Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Con Game

Okay, let's imagine you're staging a horror movie convention this weekend out in Northridge, California. Let's imagine that you line up as guests, the usual array of fright film actors who'll sell and sign photos of themselves. Let's also imagine that this kind of convention hasn't been doing so well lately and some are anticipating a very low attendance. What can you do to really boost attendance?

Hmm...let me think for a second...

I know! Bring in a real, live murderer to sell autographs for $100 each!

• Posted at 9:14 PM · LINK

Jerry Juhl, R.I.P.

Jerry Juhl, who was one of the main creative forces behind The Muppets died Monday from complications relating to cancer. Jerry and his wife Susan worked for years for the Jim Henson Organization — 37 years in Jerry's case. He wrote for Sesame Street, served as head writer for The Muppet Show, and was a writer and/or producer on most of Henson's TV projects and films, including The Muppet Movie.

His association with Henson began in 1961 when Jim was doing a low-budget show in Washington, D.C. entitled Sam and Friends. A childhood friend of Frank Oz, Juhl originally began working with Henson as a puppeteer but eventually gravitated more into writing. He had a hand in shaping most of the major Muppet characters but especially The Great Gonzo, which he sometimes described as his personal favorite.

My pal Ken Plume is preparing a lengthy bio and obit which will appear soon on IGN FilmForce. I'll post a link when it's up. This is a sad day for those of us who love the wit and glory of The Muppets because an awful lot of that came from Jerry Juhl.

• Posted at 5:17 PM · LINK

Have It Our Way

Why is it so hard to get food in a restaurant the way you want it?

A little while ago, while walking around my neighborhood on some errands, I decided to stop in a Sizzler for a meal...which I guess was my main mistake right there.

What I wanted was a grilled or broiled chicken sandwich that consisted of the chicken, a bun, some onion and nothing else. You wouldn't think this would be a tough order, would you? But it's not on their menu. What you have to do is order the Chicken Club Sandwich, which is chicken plus cheese, lettuce, tomato, bacon and mayo...and then, trying to not to sound too much like Jack Nicholson, have them hold the cheese, lettuce, tomato, bacon and mayo. You're supposed to get your choice of one side dish with it and I asked for rice and told the lady at the counter to have them leave off the cole slaw that they often slap onto your plate. Have I mentioned lately that I think cole slaw is an unspeakable evil and that if forced at gunpoint to put either it or a live grenade in my mouth, I'd opt for the grenade? When a waitress says to me, "So you're saying you don't want any cole slaw on your plate?" I respond, "I don't want any cole slaw in the restaurant. Leave it off my plate. Leave it off everyone's plate. If you can keep it out of this entire area code, I'd be most appreciative and might even consider tipping."

Anyway, I told the lady at Sizzler what I wanted and emphasized, as I've learned to do, "I want to get a bun with a piece of grilled chicken on it and some onion and nothing else." My friends rarely hear me order in an eating establishment without itemizing what is to be on my plate and concluding with "...and nothing else."

The lady promptly entered on her cash register that I wanted the usual chicken sandwich with all the stuff on it with a side of fries as my one choice, plus an extra side of rice and an order of grilled onions, both as extra items (for which I'd be charged)...and nothing about not putting slaw on the plate. It took quite a while to straighten that out, and there was apparently no way I could get a piece of onion on my sandwich without paying $1.29 for grilled onions, even though I was saving them the bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo. If you order a hamburger, a slice of onion is free. But not with a chicken sandwich. k.d. lang needs to write a song about this.

It then took quite a while for my sandwich to arrive. When it did, it was just what she'd entered into the little computer screen the first time: Sandwich with everything, fries, rice as an extra side, cole slaw, etc. The server took it back and I waited maybe another ten minutes. Finally, she brought me what was pretty much the exact same plate except that someone had peeled the cheese off the chicken, scraped off most of the mayo, removed all but one of the fries and so on. She asked, "Can I get you anything else?" and I said, "Yeah, I'd like a side order of The Manager."

The Manager came over and I went through the whole thing with him. I showed him how there were remnants of cheese clinging to the chicken breast (which was now cold) and tomato seeds on the bun. He gave the whole platter back to the server and told her to have the kitchen completely remake my order. Then he told me, "Next time you come in here, place your order with me personally and I'll make sure they make it right."

I asked him, "Exactly what makes you think I'm coming in here again?" He chuckled and said they'd make it up to me...and I didn't know what he meant because he'd offered no discount or anything else. Apparently, getting you what you should have gotten in the first place is now coinsidered "making it up to you."

Ten or so minutes later, the sandwich came again: This time, it had no cheese, two strips of bacon, no lettuce and no tomato but also no onion. I had rice but I also had cole slaw. I took it up to him at the counter and he said, "Hmm...maybe you weren't clear on what you wanted." I told him, "You placed the order for this one." I also quoted to him the way I'd placed my order in the first place and the lady who'd taken it down confirmed that that's what I'd said, including the part about a bun with a piece of grilled chicken on it and some onion and nothing else. "I defy you to tell me a clearer way to say it than that," I told him. He quickly had it all fixed and then, as I was finally eating what I should have been eating thirty minutes earlier, he came by and gave me a $2.00 discount coupon for my next visit...which I guess is what he meant by "making it up to me."

I said to him — between bites of a pretty mediocre, not-worth-the-hassle sandwich — "You keep laboring under this delusion that I'm coming back here."

I see on the newswires that the Sizzler chain recently became a private (as opposed to public) company and now has a new management team. According to the new CEO, Ken Cole, "We've come a long way in rebuilding the chain, and we still have work to do, but we now have more resources to help us return Sizzler to the great American brand it was and that we believe it will be again." I think they may have a little more to do than they imagine. Somebody is going to have to let me know if they make a difference because I sure ain't going back.

• Posted at 4:22 PM · LINK

Quick Political Thought

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted in what is being described as his participation in a campaign finance scheme. I have no idea how strong or weak the evidence is against him. Lots of folks get indicted and then the case has a way of evaporating. And of course, lots of people get indicted and then cop a plea or go to prison.

However, it's kind of amusing to scan the political weblogs and discussion groups right now. To the folks who want to see him convicted, DeLay is as good as in the slammer and this is just the start of a domino effect that will bring down many more Republicans and attendant cronies. And to the folks who want to see Republicans prosper in Congress, it's obvious this is just a partisan prosecutor ginning up a case against a political enemy, and of course DeLay will be vindicated. Wishful thinking from both factions.

I always liked the suggestion of a friend of mine who thought all elected officials (without exception) were crooks. He felt we should only elect convicted criminals. He said, "It'll save time if they come to us, pre-indicted."

• Posted at 10:15 AM · LINK

John McCabe, R.I.P.

Here's a photo of three of the founders of The Sons of the Desert, the international Laurel and Hardy appreciation society. The gent at far left is cartoonist Al Kilgore, who designed the origanization's insignia when he wasn't busy drawing movie posters, animation and the Bullwinkle comic strip. (Hey, does anyone have a collection of those? They were wonderful and should certainly be reprinted.)

The gentleman in the center is our pal, Chuck McCann. Chuck was then the funniest person on New York TV with one of the hippest kids' shows ever, and he's since gone on to become a top comic actor and an occasional impersonator of Oliver Norvell Hardy.

At right, we have Dr. John McCabe, the first and best historian of "The Boys." As I recounted in this article, he wrote the first book about them, Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, and it had a deep, positive impact on me. (When the piece was first published, it brought me a nice letter from Dr. McCabe. I have scarcely been happier to hear from anyone.) McCabe was the only biographer of Stan and Ollie to know both men — he was especially close to Laurel — and it was his writings that more or less inaugurated a wave of scholarship and appreciation of their films. He taught college courses about them, often as an overview of twentieth-century humor, and followed Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy with additional works, some of which are listed here. He also authored books on Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, George M. Cohan and others. In 1987, he married actress Rosina Lawrence, who co-starred opposite Laurel and Hardy in their 1937 movie, Way Out West, and they were wed until her passing ten years later.

I'm sorry to report that Dr. McCabe passed away yesterday morning as he slept in his home in Mackinac Island, Michigan. I have no other info but I had to note the passing of a man whose work was so important to so many of us.

• Posted at 7:49 AM · LINK

Missed It By That Much...

This will only interest you if you're really into the real minutiae of comic book history. It's a P.S. on that Get Smart sample I posted a few hours ago that I said was by Steve Ditko and Sal Trapani.

The weblog of someone who calls himself "Sleestak" has reproduced more of it over here. And now that I see the other panels, I see that it's not pencilled just by Steve Ditko. There's at least as much work on that page by Eric Stanton, who was then sharing a studio at 8th Street and 48th in Manhattan with Ditko and occasionally another artist or two. While Ditko was drawing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, Stanton was drawing comics of women with huge breasts who had a tendency to wrestle and tie each other up. Stanton, in interviews shortly before his death in '99, claimed that he helped Ditko with his sixties' Marvel work and even suggested the idea of Spider-Man's web-shooters, and that Ditko helped him with the fetish comics. Ditko has denied both counts.

The timeline here is interesting to consider. Get Smart went on the air in September 18, 1965. The first issue of the comic book was cover-dated June, 1966. That meant it went on sale around March of '66. Generally speaking, a comic of that period would have a four month production period — one month for script, two months for art, one month for production and printing. This is all educated guesswork but what's likely here is that after the TV show went on and became a hit, Dell made the deal to do the comic. So it was probably written in late October or November and then it went to an artist to draw. And you know why that's interesting? Because Ditko quit Marvel the week of Thanksgiving, 1965.

Before around 1963, Ditko had freelanced for both Charlton Comics and Marvel. As Spider-Man and the other Marvel super-hero books grew in popularity, and as Marvel raised pay rates a bit, Ditko cut back on his Charlton work. Then in his last year at Marvel, he began drawing again for Charlton, primarily on a revival of Captain Atom, a super-hero he'd done for them from 1960 to '61. He must have been drawing at an incredible clip in '65 because he was plotting, pencilling and inking 20 pages of Amazing Spider-Man a month for Marvel, plus covers, plus the story he did for that year's Spider-Man Annual. He was also plotting, pencilling and inking 10 pages a month of the Dr. Strange strip in Strange Tales. That would be a pretty full workload for any artist, but he was also making time to pencil Captain Atom. One might assume he figured he might not be at Marvel much longer so he was re-establishing his relationship with Charlton.

Then he quit Marvel and right after that, his work for Charlton increased and he also began drawing for the two Warren magazines, Creepy and Eerie, and for Tower's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Suddenly also, he was ghosting a lot of Sal Trapani's work. There were two stories for DC's Strange Adventures (in the May, 1966 and June, 1966 issues), a number of jobs for ACG comics like Adventures Into the Unknown and Unknown Worlds (credited to both) and the work with Trapani for Dell on Get Smart and a superhero book called Nukla.

Anyway, that Get Smart page was probably one of the first things Ditko worked on after he left Spider-Man. It also may have been one of the last things done in the Stanton-Ditko studio. The two men moved to separate workspaces some time in 1966 and yes, I know this is real trivial stuff. But some of us can't get enough of this kind of thing.

• Posted at 1:57 AM · LINK