Several bloggers writing about George W. Bush's Iraq policy have referenced something they call "The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics." This has something to do with the idea that if we fail, it can only be because we didn't have the will. Over here on this page, blogger Matthew Yglesias explains the way others present this argument. It flows from the fact that Green Lantern's power ring is a function of his will and resolve, and that if he doesn't falter in those areas, he will supposedly triumph in any battle.
And over here on this page, my friend Denny O'Neil assesses this theory from the Green Lantern point-of-view. Denny knows a little something about Green Lantern, having written some of the most acclaimed issues of that hero's comic book.
For those of you who live in Southern California...
Lewis Black is doing a performance on Thursday evening, August 16, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. One suspects he will have something to say about the mere fact that he's performing in a building named for Mr. Disney.
As with most Lewis Black concert appearances, the scalping mechanism has already swooped in and gobbled up all the great seats and they're asking five and six times the face value. Recent experience suggests that'll seem like a bargain compared to what those tickets will cost in July.
I believe they went on sale last Sunday but the show hasn't been publicized much yet and there still seem to be some decent seats left at Ticketmaster. If you want to see him, you might want to click right on over. Compared to this, getting a hotel room for the Comic-Con in San Diego is like getting Viagra ads in your e-mail.
I just set my TiVo for the Academy Awards this Sunday. TiVo is the only way to go with the Oscars. Record the thing and while it's on, go out to dinner at that restaurant that's always too crowded on a weekend night. Unless it's a Wolfgang Puck eatery, you'll have the place to yourself. Then come back either when the show is over or in its closing hour and start watching from the top, fast-forwarding when it gets boring. I've been known to do a three-hour Oscarcast in an hour and fifteen minutes that way and not miss anything of even minor importance. If you only skip over commercials for new credit cards and cellular service, you can save a least an hour of your life.
But you have to remember this: Pad your recording. They say three hours but it could be 3:10 or 3:20 and I think there was once a ceremony that went more than an hour over the announced time. That was back when they used to just lie and tell you the show would be two and a half hours long, knowing full well it would be at least three. They'd pre-sold ample commercials for that length. Now, they say three and try for three but it could be longer. You don't want your TiVo to stop recording just when something interesting's about to happen.
So I've padded my recording by an hour. Just in case. Wouldn't want to miss a single joke about the fatherhood of Anna Nicole's kid or Britney Spears shaving her head, or whatever really offensive thing Borat is going to do.
Also, I've set my TiVo to record Alice in Wonderland on Boomerang on Sunday but I'm not optimistic. That is, I'm not optimistic it's the show some of us want to record.
I've probably waaaay oversold this but back in '66, Hanna-Barbera produced what I remember as a pretty good prime-time animated special called Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? It was written by Bill Dana, who also appeared as the voice of Jose Jiminez, who appeared as the White Knight. Janet Waldo provided the speaking voice of Alice. (As H-B so often did, someone else sang for the star character.) Sammy Davis Jr. played the Cheshire Cat and the regular H-B voice cast did most of the other roles. The songs were supplied by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who otherwise wrote some pretty good Broadway scores and movie songs.
It's never been out on home video but we've heard that Boomerang is running it at 4:45 Eastern (1:45 Pacific) on Sunday afternoon, though it's possible we've been misinformed. There are about eight thousand animated interpretations of Alice in Wonderland and apparently Boomerang has at least half of them in its library. Some version will be running on Sunday but don't be shocked if it isn't the Bill Dana rendition. They've advertised it before and shown another. Also, don't be shocked if it is and you watch and it isn't as fabulous as I remember. There's lots of stuff I liked in '66 that I can't stand now. When was the last time you tried to watch an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.?
While I'm at it, I should mention that Boomerang's start and end times rarely coincide with any clock you might have in your home. I think the whole network is on Southwestern Bolivian Moonlight Savings Time or something.
What you won't see in this show, assuming you see it at all, are the original animated commercials for its sponsor, the Rexall company. In the sixties, they always ran a big, annual "one cent sale" — it's when my family would stock up on aspirin, Maalox and floss for another year — and it was always kicked off with some big Rexall-sponsored TV special. Ron Kurer, who runs the fine animation site Toon Tracker, has posted two of these commercials on YouTube. They're interesting because it's always been very rare for a company to spend money on animated commercials — even commercials animated on a Hanna-Barbera budget — that only ran a few times. These only ran a few times so they're quite rare.
As I mentioned, Janet Waldo did the voice of Alice. You probably know her better as the voice of Judy Jetson, or maybe Penelope Pitstop. Janet has been performing before microphones since the days of radio drama and is still at it, still sounding like a teenager. A charming lady, indeed. Howard Morris did the voice of the White Rabbit in both of these commercials and in the second, you'll hear Daws Butler as the King and as the March Hare, and that's Harvey Korman as the Mad Hatter.
The Scooter Libby perjury trial is about to go to the jury so there could be a verdict shortly. I have no idea what it might be. Sometimes, you can formulate a hunch based on the press coverage...but this time, the mainstream media has reported very little that would suggest how it's going or how it might go.
The exhaustive, in-depth coverage has mostly been from bloggers and/or via news sources that few would argue are not highly partisan. I've read some of the reporting from both sides and I don't think these people are all covering the same trial. I know these sites skew the news, possibly as a conscious, deliberate policy. As we keep saying here, there's money to be made telling some people what they want to hear, whether it's true or not.
But I can't recall the last instance of reporting that was this Rashomon. The sites that could be said to be Liberal are saying that an airtight case has been made for Libby's guilt. He'll be convicted of something and it may lead to Cheney. The more Conservative coverage says there's no "there" there; that the case is close to non-existent and should never have been brought.
Someone's going to be spectacularly wrong, at least about how the jury will decide. (This should not be confused with how the jury should decide. Remember the first O.J. case.) I'm just amazed that I can't find any reporting that delves deep into the case and finds both strengths and weaknesses in the assertions of both sides. And I'm wondering if that's because the case really is that lopsided in one direction...or if it's because reporters just don't do Fair and Balanced anymore.
We all love Wile E. Coyote, the long-suffering Road Runner chaser. But, uh, what does the "E" stand for?
I guess I don't know. I mean, none of the cartoons directed by Charles "Chuck" Jones and written by Michael Maltese ever said. Only a couple of them ever even said his name was Wile E. Coyote.
But it has just (this morning) been brought to my attention — thank you, Devlin Thompson — that more than a thousand websites say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert. The source for this is a 1973 story that appeared in the comic book, Beep Beep the Road Runner, published by Western Publishing Company under its Gold Key imprint. This is noted by Jon Cooke over on this page and as he also reveals, it was the question/answer to the Final Jeopardy question on the 1/18/07 episode of the game show, Jeopardy!
In the story, which was called "The Greatest of E's," Wile E. Coyote realizes he doesn't know and gathers together some of his relatives to answer the question. One is an uncle named Kraft E. Coyote who informs him and the world that the "E" stands for Ethelbert. That is, as far as I know, the only piece of fiction licensed or otherwise blessed by the Warner Brothers company that ever said such a thing.
This raises one of those moral issues that has no firm answer. What makes something like this an "official" fact in the world of animated cartoons? I mean, we know Bugs Bunny is named Bugs Bunny because...well, we just know. But what is the name of the frog that sings and dances in the Jones-Maltese masterpiece, One Froggy Evening? It's Michigan J. Frog, right? Apparently...but that name appears nowhere in the cartoon. As I understand it, the moniker was coined years later when there was some merchandising interest in the character...or maybe when W.B. decided to try and generate some merchandising interest. Chuck or Mike may have come up with it then or someone at WB may have and then Chuck and Mike endorsed and used it...but anyway, that's the frog's name. I suppose. I mean, if the guys who made One Froggy Evening didn't argue the point, who are we to say it isn't?
For that matter, even if some "fact" appears in a cartoon that doesn't make it inviolable. There were WB cartoons where Sylvester the Cat could talk and was owned by Granny. There were others where he couldn't talk and was Porky Pig's cat. Quick: If I asked you, "Who owns Sylvester?," you'd probably forget about all cartoons to the contrary and say it was Granny, who also owned Tweety. There were Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons where for no apparent reason, those characters lived in other eras. Elmer Fudd had a couple of different middle initials in different shorts and characters' appearances were often changing and we could list hundreds of other inconsistencies. The films weren't intended to have an airtight continuity from one to another. Some "facts" were meant to be forgotten.
It was the same with the comic books. Western Publishing licensed the right to do comics of those characters for around thirty years, and the editors at Western thought of the comics as separate entities from the cartoons. The Donald Duck that Carl Barks and others wrote and drew for Western's Disney comics was not exactly the same Donald Duck that appeared in the Disney cartoons. They adapted the character, rethinking and redesigning him for a different medium. (It's a funny thing: When I was a kid and read Bugs Bunny comic books, I always "heard" the wabbit's dialogue in Mel Blanc's voice from the shorts. But when I read a Donald Duck comic book, I never thought that duck spoke with the voice Clarence Nash supplied for Donald in his cartoon appearances...maybe because I understood so little of what the animated duck said and I could read every syllable of the comic book Donald's word balloons.) In some ways, the Donald of the comics was the same character but in others, he was a different but similar creature. And I never quite related the Mickey Mouse of the comic books or strips to any of his animated appearances.
While Western was doing the Warner Brothers-based comics, they changed a lot of the characters to make them — they thought — more workable for print media. They didn't think matching the cartoons closely mattered because, for one thing, those films weren't on TV every week then. During the forties and early fifties, they weren't on TV at all. Many of the kids who bought the comics rarely, if ever, saw the animated shorts and certainly didn't see them over and over and over, like they would in later years. So it didn't matter a whole heap if the comics matched the cartoons; only that they worked as comic book reading experiences. Back then in the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip, which was read by millions, Elmer Fudd rarely appeared and I don't think Yosemite Sam ever did...but Sylvester was a regular. He was a hobo who wasn't owned by Granny, didn't chase Tweety Birds and who had a British accent. Someone thought it made for a better strip that way.
This is why, for instance, the Road Runner in comic books differed so much from the Road Runner in cartoons. When I was a kid enjoying both, I was puzzled. I'd seen Road Runner cartoons. They were tough to come by then but I'd caught one or two and in them, there was one Road Runner and one Coyote and neither spoke. In the comics, the Road Runner not only spoke, he spoke in rhyme. He had a name — Beep Beep — and in some stories, he had a wife and a family of either three or four youthful road-running kids. The Coyote spoke too, though not in rhyme, though that didn't bother me as much. The Coyote had spoken in a couple of non-Road Runner cartoons.
I wondered aloud back then if the folks who made the comic books had ever viewed one of those hard-to-see cartoons — but of course, they had. As I learned much later, Michael Maltese wrote many of those comics and the early ones were drawn by Pete Alvarado. Pete handpainted all the backgrounds for the first Road Runner cartoon, Fast and Furry-ous. Almost all the other writers and artists who did the comics (Phil DeLara, Don R. Christensen, Warren Foster, et al) had worked for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio, if not in Jones's unit then right down the hall. They knew that in the cartoons, the Road Runner didn't talk — in rhyme or at all and it had been a conscious decision to change it for the comics. The editors and creators had also decided to not worry about consistency from comic book to comic book. In some, there was a Mrs. Road Runner and four kids. But there were several years there where the wife and one of the kids disappeared...except that every now and then, they'd inexplicably turn up for a story or two or in a reprint sandwiched in among new adventures.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's no more a "fact" that the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert than it is that the Road Runner is named Beep Beep, has a wife and kids and speaks in doggerel. It said the "E" stood for Ethelbert in one comic book story but that's just one obscure comic book story...and even the guy who wrote it didn't intend it as anything more than one joke on one page of one story in one issue.
How do I know this? Because, as some of you may have guessed by now, I was that guy. I wrote that story. I think I was around twenty years old at the time. I'm pretty sure, by the way, that that one was conceived in a lecture hall at U.C.L.A. while I was simultaneously jotting down script ideas and feigning attention to what a tedious Anthropology professor was teaching. Mike Maltese had been occasionally writing the comics in semi-retirement before me...but when he dropped the "semi" part, I got the job and that was one of the plots I came up with. For the record, the story was drawn by a terrific artist named Jack Manning, and Mr. Maltese complimented me on it.
Still, I wouldn't take that as any official endorsement of the Coyote's middle name. If you want to say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert, fine. I mean, it's not like someone's going to suddenly whip out Wile E.'s actual birth certificate and yell, "Aha! Here's incontrovertible proof!" But like I said, I never imagined anyone would take it as part of the official "canon" of the character. If I had, I'd have said the "E" stood for Evanier.
This is sad but it's something you oughta see. It's a short bit of home movie footage shot on 11/22/63 in Dallas — John F. Kennedy and the First Lady in the motorcade, only a minute or two before shots rang out. I don't think there's anything in here that gives us any additional clues as to whodunnit but it's a piece of history.
For the record, I'm a recovered conspiracy nut. Back in the seventies, I thought the answer to "Who Shot J.F.K.?" was anyone or anything other than a lone assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Snipers on the grassy knoll, Secret Service men programmed a la The Manchurian Candidate, the three hoboes, chickenmen from Saturn...all more likely than one loner with a Mannlicher-Carcano, thought I. But the more I read, the less I could defend any of those theories and I came around to the belief that not only did Oswald act alone but that not a one of the arguments against that scenario was valid. I further came to the view that it was pointless to discuss this with anyone so I don't. I also will not discuss the validity of any religion, where to get the best pizza, Fred Astaire vs. Gene Kelly, what's sexy, or any other topic about which no human being has ever changed another's mind.
Here's a few seconds from Dallas. If you're over fifty, you know exactly where you were when this film was shot.
February 21, 2007
