Thursday, June 30, 2005

No Posting

Back in the sixties in the pages of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee would occasionally award some lucky (?) reader what he called a "no prize." It might be in a letter column or it might be in the house ad section called the Bullpen Bulletins. The reader might have made some extraordinary contribution to the cause of Marvel, or he might just have found some dumb error in an issue and called it to Stan's attention. Whatever the location, whatever the meritorious conduct, it warranted the same reward: A "no prize," as in, "You get no prize." I gather this was kind of a running joke on the old Jean Shepherd radio programs and Stan kept it going, but I never heard enough of Mr. Shepherd to know the derivation for certain.

Anyway, some readers were gleeful that Stan had awarded them a "no prize," and some didn't understand and they'd write in and say, "I haven't received it." Around 1967, I'm guessing, Stan took the joke to the next level and began actually sending out...well, I'm not sure if you could say he sent out "no prizes" because there was no such thing. But he sent out empty envelopes that said they contained your no prizes. Above is a pic of one of these envelopes — a later version, judging from the return address — which sported lettering by Marvel's ace letterer at the time, Sam Rosen. Someone wrote and asked me about them so I thought I'd post this for all the world to see. There was something very charming and clever about the whole concept, and it was part of what made Marvel Comics feel like a company run by your buddies.

• Posted at 4:13 PM · LINK

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Minor Updates

We've made a few time changes in the schedule, mostly a matter of shifting a couple things up a half-hour...

• Posted at 4:23 PM · LINK

Winch on GSN

GSN, the former Game Show Network, is airing a tribute to Paul Winchell tomorrow and Friday morn — four episodes, two each morning, of What's My Line? in which Paul was on the panel. The most interesting is probably the first, in which the Mystery Guest was Mortimer Snerd...or more correctly, Edgar Bergen working Mortimer Snerd. This one reran on GSN just two months ago.

The press release from GSN is confusing because of that old convention, which is to refer to shows that air before around 6 AM as being part of the previous night's programming. The first two episodes, they say, run at 3:00 AM and 3:30 AM on Wednesday, June 29. But if you set your TiVo or VCR to that date and those times, you won't get the show in question. In the reality-based world, they're airing early the morning of Thursday, June 30. You'd think they'd give the real date since most people are probably recording the shows and not watching them live, and even the folks who are watching live can figure out when Thursday morning begins.

The What's My Line? episodes that were supposed to air the next two days were ones from July of '57 — one with Julius LaRosa as Mystery Guest and the other with Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys. If GSN does what they usually do, they'll just skip rerunning these and not bump them later. Assuming that's how they operate, the rerun early Saturday morning will have Jayne Mansfield, the one Sunday morning will have Edie Adams and Jane Russell, and the one on Monday will have Zsa Zsa Gabor.

• Posted at 1:26 PM · LINK

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Owen McCarron, R.I.P.

Canadian cartoonist and puzzle master Owen McCarron died on Monday at the age of 76. He was a longtime employee of the Halifax Herald Limited, which featured his cartoons and games in several newspapers published in Nova Scotia. He also published on his own, countless commercial giveaway comics and puzzle collections that featured his work.

American comic fans will know McCarron best for a flurry of puzzle comics and books he did for Marvel in the late seventies and early eighties featuring their characters. They included a monthly comic — Fun and Games Magazine, which lasted for 13 issues commencing in 1979 — a short-lived Sunday newspaper strip and several dozen activity books. McCarron wrote, drew and designed most of this material, and also did a few ink jobs for Marvel's superhero comics. His work was clever and well-drawn, and I recall being very impressed with his puzzle-making ability.

• Posted at 11:10 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

There's a short article over on Slate about what they do when the voice of a cartoon character passes away. I was among those interviewed for the piece.

• Posted at 5:03 PM · LINK

Winch, Continued...

Somewhere down this page, April Winchell writes about her complex, contentious relationship with her father, Paul. I obviously don't want to get in the middle of a family matter but people are writing me to ask if what she says is true or exaggerated or wacko or what. I'll just say that I don't think anyone who knew Paul well will think that any of her comments are out of line, and some might be surprised at the amount of compassion shown.

This might be worth noting. Friday evening, I attended a party for June Foray and when I came home, I had an e-mail from a friend with the rumor that Paul Winchell had died. I was skeptical since I'd just come from a gathering of folks who knew Paul and it had not been mentioned. In fact, I had a chat with Paul's agent there and he obviously hadn't heard any such thing. I couldn't check the truth of the rumor that evening since everyone I would have called was still at the party. It took me until around 5:00 the next afternoon to get in touch with someone who confirmed it and I posted my announcement here at 5:36.

By this point, the rumor was making its way through newsgroups and, as nothing had hit the mainstream news outlets, folks were wondering if it was true. After I made my post, some there began arguing as to whether I was a reliable enough source that my report could be believed. (And by the way, that does not bother me at all. I don't think you should even believe every word on the New York Times website, let alone my silly little offering here. A healthy skepticism about anything posted to Ye Olde Internet is not a bad idea.)

A little after 7:00 Saturday evening, April posted on her site that she had just received a call from someone telling her that her father had died. So I heard about it around 21 hours before she did, and I posted it on my site more than an hour before anyone thought to call and inform the man's daughter. That ought to tell you something.

• Posted at 9:53 AM · LINK

Monday, June 27, 2005

John Fiedler, R.I.P.

Some websites are making much of the near-simultaneous deaths of two members of the Disney Winnie the Pooh cast: Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger, on Friday...John Fiedler, who voiced Piglet, on Saturday. It's actually worse than that. They're forgetting that Howard Morris, who provided the voice of Gopher in the first few Pooh featurettes, passed away only a little over a month ago.

John Fiedler had a great career apart from his brief moments as Piglet. He was wonderful in one of my favorite movies, the film version of The Odd Couple, re-creating a role he'd originated on the Broadway stage. He was even better in his recurring role on The Bob Newhart Show. Here's a link to the New York Times obit, which appears this morning right under the one for Paul Winchell. This is not fun.

• Posted at 9:12 AM · LINK

Lip Service

Ray Arthur sends this message...

I too was in awe of Winchell as a kid, and had growing respect for his inventions as I got older and understood his contributions on a whole 'nother level. I remember as a young child (with a limited understanding of ventriloquism) having my father explain how great Edgar Bergen was on the radio. And questioning, even at 7 or 8, "but Dad, ventriloquism on the radio? Now, there's no question that Bergen routines were hysterical, but I saw the quality only from the comedic standpoint not the ventriliqual (if that's a word) standpoint. (Later, near the end of his career I saw Bergen on TV..."but Dad, his lips are moving. Paul Winchell's lips don't move." Did I just miss Bergen when he was great, as a younger performer? Or was Winchell that much better?

Well, I preferred Winchell but that may have been because I was a child of television and he was doing my kind of shows when I was growing up. Also, Charlie McCarthy with his top hat, monocle and snooty attitude always struck me as really being of another era.

Winchell was much better from a technical standpoint, and I believe Mr. Bergen even admitted as much. But not moving your lips is only one part of being a great ventriloquist. There are plenty of guys around who, thanks to diligent practice, can recite Peter Piper over and over without the slightest lip-quiver. What too many of them lack is the ability to amuse, and some even fall short in the skill of misdirection. As with a good magician, part of the art is to make unnatural actions seem natural and to get you to look where he wants you to look. Bergen was very funny and a good actor. The only part he didn't have down were the lip movements which, of course, didn't matter on radio.

There's a great old episode of I've Got a Secret where he came on with Mortimer Snerd and answered the panel's questions...only the secret was that Bergen wasn't doing the Snerd voice. Actor-comedian Chuck McCann was hidden under the desk and he did Mortimer's voice while Bergen moved the puppet and his own lips. You read that right: To make the bit work, Bergen had to act like he was speaking for Mr. Snerd so he moved his own lips and did all the usual mannerisms that he did to throw attention on the dummy. What's more, Chuck says that it was Bergen's idea to do it that way, meaning that Edgar acknowledged that he wasn't very good at not moving the old lips. I don't think it mattered to him and I suspect it didn't matter to most of the audience. It's like being able to see the wire when Peter Pan is flying on stage. It's more fun to pretend you don't see it.

By the way: The best ventriloquist I know of who's working these days is Ronn Lucas, who's currently appearing in an afternoon show at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. You can see a five minute video of him over on this page of his website. He has all the skills I mentioned, including being very funny. He bills himself as "the man who can make anything talk" and he really can. One night, we were in the coffee shop at the Flamingo Hilton in Laughlin, and he convinced the waitress that there had to be hidden speakers in the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar bowl, the napkin holder, the Heinz Ketchup...everything on the table. In fact, I just moved my mouth and let him order for me. If you get to Vegas, go see him...and go early so you can get a seat up front and judge how good he really is.

• Posted at 1:47 AM · LINK

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Plug

For the last few years, the best CDs of recorded Broadway-type material and show tunes have been produced by a pal of mine named Bruce Kimmel. He worked for a time for Varese Sarabande and was responsible for some excellent material there. Now, he's launched his own label and it's called Kritzerland. You can hear cuts from his first two releases at this website and you can even order the CDs themselves. Pay special attention to the new collection of songs by the mysterious Guy Haines, who appears on a lot of Bruce's albums but who is rarely seen in public.

• Posted at 5:42 PM · LINK

Winch

Interesting that most of the obits now appearing for Paul Winchell are headlined something like, "Paul Winchell, voice of Tigger in 'Winnie the Pooh,' dies at 82" and then the fact that he was a pioneer of early television, the most admired ventriloquist of his time and the inventor of the artificial heart are kind of like bonus, "oh, by the way..." details. I know reporters are supposed to look at every story and ask themselves what about it will relate most directly to the readers, and I agree that Tigger was better known today than most of Paul's other accomplishments. Still, it does seem to trivialize his more important achievements to rank them that way. Paul was a genuine superstar of 1950's TV and his artificial heart hastened the invention of a more advanced one that has saved lives. Somehow, the priorities seem a bit askew to me.

But then again, Paul himself often seemed like one of those folks who's perpetually baffled as to what to put on their tax form under "occupation." The times I was with him, the conversation could be a bit schizoid because he'd be in the mood to talk about the latest medical breakthroughs and it would seem like a silly diversion to ask him about his early TV work. Or he'd get to talking about that end of his life and he wouldn't want to discuss anything else...except, of course, if he suddenly recalled a good dirty joke.

We hired him a few times to perform voices on the Garfield cartoon show. Once, it was on the same day that Buddy Hackett was in, and Buddy had spent about five minutes telling us a particularly filthy (but funny) story about a stutterer who visits a brothel. Later, after Mr. Hackett had departed, Paul arrived. When he realized he had an all-male audience, he told us the latest joke he'd heard. That's right. The exact same joke, almost verbatim. We all had to stand there and laugh and make like we hadn't heard it an hour earlier. Paul's performance of it, by the way, was better than Buddy's.

I think that was the same recording session where I said one of the stupidest things I've ever said in my life...and there's no small list of examples from which to choose. Paul was assigned two different roles — the elderly operator of a small, mom-and-pop market...and the evil corporate supermarket mogul who was trying to buy him out. At one point in the script, there was a scene of the two men arguing with each other and usually when that occurs, you try to assign the parts to two different actors. This time, it wasn't practical so I had Paul play both and I actually said to him, "I'm sorry, Paul, but I've got you talking to yourself here on page three. You think you can handle it?"

There was a pause and everyone in the studio looked at me like I was full-goose crazy, which I guess I was. I had just said that to Paul Winchell, the undisputed heavyweight champ at having public conversations with yourself. Everyone laughed and Paul said something like, "So, who's working your head today?" Needless to say, his dual performances were flawless.

I always felt a little in awe of Paul, and unable to properly communicate to him what his presence on TV had meant to me as a child. I told him how I'd treasured my Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist figure and practiced endlessly to try and do what he did. I was not the first person to say this to him — not even the hundredth, I'm sure — but he never seemed to know how to respond to it. I'm not sure he understood how valuable his example had been to so many in my generation, even though most of us Winchell fans hadn't grown up to become voice-tossers or even performers. He had his own great reverence and debt to Edgar Bergen and rather fiercely resisted the compliment that he was at least as great as — if not greater than — Bergen. Whether it was true or not — and Paul sure seemed to think it wasn't — he just didn't want to hear it or deal with it. Which is not to say he wasn't proud of things he'd accomplished. It's just that you could never gauge where that pride might lie at any given moment and when you might venture near some sore spot.

On her weblog today, Paul's daughter April (from his second of three marriages) writes, "My father was a very troubled and unhappy man. If there is another place after this one, it is my hope that he now has the peace that eluded him on earth." Based on my admittedly-limited encounters with Paul, I'd say that's a valid assessment and a truly appropriate wish.

• Posted at 11:39 AM · LINK

Saturday, June 25, 2005

This Just In...

The first newspaper obit I've seen for Paul Winchell. [Los Angeles Times, registration perhaps necessary]

• Posted at 11:17 PM · LINK

Paul Winchell, R.I.P.

An amazing man died yesterday at the age of 82. Paul Winchell was a pioneer of early television, appearing on hundreds of shows with his wooden-headed friends, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. He was a great ventriloquist — maybe the best ever — but he was also a great all-around entertainer and inventor.

Paul was born Paul Wilchin, and an early hero in his life was radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. (Years later, a whole generation of voice-throwers would cite Paul Winchell as their early hero.) Paul got his start on the popular radio program, Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour and he later toured with stage presentations featuring talent discovered for that show. He debuted on television in 1948, at a time when few American homes even had sets, and was a mainstay of network programming for years with several different shows of his own and frequent guest appearances on others. Adults and kids alike loved the irreverent Jerry Mahoney who flirted with ladies and sassed the man who operated his head. They also loved the shy, silly Knucklehead, as well as other characters that Winchell devised. Paul was an extremely clever man and his shows were marked with inventive uses of the new medium.

Beginning in the mid-fifties, Paul turned that inventiveness into non-entertainment directions, especially medicine. His most famous achievement was in the invention of an artificial heart. Others advanced Paul's basic design to the point of making it practical but all acknowledged that the breaktrough, the underlying design, was the work of Paul Winchell. He invented numerous other things as well, including battery-heated gloves and a flameless cigarette lighter, and was as proud of his many patents as he was of all his awards as a performer.

During the sixties, Winch — as many of his friends called him — cut back on his ventriloquism and focused on his inventing. Most of his performing was limited to cartoon voice work — a field in which he quickly became one of the top practitioners. He was Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley, Gargamel on The Smurfs, Fleagle on The Banana Splits, and many more...but his most enduring characterization would surely be Tigger in the Disney cartoons of Winnie the Pooh. Paul played Tigger for various projects until a few years ago when a rasp in his voice finally (and controversially in some circles) caused Disney to replace him. He also did occasional on-camera acting jobs, many of them sans dummies, and was very good in them.

I was privileged to know Paul and to work with him on several occasions. He was a brilliant man who made no secret that he was also a troubled man, uncertain of his own accomplishments and torn between performing and doing something "more serious." At times, he seemed genuinely stunned that he had been a personal hero to so many of us.

He had an amazing thirst for what some would call "dirty jokes." One of my oddest memories is of sitting with a group of friends in the living room of a small condo he had in Encino. Completely impromptu, Paul picked up a Jerry Mahoney dummy and launched into what had to have been the filthiest and funniest routine ever performed by a beloved children's entertainer. I enjoyed the performance but couldn't help but "flash back" to being five years old and watching Paul and Jerry hosting Super Circus on ABC. It was one of those moments when you're acutely aware of how far you've come since childhood.

Last year, Paul published a dark, candid autobiography called Winch, detailing some of the demons that had plagued him over the years. The book troubled many of Paul's friends, and some of his fans regretted reading it. Here's the review I posted at the time. As noted, it's not one of those "here's a list of my successes" memoirs. It was more like, "Here's how I went crazy." The last few times we spoke, I got the feeling that he was more at peace with himself than he'd been in decades, and I hope that was not just wishful thinking on my part.

I do not believe word of Paul's death has hit the wire services yet, but it's been floating around the Internet since last night. Sadly, I was finally able to confirm it via a friend of the family so I decided to go ahead and post this here. I'm sure there will be news stories soon and tributes. In the meantime, you can learn more about this extraordinary man — and even hear his theme song — over at his website. Even that exhaustive collection of articles and clippings will only give you some inkling of the brilliance of Winch.

• Posted at 5:36 PM · LINK

On Your Teevee

The overnight Saturday Night Live rerun that airs tomorrow morning is the one from 2/10/79 hosted by Cicely Tyson with musical guests Talking Heads. It's not, as I recall, a very memorable episode.

This coming week on GSN's What's My Line? reruns: Tomorrow morning's Mystery Guest is Gene Kelly. Monday morning, it's Sal Mineo. Tuesday morn, catch Buddy Hackett. Wednesday, we get Tony Franciosa and Shelley Winters, plus one of the non-celeb guests is the great glamour photographer, Bunny Yeager. Thursday AM, you have your Julius LaRosa and then on Friday, it's Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys. These episodes are from June and July of '57.

• Posted at 11:17 AM · LINK

Yokum Boy

Here's a recent interview with Peter Palmer, who had the title role in both the Li'l Abner Broadway show and the movie of it.

• Posted at 8:16 AM · LINK

The Truth About Anti-Hillary Books

If you couldn't get through to those links to the Al Franken Show interview of Ed Klein, here's a better link. And if you don't want to listen, here's a transcript. I found it fascinating, and not because I'm that wild about Hillary Clinton — I'm still hoping she isn't the candidate — but because I think most political/polemic books are full of sloppy, blind research and it's so rare that the authors get nailed. The interview shows are either too nice to them or, more often, the interviewers lack sufficient knowledge to call people on their fibs and distortions. Nice to see an exception that reminds us what a news-oriented interview should be like.

(And yes, I know that an hour long version of The Al Franken Show airs the following weekday on the Sundance Channel. I'm guessing Monday's show will have the Klein interview but since Klein wasn't in the studio with Franken and Conason, the audio version is probably just as good.)

[UPDATE, a little later: I'm told the Klein interview made it into last night's Sundance Channel edition. The next airing of that one will be early Monday morning.]

• Posted at 12:13 AM · LINK

Friday, June 24, 2005

A Rocky Reception

Here's a not-great photo taken about two hours ago. The lighting wasn't very good but I think you can make out four top cartoon voice performers, starting with the guy on the left, who is Tony Anselmo, the current voice of Donald Duck. To the right of him is Will Ryan, who's been heard on many of the Disney shows. The lady in yellow is June Foray and if you don't know who she is, you should be ashamed and should read this to educate yourself. And the gent at far right is Joe Alaskey, who currently does many of the Warner Brothers characters originated by the late, great Mel Blanc.

The occasion was a celebration at the Motion Picture Academy (from whence I have just returned) to honor June's many years of service to the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch. The Academy is, as you may know, a somewhat political entity with various folks lobbying for more attention and money to be directed towards their area of specialty. The lighting people are always pushing for more Oscars to be presented (and more prominently) for lighting, and for more film retrospectives and exhibitions to focus on lighting, etc. June's efforts on her committee are high among the reasons that there are still Oscars for short subjects, and now one for feature animation, and that all are presented in the on-air telecast and treated as major areas. So a load of her friends and cohorts convened to salute her, and there was food and drink and speechifying and applause and a very good time was had by all.

This is as good a place as any to mention that I am assisting Ms. Foray with her long-awaited biography. Soon, I will be advertising here for someone who wants to earn rotten money for transcribing interviews I'll be conducting with her. Right now, I'm asking if anyone out there can help me jog her memory with some of the more obscure things she's done. Her powers of recall are very good but no one could have worked as much as that woman has worked and remember more than about a third of it. The other day, she received a residual check for her work on the Frank Sinatra movie, Dirty Dingus Magee and she called me up and said, "Was I in that? What did I do?" I've never seen the film so she called Frank Sinatra Jr and he didn't know, either. But June's in a lot of movies dubbing other actresses and sometimes children, and I'd like to try and identify as many of them as I can.

In the speeches this evening, director Arthur Hiller mentioned one such role. When he did the 1971 movie, The Hospital, there was a line spoken by Diana Rigg that he thought was not perfect. This was decided during the editing process and as Ms. Rigg was back in England, he brought June in and she redubbed it with a slightly different inflection. She did it so well, he said, that Diana Rigg did not even notice the substitution and had to be told that it had been done and which line it was. That's the kind of thing I'd like to itemize...as many of those as possible. If you know of any, let me know. June is a remarkable woman and I have a feeling this is going to be a remarkable book.

• Posted at 10:26 PM · LINK

Listen In

Item before last, I mentioned the evisceration of author Ed Klein on today's Al Franken Show. Here's a link to a site where you can download a couple of WMA files with the audio.

• Posted at 3:37 PM · LINK

Say, Just Out of Curiosity...

Who created the 1975 Marvel comic book, Omega the Unknown?

• Posted at 12:25 PM · LINK

The Price is Right

Here's a nice list of Free Software Utilities one can download on the Internet. I have a few other recommendations in a couple of categories and I'll try and post them here soon. But over all, this is a pretty good source of good freeware.

• Posted at 12:12 PM · LINK

Surgical Radio

I'm listening to a little of The Al Franken Show at the moment. He has on Ed Klein, the author of that new book on Hillary Clinton, and Klein was either very, very brave to come on the show or very, very dumb. Reporter Joe Conason is ripping the man and his book into teensy shreds, citing errors and forcing Klein to either admit he got something wrong or to defend it by saying, "Well, I heard that from someone," and of course, he can't say who that someone was. I missed the first part but I haven't yet heard Klein able to defend the accuracy of anything being discussed. No wonder Conservative pundits are distancing themselves from this guy.

It's interesting to me that some of Klein's critics have brought up what I always felt was an underrated aspect of all the Clinton-bashing that goes on...and it's true of a lot of Bush-bashing and other political extremism that infests our national dialogue, though the anti-Clinton folks brought it to a high art. It's the sheer profit motive. There's money in writing books and giving lectures that demonize polarizing public figures. A certain amount of America — surely not the majority but more than enough to make a book into a best-seller — wants to hear that the people they despise are even worse than anyone could imagine. And here's the key thing: It doesn't even matter that much if the "information" may be incorrect, just as it doesn't matter to most fans of Pro Wrestling that the outcome of the match is predetermined. They want to hate someone and to see that person get beaten up.

No one of any substance is willing to stand behind Ed Klein's book but according to some reports, he's going to clear something like $10 million from it, plus whatever advances he receives for his next few projects. He's not making that money because he's a good reporter. He's making it because he's giving a certain group of people what they want to hear.

• Posted at 12:04 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

My pal Peter David saves me the trouble of writing an even longer post about how brain-fogged ridiculous the anti-flag burning amendment is. Read him, then come back here and read the rest of me.

Given the low incidence of the supposed crime, we have here a cure for which there is no known disease...but there probably will be. No one's really burning American flags, at least not in this country. But with a law in place that dares people to do so, can anyone believe that some folks won't be more inclined to fire up Old Glory?

One point I haven't seen much of is that the proposed amendment would give Congress the power to write laws to stop flag-burning...but no one has seen these laws. Maybe no one has offered up a draft of what one might look like because they know any such example will be impractical and impossible to fairly enforce.

How do you write a statute that would effectively and efficiently empower authorities to prosecute flag-burning? Merely saying one cannot burn a flag won't do it since the established, proper way to dispose of a tattered or unwanted flag is to burn it. Someone will have to define what it means to "desecrate" a flag, and that discussion always reminds me of the time that infamous rebel Abbie Hoffman appeared on The Merv Griffin Show wearing an American flag shirt and CBS covered up that part of the screen. They decided that was a desecration despite the fact that during the Griffin broadcast, there was a commercial in which Roy Rogers wore the exact same shirt, and that was deemed acceptable. CBS was then in the impossible position of trying to explain why it was "desecration" for Abbie Hoffman to wear the flag while arguing against the war in Vietnam, whereas it was fine for Roy Rogers to wear it while selling fast food. How will any law against flag desecration not run into that kind of highly-arguable conundrum?

For that matter, how are they even going to define the American flag? Those shirts were probably not made out of actual flags but if they were, would it alter their legal propriety? If I take a length of red and white striped cloth and burn it, am I burning an American flag? What if the pattern has white stars on a blue background but isn't, in its whole form, a flag? Are they going to arrest me for burning something that kind of looks like an American flag? What if I burn a 13-star flag? What if I design a 56-star flag with fifteen stripes and burn it? What if instead of burning a flag, I rip it apart? What if I rip it apart and re-sew it into an American flag jacket or cummerbund? I'll bet I could think of a hundred things to do with a flag that some would think was desecration and others would think was honoring it. Suppose I shredded and charred one? Would that be desecration? What if I shredded and charred one in order to re-create a famous battle scene from American history in which soldiers hoisted a damaged flag? Supposing I write a movie in which someone incinerates Captain America...

This can go on forever and it's something the courts don't need. I think it speaks well of America if we believe it's so strong and enduring that it can't be harmed in the slightest by some punk somewhere trampling on one example of Betsy Ross's handiwork. Of all the insulting things I've seen said of this country, I don't think any have been as contemptuous as the suggestion that we are actually harmed by flag-burning.

• Posted at 10:55 AM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Here's a joke that's making the rounds via e-mail...

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate illumination?

• Posted at 8:32 AM · LINK

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Sam Kweskin, R.I.P.

Veteran comic book artist Sam Kweskin passed away this morning at the age of 81. His career in comics was brief and almost wholly spent at Marvel. He began drawing (and occasionally writing) for the company in 1952, back when it was called Atlas, and appeared in books like Adventures Into Terror and Wild Western until the amount of available work declined around 1957. The cover pictured above is reportedly the only published cover he ever drew for comics.

Thereafter, Kweskin built a solid career in advertising art and storyboarding for commercials, returning to comics only for one short story — a war back-up for the 1967 Tod Holton, Super Green Beret. Around 1972, he did a small amount of work for Marvel — some of it under the pen-name, "Irv Wesley" — on Daredevil, Dr. Strange and Sub-Mariner. On Sub-Mariner, he worked with the strip's creator, Bill Everett, who was then having health problems. Kweskin was being groomed to take over the book but it was cancelled, and Marvel's editors were not impressed enough with the work he was then doing to offer him more. Kweskin returned full-time to advertising work and also dabbled in illustration work, most of it involving old airplanes and war scenes.

Some historical articles refer to Kweskin as having been a ghost artist for Bill Everett, even before their 1972 collaborations. This is apparently not true, even though Everett told it to interviewers. Years later, when comic historians tracked down and interviewed Kweskin, he said he had never ghosted for Everett or anyone, and couldn't understand how that rumor got started. Well, it got started because Everett apparently had some names confused. In any case, Kweskin was a good artist even if he wasn't Everett's assistant, and it's a shame there wasn't more room for him in comics.

• Posted at 10:26 PM · LINK

Rickles Tonight

I hear Don Rickles was in fine form on this evening's Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which was just taped. There's a story about Sinatra in Vegas and a bit of Carson remembrance that are supposed to be wonderful. He does not, however, call anyone a hockey puck.

• Posted at 5:29 PM · LINK

Must-See Me

A few guests' names will be added to panels as they confirm but for now, you can get an idea of what you'll want to see at the Comic-Con International...

• Posted at 5:19 PM · LINK

Paul Cassidy, R.I.P.

Paul Cassidy, who was among Joe Shuster's first assistants on the Superman comic books and strip, has passed away at the age of 94. Cassidy spent most of his career as an art teacher but from around 1938 to 1940, he worked in Cleveland for the Siegel and Shuster shop, helping Joe to produce an ever-growing volume of stories and covers featuring their new creation. Scholars have argued over which work from this period is Cassidy's and which is Shuster's, but it would appear that many stories were done as follows: Shuster would do a rough layout of the pages, then Cassidy would tighten up the pencil art on the main figures. Then Shuster would ink main figures or, at least, heads. Finally, the page would be completed by Cassidy. The two Action Comics covers shown above are believed to be all or mostly all Cassidy's work, and he is said to have contributed several enduring refinements to the famous Superman costume and design.

Later Shuster employees — and there were many — had to deal with the fact that Joe was losing his eyesight. But Cassidy was around when Joe could still draw, so he assisted more than he ghosted. He left the job in 1940 and never ventured back into comics. This article tells more about his career.

• Posted at 2:41 PM · LINK

More of Daly and Wallace

I'm sure I'm making more of this than the event was worth but, heck, that's what weblogs are for. Rick Scheckman sent me a batch of newspaper clippings about the John Daly/Mike Wallace tempest. It's interesting that in those days, it was permissible for John Daly to work all week as an exec in the ABC news department...then, some Sunday nights, he would put on his tuxedo and brave the puns of Bennett Cerf to host a game show on a competing network. (Wallace had his own game show connections. He hosted several, including the pilot of To Tell the Truth, and even turned up as a panelist on some of the imitations of What's My Line? produced by the same production company, Goodson-Todman.) Although the dispute was over the Mickey Cohen interview in particular, one does get the feeling that there was also a breach of styles fanning the flames. Mike Wallace was then a kind of in-your-face TV host who supposedly — it didn't happen as often as people later remembered — got someone in the guest chair and cross-examined them until they revealed something they might have preferred not reveal on television. Daly was an enormously polite man — What's My Line? was sometimes so thick with etiquette as to be laughable — and he clearly resented what others called "rude journalism." He didn't think it was journalism at all.

In another clipping Rick sent me but which is too big to post here, Daly defends his position by noting that What's My Line? was a live, ad-lib show. Therefore, he said, there was the chance that the Mickey Cohen interview might somehow come up in conversation, and Daly didn't want that.

Interesting to note that in the article, Mr. Cohen is referred to as an "ex-gangster." In 1957, there were those who would have quibbled with the "ex" part. Four years later, he was in Alcatraz, serving his second sentence for income tax evasion.

• Posted at 2:01 PM · LINK

Two Times Daly

Jeff Boice was nice enough to send in this additional info about an item I posted here the other day...

You talked about the What's My Line? episode where John Charles Daly objected to having Mike Wallace appear as the Mystery Guest. The back story is this: Mike Wallace started the Mike Wallace Interviews show on ABC the previous month (4/28/1957). Wallace was hired by Leonard Goldenson over the objection of Daly, who was the head of ABC News at the time. Daly made it clear that he considered Wallace to be a "mere interviewer" and not a real journalist, and that ABC News would have nothing to do with him. He also warned Goldenson that the Mike Wallace Interviews show would end up getting ABC in lots of trouble

And that trouble occurred on the show which aired the week after Mother's Day, 1957. Wallace had as his guest the gangster Mickey Cohen, who made a number of slanderous comments about L.A. Police Chief William Parker. Parker sued ABC for $2,000,000 (it was settled out of court for $45,000 and an on-air apology). As Wallace notes in his book, Close Encounters, "In the aftermath of the Cohen experience, he (Daly) was able to say 'I told you so' — and did."

If your date for the What's My Line? show was correct, it was the week after the Mickey Cohen interview. Daly probably felt that appearing with Wallace would have been seen as a display of support for Wallace from both him and ABC News. Of course, he should have also known that refusing to appear in public with Wallace would also be newsworthy, and he should not have been so upset when it made the papers.

• Posted at 2:33 AM · LINK

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

MP3 Recorder Recommendation?

Someone here will have a suggestion. I need to record some interviews, and I also want to audio-record the panels I'll be moderating at this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. (By the way, one panel has fallen through so I'm down from 15 to 14. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all that free time since there's nothing to see at the con and no one interesting to talk to.)

I want to find a small MP3 recorder with a great built-in microphone for this purpose...something that records to either a hard drive or a Compact Flash card. I have MP3 players that will record but I don't like the results I've gotten with them. Anyone have a nomination?

• Posted at 10:36 AM · LINK

Labor Pains

The national executive committee of the Screen Actors Guild has voted to reject the recent deal negotiated for voicing video games, so you can ignore most of this item. Here's the latest news. This sounds like a major rift in the union that will lead to much yelling and little solidarity.

In other Hollywood labor news, the Writers Guild is making a major effort to organize the folks who write reality shows. Actually, there's an aspect of this story that's not being mentioned, which is that writers on reality shows were routinely covered by the WGA, once upon a time. I worked on a reality show in the eighties that was fully covered by the Guild. What happened over the years was that reality show producers started to realize they could avoid paying WGA rates for writers by not calling the people who were writing their shows "writers." They began calling them "segment producers" or "researchers" or some other title but still expecting these folks to create a script.

A lot of writers protested to the WGA. Some turned down such work because they didn't want to write without getting full guild benefits and protection and, of course, a writing credit. Others, for economic necessity, took those jobs but went to the Guild and said, "Can't you do something about this?" The problem was that the Guild didn't address it when it was a matter of two or three shows. The WGA covers a field of different writers doing different kinds of writing, and there's a kind of short-sighted democracy that causes it to ignore the issues that don't immediately impact the majority of members. Most WGA members do sitcoms, one-hour dramatic series or features, so those are the areas that receive most of the attention, and the needs of the game show writers and soap opera writers and variety show writers (and so on) get neglected. The reality show scam wasn't addressed for a long time because it didn't affect a lot of people...and now that it does, it's a more difficult problem to handle. One of these days, if and when variety shows make a big comeback, we're going to be in similar trouble. For over a quarter-century, variety show writers have been pointing out abusive employment practices in their area but since there have been so few of them, their grievances never became a high priority. Someday, when rectifying them will be more difficult, they'll be a major issue.

• Posted at 9:26 AM · LINK

Correction

Mark miscalculated. The episode of To Tell the Truth with Baby LeRoy doesn't air on GSN until Wednesday morning. Sorry.

• Posted at 9:00 AM · LINK

Game Show Moments

The episode of What's My Line? which ran this morning (just now) on GSN had a bit of history to it. It was from 5/26/57 and had Errol Flynn, of all people, on the panel. A few hours before the live broadcast, host John Daly learned that the Mystery Guest would be Mike Wallace, who was then gaining a reputation as a hard-hitting TV interviewer. Mr. Daly had some sort of personal dislike of Mr. Wallace or maybe it was a feud between newsmen who also hosted game shows. Whatever the reason, Daly announced that if Wallace set foot on their stage that evening, he [Daly] would not. He could not be dissuaded from this ultimatum so the producers of What's My Line? cancelled out Wallace and hurriedly replaced him with Sammy Davis, who was then appearing at a New York nightclub.

The next day, a story appeared in one of the New York newspapers detailing the switch. Daly was embarrassed and angered by the leak and though the account was unsigned, he was certain it was the handiwork of What's My Line? panelist (and newswoman) Dorothy Kilgallen. He didn't speak to her, except as necessary for his on-camera hosting responsibilities, for months after.

By the by: If you're following GSN's late night reruns, you might like to know that the What's My Line? broadcast tomorrow morning will have Mystery Guest Eddie Cantor (plus his daughter). Thursday morning's has Johnny Ray. Friday morning's has Peggy Lee. Saturday morning's should be Gene Kelly. And Sunday morning is Sal Mineo.

The reruns of To Tell the Truth which air just before What's My Line? have had some interesting folks, too. The one yesterday had Barbara Hammer, who was identified as a "fur model turned comedy writer." Ms. Hammer wrote for Danny Thomas, Ray Bolger, Pinky Lee and others, but her big credit was that she was a writer for Mr. Magoo cartoons, including one Oscar winner. She was credited on at least six U.P.A. cartoons from 1954 and 1955 and, given her background, I'm assuming she's the same Barbara Hammer who wrote an unsuccessful TV sitcom pilot in 1962 called His Model Wife, all about a model turned homemaker.

Question to anyone who knows: The classic 1962 animated TV special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, was written by someone named Barbara Chain. Ms. Chain also was credited as a writer on the 1950 Crusader Rabbit cartoons and on the 1965 Three Stooges cartoons, and it sorta sounds like Barbara Chain and Barbara Hammer might be the same person. The Internet Movie Database credits Barbara Chain also with work on the 1970 series, Villa Allegre, and the 1985 animated series, MASK, but I'm thinking this may be a different Barbara Chain. In fact, I feel like I met the Barbara Chain who worked on MASK, and she wasn't born when Crusader Rabbit was on. Or maybe I'm confusing her with Barbara Hambly, who wrote on MASK and later went on to become a top writer of fantasy books and comics. Anyway, my question is whether anyone can sort out all these Barbaras and tell us which of them, if any, might qualify for the title of first female animation writer.

If I've figured correctly, tomorrow morning's To Tell the Truth should feature a spot with Melvin Purvis, the G-Man who nabbed many famous gangsters, including John Dillinger. It's from 9/24/57. And next Monday, one of the subjects is the grown-up actor who'd once worked under the name of Baby LeRoy, getting kicked and hassled by W.C. Fields.

• Posted at 2:14 AM · LINK

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Cent-imental Journey

I learned to read from comic books, mostly from Dell Comics published between around 1957 and 1960. I read most of them and I had a subscription — a birthday gift from some relative — to Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. The rest, I bought off the newsstand...or my father would say, "Pick out a couple," and I'd pick out a couple and he'd buy them for me. Also, every so often, we'd cruise by a second-hand bookstore where they had a pile of used comics for a nickel each, six for a quarter. I would, of course, get six.

Every so often, a Dell comic would carry a subscription ad on the back cover like the one above. (That's a reduced section. You can see the whole ad by clicking here.) One day in 1959, on the rear of an issue of Looney Tunes, I came across the offer depicted. For one dollar, you could receive twelve issues of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies...so right there, you saved money and you also received the security of knowing you wouldn't miss an issue. But, like they say in bad infomercials these days, that's not all! You also got a handsome membership certificate in the Dell Comics Club and a Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece.

How could I pass that up? Never mind scoring $1.20 worth of comic books for $1.00. I suddenly wanted to belong to the Dell Comics Club. I wanted to belong and to feel a kinship with my fellow Dell Comics Clubbers and, of course, flash my Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece for any and all to see.

Joining was not a simple thing since they wanted you to cut the coupon off the back cover, and I wasn't about to deface a comic book that way. In fact, it occurred to me that maybe this was an initiation test trick. Anyone who would cut up their comic book was not worthy of belonging to the Dell Comics Club and would be summarily rejected. So I made my father take the issue of Looney Tunes to work with him the next day and, when no one was looking, make a copy of the back cover on the office thermofax machine. My father did a lot of silly things to make his son happy and this was one of the less painful. Then we filled out the copy and he wrote me a check for a dollar, made payable to "Dell Publishing Co., Inc." and we sent it off. I was crushed to see that the next day's mail did not include my first issue, membership certificate and Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece. Impatiently, I went back to the ad to check for any fine print that might indicate how long it would take for my goodies to arrive...and that is when I made a horrifying discovery.

The comic with the offer was from 1954.

It was one of those old ones I'd picked up at a second-hand store...in such good condition that it had seemed like a current issue. I had ordered from a comic that was five years old. (My excuse: I was only seven years old.) Feeling a bit foolish, I decided to say nothing and to wait and see what I did receive. Maybe the Dell Comics Club was holding open its membership for me? Just maybe?

No such luck. A few weeks later, I received a different Dell premium — a couple of Huckleberry Hound posters which I saw advertised as a subscription bonus in current issues. No membership certificate. No Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece. Adding insult to injury or maybe injury to insult, I also began receiving a monthly subscription to Tom and Jerry comics. Never understood that. I imagined some guy at the Dell company going, "Hey, you know that kid who ordered the Looney Tunes subscription? Well, he was stupid enough to order from an old issue so he doesn't deserve Looney Tunes. Send him Tom and Jerry, instead!"

But that's how I never joined the Dell Comics Club...and how I missed several issues of Looney Tunes. When I was in my thirties, I decided to rectify the second problem. I decided to fill out my collection of Looney Tunes and, by searching dealers' tables at comic conventions, I was able to do this. Got 'em all...and back when the prices were low enough to do it for a buck or three an issue. Since the Dell Comics Club was long defunct — I presumed, since by then the Dell Comics company sure was — there was no chance of rectifying my childhood trauma by joining.

However...

There's a reader of this site named Mark Thorson. He's one of several who won't let a typo sit on this site for more than about three minutes. If I spell a word wrong at 8:34, I have a message from Thorson at 8:37. Anyway, the other day he wrote not to correct a mistake but to ask me about an eBay auction for a lucky charm relating to Dell Comics. Could it be?

I hustled my mouse over to eBay, bid...and, yes, I am now the proud owner of a Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece. Have a look...

Okay, so it's not exactly like being a member but it's close. It says I'm a member and, you know, it's not like someone can run a check and find out I'm not. In fact, I hereby declare myself President of the Dell Comics Club. And vice-president. And secretary-treasurer and everything else. Try and stop me. After all, I'm the guy with the Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece.

And that's pretty much all there is to this story. I just wanted to show off my new acquisition and...oh, wait. I should mention that my Dell Comics Club Lucky Penny Pocket Piece also says I will have good luck. This will be nice...though I suppose it would have been nicer if it had commenced in 1957. I've missed out on 43 years of good luck. Heck, if I'd been lucky back then, I might have gotten my Looney Tunes subscription.

• Posted at 11:43 PM · LINK

A Nice Little Piece on Groucho

Here's a nice little piece on Groucho for those of you in the mood to read a nice little piece on Groucho. Thank you, Dan Gheno, for calling my attention to the nice little piece of Groucho.

• Posted at 11:11 PM · LINK

Monday, June 20, 2005

Today's Political Rant

No one will ever give me credit for it but I think, back in the pre-Internet days of electronic bulletin boards, I was the first person to ever make an important point in online discussions. My friends and I used to refer to Mark's Rule, which is that you're not allowed to compare anyone to Hitler or Nazis unless they're actually committing mass murder and genocide. I think this is better that the version now being floated about, which says that you're not allowed to compare anyone to Hitler at all. If someone is going around and killing thousands of people, or even hundreds, I think it's okay to make a Nazi analogy or two.

A lot of people are upset because an Illinois senator suggested that certain actions in U.S prison camps could be mistaken for Nazi S.O.P. This is not exactly saying the perpetrators are equal to Nazis but it's close enough, I guess.

Dick Durbin's detractors are calling his remarks "treason" and demanding that he be kicked out of the senate or at least censured. Personally, I don't think spoken words alone ever constitute treason, and the demands for his ouster are empty political threats. It's like when someone loses a public battle on some issue and says, "You haven't heard the last of this! We're going to pass a Constitutional Amendment to reverse this." That almost always means you have heard the last of it. What's the current batting average for threatened amendments to our Constitution? I think it's like one in five hundred million. The stats for getting senators tossed out of office for what they say are about the same.

Might they get him censured? They shouldn't. But never underestimate the power of the right-wing wackos to force Republicans in Congress to occasionally act on their hysterics. (The Terri Schiavo matter will stand for some time as the shining example but it's by no means the only. By the way, right-wing wackos should not be confused with left-wing wackos, who are just as wacko though somewhat less effectual.)

Was Durbin in the wrong? Yeah, if for no other reason than that the public discourse is now over his choice of analogy, rather than the actual issue he was trying to get people to do something about. He was raising a very serious matter and one suspects that at least some of the folks now hammering him for the Nazi reference are doing so because it's easier — and probably more fun — to do that that to address the main charge. Otherwise, I think I agree with Andrew Sullivan, and that must mean something since I so rarely agree with Andrew Sullivan. We need to address the issue instead of shooting messengers. That's probably all Senator Durbin was trying to make happen and it's unfortunate that he used a few words that have gotten things off-topic.

• Posted at 4:02 PM · LINK

Another Vegas View

Here's another old Vegas picture from...well, it's probably before 1973 because the old MGM Grand (now Bally's) doesn't seem to be where it oughta be. They have a couple of Clarks over at Caesars Palace — Roy Clark is opening for Petula, no relation. The Flamingo across the street is still advertising itself as a motel, and in its showroom you can see the team of Phil Ford and Mimi Hines, with Myron Cohen as their opening act. I thought I'd post this to note that Phil Ford, a classy entertainer and straight man, passed away last week at the age of 85. Here are some details on his life and times.

• Posted at 10:12 AM · LINK

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Memo Minder

A couple of readers of this site have sent me links to sites that suggest the Downing Street Memos are forgeries or fakes. The "evidence" of this appears to be from reports in news items like this one that the copies circulating are not originals...

The eight memos all labeled "secret" or "confidential" were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals. The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

Okay, since that "senior British official" is anonymous, I wouldn't trust that endorsement, in and of itself. But as I understand it, these alleged memos are not, like the infamous Dan Rather letter, the work of one dead person who sent it to another dead person. In this case, the memos were written by and circulated among many folks who are very much alive and able to deny their authenticity. If the documents are fakes, one of the named recipients ought to get up and say so. My guess is that the "senior British official" is one of them responding when the AP reporter called up and said, "Hey, did you get copies of these?" It's hard to believe that they weren't asked before any newsperson risked embarrassment by reporting on them.

• Posted at 2:08 PM · LINK

Strip Sleuthing

Dan Tobias does some sharp detective work on the photo posted in the previous item. One of the signs makes reference to "Wednesday, November 27." In the sixties, Wednesday only fell on that date in 1963 and 1968, Dan notes. I'm pretty sure the Pzazz show wasn't open in '63 but was in '68, so that fixes the year for us. So does the fact that the sign advertised a boxing match with "Mac Foster." MacArthur Foster, a heavyweight boxer from California, turned pro in November of '66. Good work, Dan.

• Posted at 1:34 PM · LINK

Vegas Visions

I love old pictures of Las Vegas, especially ones in which you can read the marquees on the casinos. They give you some idea of how wonderful that place must have been, once upon a time.

This photo, which I'm guessing is from some time in the mid-to-late sixties, has a lot of information if you look closely. The Silver Slipper, which ain't there no mo', is offering a show called The Wonderful World of Burlesque with performances at 10:00 PM, 12:30 AM and 2:45 AM. The time clock was different back then. I don't know the last time any Vegas hotel had a regular show that started after 11 PM. (The Luxor currently has a show called Midnight Fantasy. It starts at 10:30 PM.) The $1.57 "World Famous Buffet" at the Silver Slipper was open 'til midnight so you could chow down late, then go catch the 12:30 AM burlesque show, which was probably a pretty good one. The lead comic then might have been either Hank Henry or Tommy "Moe" Raft, both of whom were Minsky's veterans who were said to be among the greatest. Johnny Carson, when he played Vegas back then, never left town without seeing whichever of them was then working.

Also while you were at the Silver Slipper that evening, you could have strolled by the lounge and taken in a "Dixieland Singalong" with George Rock. I'm assuming that's the same George Rock who previously played trumpet for Spike Jones and sang on many of his records, usually doing a baby-like voice, as in "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth." If so, I'd sure like to have seen him perform.

At left in the pic, you can see a little of a marquee for a show called "Pzazz." That's at the Desert Inn, and it was said to have had the best-looking showgirls on The Strip. The Desert Inn ain't there no mo', either.

Those two shows would probably have made for a very full, fun evening. But if that wasn't enough, you could have gone across the street to the Frontier — which is still there, though probably not for long — and seen the offering in their showroom. The headliner was Phil Silvers, probably with Leo DeLyon as his sidekick and accompanist. And it looks like his opening act was Vic Damone. These days in Vegas, you rarely even get an opening act and when you do, it's always someone you've never heard of before. Vic Damone was a pretty big star back then and it was not uncommon for one big star to open for another. Anyway, those three shows must have offered an awful lot of entertainment for relatively little money, and you didn't even have to get in a taxi.

• Posted at 11:09 AM · LINK

Follow-Up

The other day, I linked to a funny Daily Show spot about the invoking of Hitler in political discussions. Bill Sherman makes a salient point about that spot.

• Posted at 9:54 AM · LINK

Also From the E-Mailbag...

From Mike Kozlowski comes this message about an earlier post here...

I'm a daily reader of your site, and I've been following your Deep Throat posts with some interest. Although I'm a registered Republican, I agree with you for the most part — Mr. Felt did the right thing. He should be regarded, to a great extent as a hero. He exposed, quite literally, "high crimes and misdemeanors," and I most certainly do not believe that he had any plans to profit from it in the future. (Frankly, I don't believe he's the one planning to profit from it now, but that's another story.)

My problem — such as it is — is in his apparent motivation at the time. By all accounts I have seen, there was a considerable personal motivation due to his being bypassed for promotion at the FBI. And there have been some stories in recent days pointing out that at one point he was placed in charge of the hunt for — of all people — Deep Throat. Again, without denying that his actions were instrumental in removing a criminal from the Presidency, that's where I think some people start to get a little uncomfortable. I think the best way to summarize it is that he did the right thing — but for some of the wrong reasons.

Please don't misunderstand — I wouldn't want to change history and not have Mr. Felt come forward; God alone knows what he and the reporters and (in truth) the politicians on both sides of the fence in those days saved us from. I'd just feel a bit better about it had Mr. Felt turned in his FBI badge and then walked up the steps at the Capitol to testify before the Select Committee. Hope this helps explain the misgivings some of us have.

I think there's been a lot of "spin" out there trying to tar Mr. Felt, a lot of it from folks like Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan and Chuck Colson, who have been trying for years to sell the idea that their boss, Mr. Nixon, was unjustly ousted from the presidency. (It's amazing how many times lately Liddy and Colson have appeared on interview shows without anyone bothering to mention that they went to prison as an indirect result of the man they are now criticizing. Think that might have a little something to do with their outrage at the guy? Just a little?)

The "spin" they and others have been trying to impose is that Felt leaked tons of confidential information to Bob Woodward. Well, maybe he did...but we don't know that. That's speculation. There's no law against an FBI man talking to a reporter, even in a garage at 3 AM. We know very little of what Felt imparted and it may not have been raw FBI files, as some have suggested. Woodward says "Deep Throat" rarely volunteered information and that he functioned mainly to confirm or deny what the reporters' investigations had uncovered. The conversations quoted in All the President's Men are pretty much in that vein. Unless Woodward gets into more specifics in his forthcoming book, that may be all we'll ever know about what Felt leaked to him.

Another bit of "spin" they're trying to sell is Felt as operating wholly because he was ticked off at not getting a promotion. That sounds exaggerated to me, and I seem to recall that many FBI officials were upset when L. Patrick Gray was appointed as Acting Director. A government agency like that is supposed to operate roughly on succession from within, and Nixon had instead installed not only an outsider but one who was widely viewed as a marionette. Let's remember that Gray is the guy who presided over the Watergate investigation by destroying physical evidence that could have implicated presidential aides. He also made sure that Nixon's aides were briefed on every step of the investigation into the possible criminality of...Nixon's aides. Felt probably believed he was entitled to the job — which he was — but the primary anger may well have been over the fact that it went instead to someone who was there to turn the FBI into a slightly more legitimate version of Nixon's plumbers. Again, we don't know for sure what was on Felt's mind and shouldn't accept the G. Gordon Liddy version of things.

There are things that unsettle me about Mr. Felt's actions but I don't think he should have turned in his badge and then gone in to testify before the committee. For one thing, the committee didn't exist when he started meeting Woodward in the garage, nor was there a Special Prosecutor yet. Somehow, I don't think taking the matter to John Mitchell would have resulted in a thorough investigation.

If Felt's mission was to make sure the abuses of the Nixon boys came to light — especially with regard to the FBI — then he may have felt his job was finished once a Special Prosecutor was appointed and the hearings were convened. (Felt left the FBI about the time both those things occurred.) One could speculate that he didn't quit his position before that because he didn't want to leave Gray unchecked. Also, from all reports, Felt was largely running the bureau's non-Watergate activities and doing a good, important job in that post. As I think we've seen in many years of Washington Watching, quitting one's position of power is a very good way to marginalize yourself and to lose your effectiveness. How many former members of the current Bush administration have we seen testify against current policies and not make much of an impact?

Actually, the more I think about it, the less important I think Mark Felt was to Watergate. Can anyone name one sizzling revelation that he imparted to Woodward and Bernstein that impacted the case? I think the biggest one cited in All the President's Men was that one or more of the Nixon tapes had suspicious gaps...a fact that would have come out anyway. The book details how the reporters obtained and confirmed the important stories they did break, and I think D.T. is only cited for confirmation.

I'll be interested in what Woodward has to say about Felt's motives, and also whether "Deep Throat" was happy with how things turned out. Felt may turn out to be less honorable than I think, but I'd like to make that judgment based on something more than we have. Maybe he did it all because he had delusions of being Mark Twain, and wanted to be portrayed by Hal Holbrook.

• Posted at 1:15 AM · LINK

Saturday, June 18, 2005

From the E-Mailbag...

A reader of this site named Greg Cox just sent me the following...

If Hagel wants to see us succeed in Iraq, he'll support the commander in chief, rather than say things like, "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality..." How could anyone take him seriously?

Well, let's see. If a Democrat says things aren't going great in Iraq, he's dismissed as being partisan. Now, if a Republican says it, we can't take him seriously. That certainly makes for useful political discussions. From what I can tell, the Independents in Congress all seem to be siding with the Democrats so I guess we can't listen to them, either.

Is the premise here really that once we go to war, it's the duty of every American to waive his right to criticize our elected officials? That if you feel our leaders are erring and taking things in the wrong direction, you should just shut up and "support" them? (I never quite know what "support" means in that context? Almost half of America voted to remove George W. Bush from office. Was that not a lack of "support?" If so, shouldn't we have cancelled that election?)

We're starting to see a number of people who formerly endorsed the current actions in Iraq express doubts and pessimism, and I suspect their ranks will swell in the months to come. Is the primary response going to be that those folks don't want to see us succeed over there? If so, it could be a long, divisive summer...

• Posted at 9:49 PM · LINK

Super Update

Tommy Donovan, who's obviously smarter than I am, figured out a way to do a direct link to the Mo Rocca report from Metropolis. Here it is.

• Posted at 5:56 PM · LINK

Bruce Hamilton, R.I.P.

Comic book publisher and collector Bruce Hamilton passed away early this morning following a prolonged illness. I'm afraid I don't have a lot more in the way of details but just losing Bruce comes as very sad news. Bruce was a great patron and promoter of classic comic artists, most notably Carl Barks, and was involved in most of the major, high quality reprintings of Barks works the last few years. Obviously, what made Carl's work so popular was its basic quality, but Bruce did a lot to make sure that it was kept in print and that high standards were maintained, and that financial rewards trickled back to Carl in his retirement years. Bruce had several publishing imprints, including Gladstone Comics, Another Rainbow and Hamilton Comics, but they all showed enormous love and respect for the material they issued, and I always enjoyed the time I spent with him talking comics. One hopes that tradition will continue.

• Posted at 5:51 PM · LINK

Super Report

The other night, Jay Leno sent Tonight Show correspondent Mo Rocca to Metropolis, Illinois for the 2005 Superman celebration. Posted now on the show's site is the segment, which includes interviews with Noel Neill, John Schneider and Superman museum curator Jim Hambrick. Unfortunately, the way the NBC website is configured, there seems to be no way me for to give you a direct link to the video. So if you want to see it, you'll have to go to this page and find it yourself.

Incidentally, you'll note that in addition to not being willing to provide direct links, the folks who run that website also think the gentleman's name is Mo Rocco. Unless he's changed it lately, it's still Mo Rocca.

• Posted at 5:22 PM · LINK

Deal of the Decade

Last year, the year before and the year before, the fine folks at TwoMorrows Books published fine collections of my silly articles. The first volume was Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life. The second was Wertham Was Right. And the third was Superheroes in my Pants.

There is no new volume this year. I've been too busy to assemble one. However, you can still purchase those three. In fact, if you've never bought any of them, you can get a bargain: All three are now available in a bundle for thirty-four bucks, which is almost like getting one free but not exactly. Go here to do this...and consider yourself fortunate. If you just need one, you can find a link to purchase it on this page. If you don't need any...well, what can I say?

• Posted at 5:03 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Mark "Deep Throat" Felt has reportedly closed a book and movie deal to tell his tale...what he remembers of it, anyway. Since his identity became known, one of my correspondents has bombarded me with messages, trying to convince me that Felt is not and never was a man of any honor. My pen-pal seems to think this announcement proves it, and others are touting it as evidence of Felt's bad motives. I'm more than a little amazed at the leap.

First off, Mark Felt has now become the absolute last major Watergate figure to sell a book about his role in that scandal. They all wrote books. They all tried for movie deals and many got them. If exploiting Watergate for profit was a crime, a lot of those guys would be returned to prison, and G. Gordon Liddy would have to give back his entire career since then.

Secondly, I fail to see how someone's actions in 2005 — and this is assuming they're his actions and not his family's — reflects on his motives in 1971. Is the premise here that Felt met with Woodward in that garage only because he was thinking, "Oh, boy. Maybe years from now when I'm old and can't recall anything, I can get a deal to write a book about this"?

Some of the attacks on Felt's arguable heroism have been hysterical, and some contradicted their own points by trying to simultaneously dismiss him as a figure of little importance and blame him for subverting the entire Nixon presidency. I think the record will show that a lot of people brought down the Nixon presidency, starting with Nixon. He was accused of using the C.I.A. to stop an investigation that might lead to him or his aides...and, lo and behold, there was a tape recording of him giving the order to have the C.I.A. stop an investigation that might lead to him or his aides. When that came out, even the loyalest Republicans deserted Nixon and he got the message and resigned. I don't see how any of that was because of anything Mark Felt did that might have been unethical...including making a book deal 34 years later.

• Posted at 2:25 PM · LINK

Friday, June 17, 2005

DVDilemma

The folks putting together the forthcoming DVD set of The Yogi Bear Show are trying to make it as complete as possible, including getting the right credits on all the cartoons. This is, of course, admirable and to be encouraged. Alas, there are two for which they need our help. There was a Yakky Doodle cartoon called "Happy Birthdaze" and a Snagglepuss cartoon called "Royal Rodent." All the prints of those two cartoons in the Turner/WB/Cartoon Network vaults have truncated opening credits. Each lacks the title card that identifies the animator, writer, etc.

If you have an old print of either cartoon (and we're probably looking for someone with a 16mm copy here), can you check it and see if it has that information? We do not need to borrow the cartoons. We need you to tell us what the title cards say. Drop me a note if you can do this. Thanks.

• Posted at 2:35 PM · LINK

Raising a Fuhrer

My favorite segment lately on The Daily Show: Host Jon Stewart takes A Relatively Closer Look at the use of Hitler in our political rhetoric. (If that link doesn't work, go to the Comedy Central homepage and look around for the clip that mentions Hitler.)

• Posted at 1:23 PM · LINK

Paying for Public Programs

David Thiel is the Program Director at WILL-TV, a Public Broadcasting System station in Urbana, IL. He writes the following in reponse to my comments the other day...

Just read this morning's political rant. There's some truth in what you write, and I'm sure that most of us in the public broadcasting system would prefer not to have our funding subject to the whims of politicians. However, simply declaring that we should be freed from the government doesn't address the central problem, which is a chronically underfunded U.S. public broadcasting system.

While the money provided by the federal government through CPB is not the majority source of our funding — in truth, individual viewer/listeners contributions far exceed tax dollars — it is a relatively stable source which the system leverages to attract money from states, universities, foundations and businesses. A loss of federal funding would be devastating, particularly to smaller, rural stations. Furthermore, due to difficulties in attracting national corporate underwriting — including a soft advertising market and corporate America's newfound reluctance to support public institutions — several signature PBS series are in danger of coming to an end. CPB money — funnelled through local stations' dues to PBS--is helping to keep them on life support.

My own station is in a mid-size market, but we are facing a number of financial pressures, including a sluggish state economy and a budget-busting, federally-mandated transition to digital broadcasting. We've made a number of cuts in response, but we're getting to the point where we may not be able to absorb a loss such as you propose without making large-scale reductions in the services we provide to our local communities.

While I'm sure that you are sincere in your reasoning for doing away with federal funding for public broadcasting, most of those declaring that government has no business funding the arts aren't doing so on philosophical grounds. They simply want us to no longer exist, and defunding CPB is a good place to start.

Saying that we should do without federal funding isn't enough. There needs to be broad, public support for an alternative source of income. One of the ideas being mooted is a trust fund, but even that would require a great deal of start-up money. In the long run, that might be the best answer. In the short run, it's vital to ensure that CPB continues to exist. Those who agree should contact their members of Congress immediately, as the full House will be voting on this matter very soon.

As I hope I made clear, I'd like PBS to exist. I'd also like to see the government spend more money on education, medical care for the disadvantaged and a few dozen other things that I think are more important than Reading Rainbow and more legitimate applications of tax dolllars. I'm not wishing for the demise of Sesame Street. The happy ending to this for me would be that enough private individuals and public corporations would support the institution that it never had to ask Congress for another dime.

Having said that, I guess I should confess that I stopped subscribing to our local PBS outlet, KCET, a number of years ago. I paid my dues for a decade or two but the sheer quantity of mail asking me to renew early or up my donation had become truly staggering and annoying. I don't mind junk mail in and of itself, since it takes a whopping ten seconds to toss it in the wastebasket. But I was genuinely starting to feel like every time I sent KCET fifty dollars, they spent sixty trying to get more out of me. I kinda wanted my money to go for programming, not badgering me.

I finally wrote to whoever signed one of the many pleas and said, "Hey, I'll make a deal with you. I'll support KCET indefinitely at the $100 level if you'll never again send me any solicitations apart from my annual renewal notice." I got back a letter that said, in effect, "We can't do that. We've found this approach to be very effective." Well, it wasn't with me. For a time, I was also getting phone calls from them, and I have a policy not to buy anything from any salesman who calls me like that.

Obviously, I know little about what it takes to amass the funds necessary to keep PBS up and operating. Back in the days before HBO and Showtime, I believe that some people had trouble with the whole concept of paying for television programming. I wonder, now that so much of America does pay for premium channels or cable or pay-per-view, if it's easier or harder to get them to consider sending money to a TV channel. I also wonder if anyone has done a feasibility study on making PBS into at least a partial "pay" system like HBO, perhaps with the kids' programs available to all. I actually think I'd have a lot less problem supporting Public Broadcasting if that just meant another monthly fee like I pay for The Sundance Channel and Cinemax. I'd sure pay to get rid of Pledge Breaks and direct-mail solicitations. I'm not sure I want to pay to have them send me near-daily renewal notices...or, worse, to put Tucker Carlson on the air.

Anyway, David, thank you for the message. I believe in what you do, even if I'd like to see some different ways found to pay for it.

• Posted at 12:54 PM · LINK

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Today's Political Rant

Congress is moving to sharply reduce — and perhaps, eventually eliminate — funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In other words, less funds for Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow and other programs that are paid for, at least in part, by your taxes.

I'll probably find myself on the opposite side to many of my friends on this, but I don't think this is a bad thing. The motives behind the cuts may be nasty — an ongoing Conservative drive to silence reporting that does not, by default, skew in their favor — but that doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for the cuts. I've always been uncomfy with the notion that "funding for the arts" is a legitimate function of government. I want there to be arts, of course, just as I want there to be a lot of things that I don't think should be underwritten with tax dollars.

But I also want the arts to be free of political pressure and I don't know that that's ever possible when they're underwritten with public money. I recall tuning in C-Span one day years ago and seeing Jesse Helms and an equally-insufferable Democrat debating the merits of some piece of statuary which had been paid for with federal funding. Helms thought it was obscene, the Democrat thought it wasn't, and my reaction was that these two men should not be having this discussion on the floor of the Senate. "The arts" should not be at the mercy of any politician's tastes or value system, and the sooner they're freed from that, the better.

• Posted at 4:24 PM · LINK

Stag Film

I love seeing movies at the Motion Picture Academy down on Wilshire. Some say it's the best movie theater in the country, at least in a tech sense...and if it isn't, it's darn close. Everything I see there reminds me of that "special" quality of film that you can never get at home watching a DVD, no matter how big a plasma screen you purchase. It's a special treat with a movie as visually rich and fascinating as last evening's presentation, Bambi.

The star of the evening...well, there were two stars. One was Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's "Nine Old Men," who was one of main animators of the film. When they rolled Ollie out (he's 93 and in a wheelchair) for the post-screening panel discussion, the standing ovation from the audience was as touching as anything the Disney crew ever produced.

The other star was the print, itself. An amazing digital restoration was recently done and it's now available on DVD. But to appreciate how remarkable it is, I suspect you have to see it the way we did tonight — on a big screen, and preceded by a brief presentation of "before and after" examples. At the end of the film, when newly-added credits appeared for those who had done the restoration, there was a huge burst of applause for those folks, many of whom were present. We all hear bad things about the current management of Disney, but this preservation and refurbishment must have cost a bloody fortune. True, it will probably turn out to cost-effective but a lot of studios would have tried to strike a new print off an old negative, clean up a little dirt and release it as a "full restoration." Someone deserves credit for not going that route. (Here's an article that will tell you a little bit about what they did.)

So the film looked and sounded beautiful, and the introductions and panel discussion — hosted by good buddy, Leonard Maltin — were perfect. Joining Ollie Johnston were current-day animator Andreas Deja, and two Bambi voice actors — Peter Behn, who at age 4 voiced Thumper, and Cammie King, who wasn't much older when she recorded the voice of Faline. Ms. King drew a noticeable ooh from the audience when she mentioned that Bambi was one of two movies she worked on, the other being Gone With the Wind. I see by the Internet Movie Database that she was also in Blondie Meets the Boss, and I guess I can understand why you might leave that one off your résumé. Still, I wonder how many actors can say that 66.6% of their film roles were in movies that are widely regarded as classics. (Also present and applauded, though he declined to participate in the panel, was Tyrus Wong, who art-directed the film's extraordinary backgrounds.)

With all this wonderment, I hate to inject a "but" into this report but, as you know, we bloggers are always under oath when we post. I have to admit that there is something about Bambi that I do not love, and I'm not sure I can explain what it is. There's a stretch of film there — from just before Bambi's mother is killed through to near the end — where I feel unpleasantly manipulated. And though the whole movie is only 70 minutes, it always seems way too long to me.

Perhaps it's some form of sense memory. I first saw Bambi when I was five years old. It was the 1957 reissue and I remember my father driving my mother and me to the theater in Westwood, dropping us off and picking us up after. It was either the Village Theater or the Bruin — then, as now, right across the street from one another. I had been carefully briefed beforehand that there were sad moments in Bambi. I think newspaper articles of the day actually cautioned parents to prepare very young children for the mother dying and the forest fire. Anyway, none of that upset me but I do recall that the movie was, like most movies are when you're that age, about eleven hours long, and I really didn't like a lot of what was occurring on that screen.

There are some movies that bring out a sense of Unconditional Surrender in me. I just want to tell the filmmakers, "Okay, I'm yours. Play with my feelings. Take me on an emotional roller coaster and I'll follow you anywhere." Somehow, Bambi has never quite moved me to that point. It comes close, especially in the early scenes with Thumper, and I can certainly have a good time admiring the sheer artistry. I just feel like more of a distant spectator with Bambi than I do with Snow White or Pinocchio or Dumbo or any of the other early classic Disney animated features. Maybe in a few days, I'll have more thoughts and I can do a better job of explaining why this is. In any case, even if you buy the DVD, should you get the chance to see this version on a big screen, do not miss that opportunity.

• Posted at 12:44 AM · LINK

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The Marvel Age of Huge Breasts

Over at IGN, Fred Hembeck is ripping the lid off one of the best-kept secrets of The Marvel Age of Comics. While he was publishing the vintage Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four and other comic book masterworks, the firm's owner, Martin Goodman, was also putting out a line of ultra-cheap men's magazines. For some of them, he had the comic division whip up a low-budget strip not unlike Playboy's Little Annie Fanny. Various installments were written by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Ernie Hart, and drawn by Wally Wood, Al Hartley, Jim Mooney and Bill Ward. All but Mr. Ward were concurrently doing work for the comics. The strip was timid in execution (Pussycat kept most of her clothes on) and kind of satirical in an Al Capp sorta way, and Hembeck will tell you all about this curio, and he'll probably inspire some writer to bring her back and put her in The Avengers.

• Posted at 4:32 PM · LINK

Vocal Stylings

Over at The Onion, Billy West talks about cartoon voice work — an area at which he excels. Billy complains, and rightly so, that a lot of producers would rather pay zillions of dollars to a "celebrity" voice who'll give a mediocre performance than to hire a reasonably-priced specialist who might not have the reputation but has a lot more talent. He's absolutely right. And the maddening thing about that is that many of those producers will tell you, off the record, "Yeah, the no-name voice actor would have done a much better job but the celebrity adds a note of importance to the project."

Billy notes one of the unethical practices in this area. Some less-than-scrupulous producers will bring in a guy like him or Maurice LaMarche or Rob Paulsen — any good voice actor — to audition. And then they won't hire them but they'll take that audition tape, play it for the star they do hire and say, "Try to read the copy like this guy did." This is a slight variation on a scam that a couple of studios were working years ago, when having voice tracks recorded in Canada was even more financially advantageous than it is now. They'd audition for a new TV show in Hollywood, calling actors back again and again, just as if they intended to hire some of them to work on the series. And then, once they'd selected the proper voices from all those created by the L.A.-based actors, they would not hire those people. Instead, they'd take the audition tapes up to a studio in Vancouver or Toronto, bring in Canadian actors and say, "We need you to match these voices." What a lovely practice.

• Posted at 3:09 PM · LINK

Blanc Verse

In addition to voicing an astonishing percentage of the funniest cartoons ever made, Mel Blanc was also an accomplished recording artist. He did funny records for kids, many of them based on his cartoon roles. He also did silly songs for adults and while I have a pretty good-sized collection of them on 78 and 45, I welcome the forthcoming CD from Collectors' Choice Music. Here's a link to the page on which you can order The Best of Mel Blanc, and I sure hope this is Volume One, because as good as the selections are, there's more where that came from. And while you're over there, Collectors' Choice also has The Golden Age of Comedy: Mel Blanc, which offers cuts from Mel's radio work.

And Mel isn't on it, but I have to recommend Ready or Not, which is the CD release of one of Godfrey Cambridge's best comedy albums. Mr. Cambridge is way too forgotten these days, remembered (when he's remembered at all) for that dreadful movie, Watermelon Man. But he really sparkled as a stand-up, and I recall him as one of the first black comics to get mainstream exposure and to make audiences of all colors laugh at race-themed material. This one is worth picking up, too...and to tell you how sincere I am, these aren't even click-through affiliate links. I don't make a nickel when you order from Collectors' Choice.

• Posted at 11:19 AM · LINK

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Monday, June 13, 2005

Jacksonville Justice

I think I've learned two things by following as much of the Michael Jackson trial as I followed. One is how unbelievably rotten the news coverage of something like this is. You may or may not agree with the verdict but clearly those jurors, like the ones in the Robert Blake case and maybe a few others, did not experience the trial that was described to us by the folks covering it. It's like the story of the blind men all trying to describe an elephant except in this case, you have blind reporters and most of them had their heads up the elephant's ass.

I was tuning in Court TV for five minutes every few hours since "Verdict Watch" commenced and I happened to be watching today when, right in the middle of a story about the prosecution of that Ku Klux Klan member in Mississippi, they cut in to say...well, not that a verdict had been reached. Court TV, with all its correspondents on the scene and all its boasts about providing the most extensive inside coverage, cut in to say that other networks were reporting there was a verdict. A few minutes later, they confirmed it, thereby announcing they'd been scooped.

That had to be embarrassing but not as embarrassing as what followed. That's when we began to get the cavalcade of predictions, almost all of which were dead wrong. I flipped around — CNN, Fox, MSNBC, back to Court TV — and I think I heard one person say Michael would be found "not guilty" on all counts, and even that wasn't so much a prediction as the pundit saying that was what should happen. The consensus was for conviction on some of the charges, usually either all the molestation counts or all the alcohol-related ones. After the jury acquitted on all ten indictments, I scanned the same channels and heard a lot of the same people say, "Well, I expected this," even though an hour earlier, their big debate had been whether Michael could be taken immediately into custody or allowed to post an Appeals Bond. Nancy Grace, the anchor on Court TV, even said of the outcome, "I'm not surprised," after earlier insisting there was no way a jury could fail to convict on some allegations of sexual misconduct.

So that's one thing I learned...not to listen to these people. The other is not so much a lesson as an observation.

A lot of people are saying, or will say, "Michael Jackson was found Not Guilty by reason of Celebrity," and that in California, you can get away with murder (or child rape) if you're famous. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but it occurs to me that there's also a downside to being a famous person who goes on trial.

Before the murders in Brentwood, O.J. Simpson was a guy who lived on his reputation and likability, essentially making a very good income as a famous, beloved football hero. After the acquittal, there was a lot of talk about how he'd build back that fame and fortune with a well-managed campaign of public appearances, book deals, interviews, etc. Anyone remember the big pay-per-view interrogation to be conducted by Larry King? The one they said was certain to net Simpson upwards of seven million clams? Never happened. The closest they came was an anemic VHS tape that sold next to nothing. (I have a copy purchased on eBay for two bucks. It's pretty awful.)

It turned out — and it must have come as a shock to Simpson — that there was no market out there for O.J. None. I remember the guy who bankrolled the tape appearing on Larry King Live, confidently projecting it would be the best-selling videotape of all time. King pointed out that something like 65% of Americans thought Simpson was guilty and might not want to give him money. The producer said, okay, fine. But if even 5% of the remaining 35% buy the tape, it'll make a fortune. Well, it didn't. Total flop. It turned out that even people who thought O.J. didn't do it — check that: people who told pollsters they thought O.J. didn't do it — wouldn't spend money on him. That's why there's been no book by Simpson, no movie (as promised) to give his side of the story, no big comeback. The public has placed him in a kind of purgatory, shunning him, yelling at him when they see him in public, and refusing to allow him to return to his former life as a much-loved star.

I am by no means suggesting that that kind of punishment is an adequate substitute for a proper guilty verdict and a sentence of many decades behinds bars. But it's also not nothing.

Simpson lost his home, his fame, his career, most of his money — all things that one assumes mattered a lot to him. Maybe he did escape long-term incarceration because he was a celebrity...but Celebrity Justice can also involve that other kind of penalty. If a plumber is accused of murder, tried and acquitted, he can go back to fixing toilets. O.J. couldn't go back to sportscasting, doing rent-a-car ads and appearing in bad movie roles.

It's not exactly the same with Michael Jackson. There are still folks out there who love him and who'll buy his albums and attend his concerts, but there aren't as many of them as there used to be and their number will go down, not up. Even if a lot of folks feel that this particular case did not merit a Guilty verdict, they've also decided that his rating on the Creepy Index has risen to a level that can no longer be overlooked because he dances well.

Since I can't do any worse than Nancy Grace did this afternoon, I'm going to make a prediction about Michael. I predict he's going to make a brief comeback — maybe a tour, maybe reuniting with his brothers — but eventually, it's all going to fizzle. The folks who believe he's innocent aren't going to support him for long, or support him with money, just as the folks who believed O.J. was framed didn't support him enough to allow for any sort of post-verdict career. Jackson may do okay in other countries, but his fans in the U.S. are just going to get tired of rationalizing the sleepovers and defending the weirdness. Eventually, he'll receive the same kind of Celebrity Justice that Simpson received...and no, it's not real justice. But it's better than nothing.

• Posted at 9:49 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Here's my entry into the "What the Democrats Oughta Do whirlwind." I figure, everyone else is playing so I can play, too. What I think they oughta do is find a candidate. I don't think there's anything wrong with the Democratic platform or philosophy or battle plan --

Okay, maybe the battle plan. They're too worried about being called anti-religion or anti-American or anti-family or anti-military, and so they back down, as if the Republicans aren't going to call them all that, anyway. So far, and I may change my mind if he takes it in ugly directions, I like the fact that Howard Dean seems to be moving past all that. He's a good speaker and if he's going to go out there and call this Administration on some of its inconsistencies and misrepresentations, fine. Someone's gotta say it, and Democrats are dumb if they think the press is ever going to fulfill that function.

But as I was saying, I don't think there's anything wrong with what the Democrats are doing except that they don't have a candidate...and at this stage, it doesn't even have to be the person who might really be on the ticket in '08. They just have to prove there'll be some viable choices. Bush is unpopular and getting more so by the minute. More and more, Americans think the War in Iraq just ain't worth what it's costing us in lives (we just passed the 1,700 mark) and grief and money. More and more, Americans see the Bush economic program as a scheme to relieve the Super-Rich of the burden of paying for government and to shift it onto lower and middle-class working stiffs and destroy their Social Security at the same time. Even though Bush himself can't run again, it's a great track record to run against.

The trouble is, you can't beat something with nothing. "The Republican way is bad" is only half the sales pitch. The other half — the half they're missing — is offering up someone who can do better. Who might that be?

I don't think it's Hillary Clinton. Too much baggage. We'd spend the whole election talking about the Clinton marriage and her sexuality and Vince Foster and Whitewater and all those topics that we're all sick of, even if we think they're unfair accusations. We'd wind up talking about everything except what she might do in office. I also don't think it's Joe Biden. He's a smart guy but he seems to have every bad personal quality that made people think Al Gore was a boring policy wonk.

Maybe it's this guy. The link is to a Salon interview with Virginia governor Mark Warner. I don't know a whole lot about him but the last three Democrats who won the White House were all Southerners and that alone makes him worth a look-see. We also seem to like to put governors in the White House, as opposed to senators. The few times I've heard him speak he sounded good, and the interview (which unless you subscribe to Salon can't be read in full without viewing ads or buying a day pass, I believe) has him saying a lot of the right things.

This is not an endorsement. I just think the Democrats need a face to display, and his is the first one that I could begin to imagine on the 2008 presidential ticket. One hopes there will be more from which to pick.

• Posted at 12:36 AM · LINK

Voice Guys

Did you read that piece I wrote earlier about the settlement in the contract for actors who provide voices for video games? Well, Don Porges has some more thoughts on the matter over on his blog.

• Posted at 12:02 AM · LINK

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Maybe Set the TiVo!

We've had a lot of items here lately about our dear friend, the late Howard Morris. So I thought I'd mention that one of his big movie roles — Boys' Night Out, co-starring Tony Randall, James Garner, Howard Duff and Kim Novak — airs this coming Thursday morning on Turner Classic Movies. It's not a great film but Howie is fun to watch in it. And if you do tune in, see if you can spot composer-actor Frank DeVol ("Happy" Kyne on the old Fernwood Tonight show) in a funny, unbilled cameo under a lot of make-up.

• Posted at 10:02 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

People have been debating whether Mark "Deep Throat" Felt was a good guy or a bad guy, and these debates often seem to be conducted on the assumption that he had to have been one or the other.

I don't think many public figures — especially in government — can be fit wholly into one of those two classifications, and I see no reason to expect that Mr. Felt can be so tidily rated. His motives in leaking to Bob Woodward were probably some mixture of wanting to protect the F.B.I. from abuse by the Nixon administration and wanting to advance his personal agenda. In the grand scheme of things, I suspect he was less important to the toppling of a president than he was to the career advancement of Woodward and Bernstein. I don't think what he did was dishonorable or illegal — that's the spin of those who cast their lot with Richard M. Nixon — and to the extent he did it to expose corruption, I guess he's a hero.

But only for that one series of actions. He wasn't a hero for what he did soon after. This article tells all about that.

• Posted at 4:20 PM · LINK

No Strike, No Residuals

I should have posted this the other day but a potential strike has been averted by actors who provide voices for video games. The rough terms can be read in several articles online like this one. As you'll see, the unions backed down on their demand for residual payments, which is not good. On the other hand, they got a nice increase in up-front fees, and the residuals battle can be fought again another day.

I did want to comment on this paragraph from the article to which I just linked...

Game producers had balked at providing residuals, arguing that people don't buy games because of the actors who appear in them. "That would set a precedent for hundreds of other people who created a game to say, 'What about us?"' industry attorney Howard Fabrick recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Both sentences are a little light on logic. Obviously, the actors are a factor in the sales of a game. If not, the employers would just grab a delivery boy, give him fifty dollars and stick him in front of a microphone. That they pay to get accomplished actors is proof that it does make a difference.

And, yeah, if actors got residuals, then everyone would want residuals. But voice actors have been receiving residuals in conventional animation for many decades, and the producers haven't had a lot of trouble in denying them to everyone else. And directors, writers and actors get residuals on live-action films and TV shows and somehow, this hasn't led to the cameraguys and caterers getting residuals.

One other point: If you Google for some of the other articles on the settlement, you'll see a number which refer to residuals as "profit-sharing." No, residuals are not profit-sharing. Profits are amounts that are calculated based on subtracting what something cost to make from what it grosses. Residuals are fixed fees for re-use that have nothing to do with what a project cost to produce or how much money it took in. This may seem like a trivial distinction but it isn't when you work on a show that's popular enough to be rerun hundreds of times but the studio is still claiming it's not in profit. (Has Paramount stopped claiming that Star Trek lost money?)

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Update

In the last ninety minutes, 14 people have written me to say something like Jeremy Bonner wrote in this message...

I can't believe it! I've been hearing that song ("Pop March") in my head for years. A local radio station used it all the time and I never knew its name and I never knew who did it and every so often, I'd think of it and it would drive me bozo. Thank you for resurrecting a mystery and solving it, even though I'll probably be humming it to myself for the rest of the year.

And six of you have sent me this link to a bio of what appears to be the same Johnny Pearson.

• Posted at 9:36 PM · LINK

Unchained Melody

We all have certain silly tunes that linger in our memory but defy identification. You heard the song somewhere and it stayed with you...but you have no idea what it's called or who recorded it. If you did, you could maybe procure an actual copy and play it a few times and satisfy some trivial part of your brain and get it out of there forever. But you don't know what the heck it's called and when you try to hum it for your friends or (even more embarrassing) a clerk at a music shop, they don't know what the heck it is, either...and not just because you can't hum.

And then one day if you're fortunate, the mystery is solved. Here is one such story.

Years and years ago — we're talking late sixties/early seventies here — I heard this silly, catchy instrumental that went in my ear and stayed there for decades. I don't know where I first heard it but there's a brief snippet of it in the movie, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and when I was once introduced to its maker, Russ Meyer, I immediately asked him about it. Mr. Meyer made it clear that he had no idea what song I was talking about, and that even if I could narrow it down for him, it still wouldn't do any good because he didn't know where any of the songs in his movies had come from and why the hell was I asking him about that instead of about the bustlines of his leading ladies, like everyone else did? I sighed and asked him about the only thing he then seemed interested in discussing.

I continued to hear The Song popping up on cheap videos and radio commercials, and I got the idea that it was from some music library. One can purchase for a modest fee, recordings of royalty-free (or low-royalty) music that can be used freely to score movies or commercials or whatever. The places I heard the song were the kind of venues that would use cheap music libraries...but even assuming I was right about his, there was still no way to identify it.

Then, a year or two ago, I was doing a flurry of radio interviews to promote a book I wrote called Mad Art. In case you're never done one of these, the way it works is that you're home on your own phone, available at the appropriate time. If the interview is at 9:00, someone phones you at 8:55 — usually the show's producer but sometimes it's the on-air host, calling during a commercial break. They greet you, check the pronunciation of your name, and then you're patched into the broadcast. You hear a minute or so of the radio show over the phone and then suddenly, the host is introducing you and asking you the first question and it's up to you to be witty and charming and to mention the book as many times as possible. The spot is always over sooner than you expect and then they thank you and hang up.

So one night, I agree to be on a late night radio show in some other city. I think the show started at 3 AM their time, which was Midnight my time. At 11:55, the producer called and I provided the usual pronunciation guide...and then she said, "We'll be to you in about three minutes. You'll hear us playing a short song to lead into the spot." I said fine and waited...and when the short song began, I couldn't believe it: They were playing me on The Song! The very song I'd been trying to identify since 1971!

I resisted the temptation to answer the host's first question by saying, "Never mind my stupid book. What's the name of that song you just played and who recorded it and where can I get a copy?" But I didn't. I waited until the spot was over and asked the producer who replied, "I don't know. I'll check and call you back!" Thirty minutes later when she hadn't called back, I called her only to have her say, "I'm sorry...no one here knows. It's on a reel of stuff we use all the time but it's not labelled." I asked her if she could at least make a CD of it for me. She said she would but never did. So close and yet so far.

A few months later, I was telling the story to a friend in the radio business. He said, "You think it's early seventies library music? I have a lot of that stuff. I'll send you some CDs." The next day, he did. He sent me thirty CDs, each with 20-30 music cuts on it.

I got lucky. It was the fifth or sixth song on the first CD I checked. I played it about twenty-seven times and after that, I never had to think about it again.

Okay, so you probably want to know: What was this song and where can I hear it? It's called "Pop March" and it was recorded by Johnny Pearson, about whom I know nothing other than that he recorded a lot of songs of this kind. Not long ago, it was released on a CD called Music For TV Dinners: The Sixties. If you click on that name, you'll be transported to an Amazon page that sells the CD but that's not why I'm providing the link. The page has audio samplers of the tunes on the CD, and you can click on the appropriate one and hear about a minute of "Pop March," which is Track #16. That oughta be enough to (a) cause some of you to go, "Oh, that song!" and/or (b) cause it to run through your head for the next 35 years. If nothing else, you can marvel at how a tune can so perfectly capture the sound of its era. It'll make you want to go watch Laugh-In, protest the Vietnam War and take your Pet Rock for a walk. (And if anyone reading this has any info on the song or Johnny Pearson, please share.)

• Posted at 8:06 PM · LINK

Doing a Number on Numbers

Tom Lehrer wrote and recorded a number of very brilliant comedy songs but he has made his primary living as a professor of mathematics. Sometimes, he combines his two careers. Here's a link to a 13 minute homemade video of Mr. Lehrer singing a number of song parodies that relate to his academic side. You may not get all the references but how often do you get to see and hear Tom Lehrer at all, let alone performing material you've never heard before?

• Posted at 4:18 PM · LINK

The Pooch Puppet Strikes Again!

I'm a little weary of Michael Jackson jokes but if anyone can keep it funny, it's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

• Posted at 3:25 PM · LINK

Games People Watch

Coming up this week on GSN's reruns of What's My Line?: Tomorrow morning is an episode from 3/10/57 with Mystery Guest Charles Boyer. Monday morning, they have Norman Vincent Peale and Judy Holliday, with Robert Preston on the panel.

Tuesday morning, the Mystery Guest is Mamie Van Doren and one of the non-celeb guests is a 27 year old District Attorney named Thomas Eagleton. Fifteen years later, Eagleton would be the Senator from Missouri who ran for vice-president with George McGovern. He was forced to drop off the ticket when some of his health problems were revealed.

Rounding out the week: Wednesday morn, the Mystery Guest is Hedy Lamarr. Thursday, it's Fernando Lamas. And Friday, we get Helen Hayes.

Also, tomorrow morning GSN will run a tribute to Anne Bancroft consisting of one episode of Password and three of What's My Line? Details are right here.

• Posted at 8:06 AM · LINK

Friday, June 10, 2005

Verdict Watch

I am occasionally amused/fascinated by the spectacle of news people having to fill time with nothing to say. They don't say a lot when they do have something to say but it's even worse when, for example, a high-speed chase is entering its second hour and all the known information could be summarized in about five minutes. Drawing it out and pretending to have new angles and perspectives is something of an art — one many of us dabbled in back in school when we had to write a 1000 word essay on some topic where we knew one measly fact.

The last few days, I've been peeking in on Court TV's "Verdict Watch" and, boy, those people are good at talking for hours and saying nothing. The situation around the Michael Jackson case has changed little since the case went to the jury a week ago. You could list every significant development in under two minutes: The jury sent out a note, contents unknown. Michael dropped by a hospital again. His lawyer said that he has not authorized anyone to speak for the family despite the (until yesterday) constant presence on the news of Jesse Jackson and/or some woman named Ramona Bain as spokespersons. And that's about it. I just watched ten minutes of speculation on whether a long deliberation bodes well or ill for the defense. Each "analyst" says it can mean anything...and then itemized all the different things it could mean.

As I write this, the "Jury Clock" is at 27 hours, 24 minutes and change...and Gloria Allred has joined the throng of Talking Heads who don't know anything but won't let that stop them. An awful lot of sentences begin with, "If Michael Jackson is convicted..."

This morning, the Court TV analysts were trying to suggest that Friday is often "Verdict Day" in a trial and that while nothing had been announced, there was something in the air. Now, passing 1:00 PM, they seem to be talking more about how this jury is so diligent that they could take a lot longer.

A little while ago, one gent explained that they'd tried and failed to get a glimpse of how the jurors were dressed this morning, operating on the premise that a well-dressed jury is one that expects it might be giving interviews later in the day. But of course, no one saw the jurors when they arrived for today's deliberations. I think it would have been great if they'd all marched in this morning dressed as various barnyard animals. It wouldn't have meant anything to the case but it would have given the trial analysts plenty to talk about. ("I once covered a case where they were all dressed in cow costumes and that jury voted to acquit...")

• Posted at 1:01 PM · LINK

John Albano

I finally have enough info to post about John Albano, the veteran comic book writer and cartoonist who passed away last Monday in an Orlando hospital near his home in Altamonte Springs, Florida. His sister-in-law says the cause of death was a heart attack followed by a stroke. He was 82 years old.

Albano had a long, varied career that included stints as an editor for The National Enquirer (for seven years) and magazine cartoons for an array of clients, including Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. Comic book fans know him best for his time at DC in the seventies where he wrote for Joe Orlando's ghost comics (House of Mystery, etc.), Plop!, Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen, Swing with Scooter,, the revival of Leave It to Binky, and many others. He won the A.C.B.A. (Academy of Comic Book Arts) award for Best Humor Writer in 1972.

His most famous work probably was when he co-created — with artist Tony DeZuniga — the long-running western character, Jonah Hex, who originally appeared in All-Star Western in 1972. Albano wrote the first eleven tales of the scarred gunfighter when a dispute arose over the film rights to his co-creation. A lawsuit was settled with Albano receiving money but his relationship with DC Comics was effectlvely destroyed, and others wrote Jonah Hex for years after.

Albano also worked for the short-lived Atlas comic line of the seventies (Phoenix, Planet of Vampires, etc.) and for Gold Key comics on Underdog, Heckle & Jeckle and other comics produced out of the firm's New York office. He wrote for National Lampoon, authored some children's books and did a lot of work for Archie Comics beginning around 1984. He was writing for Archie as recently as a year ago, and had recently been devoting himself to the script for an off-Broadway play.

My thanks to his friend Michael Browning for gathering information and the photo. I don't think I ever crossed paths with John but if I had, I would have told him how much I enjoyed his work.

• Posted at 8:52 AM · LINK

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Day-Time Dramas

Proving that eventually, every TV show that has ever existed will be out as a DVD set, you can now order Season 1 of the 1968 series, The Doris Day Show. I am not suggesting you do this, as I do not recall it as being a great show, but I will provide an Amazon link if you want to see for yourself.

More interesting than the show is its history, especially of that first season. In the sixties, Ms. Day was married to an agent named Marty Melcher, who proved the old Show Biz adage that one should not manage one's spouse's career. It works once in a while but it usually doesn't, and the Melcher-Day saga is as fine an example as you'll find of the "doesn't" variety. For a time, the damage Melcher did to his wife's stardom consisted of signing her up to do movies that she didn't want to do. She'd read a script like the one for the 1967 Caprice and say, "Well, thank God I don't have to do garbage like that," and Melcher would tell her, "Uh, I already signed you up for it. You have to do it." And do it she did...under duress.

Doris was one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world but she was seeing very little of that loot. Melcher was then in partnership with an investment manager named Jerome Rosenthal, and every cent she made went into some new oil drilling scheme, or a hotel or some other venture "guaranteed" to yield mega-bucks. Onlookers would later wonder why the Melchers didn't just live comfortably, as they could have, off what she made: Why plunge it all into risky investments? The answer, it was suggested, had something to do with Marty's ego and his determination not to let it be said that he just lived off his wife. The investments were to yield money that he could claim as his income, even though they were being funded by her money.

The trouble was that, unbeknownst to Doris, those investments were wiping out her money, not increasing it. It would never be clear to what extent this was because the ventures were uniformly unsuccessful or if Rosenthal was just pocketing the bucks...but Melcher found himself in the position of a losing gambler who was desperately throwing more cash on the table, trying to get even. In his panic for funds, he turned to television.

CBS was, at the time, worried that Lucille Ball would soon retire and they saw Doris Day as the star of a sitcom that could be cultivated to take over Lucy's exalted place on their schedule. Even if Lucy stuck around, Doris had proven she could draw an audience. They pursued her for a weekly series and despite Melcher's urging, she said no. She was a movie star, she argued, and couldn't handle the rapid pace of TV filming. Melcher argued back that her kind of movie (i.e., clean) was on its way out and the CBS deal was a lifeline. When she continued to say no, Melcher just ignored her wishes. Without telling her, he committed her to a sitcom and took a huge advance from the network. That money went directly into the Rosenthal investment program, never to be seen again.

Then Melcher got sick...very sick. He died in April of '68 and one day not long after, Doris ventured into his office to tidy up. There, she came across several completed scripts for a TV series called, chillingly, The Doris Day Show. CBS, she soon discovered, expected her to begin filming the show the following month. Further investigation yielded the horrifying revelation that her investments were not worth the millions of dollars Melcher had claimed. They were practically worthless and she was very close to bankruptcy. Somehow — despite depression over her husband's death and the subsequent disclosures, plus the fact that she hated the format of the series to which he'd committed her — she got through the filming of Season One of a TV series she didn't want to do. Those are the episodes that comprise this first DVD set.

The show lasted five seasons and went through four distinct formats and a wide selection of co-stars. Friends said it was amazing that she got through it at all. To further complicate her life during this period, her son Terry Melcher was mixed up with Charles Manson, plus there was a grueling lawsuit against Jerome Rosenthal. (Day eventually won a $22.8 million malpractice suit against him but settled for $6 million.) After the series was over with, she pretty much retired. A producer I know spent something like ten years offering her scripts and huge sums of money but she declined every one of them.

Like I said, I'm not recommending the show. Despite a good cast and the enduring charm of its star, it was a bland little comedy that is largely forgotten...so I guess, just for the sake of history, it's good that it's coming out now on DVD. At the very least, it gives me the chance to tell this story, which I find much more colorful than the show itself.

• Posted at 5:21 PM · LINK

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Set the TiVo (Quickly!)

The Animal Planet network is rerunning a couple of shows that may be of interest to cartoon fans. Animal Icons has an episode tonight (and it reruns Saturday morning) called "Animated Animals" that includes interviews with June Foray, Billy West and other great voice folks. There's also an episode about Garfield, which I haven't seen, which runs tomorrow and again on Saturday afternoon, and one on Star Wars creatures and one on Japanese movie monsters. Thanks to George Karlias for reminding me about this stuff.

• Posted at 6:48 PM · LINK

Dave Tebet

Recently, when Howard Morris passed away, I directed you to this video link to watch what some have called the funniest sketch ever done on television — The Sid Caesar take-off of This is Your Life. If you remember the sketch (or go watch it now), you'll note that before Carl Reiner "surprises" Sid in the audience, he briefly hovers over a slim gentleman seated in an aisle seat. That man was David Tebet, who was then the publicist for Mr. Caesar's program.

Not long after, Mr. Tebet was hired by NBC where he quickly became Vice-President in Charge of Talent. He was the guy in charge of luring Big Stars to the network and keeping them happy once they were there. His job involved stroking large egos, fielding complaints, distributing compliments and keeping out of the ugly side of negotiations. Rumor had it he was empowered to bestow an endless array of gifts whenever he thought appropriate, and RCA products were the most frequent present. Johnny Carson once joked that at his funeral, the graveside services would be interrupted as a truck pulled up and delivered a Color TV from Dave Tebet. As far as I know, this did not happen.

Tebet was often credited with being the guy who suggested Carson for the Tonight Show post. Others claimed it as well, but Tebet seemed to have the strongest claim. In the seventies, when Johnny negotiated for ownership of that show (for the length of his tenure) and set up his own production company, he hired Tebet away from NBC to help him run it. The network, it was said, suffered for the loss. When a star was irate about something, they no longer had Dave Tebet to go in and smooth things out. This especially applied to disputes with Mr. Carson.

Dave Tebet died on Tuesday at the age of 91. If Carson were still around, he'd probably send a Color TV to the funeral.

• Posted at 5:24 PM · LINK

Good News

Nice to hear that Bob Costas will be an occasional substitute host for Larry King. Costas is one of the best interviewers in the field and I'd love to see him graduate to a regular daily show where he could get the kind of guests that Mr. King is able to get. Maybe that's what this will lead to.

• Posted at 1:09 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Andrew Barkus writes to ask...

That is, indeed, an interesting statistic about GWB's approval rating. Could you cite a source for the stat? Friends that I have mentioned it to seem to think it is a bit far-fetched.

Sure. In fact, I said Bush's approval rating was 20 points lower than Clinton's was on the day he was impeached. It could actually be said to be more like 25. Bush's current approval rating is at 48% according to both the ABC News/Washington Post Poll and the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Some polls, as you can see on this page, have him even lower.

As you can see here, right after Bill Clinton was impeached, his approval rating was at 73% in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. (There were other polls that had it more like 68%, which is where the 20 point gap comes from.)

By the way: I don't think approval polls tell the whole story, especially at only one moment in time. There were certainly points where Clinton's ratings were lower than 68% and Bush's have been higher than they are now, and may well go up again. I don't think though that Clinton ever got below around 55% in the major polls. Here's a rundown of Clinton approval numbers.

• Posted at 12:56 PM · LINK

Game Show Watching

This morning, GSN reran another episode of the 1990 To Tell the Truth. One of the segments was about a priest who gave up the priesthood to marry a nun. One of the impostors who were impersonating the ex-priest was a young entertainment lawyer named Tom Mesereau. What is Mr. Mesereau doing these days? Well, today he's waiting for a verdict on his client, Michael Jackson.

• Posted at 8:19 AM · LINK

Go Read

Speaking of the National Cartoonists Society shindig: Scott Shaw! provides a thorough and accurate report on the proceedings.

• Posted at 7:23 AM · LINK

Foto Blogging

Yes, it's another photo from the National Cartoonists Society gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona. On the right is Lalo Alcaraz, who does a very funny newspaper strip called La Cucaracha. On the left is Sergio Aragonés, proving once again that anyone can look good if they have a tux.

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK

Tony Numbers

I mentioned in my Tony Awards review that with the exception of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, none of the musical numbers presented on the broadcast made me want to see the shows. I dunno if this is proof but it comes close: La Cage aux Folles, which won the Tony last Sunday night for Best Revival of a Musical, has just announced it will close later this month. Obviously, there was no stampede to the box office in the last few days.

(On the other hand, this article says that ticket buying for Spelling Bee, Light in the Piazza, Doubt and Spamalot were up. It's just odd to see a show win Best Revival and then close.)

So how were the ratings for the Tony telecast? It depends who you ask...

"If last year's Tony Awards slumped among viewers 18-49, Sunday night's show positively bombed. It was down 7 percent from last year's already anemic 1.5 adults 18-49 average to a 1.4 for CBS, according to Nielsen overnights." (Media Life Magazine)
"The bad news for last night's Tony broadcast on CBS was that ratings did not increase from 2004. The good news was that they didn't really shrink either." (BroadwayWorld.com)
"CBS, which broadcast the three-hour show, was cheered Monday by the overnight ratings, which climbed a bit, attracting 6.62 million viewers, up from 6.46 million last year." (Chicago Tribune)

So they were down, they were unchanged, they were up. However you score it, they still got beaten by a lot of reruns of cop shows.

• Posted at 12:17 AM · LINK

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

Semi-Recommended Reading

The prevailing theory about the Watergate break-in seems to be that Nixon and his men were paranoid/worried (pick one) about revelations involving Howard Hughes. Nixon had been embarrassed before about his connections with the eccentric billionaire, most notably in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. So, the assumption goes, the Watergate burglars were dispatched to wiretap the phones of Democratic honcho Larry O'Brien, who was a former Hughes aide and was therefore in a position to know a lot of Hughes-Nixon dirt.

I've never completely bought this bit of conventional wisdom. Maybe it's true but it seems to me that Richard Nixon didn't need a specific reason to spy on his enemies. The mere fact that they were his enemies was reason enough. In any case, one of the major articles on his relationship with Hughes and how it may have figured into Watergate ran in Playboy magazine in 1976 and it's available, probably for a limited time, on that publication's website. Here's the link and remember that if you click in the wrong place, you might catch a glimpse of a naked woman.

• Posted at 10:55 PM · LINK

Stupid TiVo Tricks

If you own a TiVo, this page may be of interest to you.

• Posted at 10:38 PM · LINK

Coming Soon...

It's five weeks until this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Remember how jammed everything was last year with 87,000+ people in attendance? Well, every year has had a bigger turnout than the year before...so what does that tell you?

I don't want to scare anyone but last year, the streets and parking lots and restaurants were jammed...and that was with nearby Petco Park standing empty. This year, the San Diego Padres are playing the Arizona Diamondbacks there Thursday evening, Friday evening, Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, and I wouldn't count on a low turnout. Those two teams are currently neck-and-neck for the championship in the National League West. So if you're a Padres fan, that's the match-up you want to see.

If you're going to need a parking space at the con, I'd start looking now.

You're going to want to get there early so you can see all or most of the fifteen panels I'm moderating. (Fifteen panels? In four days? Is this man crazy?) I'll try to get the schedule up here soon but know that the Golden/Silver Age Panel will focus on DC Comics from 1940 to 1970 and will feature Gene Colan, Arnold Drake, Sy Barry, Ramona Fradon, Nick Cardy and Murphy Anderson. We'll have our annual Cartoon Voice Actor panel, including a number of folks who've never been there before — Charlie Adler and E.G. Daily, f'rinstance. There'll be a game of Quick Draw!, a couple of tributes to the late Will Eisner, a panel on Comic Book Weblogs, one-on-one interviews with a number of veteran comic creators, a 40th Anniversary look at A Charlie Brown Christmas, a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel that will make news, a spotlight on Gary Owens, and a number of other fun events. If you want to have the best possible time at the San Diego Con, just follow me around.

Do not ask me about procuring a hotel room in town during the convention. There may still be some but I don't know where.

I'll post some tips in the next few weeks. It's going to be terrific. Crowded but terrific.

• Posted at 10:33 PM · LINK

An Interesting Statistic

George W. Bush's approval rating is now a full twenty points lower than Bill Clinton's was on the day he was impeached.

• Posted at 9:54 PM · LINK

Tuesday Afternoon

A rushed day, running around to doctors with my mother...who's doing much better, thank you. Here are a few loose ends and updates...

Thanks to all those who sent donations after my little appeal the other day. When I get some time (ha!), I'm going to try and set up a little private "extra" area on this site for folks who've contributed to its upkeep, and all of you will be included.

I am told that Chita Rivera did cuss (the "s" word) on the Tony Awards when she accidentally killed John Kander. I assumed she hadn't because there was no audience reaction, but I guess Broadway audiences don't really care much. Also, several folks have written me that Nathan Lane's shaven dome was because of the recently-shot prison sequence for the end of the movie of The Producers. (And boy, I wish they wouldn't call it that. It'll just confuse people. I don't know how many times I've seen some home video ad or purchase that mixed up the non-musical version of Little Shop of Horrors and the musical one directed by Frank Oz. If I were the guy in charge, the movie version of the musical of The Producers would be called Springtime for Hitler with "The Producers" in a sub-title.

I have, alas, confirmed the death of comic book writer and cartoonist John Albano. I'll try to post a more formal obit later today.

And I'm sorry to hear of the passing of a very classy lady named Anne Bancroft. I can't say that I knew her well but the few times I was around her, she seemed just as delightful in person as you'd expect. And she and Mel sure made a fine, loving couple.

• Posted at 3:08 PM · LINK

My Reputation At Steak

For years, I've told my pal Earl Kress that the best steak house in America is Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. Don't think it isn't, just because it didn't make the list of The Original Great Steak Houses of North America or The Top 10 U.S.D.A. Prime Steakhouses or any of those other bogus surveys that they put together for the in-flight magazines. Every time I fly, I stow my laptop, buckle my seat belt and then immediately check the magazine to see if by some fluke of honesty, they've put Peter Luger's in its rightful position atop the lists. That it is nowhere in evidence proves that the lists are just advertising scams and that the listed eateries paid their way onto those rosters. The way I see it, Peter Luger's is so good, they don't have to pay to have someone say so.

Earl has heard me say this so often that on his current trip to New York (this week), he decided he had to try it for himself. For a moment there, I thought my bluff had been called and that I'd so oversold the place that it could only disappoint. I imagined Earl calling me in a fury, yelling that he'd shlepped all the way out to Brooklyn on my say-so and discovered that it was not a life-affirming, deeply-moving and multi-orgasmic experience; that it was just steak.

Last night, when he got back to the hotel, Earl phoned and said, "I've just had the best meal of my life." I feel as proud as if I'd picked out the Porterhouse and cooked the meat myself.

• Posted at 2:57 PM · LINK

Great Moments in TV Journalism

At this moment on Court TV, the discussion topic is if Michael Jackson goes to prison and if the rumors are true that a portion of his nose is a prosthetic piece, will he be allowed to have it in his cell or will they take his nose away?

• Posted at 2:37 PM · LINK

Monday, June 6, 2005

More Spider Stuff

And if that eBay auction doesn't satisfy your urge to browse Spider-Man collectibles, here's an even bigger collection. Thanks to Paul Merolle for telling me about it.

• Posted at 5:03 PM · LINK

Spider-Stuff

If you're a big fan of Spider-Man, you might want to bid on (or at least browse) this eBay auction. It bills itself as "The World's Largest Spider-Man Collection" and it sure gives you an idea of how many Spider-Man items there have been for which co-creator Steve Ditko never saw a nickel. Thanks to Pam Noles for the pointer.

• Posted at 3:04 PM · LINK

Follow-Up

Pat O'Neill writes to say there was a brief shot of Jerry Orbach in there as an intro to Jesse Martin's rendition of "Razzle Dazzle." Bet I wasn't the only one who missed it. My thought was that they were singing that song because Fred Ebb wrote the lyrics and only later did I connect it with Orbach, and I don't think this is just me being dense. I think it was rushed to the point of confusion.

• Posted at 10:49 AM · LINK

Yet Another Tony Thought

One more awkward moment at the Tonys was the segment devoted to the deceased. Pressed for time, they had to rush through a very incomplete list...which may be worse than doing nothing at all. Did they really leave out Jerry Orbach? That's a pretty big Broadway star to omit in favor of a couple of agents. Christopher Reeve was there but they cut to his picture so late that most people probably didn't see him.

Then came the "Razzle Dazzle" musical number which might have made sense if someone had reminded us that its lyrics were by the departed Fred Ebb (or even that it was introduced on Broadway by Mr. Orbach) and if the director hadn't opted to cut to a camera located in upstate New York. The long shot may have been because one of the dancers was showing a bit too much dorsal cleavage...but if so, that's like the silly need to bleep words in a pre-recorded musical number. Weren't the Standards and Practices people at rehearsals?

• Posted at 10:16 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

The Supreme Court says that laws against medical marijuana can and should be enforced. I suppose this may be an example of non-activist judges at work. Those laws are idiotic and illogical but they are on the books, and perhaps it is not the job of any judicial authority to parse them in a manner that weakens them. Justice Stevens, in his opinion, made clear that he was not cheering the federal ban on marijuana; just that it was up to Congress, not the courts, to repeal those laws.

Which means Americans oughta start pressuring Congress to do so — and in a hurry, since people who might be helped by the drug are suffering, and the enforcement of those laws is a splendid waste of resources and manpower. The decision related to a couple of cases, one being that of an Oakland woman named Angel Raich. Ms. Raich, it is reported, suffers from a wide array of ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain. She has been able to alleviate some paralysis by smoking marijuana but we sure can't allow that to continue. Let's pull some law enforcement folks away from watching for terrorists and send them to arrest this woman, who is clearly a threat to us all.

I don't know why there isn't some national doctrine or A.M.A. precept that says that anything that can be done to alleviate pain and suffering can be at least tried. The bureaucracy involved here helps no one, to say nothing of the inconsistency. "Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion," says John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy. "To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective." Yeah, right. That's why all drugs are thoroughly tested before the public is allowed access to them — like, say, Vioxx or whatever other widely-used pain reliever will next be judged unsafe after hundreds of thousands of people have used it for years. But we can't let Angel Raich have something that she's found works for her.

Would someone ask Mr. Walters if excessive consumption of alcohol is safe or effective? I've had more friends killed in one way or other by Jim Beam than by pot...and yes, I know this is an old argument. But for 40 years, I've been asking why using marijuana should be put in a different category from drinking vodka, and I've never seen an answer more useful than Jack Webb's in a 1967 episode of Dragnet. He said something about how booze does a lot of damage but it's here and it's not going away, so why do we need to add marijuana to the list? (Actually, the most honest answer I've seen was a guy on the old Joe Pyne Show, also in the sixties, who once said that alcohol was the establishment drug and marijuana was the anti-establishment drug, and the establishment has a selfish duty to deny "the enemy" everything.)

It was interesting to see that today's Supreme Court decision had Rehnquist, O'Connor and Thomas in dissent. There's a strange mix. I've always thought Thomas was a judicial mediocrity but he does seem to believe in states' rights...so give him points for consistency.

• Posted at 10:08 AM · LINK

A Nichols's Worth of Advice

Several folks who didn't catch the Tonys wrote to ask me to quote Mike Nichols with his counsel to the losers. It was as follows: "Cheer up. Life isn't everything!"

• Posted at 7:15 AM · LINK

Tony Tally

Let the record show that in this post, I predicted the winners in 25 categories of Tony Awards, and that I only missed in five: Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play was Bill Irwin in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Best Revival of a Play was Glengarry Glen Ross, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play was Liev Schreiber in Glengarry Glen Ross, Best Scenic Design of a Play was Scott Pask for The Pillowman, Best Costume Design of a Play was Jess Goldstein for The Rivals. That's not a bad track record when you consider that I haven't gotten to New York for a couple of years and so did not see any of the shows.

• Posted at 12:53 AM · LINK

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Troubled Tonys

There's something wrong with a Tony Awards broadcast where the high point is a surprise walk-on by Al Sharpton.

I'm usually quick to defend these shows because folks don't appreciate how difficult they are to put on, how many things could go wrong and don't, and because a lot of the high and low points are things are simply beyond the producers' control. Still, you had to wince at all the tech mistakes and bad choices. Especially baffling was how, at least on the New York telecast which I watched out here, gibberish kept popping up on the screen, courtesy of (I guess) a drunken closed-captioned device that went inexplicably open...and every so often, you could hear the director (I think it was) giving camera instructions, which ain't supposed to happen, either.

Good points: The opening with Billy Crystal. The funny bit with Christina Applegate (actually, a stuntwoman) falling off the stage. The charm of host Hugh Jackman. Nathan Lane and just a few other presenters. Mike Nichols's advice to the losers. The number from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee...which was the only musical number all evening that made me want to go see the show. Some say the main function of the Tony telecast is to serve as an infomercial for Broadway, and that the real winners are those whose presentations drive buyers to the box offices. I can't see how most of the selections this evening could prompt purchasing, especially the scenes from the nominated plays which were too brief to generate the slightest interest. Even Spamalot, which I just know is not a dull show, looked like a dull show.

Bad points: There were too many of them to name...and hey, what's with everyone tugging their ear to send a signal to someone? And all that lip-syncing on a show that's celebrating The Magic of the Live Theater? Why was Nathan Lane's head shaved and why were almost all the winners thanking their agents? Radio City Music Hall is way too big to properly present anything smaller than huge spectacle, and the director kept cutting to wide shots that not only distanced us from the action but showed us the empty seats of so many attendees who'd had enough and headed for the lobby.

Last year, there was a ghastly "star" musical number with Mary J. Blige singing a number from A Chorus Line. This year, it was outdone by Aretha Franklin and Hugh Jackman singing a song from West Side Story. The thought — to honor Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday — was a nice one, but why'd they have to pick a number from his first show, and one for which he wrote only the lyrics? Rumor has it the man has written one or two good songs all by himself in the years since.

Even the bleeping was weird. The idea of having a live broadcast on a seven-second delay is that someone might accidentally blurt out some naughty word...but there were two deletions in the number from Dirty Rotten Scandals — which was, of course, scripted and rehearsed, and I think it was also pre-recorded and lip-synced. For that matter, once you've made the (correct) decision that you have to leave in the shots of men and women kissing their same-sex mates, are you really going to offend anyone by allowing the word, "ass?"

Later, during Chita Rivera's tribute to deceased friends, she was censored without even being dirty. She was supposed to speak of the recent deaths of composers Fred Ebb and Cy Coleman but she accidentally mentioned Ebb and his very much alive partner, John Kander. CBS bleeped the mention of Kander on the fly, but since she caught and corrected herself, most viewers probably didn't know what she was talking about and/or thought she'd uttered some ghastly expletive.

It was a whole evening of that kind of thing...painful to those of us who want the Tony Awards to be as wonderful as we all know Good Theater can be. Recently, someone sent me DVDs of some of the earlier telecasts and it's fascinating how joyful these shows used to be. (The 1971 show, for reasons that can probably never be re-created, is especially thrilling.) I know you can't ever get Zero Mostel and Robert Preston out to re-create their great musical moments...but these things used to be about performances, and now they're about walking to the stage to thank your agent and life partner. Most of America doesn't watch the Tonys since they've never seen the shows and don't know who most of the nominees are...but there's a group out there that might tune in and perhaps be moved to purchase tickets, if only the show had a little magic.

• Posted at 11:02 PM · LINK

The Iron Horse of Comic Art Publications

For more than 35 years, the world of newspaper comic strips has been covered by Cartoonist PROfiles, a fine quarterly magazine produced by Jud Hurd, who is himself a practitioner of the art. Cartoonist PROfiles has delved into animation and comic books, but its principal focus has been political cartoons and comic strips, and I've been a happy subscriber since its inception.

Sadly, I'm hearing that this venerable magazine may be coming to an end soon. Mr. Hurd is in poor health, and you could almost sense it from the latest issue (#145), which I received yesterday. The issue is a little slimmer than I'm used to, and has the slight feel of having been assembled without Hurd's customary editorial precision. That is not a criticism. If what I've heard is true, it was a commendable effort just to get this one to press.

I hope this is not the end of this fine publication. Perhaps when Hurd is no longer able to do it, he has someone else in mind to assume command, or someone can be found. At the very least, I'd love to see someone issue the entire run on CD-Rom because even though I have 'em all, it would be a lot easier to have the issues in that format. It's been a very important magazine and there's been a lot of history in its pages.

• Posted at 10:44 AM · LINK

Thoughts on Verdict Watch

It's tempting to try and predict the outcome of the Michael Jackson trial. But then I remember that those jurors sat there for 14 weeks and heard something like 130 witnesses, whereas I've paid maybe an hour's worth of attention to the matter and only heard/read third-hand paraphrases of some teensy fraction of the testimony. That doesn't mean they'll come to the right decision — one O.J. jury was certainly wrong — but real jurors have a perspective and a possession of the facts that are generally unavailable to us casual, armchair jurors. Maybe we ought to trust them more than we do to judge the case that was presented in court. They're also burdened with rules of evidence and points of law that do not encumber our judgment...and of course, we have the luxury that if we're wrong, no one gets hurt.

Many of the Talking Heads on cable TV are avoiding predictions but those that have a view seem to think there's no way Michael will be found guilty; that we're looking at either an acquittal or a hung jury. The latter possibility may be just wishful thinking from folks who are making good livings covering this Jackson trial and wouldn't mind another. It doesn't hurt to keep in mind that a lot of these same experts told us that Robert Blake was a sure bet for a quick conviction.

As I understand it, the jury could boot the molestation charges and convict Jackson of one or more counts of furnishing alcohol to minors. That sounds like a nice "compromise" move if they're as conflicted as the press coverage of the trial might suggest. But maybe they're not conflicted one bit. Maybe they're sure, one way or the other. I'm not going to make the mistake again of being shocked at a verdict because I expected the jury to see things the same way I did after some casual glances at the MSNBC coverage. It's the real world in that jury room. The only prediction I can express with any confidence is that regardless of the verdict, Michael Jackson will never be Michael Jackson again.

• Posted at 10:19 AM · LINK

Foto Blogging

Here's another photo from the National Cartoonists Society gathering in Scottsdale last weekend. Sunday evening, they had a roast/tribute to Sergio Aragonés and almost everyone in the room was wearing false mustaches that looked much more realistic than the phony one he's been sporting all these years. Here, we see Mr. and Mrs. Mort Walker with theirs. Mort, of course, is the man reponsible in one way or another for Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Boner's Ark, Sam's Strip, Sam and Silo, Patches and Gamin, etc. Three times during the weekend, other cartoonists had to physically restrain him from creating a new strip. (Sergio, by the way, took this photo.)

• Posted at 8:18 AM · LINK

Set the TiVo!

In case you're unaware, the Tony Awards tonight will be preceded by a one-hour special on the TV Guide Channel covering the arrivals. I just found this out so I figured I'd pass it on.

• Posted at 1:05 AM · LINK

Saturday, June 4, 2005

Guilting for Gelt

It's been many months since I formally solicited donations on this site...which may be why it's been many months since I've received many. In the last half-a-year, the number of visitors here has almost doubled while the "take" has dropped to a trickle. I'd like to see this site start paying for itself again, so I'm going to post a banner and hope it'll move some of you to send some bucks. If enough of you do, I'll be adding a few new departments to this site in the next month or two.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This solicitation does not apply to anyone who has sent me more than $200 in the past. I have a couple of loyal readers who, every time I ask for money, send me large amounts. I am more than appreciative and don't want any more of your money, people. In fact, I'll send it back if you send it. This means you too, Frank.

Okay, here's the banner...

• Posted at 4:53 PM · LINK

Toad in a Hole

On Wednesday, I cautioned you all not to click on a link that would take you to an animation for a Crazy Frog. If you did, you might be interested in this article about the critter. Thanks to Alan Light for the links.

• Posted at 1:24 PM · LINK

Award Winners

The Tony Awards are tomorrow night. I was going to post the winners after the ceremony but I expect to be busy then so here they are now...

Best Musical: Spamalot
Best Play: Doubt
Best Revival of a Musical: La Cage aux Folles
Best Revival of a Play: Twelve Angry Men
Best Special Theatrical Event: 700 Sundays
Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical: Norbert Leo Butz, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical: Victoria Clark, The Light in the Piazza
Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play: Brían F. O'Byrne, Doubt
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play: Cherry Jones, Doubt
Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical: Dan Fogler, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical: Sara Ramirez, Spamalot
Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play: Michael Stuhlbarg, The Pillowman
Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play: Adriane Lenox, Doubt
Best Director of a Musical: Mike Nichols, Spamalot
Best Director of a Play: Doug Hughes, Doubt
Best Choreography: Jerry Mitchell, La Cage aux Folles
Best Book of Musical: Rachel Sheinkin, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Best Original Score: Adam Guettel, The Light in the Piazza
Best Scenic Design of a Musical: Michael Yeargan, The Light in the Piazza
Best Scenic Design of a Play: Santo Loquasto, Glengarry Glen Ross
Best Costume Design of a Musical: Catherine Zuber, The Light in the Piazza
Best Costume Design of a Play: Jane Greenwood, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Christopher Akerlind, The Light in the Piazza
Best Lighting Design of a Play: Brian MacDevitt, The Pillowman
Best Orchestrations: Ted Sperling, Adam Guettel and Bruce Coughlin, The Light in the Piazza

Maybe I should have put up a SPOILER ALERT but I didn't feel like it. Enjoy the show even though you already know who's going to win.

• Posted at 9:28 AM · LINK

Leon Askin, R.I.P.

Another great character actor has died. You might think of Leon Askin as being to Nazi officers what Fritz Feld was to maitre d's, what Parley Baer was to small town mayors, what Jack Norton was to drunks, what Mary Wickes was to sharp-tongued housekeepers, what Eddie Deezen is to nerds, etc. Most folks probably remember Mr. Askin for his role as General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes but he actually played a wide range of non-Kraut roles in his long, illustrious career on stage and screen. A few years ago, I chanced across his website and found his bio fascinating. Now that he's passed away in his native Austria at age 97, the website will probably go away. Before it does, you might want to read up on Leon Askin, an actor who could do a lot more than threaten to send Colonel Klink to the Russian Front.

• Posted at 1:37 AM · LINK

Dopey Drive

Donald Wildmon's American Family Association has for some time tried to run some sort of boycott against the Disney company for being "gay-friendly." Now, they're calling it off, citing some kind of vague, limited success. One suspects it's more a matter of them realizing their impact was microscopic and that it was time to claim some feeble gains, declare victory and get out before too many people noticed how ineffectual they were.

Actually, I think something like 99% of all boycotts are utterly ineffectual, except maybe to get the boycotters a few moments in the spotlight to express their outrage. Most Americans don't alter their buying patterns much, at least over so-called moral issues. Some of them will even write indignant "I'll never buy your product again" letters and then, on their way home from mailing the letter, stop off and pick up the product. It would not surprise me if the Disney organization noticed zero loss — and perhaps even an uptick — due to Wildmon's hysterical boycott.

• Posted at 1:18 AM · LINK

Friday, June 3, 2005

Foto Blogging

So without a lot of time to write, I'm going to create the illusion of activity on this weblog by posting photos. This one was taken last weekend at the National Cartoonist Society get-together in Scottsdale, Arizona. The gent with the mustache is my collaborator of mucho años, Sergio Aragonés, who has been a mainstay of Mad Magazine since 1963. The man he's speaking with is Jack Davis, who was in Mad as of its first issue in 1952, and who went on to become one of the most popular commercial artists in the world. They're sharing a nice moment talking about something-or-other. Sneaking past them at left is Irwin Hasen, who was a great illustrator for DC Comics in the forties and early fifties, and who was later best known for the Dondi newspaper strip. Read more about Sergio here and about Irwin here, and one of these days, I've got to write something about Jack.

• Posted at 10:17 PM · LINK

Friday Morning

First off, I'm way behind on responding to e-mail, and it'll probably get worse before it gets better. My ongoing apologies to those of you whose messages languish in my "to be answered" folder.

Secondly, I'm almost burned-out on reading about Mark "Deep Throat" Felt but this article by John W. Dean is of great interest to those of us who wallow in this stuff. Even more important is this list Dean has compiled of what Felt/Throat is known to have told Bob Woodward and how much of it was wrong. It may, however, have been close enough for government work.

The weekend rerun of an old Saturday Night Live is of little interest. It's a 1998 episode guest-hosted by Scott Wolf. But the following week, they jump back to 5/22/76 for one with Buck Henry and musical guest Gordon Lightfoot. It contains the "Talk Back" sketch which I thought was the funniest thing they did the first season. There's also an installment of "Samurai Tailor," Michael O'Donoghue doing his impression of Tony Orlando and Dawn having sharp steel needles plunged into their eye sockets, and Lorne Michaels upping his offer to The Beatles to reunite on SNL.

Sunday evening, we'll all be watching The Tony Awards, which I suspect means we'll see a lot of Eric Idle.

Some time next week, I'll probably be posting the schedule of events I'm hosting at this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Looks like there'll be fourteen of 'em — a new record for me and one that means I'll be spending all four days in various convention halls. Well, it beats trying to get a hotel room down there...

Back to a deadline...

• Posted at 9:22 AM · LINK

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Recommended Viewing

It's been a while since I mentioned The Daily Show With Jon Stewart since I figure if you're smart enough to find your way to this website, you're smart enough to watch that show regularly. But their coverage of the Deep Throat unmasking was especially funny and, thanks to a weblog called Crooks and Liars that offers video clips, I can point you to an online Daily Show excerpt. I can even offer you your choice of a QuickTime version or a Windows Media File. Enjoy.

• Posted at 12:55 AM · LINK

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Warning

Do not click on this link. Do you hear me? Do not click on this link.

• Posted at 10:38 PM · LINK

GSN Info

This is for those of you watching the What's My Line? reruns on GSN. Tonight's episode has Bert Lahr as the Mystery Guest and tomorrow night's has Yul Brynner. Early Saturday AM, GSN will skip an episode with Robert Montgomery in order to present a tribute to the late Eddie Albert...episodes of game shows on which he appeared. Then the episode that airs early Sunday morning has George Gobel as the surprise celeb, and Monday morn we'll see Peter Lawford and Salvador Dali.

• Posted at 7:46 PM · LINK

I've Run Out of Throat Puns

I have to admit that I'm really enjoying all the stories about Mark Felt and his actions as Deep Throat. I read every Watergate book, watched every documentary, talked at length with friends of similar interest. I even once had a bizarre lunch with the infamous Charles Colson, which I'll tell you about one of these days. Anyway, I find it all fascinating.

As I said earlier, I think it's premature to call Felt an out-and-out hero. We don't know all that much about his motives and just how much of what he told Bob Woodward was classified. But it's also ignoble to suddenly start damning the man with every conceivable negative interpretation of his actions. That's just Nixon People trying to spare themselves the discomfort of seeing themselves once again viewed as participants in villainy. Say what you will about him, Felt helped to expose a corruption that was creeping into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the arguments that he was "disloyal" and a lawbreaker himself are basically arguments that he should have been a good, silent drone and allowed the plan to succeed.

That said, Felt may not be much of a hero, not for his Deep Throat activities but for some later twisting of the law. As this article in the Boston Globe notes, Felt engaged in some nefarious crimes and (irony alert!) illegal break-ins.

I'm not sure how I feel about either period of his life. I guess I feel I don't know enough to judge. But it does remind me that some people are not All Good or All Bad; that sometimes, they can be both at different times. Or even both at the same time.

• Posted at 1:14 PM · LINK

A Howie Morris Story

I think I promised to tell this and forgot. It involves a naughty word that every one of you knows and if I used it without asterisking, no one in the world would be harmed. However, it might cause me to get dropped by a couple of search engines so I'm going to asterisk...

In 1966, Hanna-Barbera produced a prime-time animated special that for some reason has not been rerun much since then, nor has it ever been released on home video. It should be, because I recall Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? as a pretty good little story. It took the famous Lewis Carroll tale, updated it and put it into Hanna-Barbera style. There were some nice songs by the team of Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who are today better known for writing the tunes for Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and many other shows. (One wonders if there was any connection between them doing this job and the fact that George Sidney, who directed the movie of Bye Bye Birdie, was then on the Hanna-Barbera Board of Directors). Bill "Jose Jiminez" Dana worked on the script and cast Jose as the White Knight.

The voice of Alice was provided by veteran radio/animation actress Janet Waldo, and it's worth noting that if they made this show today, there's no way Janet Waldo would have gotten the job. The lead voice would be by Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or someone else who was "hot" in some other venue. Actually, even then the trend to "celebrity voices" was starting. Sammy Davis Jr played the Cheshire Cat and in addition to Mr. Dana voicing his character, Zsa Zsa Gabor played the Queen of Hearts and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had a cameo. The rest of the cast included folks who were otherwise in the H-B voice talent pool: Daws Butler, Don Messick, Harvey Korman, Allan Melvin...and Howie Morris as The White Rabbit. Howie had been on almost every Hanna-Barbera show in recent years, including The Jetsons, Atom Ant and The Flintstones.

(And speaking of Flintstones, there were two animated cameo guests in Alice: Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble showed up to perform one musical number. Alan Reed and Mel Blanc supplied their voices but the recently-deceased Henry Corden provided Fred's singing voice.)

Anyway, the Howie Morris story: Howie recorded his part in the special and a few weeks later, he was scheduled to come in and record another version of the voice track, this one to form a record album that H-B Records (the studio's own label) would release around the time the special aired. The entire thing had to be redone for the LP because (a) Sammy Davis was under contract to another record company so his voice couldn't be used and (b) some dialogue had to be changed so the story could be followed without the visuals. Scatman Crothers was hired to assume the role of the Cheshire Cat and a few other parts were changed. But Howie was supposed to repeat his role.

Unfortunately, Howie had a schedule conflict the day the record was supposed to be recorded. He was directing Hogan's Heroes or playing Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show or something else...but it was a problem. He probably could have squeezed in the H-B recording on that date but it would have been an enormous inconvenience, and made for a very exhausting workday. His agent so informed the studio and it was agreed that Howie would be recorded on another day, apart from the other actors. This was a fairly common practice, and Howie was told that they were willing to make the accommodation since he was so good and since he had frequently juggled around his schedule when they needed him. Then, for reasons unknown, someone at the studio changed their mind about Waiting for Morris and the day they recorded the album, they had Don Messick perform the role of the White Rabbit.

Shortly after, Howie was in the studio to record something else and he innocently inquired when they wanted him to do the White Rabbit material for the record. Joe Barbera told him that it wouldn't be necessary; that Messick had already done it. Howie was angry. Words were exchanged with Mr. Barbera explaining that they couldn't wait for him and Mr. Morris explaining that he could have been there if someone hadn't assured him the recording could be done later. Tempers flared and — here come those asterisks — Howie finally told Joe Barbera, "Go f*** yourself!" And he walked out of the building...and out of Hanna-Barbera forever, he thought.

Howie did not work for Hanna-Barbera again for years. Messick took over some of his roles, like Mr. Peebles the pet shop owner on Magilla Gorilla, as well as the voice of Atom Ant. Howie worked for Filmation Studios, where he played numerous roles, including Jughead, on the various Archie cartoon shows. In fact, he was on most of the Filmation shows for years, and also worked for Disney voicing Gopher in the Winnie the Pooh featurettes, and for other studios. Then one day, Hanna-Barbera called again.

When Howie told this story, he always said the job was for the Jetsons revival, which was done in 1985...but he'd worked for them again a few years before that. In 1979, for instance, Hanna-Barbera produced a live-action TV special called The Legends of the Superheroes with various actors playing DC comic book characters. Howie, in a fit of apt casting, played Dr. Sivana, the arch-enemy of Captain Marvel.

Whatever it was, there came a day when Howie returned to the H-B Studios for the first time in more than a decade. He was very nervous about running into Joe Barbera, fearing there would be some sort of angry confrontation. He got through his business without encountering J.B. and then, just as he was turning to leave, he looked down a hallway and saw the handsome figure of Joseph Barbera coming his way. "Howie," he heard Barbera call out. Howie froze in fear...but Barbera came up to him, gave him a big hug and told him how happy he was to see him again after all those years.

"You're not going to throw me out?" he asked Joe.

"Of course not, Howie. Why would I throw you out?"

Howie stammered, "Well...the last time I was here, I told you to go f*** yourself."

Barbera grinned and said, "I took your advice."

• Posted at 10:23 AM · LINK

Grabbed by the Throat

I dunno about the other cable channels but MSNBC turned into the Bash Deep Throat Channel yesterday afternoon. They had three or four shows in a row on the unmasking of Mark Felt as the fabled secret source and Pat Buchanan was on every one of them to call Felt a "snake" or worse. At times, he was joined or spelled by other former Nixon aides, including David Gergen, G. Gordon Liddy, Monica Crowley and Chuck Colson, all suggesting that Felt had impure motives, that he disgraced his position, etc. One can understand a certain anger at the figurehead of Nixon's bringdown, but it seemed like a strained exercise. Any "whistleblower" is, almost by definition, going to cause his peers to feel betrayed. If nothing else, they have cause to be embarrassed that he did something to uncover wrongdoing while they supported it with their complicity.

For years after he got out of the slammer, Liddy was making the rounds of the talk shows, flogging his book and comparing John Dean to Judas Iscariot...an analogy which, as many interviewers pointed out, worked if you thought Richard Nixon was somehow comparable to Jesus Christ. Liddy kept saying that one of the lowest things one can do in the world is to "rat" on your friends, which struck me as a silly schoolyard comparison. You don't tell the teacher that Jimmy used too many paper towels in the little boys' room but if others are involved in serious crimes and you know about it, that's a different matter. One time, Liddy was advancing his view on Larry King's problem and, in a rare instance of Mr. King challenging a guest, he asked how Liddy felt about some of John Gotti's men turning on him and testifying to help get him convicted. Were they "rats?" I remember the moment because it was one of those rare times on an interview show when you could see someone get knocked out. Liddy didn't have an answer.

Still, that seems to be the big complaint against Felt; that he was disloyal to the Bureau and/or Richard Nixon. I don't know that I buy any definition of loyalty that's remotely in that area. The F.B.I. was being compromised. J. Edgar Hoover, who was too feisty and independent for any president to control, had died and his replacement was L. Patrick Gray, a virtual Nixon puppet who dealt with the Watergate scandal by keeping the White House briefed on the investigation and by destroying potentially incriminating documents. Felt's "sin" was not falling in line with an F.B.I. that was moving in that direction.

I don't know that I'd call Mark Felt a "hero" — not without knowing more about his motives. But the rush by Nixon loyalists to tar his name is shameful. There was wrongdoing in that administration and if everyone had bought into their current definition of "loyalty," it would never have been exposed. Maybe that's all they wanted.

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK

July 1, 2005 • Current • May 1, 2005

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 8:51 PM · LINK

No Posting

• Posted at 4:13 PM · LINK

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Minor Updates

• Posted at 4:23 PM · LINK

Winch on GSN

• Posted at 1:26 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 9:43 AM · LINK

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Owen McCarron, R.I.P.

• Posted at 11:10 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

• Posted at 5:03 PM · LINK

Winch, Continued...

• Posted at 9:53 AM · LINK

Monday, June 27, 2005

John Fiedler, R.I.P.

• Posted at 9:12 AM · LINK

Lip Service

• Posted at 1:47 AM · LINK

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Plug

• Posted at 5:42 PM · LINK

Winch

• Posted at 11:39 AM · LINK

Saturday, June 25, 2005

This Just In...

• Posted at 11:17 PM · LINK

Paul Winchell, R.I.P.

• Posted at 5:36 PM · LINK

On Your Teevee

• Posted at 11:17 AM · LINK

Yokum Boy

• Posted at 8:16 AM · LINK

The Truth About Anti-Hillary Books

• Posted at 12:13 AM · LINK

Friday, June 24, 2005

A Rocky Reception

• Posted at 10:26 PM · LINK

Listen In

• Posted at 3:37 PM · LINK

Say, Just Out of Curiosity...

• Posted at 12:25 PM · LINK

The Price is Right

• Posted at 12:12 PM · LINK

Surgical Radio

• Posted at 12:04 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

• Posted at 10:55 AM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

• Posted at 8:32 AM · LINK

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 11:21 PM · LINK

Sam Kweskin, R.I.P.

• Posted at 10:26 PM · LINK

Rickles Tonight

• Posted at 5:29 PM · LINK

Must-See Me

• Posted at 5:19 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 5:08 PM · LINK

Paul Cassidy, R.I.P.

• Posted at 2:41 PM · LINK

More of Daly and Wallace

• Posted at 2:01 PM · LINK

Two Times Daly

• Posted at 2:33 AM · LINK

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

MP3 Recorder Recommendation?

• Posted at 10:36 AM · LINK

Labor Pains

• Posted at 9:26 AM · LINK

Correction

• Posted at 9:00 AM · LINK

Game Show Moments