I'm sorry you had so much trouble this morning attempting to secure a hotel reservation for this year's Comic-Con International. I'm sure you're telling the truth when you say that you logged on and/or dialed in at the appropriate hour. I can't explain why the rooms were all booked, seemingly within minutes, while you were on hold or waiting for some webpage to load or getting dumped off the line or whatever the hell happened.
I'm also sorry that there's nothing I can do to help you except to suggest that more rooms should become available at some point, both through the convention's booking agency and directly through the various hotels. The hotels, for their own purposes, hold onto some rooms until closer to the con dates. I know that doesn't make sense from your standpoint since you're ready to plunk down cash right now for one...but they're not worried about not selling those rooms. They are worried about not having rooms for important guests and others who do a lot of ongoing business with the hotel. There are also comic-congoers who make multiple reservations, or book more rooms than they'll need, and some of those may become available in the coming months.
Keep looking. You may not be able to stay within walking distance of the convention but you should be able to find a room somewhere if you remain ever-vigilant. It's maddening, I know, but look at it this way: It'll be a great convention and once you get this messy lodging problem settled, you'll forget what a hassle it was and you'll enjoy the heck out of the con. I know I always do.
Your pal,
P.S. I expect to be moderating my usual roster of a dozen or more panels at the con. If you can't find a place to sleep in San Diego, come to my panels and sleep there.
Continuing with our theme today, which seems to be brilliant men who smoked cigars...
My friend and one-time employer Jack Kirby died thirteen years ago this morning. It's a cliché — but perfectly true — that not a day goes by that I don't find myself thinking about him and, usually, talking about him with someone. I always knew I was privileged to have been around him as much as I was but I'm still coming to realize just how privileged. A lot more than I imagined at the time, probably even more than I can now begin to grasp.
This seems like the right day to make the following announcement...
As many of you know, I've been working on a biography of Jack that might be described as "authorized" and/or "official." I don't think of it either way. I'm thinking of it as Mark setting down every possible thing I've learned from or about Jack. Anyway, this book in its present state is huge. It makes the Encyclopedia Americana look like one of those take-out menus they hang on your doorknob...and it's still growing. I recently came across a trove of info about employees in the Simon and Kirby studio and I haven't even been able to begin sorting through that material and incorporating it into the book.
I finally decided that the endeavor was getting too large and taking too long...so I'm turning it into two books. Jack is just too big a topic for one book.
The first will be a very nicely printed art book with a simpler but quite complete version of the Kirby biography. The volume will also be loaded with rare Kirby art, all of it in reproduced in full color, much of it shot from the original artwork. That needs a bit of explanation. Many of the pieces will consist of black-and-white artwork in pencil or ink but we'll be printing them in color so that you can see all the pencil marks, corrections, smudges and in some cases, notes in the margins. There will also be plenty of pages that print Jack's art in pencil form and, of course, color pieces and some things you've seen before but not in the way we're going to present them.
This book will be called Kirby: King of Comics and it will be released in October of this year by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which is one of the world's most prestigious publishers of high quality art and illustrated books. It'll be a hardcover volume, 9" by 12-1/2", all in color and with a gatefold and all sorts of nifty features that we hope will make it worthy of its subject.
Later on — and don't ask me when but it'll be another year or two at least — I'll publish the gargantuan, Galactus-sized bio for the hardcore Kirby fan...the kind of person who wants to read every little detail of the man's extraordinary life. As soon as fresh data stops coming my way, I'll wrap that one up but in the meantime, you'll have the first book before this Christmas. I'll tell you more about it over the next few weeks.
This is interesting. I thought the tune from the Ernie Kovacs clip this morning was "Rialto Ripples" by Gershwin and Donaldson. And if you clicked on the link I provided to an old piano roll copy of that tune, you can hear why I thought that. Like maybe because it's the same song.
But as Kovacs fans are now informing me, the piece ol' Ernie used was "Oriental Blues," aka "Ernie's Tune," written by Jack Newlon. This website which studies classic TV themes has the following posted...
...this piece is based upon "Rialto Ripples" cowritten by the teenage George Gershwin with Walter Donaldson. Comparison of the melodies verifies that the "A" themes of both pieces are nearly identical (only the bridge and overall tempo was changed to protect the guilty.) "Rialto Ripples" strolls along at a leisurely pace, but "Oriental Blues" is a more frantic piece often with added comedic sound effects during the bridge...
Given how litigious the Gershwin estate has always been — especially back when Ira was alive — it's amazing that a national TV show got away with featuring such a total rip-off. Then again, since "Rialto Ripples" was written so early in Gershwin's life — he was eighteen when it was copyrighted — and he only co-wrote it, perhaps his estate didn't control it in any way.
Thanks to all who wrote in, including Robert Poodiack, Mary Wallace, Dave Sikula and Eric Wilson. And isn't it interesting that Ernie Kovacs — a man from whom so many stole — would have had a "hot" theme song?
A few days ago in this item, I linked to a clip of Groucho Marx doing a surprise cameo on an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. A reader of this here site, Tom Atwill, wrote to ask, "How would something like that come to pass? Would they write it and then go to Groucho's agent and see if he'd do it?"
Probably it came about because Sidney Sheldon, the producer of I Dream of Jeannie, was an old friend of Groucho's. I have no first-hand knowledge on this one but I'll bet it was as simple as this: Sheldon was having dinner with Groucho one night and he said something like, "Hey, Grouch. How about dropping by the set some day and shooting a cameo appearance? We'll let you hug Barbara Eden. You can even see her navel." And Groucho said something like, "Okay...just let me get a real bad toupee to wear." Then Sheldon either wrote the scene or had his staff figure out some way to get Marx into the episode...and I'll bet it wasn't any more complicated than that. Just Groucho doing a favor for a friend.
This was only possible because back then, they used to actual do surprise cameos on TV shows. When was the last time you saw one that wasn't in the promos beforehand? One of the reasons I've soured on Deal or No Deal is that I feel like the promos and/or the opening tease usually give away the entire episode. They'll tease that the contestant must make a life-or-death choice when they're down to the last five cases...and that effectively tells you that not much is going to matter as they open the first twenty cases — i.e., the first half hour of the show. Or like on last night's show, they told you in the previews that Magic Johnson was going to make a surprise appearance. So all through the game, whenever Howie Mandel asked the contestant if they wanted to accept the latest bank offer, you could think to yourself, "She's not going to take it. We haven't seen Magic Johnson yet."
The first twenty case openings on that show never matter...and what's more, the producers know it. They have Magic Johnson backstage and they know they can wait 'til late in the game to send him out there. Because they know it's going to go that long; that no one's going to take the first bank offer or the second or the fourth. I think the earliest offer anyone's taken has been the fifth and the player has to really being doing poorly to quit then. Almost all the games go until at least the seventh offer...and the banker only makes a maximum of nine. So it gives the whole thing a very pre-arranged feel and I don't know why I'm still watching, even with a lot of fast-forwarding.
I love surprises on television. You'd think, in the era of Reality Programming, someone would try one every now and then.
The Producers has opened in Las Vegas. We've been wondering here for some time how they were going to cut an hour out of it and this article supplies some of the answer. The omitted musical numbers are...
Act One, Scene 4: "We Can Do It" Reprise (Max & Leo)
Act One, Scene 6: "Der Guten Tag Hop Clop" (Franz, Max, Leo)
Act One, Scene 9: Act One Finale (All)
Act Two, Scene 1: "That Face" (Leo, Ulla, Max)
Act Two, Scene 3: "You Never Say 'Good Luck' on Opening Night" (Roger, Max, Carmen, Leo, Franz)
Act Two, Scene 5: "Where Did We Go Right?" (Max, Leo)
Act Two, Scene 6: "Betrayed" (Max)
Act Two, Scene 7: Max's section of "'Til Him" (Max)
...plus there are also trims in the dialogue. I actually thought the show felt rushed in the full version so this one probably goes by in a wink. I'd love to see my pal Brad Oscar playing Max — when I saw The Producers in New York, it was when he was still playing Franz — but I have little desire to see the stripped-down version. Sounds to me like with those cuts, "Springtime for Hitler" practically becomes the finale.
Ticket prices, you will note, range from $75.50 to $143.50. In New York, tickets for the full version run from $31.25 to $111.25 and are frequently available for half-price at the TKTS booth. Then again, the New York version does have Tony Danza playing Max.
These are the end credits to one of the many TV programs of Ernie Kovacs. Only Ernie Kovacs could have end credits that ran three and a half minutes and were more entertaining than most shows.
When I was a kid, I loved that tune that Mr. Kovacs often used on his programs and wondered who wrote it and what it was called. Turns out it's "Rialto Ripples" by George Gershwin and Will Donaldson. If you'd like to hear it as it sounded in a player piano in 1916, allegedly played by Mr. Gershwin himself, you can do so over on this page. [WARNING: At least on my computer, the tune starts immediately upon connection.]
February 7, 2007
