Friday, November 23, 2007

Important-Type Announcement

The past few years, this weblog has celebrated the work of a brilliant cartoonist named Don Martin by noting his very funny holiday, National Gorilla Suit Day. I've encouraged you to remember the late Mr. Martin and his work and now I'm in the odd position of...well, not discouraging you but just announcing that Don's widow has asked me not to mention him or his holiday and to delete all past mentions of both. I don't fully understand why but I still have (and will always have) the greatest respect for the man...so I've done as she asks. I don't think I would do this for anyone else so Mrs. George W. Bush and Mrs. Dick Cheney, don't bother asking.

• Posted at 10:46 PM · LINK

The Knights of Columbus

The following is a review of a production of the show, Monty Python's Spamalot. It contains information that warrants a big, fat SPOILER ALERT. If you don't want to know what happens, read no further.

Now then: Due to the Stagehands' Strike, you can't see Spamalot on Broadway at the moment but you can in Columbus, Ohio, at least while the national touring company is parked here for the next few days. This evening, my friend Carolyn and I, accompanied by Maggie Thompson of The Comics Buyers Guide, saw it at the Ohio Theater, not far from where the Mid-Ohio Con is taking place this weekend. If this troupe is wandering anywhere near you — according to this page, they go next to Toledo — you might want to do so. I dunno how the original cast was in New York or how the currently-idle cast there is but these folks put on an awfully good show.

It is, of course, freely (very freely) adapted from one of my and probably your all-time favorite movies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but there's an awful lot that's new. And funny. And even hummable. They also have one of the funniest Playbills I've ever seen.

I did want to mention the main cast members because they were all quite splendid: Michael Siberry, Esther Stilwell, Ben Davis, Jeff Dumas, Christopher Gurr, Patrick Heusinger, Robert Petkoff and Christopher Sutton. And there was one other person on stage who really gave an outstanding performance, and I think he deserves special mention. I am speaking, of course, of me.

Here's where that SPOILER ALERT kicks in. At one point in the show, they haul an audience member who's sitting in a certain seat up on stage to be a part of a key scene. Guess who was the lucky (?) person sitting in that seat. It was rather odd to be watching the play one moment and being on stage and a part of it, the next.

In a situation like that, you kind of have to play dumb because the show's on auto-pilot and anything odd you do can only screw things up for them. So I nodded and grinned as they asked my name and then used it in subsequent dialogue and a song...and then returned to my seat with a Polaroid photo of me and the cast, and a little Python Foot trophy they present to whoever gets conscripted to participate. Carolyn and Maggie were both thrilled, and not because I was in that seat instead of one of them. They just thought the show was better with me in it. If you go see it, I probably won't be in it but don't let that stop you.

• Posted at 10:33 PM · LINK

Go Read It (Maybe)

Over at Slate, they're offering a slide show of 11 Peanuts strips that, they say, capture the essence of the magnum opus of Charles M. Schulz. The text leans a bit heavily on the new David Michaelis book that is endorsed by no one who actually knew Schulz...but the observations are worth some consideration.

• Posted at 12:41 PM · LINK

Tales of Manhattan

Can't believe I forgot to get this one up here in greater detail. At the big National Comic Book Convention in New York last Saturday, I moderated a wonderful panel with four veterans of Marvel Comics: Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott, Herb Trimpe and Gary Friedrich. And when I say "veterans," I don't just mean veterans of working in comics. Dick, as befitting the man who drew all them issues of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, wore his old Army uniform from World War II, which is still intact and still fits. (In the above photo, sent to me by Dennis Rogers, we have — left to right — me, Gary, Herb, Dick and Joe.)

So I'm chatting with all these gents and right in the middle of the panel, my little BlackBerry vibrates to tell me I got an e-mail and it turns out it's Stan Lee, who's way off in Los Angeles at that moment, writing to thank me for things I said about him (and didn't say) at that dinner the previous Sunday. I couldn't resist reading his e-mail to the audience there and quickly writing him back:

Hi. I am at this very moment moderating a panel at a New York con with Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott, Gary Friedrich and Herb Trimpe. They all say hi and the audience was thrilled when I read your email to them. Any message for them?

That was sent at 12:26 PM EST. At 12:44, while the panel was still going on and I could read the message to the crowd there, I received the following in reply:

Yeah, here's a message for them — tell them to stay away from hick towns from now on and have their next convention in L.A. so I can be with 'em!

Excelsior!
Stan

So that was how we sorta/kinda got Stan Lee on the Marvel Panel even though he was 3000+ miles away and unaware it was even taking place. This is precisely the kind of thing that the Internet was invented for. Well, that and porn.

• Posted at 8:03 AM · LINK

November 24, 2007 • Current • November 22, 2007