Monday, May 16, 2005

Correction to the Correction

Turns out that what I identified as an R. Crumb self portrait over on Tom Spurgeon's site is actually a Crumb drawing of Allen Ginsberg. This is not quite as big an error as Newsweek just owned up to but I was wrong. On the other hand, I don't think it looks very much like any picture I've ever seen of Allen Ginsberg. Then again, the few times I've met Crumb, I was struck by how he looked nothing like the way he drew himself.

• Posted at 11:08 PM · LINK

Correction

Just saw a paper copy of today's Los Angeles Times — yes, they still make them — and there's a different R. Crumb self-portrait accompanying Crumb's little op-ed piece. That is, it's different from the one on Tom Spurgeon's site.

• Posted at 2:16 PM · LINK

Al Kurzrok, R.I.P.

You have to really be into obscure comic book credits to know the name of Al Kurzrok. He worked briefly for Marvel around 1970, mostly as a letterer but he also wrote a few stories for them, including five issues of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, a couple of western stories and some other things that never saw print. He also worked for a time for Harvey Comics...and even I'm not all that sure what else, if anything, he did — though I know this obituary gets his comic book credits all wrong. Most interesting is that he left that world behind, went into Psychology and occasionally tapped into his old skills to advance his new career. (I found out about all this via Tom Spurgeon's fine news blog, The Comics Reporter. Tom also has up a drawing of R. Crumb which I guess is the drawing that goes with the L.A. Times article just mentioned.)

• Posted at 11:51 AM · LINK

Crumb on Self Portraits

The L.A. Times website features a short editorial piece by Robert Crumb. [Subscription probably required.] I think the online piece is missing an illustration that presumably appears in the old-fashioned, paper Los Angeles Times.

• Posted at 7:52 AM · LINK

Early Monday Morning

Thanks to all who've written with concern about my mother and myself. She's better now but we spent another long night in the U.C.L.A. Medical Center Emergency Room...and by the way, the doctor part of the place is super-efficient but I've never seen unhealthier food than they have in their vending machines. Talk about drumming up business. You'd think a hospital would have trail mix and fruit and maybe a hard-boiled egg or two but no. It was all Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs and a kind of cinammon bun so noxious that at 4:30 in the A.M., I watched a famished lady buy a package, take one bite and then shot-put the rest into a dumpster across the room. The vending machines did have microwave popcorn and microwave oatmeal-in-a-cup but as the waiting room had no microwave oven, those didn't seem too healthy, either.

I'm way too far behind on work to write about all we've been through here. When I do, I'll expand on what I think I said earlier about how the doctors and nurses and paramedics have all been terrific but that the non-medical folks and the red tape in the system are insane. They keep making mistakes and then no one seems to have the power or responsibility to fix those mistakes. I'll tell you all about some of them once I finish a script that should have been done long ago. If I can just manage to get a couple more days without having to go to some medical facility and argue with people, it will be.

Here are a few dangling topics and follow-ups...

• Yes, I did receive a copy of Rowan Atkinson Live, thank you. Thirty of you offered copies and two just sent them, and I am grateful to you all. By the way, several said, "I bought this and I've never watched it." You should. It's hilarious.
• Another thirty or so of you sent suggestions of good dial-up Internet Service Providers. I'm trying AllVantage on a month-to-month basis and so far, all seems to be well. I'll let you know if it ever stops being well.
• The release date on the fourth volume of Garfield and Friends on DVD has been moved up to August 30. To answer an oft-emailed query, this is the one that includes the first episode with the Singing Ants ("Picnic Panic") and there are plenty of great guest star voices including Victoria Jackson, James Earl Jones, John Moschitta, Don Knotts, Don Messick, Stan Freberg, Buddy Hackett, Bill Kirchenbauer, Jewel Shepard, Dick Gautier, Paul Winchell, June Foray and Charles Aidman. There will be one more volume of DVDs after this and I have no idea when it'll be out...but it does look like we'll make it through all five volumes without any special features or commentary tracks or anything of the sort. Sorry...but it wasn't up to me.
• Yes, I know I still owe you the story about Marty Feldman I promised long ago.
• In this posting, I asked for someone to suggest an article that presented a different view of the Iraq War than the one to which I linked. Russ Maheras suggested this one and Buzz Dixon nominated this article. I'd like to suggest that everyone also read The Downing Street Memo, which would probably be Exhibit A in impeachment proceedings if a Democrat had taken us to war on these terms.

Lastly, I owe an awful lot of e-mails to an awful lot of people. If you're one of them, please be patient. I'm back on deadline for now so there won't be a lot of messages getting answered and there won't be a lot of stuff on this page for a while. All this will pass.

• Posted at 1:55 AM · LINK