Monday, October 31, 2005

Major Oops!

I screwed up the link a few posts back to the Lewis Black piece on candy corn. It is now fixed. It points to this clip. Thanks to all eight thousand of you who wrote to tell me.

• Posted at 10:30 PM · LINK

Construction Work

In what I hope will be more of a treat than a trick, I've revised and updated a few sections of this website and added one new one...

• The Jack FAQ, the section wherein we answer questions about the great Jack Kirby, has had a slight revamp and I've added about eight or nine new questions 'n' answers.
• The Allan Sherman Discography has been redesigned and expanded, and I've added a half-dozen new listings and corrected others.
• The Castle Films Gallery has been considerably expanded with the addition of more than a hundred new film box scans.
• I've added a whole new section: Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More. The title should be self-explanatory.
• And I fixed a bunch of little things that you probably won't notice but I do.

I have some other new departments I'll be adding in the coming weeks once I finish a screenplay that has to be in soon. If you find any missing pictures or pages that load oddly, please drop me a line. Whenever you fix something on a website, you invariably screw something else up.

• Posted at 9:32 PM · LINK

Oh, Wonder Woman...

Stay away from that man. He's bad for your image.

• Posted at 8:55 PM · LINK

WGA News

For some time now, the west coast and east coast divisions of the Writers Guild of America have been engaged in a spat that got waaaay nastier in public than it should have. I explained it to the best of my questionable ability in this post.

I'm delighted to say that it's over. As announced in this letter (CAUTION: PDF file), the two branches have arrived at a settlement that — at first glance — looks to me like they split things pretty much down the middle. This is good news, as the combined WGA faces challenges and battles far too serious for us to spend time whacking each other over the head. With little in the way of inside info, I'm going to leap to a conclusion here. It's that this settlement was made possible because of a turnover in the leadership of both branches since it started.

So now the WGA can devote more of its efforts to organizing in new areas and bracing for what promises to be a nasty negotiation in 2007. Alas, there will still be internal squabbling to sap our strength. There always seems to be some faction within the WGA that is angry about something, usually an alleged (and on rare occasions, valid) breach of our constitution. The fights are always way more vicious and personal than is practical, and they waste a lot of energy and bile that is better directed towards those who are raking in zillions on DVDs while insisting that "times are tough" and writers need to accept lower compensation. Let's battle them, people. Not each other.

• Posted at 8:43 PM · LINK

Black Humor

Several of you are writing me to tell me you eat and like candy corn. You lie. Compared to you people, Scooter Libby is George "Cherry Tree" Washington.

Everyone hates candy corn, even comedian Lewis Black. Here's a link [Real Player required] to his view of this noxious product that aspires to be both corn and candy and succeeds as neither.

The video file resides on a Lewis Black fan site which I discovered thanks to news from me reader Mike Lindsay. There are lots of fun video clips there. I especially recommend this one and this one. [Real Player required for both]

• Posted at 6:43 PM · LINK

Today

My views of Halloween have not changed from two years ago. And the people who've written to me since then to say they like candy corn are all still liars.

• Posted at 10:54 AM · LINK