's replaced by What's Going On? GSN only has four episodes of that show, which will then be replaced by Choose Up Sides, which may well be the worst game show ever televised on a network. That show runs through April 29 and it will be replaced on the GSN schedule by...I dunno. I'll let you know when I find out.

• Posted at 12:59 AM · LINK

Thursday, April 7, 2005

Will and Testament

Gary Sassaman reports on the Will Eisner Memorial held today in New York. Wish I could have been there.

• Posted at 10:02 PM · LINK

Dale Messick, R.I.P.

Dale Messick, creator of the long-running newspaper strip Brenda Starr has died, a few days before what would have been her 99th birthday. As I mentioned here, her strip "was drawn with great energy and humor, and the writing stands up far better than many strips of its era." It is also worth noting that her career represented a triumph over the inane notion that a woman's work has, by definition, less worth than a man's. She shouldn't have had to change her signature from Dalia Messick to the more ambiguous Dale to get her work accepted but by the time most folks found out Dale was a lady, she'd proven she could do a newspaper strip as well as the above-average male. Here's a link to one of several obits that are now available on the web with more info about this remarkable lady.

• Posted at 11:56 AM · LINK

WGA Warfare

The battle between the east and west wings of the Writers Guild of America has gotten nastier, as such battles tend to do. For background on this, you might want to click here but maybe a quick summary will suffice. The large WGAw and the smaller WGAe are quarreling over the enforcement of some old constitutional provisions. The WGAw thinks it is owed a large sum of money for services it has provided to WGAe and that a number of WGAe members are legally obligated to join WGAw. The WGAe thinks that this is a not-so-subtle attack on their independence and probably part of a larger plan by WGAw to take over the WGAe.

There is a constitutionally mandated mediation process which should be settling this, and the rules say that mediation should be commencing next week. The WGAe has suggested delaying until July. The WGAw is arguing over some conditions before agreeing to that postponement. The WGAe accuses them of adding "last minute terms," although it would seem to be the WGAe's fault that this was all not discussed sooner. The WGAw accuses them of not being serious about mediating at all and of stalling.

For a time, the WGAe looked like the more reasonable of the two but they've begun taking divisive ads out in the industry trade papers accusing the WGAw of being divisive. The latest one, which I think owes John Kerry an author credit and royalties, accuses the WGAw of declaring war on WGAe and says, quote: "It's the WRONG war at the WRONG time, against the WRONG enemy."

Although I'm a member of the WGAw, I'm not necessarily on that side. I guess my main view is that it's a pretty sad state of affairs that two organizations that exist to settle disputes with our employers cannot even begin to settle one between themselves. There may be a good argument for a merger at some point but a strong, united labor organization is not going to quickly result from a hostile takeover.

• Posted at 10:43 AM · LINK

Premiere Problems

I attended the premiere last week of Frank Miller's Sin City with a certain amount of trepidation...which was replaced by a lot of relief when I found myself liking it. I'll tell you all about both emotions in a piece I originally posted here but have since moved over to NOTES from me.

• Posted at 12:36 AM · LINK

Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Mystery Solved?

This morning at breakfast, I ran into veteran comedy writer Arnie Kogen, who worked for a time on The Dean Martin Show. Arnie left before they got to the roast episodes I mentioned here but I figured he'd probably know who the writer was whose initials, "GB," appeared on that script excerpt I posted. He thought it was George Bloom. Sounds right to me.

• Posted at 12:58 PM · LINK

Tit for Tat

Several of you have written me to express disappointment in the recent Laurel & Hardy fest on Turner Classic Movies. Films started at odd times and some of the prints were not up to the usual TCM standards. I am told that the folks there are well aware of the problems and they're already working to rectify matters when the films are repeated in a few months.

TCM reminds me of those "repertory revival cinemas" that a lot of us used to go to in the days before home video...the ones that would show a different double feature every evening. A friend of mine who managed one explained the big problem to me. You advertise that six weeks from now, you'll be showing Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. A day or so before, the prints arrive from the distributor and they're terrible: Scratches, faded scenes, pops on the soundtrack, missing footage, etc. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it except rehearse your apologies to irate film buffs. I asked him if he could just not deal with the suppliers who sent the bad prints but he said, "I'd have nothing to show besides home movies of my vacation in Phoenix."

The problem should be less in the era of digital video, and it is. But there are a lot of movies that have yet to be properly mastered for broadcast and home video, and I'm afraid a lot of the Laurel & Hardy movies fall into that category. If you live in England or some other Region 2 DVD country, you can buy what I'm told is a wonderful boxed set of films...and, yes, I know it's possible to get a PAL DVD player and TV monitor in this country, and I may wind up doing that. But these great movies oughta be available in this country and be watchable by all. The Hallmark company owns most of 'em and reportedly has the idea that there's not much market for these films. The way they've been putting them out in occasional DVDs made from mediocre prints makes you feel someone there is trying hard to prove that.

Despite the flaws in the TCM presentation, I've enjoyed having a quantity of Stan and Ollie on my TiVo and I played each film at least twice over the weekend. I forgot how much I just like watching Laurel and Hardy, no matter what they're doing. I don't even care that much about the slapstick in the movies. There's something so pleasant and fascinating about the way those two guys walk down the street or carry suitcases or move a piano. I'd rather have good prints and high-quality DVDs...but I just like watching them, the way you like looking at a favorite painting or listening to a favorite tune. I have more thoughts on The Boys over in this section.

• Posted at 1:37 AM · LINK

Another Greg Garrison Tale

The Dean Martin Show, debuted on September 16, 1965 and had its last regular broadcast on May 24, 1974, followed by almost six years of occasional specials. A run like that is no small feat, especially with a star who doesn't want to rehearse, and it can probably be attributed mainly to the ingenuity of producer-director Greg Garrison. He had a good creative team, and they kept finding ways to freshen it with new supporting players, recurring segments and good-looking women. For the last season or so of weekly shows and most of the specials, they went largely to a "roast" format. They took the money they'd been spending on musical arrangements, dancers and choreography and put it into more joke writers and guest stars. Each week, some celebrity would be the "Man [or Woman] of the Hour," and they'd trot out other celebs, some of whom even knew the honoree, to insult/praise them.

There was something rather "in-groupish" about the shows. It was like one week, you'd have Don Rickles roasting Telly Savalas and the next week, you'd have Telly Savalas roasting Don Rickles, and you'd wonder if maybe they hadn't taped both roasts at the same time and divided the cue cards up at random. Okay, so it wasn't quite so bad, but it seemed like that. There was an awful lot of cut-and-pasting done, and Garrison did a pretty decent job of shooting and editing. You almost didn't notice that in some of the roasts, especially the later ones, some of the stars who spoke weren't even there, and some weren't there for long.

My friends and I used to watch and try to figure out all the editing tricks. Sometimes, Dean would introduce a speaker — say, Bob Hope — and skillful cutting would make it hard to notice that you never saw Hope in the same shot as Dean or the guest of honor. That meant Hope was taped at another time, possibly on another stage using just a small part of Dean's set.

Or you'd see something like this: Foster Brooks would tell a joke about a fish. Then they'd cut to a shot of Dom DeLuise, seated on the dais, convulsed in laughter. Then they'd cut back to Brooks at the rostrum and he'd tell a joke about a dog. Deduction: They cut out at least one joke between Foster's fish joke and his dog joke...and the footage of Dom was of him laughing at something else altogether. (It may have just been that Garrison told him to act like someone had said something hysterically funny.)

In addition to Garrison's skills, you had the legendary Harry Crane as head writer. (I assume those are his initials up there on the script excerpt. I'm not sure who "GB" is. I thought it was Gary Belkin but he was doing The Carol Burnett Show at the time. And I think George Burditt was writing Three's Company.) Crane, who died in 1999, was a longtime jokesmith who wrote for all the biggies: Dean, Frank, Gleason, Abbott & Costello, even Laurel & Hardy. The roast format required tons of material — more than it seemed because almost everyone's speech was taped at two or three times the length and then pared down in editing. For a time, the crunch was so bad that Harry was buying jokes "under the table" from outside writers, one of whom was Yours Truly. I think I sold him around a dozen, three of which made it to air. He told me that was a good batting average.

Crane was the perfect man for the job because he wrote the way Garrison directed: Cut-and-paste. While I was visiting Harry one day, someone poked a head in and told him that Lorne Greene had dropped out as a speaker on the roast they were taping later that week. The replacement was Ted Knight. Without even interrupting the anecdote he was telling me, Harry ruffled through a pile of pages on his desk, found the Lorne Greene material and went through it, crossing out "Lorne" everywhere and writing in "Ted." The only rewriting necessary was to change one reference from Bonanza to The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

He told me he liked working for Garrison because of Garrison's deal with Dean. Dean would just show up on tape day and read whatever was on the cards. Years earlier, Harry said, he'd practically had a stroke arguing with Jackie Gleason over what was funny. (Harry had a long explanation, which I didn't necessarily accept in toto, of how everything that worked on The Honeymooners was his idea and Gleason had to be talked into it all.) He liked the fact that Greg, in turn, let the writers write what they thought was funny. He also had a great respect for the fact that Garrison could get the show down at all under a time crunch that would have crushed a lesser man.

At the time, I was probably a bit too critical of Garrison's patchwork editing, and I asked Harry if it bothered him. He pointed to a still photo that was up on the wall over his desk. It was from a recent show and it featured Dean, Johnny Carson, Bette Davis, Jack Benny, George Burns and about a dozen other celebs of that stature. "You can't get a line-up like that to come in and put on tuxedos if you're going to take all day to tape a show," Harry said. "Greg does it every week."

• Posted at 12:20 AM · LINK

Monday, April 4, 2005

Surprise Party

Next month, if you have any interest in it, you'll be able to buy a 3-DVD set of memorable episodes of This Is Your Life, a series that was broadcast regularly from 1948 to 1952 on radio, from 1952 to 1961 on TV and in various short-term revivals and specials since. I wrote a piece about it you can read over in NEWS from me.

• Posted at 2:44 PM · LINK

Sunday, April 3, 2005

Felix the Auto Dealer

Another chapter in the saga of a great cartoon character. [Los Angeles Times, registration may be required]

• Posted at 11:29 AM · LINK

Game Show Heaven

Those of you watching GSN's reruns of The Name's the Same have probably noticed that they went through their entire supply of episodes hosted by Bob & Ray and are now into ones hosted by Clifton Fadiman. Mr. Fadiman was a scholarly game show host, more suited to his previous stint on Information Please and somewhat out of place on this one. The most interesting thing about the episode they ran the other night was that one of the panelists was the great playwright, Marc Connelly. I always admired his work, especially his collaborations with George S. Kaufman, but I don't believe I'd ever seen him on camera before. That's one of the joys of these hoary game show reruns — the history you get to see.

GSN has about two weeks of The Name's the Same hosted by Fadiman, and then that brings us to the end of that series. They'll replace it beginning April 18 with a string of old, short-term game shows. One is What's Going On?, which was on briefly in 1954. This was kind of a cute idea. There were six celebrity panelists each week. Three were in the studio and three were in various remote locations, doing something like ice skating or flicking a chicken or whatever. The three in the studio had to guess where each of the other panelists was and what that panelist was doing. A gent named Lee Bowman was the host.

Another is Choose Up Sides, which was an awful program on which Gene Rayburn presided over competing teams of kids doing the kind of silly stunts by which adults were humiliating themselves on Beat the Clock. Fortunately, the show only lasted a little less than three months in 1956 so GSN can't have that many episodes, and something else will soon follow...maybe Two for the Money, which was hosted by Herb Shriner.

In the meantime, they're currently airing episodes of What's My Line? from late 1955 with Fred Allen on the panel. We have less than three weeks before we hit the 3/11/56 show, which was his last. Either tonight or tomorrow night, they should run the one from 11/20/55, on which one of the contestants was George Petty, the famed illustrator of beautiful women. Like I said, there's history there.

• Posted at 10:49 AM · LINK

Early in the A.M.

I was going to post another story here about Greg Garrison tonight but my lovely friend Carolyn is here, and she's more important than updating my weblog. That's a high compliment since updating one's weblog is pretty darn important. Anyway, I'm going to be busy tomorrow so I may not get to the Garrison tales then, and I have jury duty this coming week. But I will get around to them. Promise.

(Hey, I wonder if the willingness of professionals to serve on juries would improve if they equipped those waiting rooms with wi-if access...)

• Posted at 1:10 AM · LINK

Moose Mall

As my comrade Jerry Beck notes, the Dudley Do-Right Emporium (seen above in a photo by Ken Plume) is going away. It closed some time last year or maybe the year before, and will soon be razed...though parts of it may be preserved for historical purposes. Jay Ward built the place in '71, around the time his last real series, George of the Jungle, ended production. Jay had an oddly-shaped parcel of land up on Sunset Boulevard and part of it was occupied by his studio. He put the gift shop up on a corner of it and stocked the place with Rocky and Bullwinkle merchandise, some of it made especially for the store.

It was always fun to drop into the Emporium. For one thing, you might be waited on by some employee of Jay's studio, some member of his family...or even Jay, himself. A lot of tourists bought Bullwinkle cels and Rocky dolls there, unaware the guy with the handlebar mustache who was taking their money was Jay Ward. Depending on his mood, he might or might not tell them. Once, the story goes, someone asked him if it would be possible to get Mr. Ward's autograph in their book. Jay said, "Well, I'll check but he's usually passed out drunk by this time in the afternoon." Jay took the autograph book into the studio building on the other side, signed the page...then took it back to its owner, explaining, "You're lucky. I caught him before he got to the heavy stuff." On request, he might also procure the signature of his shows' mythical executive producer, Ponsonby Britt.

Most of the time when I went up there, the person behind the counter was Jay's wife, Ramona. Well, actually, most of the time there was no one there and the place was closed. I forget what they claimed their hours were but the truth was that it was open whenever someone there felt like opening it. For the last decade or so of his life, Jay pretty much ran the animation part of his business with the same "if I feel like it" attitude. I worked with him on an unrealized project that, had it gone forward, would have been one of the biggest, most lucrative things to happen to him in years. His partner, Bill Scott, was excited about it. Jay's attitude was kind of like, "Well, if you want to...okay..."

Actually, I'm surprised the Emporium stayed around as long as it did. When it opened, there was a lot of tourist foot traffic in the area, owing to a bank across the street that was always staging events and exhibits. (Does anyone here remember the Guggenhead Travelling Exhibition of Awfully Modern Art? It was a touring show of art parodies and it was at that bank, whatever it was called then, for months at a time. People used to visit it and then hike over to the Dudley Do-Right shoppe to buy Boris Badenov t-shirts.) Nowadays though, no one walks on that part of Sunset, it's darn near impossible to park, and that piece of land has to be worth a fort-yoon. Or at least, it's worth too much to hold a store that's almost never open and which probably didn't make much money when it was. I think Jay did it the same way he did his cartoons: As much for fun as for the income. Sorry that Jay, his store and that attitude are no longer with us.

• Posted at 1:01 AM · LINK

Saturday, April 2, 2005

Today's Political Rant

Above, we see George W. Bush awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former C.I.A. Director George John Tenet. According to a press release that accompanied the presentation, "The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation's highest civil award. It was established by President Truman and later re-established by President Kennedy. It is awarded by the President of the United States to persons who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Last week, a presidential commission reported, "We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." Bush says he accepts the conclusions of this report.

So, uh, what's the spin here? Tenet was in no way responsible for the fact that his agency got everything wrong so he shouldn't be denied the nation's highest honor? Getting everything wrong when the U.S. goes to war isn't that big a screw-up? Bush gave the medal when he thought Tenet had done a great job and now doesn't want to embarrass the guy now by saying it was a mistake? Help me out here, someone.

• Posted at 9:40 AM · LINK

SNL Watch

Just to remind you: The weekend late night rerun of Saturday Night Live is the Show #4 (11/8/75), which was the one hosted by Candice Bergen. It includes a great film bit by Albert Brooks, the first "Land Shark" sketch, and Andy Kaufman doing his bit where Foreign Man does inept impressions. Next week in that slot, they have Show #13 (2/14/76) which is the one where John Belushi and guest host Peter Boyle did "Dueling Brandos."

Speaking of Mr. Kaufman: A major turning point in his career, some said, was a phone survey on the 11/20/82 edition of Saturday Night Live. Viewers during the live broadcast were invited to call in and vote on whether or not to ban Andy Kaufman forever from the show. Depending on which account one believes, Kaufman either suggested the stunt or just went along with it because he expected to either win or to come back on the show thereafter in the guise of Tony Clifton. Neither of these happened. Kaufman lost the vote 195,544 to 169,186 and was never invited back again in any identity, thereby losing an important showcase for his comedy. An hour-long version of this episode, including all the Kaufman-related material, airs this Tuesday on the E! Channel. In the East, it runs at 4 PM and again at 1 AM the following morning. It's the one with host Drew Barrymore and musical guest Squeeze.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK

Friday, April 1, 2005

Elsewhere on the Web

The always-wise Peter Sanderson reports on the New York premiere of Sin City and certain other related topics.

• Posted at 11:06 PM · LINK

Just in Time...

It's still April Fool's Day, at least where I am. So I can still post that today is the 5th anniversary of the Oddball Comics page written and curated by my longtime buddy, Scott Shaw! Every week, Scott plucks from his bizarre collection, some comic book that makes you go, "What the hell were they thinking?" It's always worth a click, a chuckle and a glassy-eyed stare.

• Posted at 9:56 PM · LINK

How I Spent Today

Went up to the Magic Castle (of which I am a member) for lunch with a fabulous actress friend named Judy Strangis. Most folks remember Judy for her role on a great, oughta-be-rerun sitcom called Room 222, and also for playing Dynagirl on Sid and Marty Krofft's ElectraWoman and DynaGirl series. There was also a time when the F.C.C. seemed to have a rule that she had to be in every fourth or fifth commercial aired, and she's still adorable. [ATTENTION, JUDY: To read that earlier item I posted about you, click here. Actually, anyone who wants to read that story can click there. You don't have to be Judy Strangis to click there.]

Then I went to what I once called here The Best Car Wash in the Universe, and you'll have to click that link to see why. Alas, I must now rescind that designation because today, they refused to fill my tank.

Premium unleaded petrol, the kind I put in my auto, is $2.71 — a number I feel I should emphasize to a certain longtime (but Republican) friend of mine who seriously thought Jimmy Carter should be impeached over rising gas prices. With a fill-up and wash, which is what I was getting, it's $2.61. My tank was darn close to empty when I rolled in, so a fill-up should have been close to 18 gallons. The pump's nozzle clicked off around eight and I told the attendant, "It can take more." The sensors on the nozzle clicked off again and he said, "That's it," and turned off the pump, wrote up my ticket and gave the signal to move my car on to the place where they vacuum it out and pry all the little parking lot stubs out from the ledge under the windshield wipers.

"It's not full," I said. It wasn't just that I wanted to save a buck or so by filling it to the brim at the gas+wash price. I wanted a full tank so I wouldn't have to stop for gas again in a few days. But the attendant informed me that station policy was that the second time the sensor clicks off, the tank is considered full, end of discussion. We argued over this and the Manager came over to explain the policy to me in terms you'd use with a very stupid person who'd just overdosed on Valium. I made salient, irrefutable points but by this time, my car was on the conveyor belt being slathered with suds so it all seemed pointless. I went on in to browse the greeting cards, check out the display of cellphone accessories, buy a Pepsi and pay for my wash and half a tank of gas.

Ten minutes later, my car was done. When I got in and fired 'er up, the needle went to about half-empty...or half-full for you optimists out there. The Manager was walking by so I called him over and pointed it out. I suggested that maybe there was something wrong with the sensors on their pump nozzles and he said, "Yeah, you may be right. I'll have the guy come out and check 'em." I asked if, in the meantime, I could drive over to the pump and they could put in another eight-or-so gallons. He said, "Sure, but I'll have to charge you the $2.71 price. You only get one fill-up at the discount price with each wash." It was another of their policies, he said.

I said, "That doesn't make any sense. I only want one fill-up. We're only having this discussion because I didn't get a fill-up. 'Fill-up' means you can't put any more in, so you can't get more than one flll-up per visit, no matter how hard you try."

He gave me a snarl and said, "You'd be surprised what some people try," and walked off. Guess which car wash I'm not going back to for a while. And by the way, the Manager's name was Phillip.

• Posted at 4:40 PM · LINK

Another Nice Schedule Screw-Up

Turner Classic Movies seems to be playing an unintentional April Fool's Day joke on those of us who've set TiVos or VCRs to record today's Laurel and Hardy treasures. It's the old Phony Start Time trick.

This morning, they scheduled Beau Hunks to run 7:15 to 7:45 (all times Pacific), which would have been great except Beau Hunks is longer than that, a fact that someone there even knew. Their own schedule, shown above, says it's 37 minutes and while I haven't run a watch on it, I think the print they ran may have even been a minute or two longer than that. The film before ran a minute or so over so, allowing for the TCM openings and billboards, Beau Hunks actually aired from 7:17 to about 7:55. This means that a 7:15-7:45 recording, such as all our TiVos made, cut off the last 9 or 10 minutes.

The following film, The Bohemian Girl, was scheduled to start at 7:45 and run until 9:00. It actually started at 7:57. (At 7:56, an on-camera graphic still gave its start time as 7:45 and so does the TCM website.) The schedule says it's 68 minutes, and maybe the print they're showing as I write this is indeed that length...but a complete one would be 70 or 71, depending on which source one believes. Even if it's only 68, it will end at around 9:05. Your 7:45-9:00 recording will therefore consist of the last 10 or so minutes of Beau Hunks — followed by all of The Bohemian Girl except for the last 5-7 minutes.

Up after that is Them Thar Hills, which is supposed to start at 9 AM but will actually commence around 9:07 or 9:08. It's to be followed by Tit for Tat at 9:30. Both of these are in half-hour time slots but both are around 20 minutes each so this may fix the problem and allow Pick a Star, which is scheduled for 10 AM, to actually start at 10 AM. But it could actually start before.

This is frustrating because it's so simple. I mean, how difficult is it to not schedule a movie you know is 37 minutes in a half-hour time slot? TCM is usually so good about restoring and showing complete prints of great movies. Can't they at least let us know when they start and end? As Mr. Hardy would say when Mr. Laurel drops a brick on his head, "Oooow!"

• Posted at 8:51 AM · LINK

Greg Garrison, R.I.P.

It hasn't hit the press yet but I'm hearing that longtime TV director-producer Greg Garrison died on the 25th due to complications of pneumonia. I barely knew Mr. Garrison but there was a time around 1969-1971 when I used to prowl NBC Burbank, sneaking in to watch Bob Hope tape a sketch or Johnny Carson do his monologue. And whenever I could, I'd slip down to the studio where Dean Martin was doing his series. I was always hoping for a Golddiggers rehearsal but I'd settle for watching Dom DeLuise, Kay Medford, Nipsey Russell and/or Lou Jacobi rehearse a sketch. Once in a rare while, I might even see Dean but he wasn't there very often.

The great open secret of The Dean Martin Show was that Dean barely showed up for work. He did for its first season, but the program wasn't working, and Dean was unhappy with how hard he was working. That was when Greg Garrison, who'd been hired as director only, came up with an idea. To make the show more spontaneous — and to keep Dino interested in doing it at all — he would arrange the schedule so Martin only had to come in one day a week, and not even for the entire day. Rehearsals were done with a stand-in, and everything that didn't involve Dean was taped when he was nowhere on the premises. There were people who appeared on The Dean Martin Show without ever meeting Dean.

On tape day, Dean would come in, watch a run-through with the stand-in, then go out and replicate the stand-in's actions. Everything was configured for maximum speed. Dean almost always wore a tuxedo, thereby minimizing costume changes and making it possible for any segment to be edited into any other show. The lines were all on cue cards and the songs, which were performed live, were all tunes that Dean already knew. If something went wrong, Garrison would usually not start over. He'd work some kind of paste-up edit, often inserting a freeze-frame in a manner that made other TV directors wince. Once in a while during a musical number, Dean wouldn't be able to hear the orchestra and if you watch, you can see him rubbing his ear to signal Garrison to have the audio cranked up a notch. Anyone else would have restarted or edited...but Garrison promised his star he'd be done by 10 PM, and did whatever was necessary to make that happen.

I used to watch Garrison at work and there was something amazing about how fast he could tape a prime-time network variety show. His relationship with Dean was also fascinating. To get his one-day-a-week schedule, Dean had traded off a star's right to reject material or have input into the script. He just showed up and did whatever he was told to do. One time, Garrison needed some reaction shots of Dean that would be edited into a musical number by someone else. He told Dean, "Stand there, look to the left and stick out your tongue," and Dean stood there, looked to the left and stuck out his tongue. He did everything Garrison commanded with no idea of the context or what the routine was about. That was the kind of trust he placed in his producer-director and business partner. At the same time, Garrison knew that his career was dependent on that relationship, and did everything possible to make Dean happy and to earn that trust. Nick Arnold, a friend of mine who wrote on the show, never once met its star...but once a week, he'd ask Garrison, "How's Dean?" Every week, Garrison would give the same answer: "Dean's beautiful!"

The Garrison Technique was much debated in the TV business. On one hand, you had a very successful show, and it could certainly be argued that he'd figured out the perfect way to package his star for weekly television. On the other hand, NBC would never have tolerated some of the odd, patchwork edits on another show, and a lot of guest stars were upset that they never got to rehearse with Dean before tape rolled. I once saw Juliet Prowse tape a duet with Dean, then explode in anger when informed that there would not be a second take. She was sure it could have been done better, especially once she had some idea where Dean was going to stand or when he was going to put his arms around her...but the schedule was more important than doing it again. Other performers, including most of the regulars, just accepted it but none of them liked it.

I have some other stories and observations about Greg Garrison which I'll try and post over the next few days — like how he managed to tape "roasts" featuring people who were taped at different times, sometimes in different states, but looked like they were all in one room. I'll also tell why Marty Feldman wanted to strangle him, which is kind of an interesting tale. For now, I'm just sorry to hear that we've lost another true pioneer of the television industry.

• Posted at 12:03 AM · LINK

May 1, 2005 • Current • March 1, 2005

Friday, April 29, 2005

Zeke Zekley, R.I.P.

• Posted at 4:20 PM · LINK

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Senator Al?

• Posted at 12:56 AM · LINK

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Keeping Tabs

• Posted at 6:32 PM · LINK

Somebody Loves Me?

• Posted at 6:21 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 2:32 PM · LINK

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...

• Posted at 6:26 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 6:12 PM · LINK

The Kreskin of Komix

• Posted at 11:53 AM · LINK

Monday, April 25, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 9:35 PM · LINK

Special Two-Way Wrist Radio TiVo Alert!

• Posted at 1:12 AM · LINK

Sunday, April 24, 2005

The Saga of Stan Lee Media (Cont.)

• Posted at 9:17 PM · LINK

Public Appeal

• Posted at 8:46 PM · LINK

Possible TiVo Alert!

• Posted at 9:33 AM · LINK

3 Down, 22 To Go...

• Posted at 12:06 AM · LINK

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Gas Guzzling

• Posted at 8:09 PM · LINK

Important Stuff

• Posted at 2:45 PM · LINK

Funny Discs

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK

Friday, April 22, 2005

Friday Afternoon

• Posted at 4:23 PM · LINK

Bidding on Pope Futures

• Posted at 1:44 AM · LINK

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Game Show News

• Posted at 12:01 AM · LINK

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Yokumberry Video

• Posted at 9:15 PM · LINK

You Blockhead!

• Posted at 1:07 PM · LINK

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 11:03 PM · LINK

DeLaying Tactics

• Posted at 8:49 PM · LINK

Useless Breaking News

• Posted at 9:07 AM · LINK

Paperback Rider

• Posted at 8:53 AM · LINK

Monday, April 18, 2005

Barely Edible Delights

• Posted at 5:37 PM · LINK

Black Tie Event

• Posted at 3:00 AM · LINK

GSN News

• Posted at 1:32 AM · LINK

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Still Finishing the Hat

• Posted at 3:55 PM · LINK

A Great Time-Waster

• Posted at 3:40 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 10:09 AM · LINK

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 11:10 PM · LINK