Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Turn Down the House Lights

The other night at the Sondheim event, the introductions were done by a gentleman whose name I didn't catch. But I do remember something he said and I've been thinking about it. Here's an approximation of his words...

Later, there will be a Q-and-A session and I'm sorry to say I need to explain to people what the "Q" means. It means you ask a question. A question is a sentence that begins with an interrogatory pronoun and it ends with a question mark and your voice goes up at the end. And it's one sentence. If it's more than one sentence, it's not a question. This is not an audition. It is not about you. We don't need to hear what the first Sondheim show was you saw and how it forever changed your life. Just ask a real question and sit down.

As you know, I moderate a lot of public events and while I occasionally say a little of that, I never go that far. I think I'm going to start...or, better still, consider skipping the "questions from the floor" portion entirely. It's been clear to me that many audiences do not want the kind of audience participation that usually occurs these days.

The folks at the Sondheim interview cheered the admonition. An open mike at a public event has increasingly become a magnet for people who should not be allowed near open mikes at public events. Audiences have begun to dread that portion of the program and to regard it as the signal that the event they came to see has come to an end. Thereafter, they can either leave (many do at that point) or sit there and cringe as control passes from the person they wanted to hear and goes to some stranger who, but for this opportunity, would never be speaking in front of a real audience and/or to someone of importance.

This seems like a new trend to me. I don't recall it happening much at lectures and panels I attended in the sixties, seventies and eighties, but it got going in the nineties and has sadly become the norm in this century.

There are always tip-offs, always danger signs. One is when someone camps out at the microphone in the aisle for the entire talk, waiting for their chance. That guy, you just know is there to hijack the attention. The person who gets up and starts with "On behalf of everyone here..." or "And I know I speak for everyone..." is about to say something just to force the audience to applaud, and they probably think that applause is for them.

I have also seen great gymnastics of segue performed to formulate a question that seems to make it natural for the question-asker to mention their own current projects or even perform a bit. One time, I was interviewing Ray Bradbury. The first guy at the mike — who'd been poised there since before Ray and I arrived on stage — just wanted to say how much Ray's work had inspired his own, beginning efforts and he wanted to read aloud a passage from one of those stories to demonstrate this. If I hadn't stopped him, he'd have turned the rest of the hour into a books-on-tape recital.

I see the worst of it when I host panels about Cartoon Voicing. We always seem to get an audience member who aspires to that profession — not that there's anything wrong with so aspiring — but wants to ask for advice in a couple of different voices and accents. The panels themselves are always great and no one leaves...up until the moment when I say, "Let's take some questions from the floor." That's when people figure it's over and they start trudging out...so I'm going to stop saying it. Or at least, I'll be much ruder if I do say it and the first lady at the mike has a question she's been dying to have answered but which can only be asked in her Bart Simpson impression.

Anyway, that's what I've been waiting my whole life to say, and I know I speak for everyone when I say it...and by the way, my new book is available from Amazon. Thank you. Oh, and one more thing — on behalf of everyone here, I really want to thank you for everything you've done...and is it okay if I give out my website address and pass out some flyers I happen to have along?

• Posted at 3:33 PM · LINK

Highly Recommended Reading

Someone at the convention on Saturday asked why, of all the pundits and commentators on the Internet, I keep linking to Fred Kaplan. It's because he writes columns like this one. If you never click on my Fred Kaplan links, at least click on that one.

It's a clear, concise and factually-sound explanation of why the Iraq War is such an unwinnable mess. Here, I'll even quote the beginning of it to get you started. Kaplan starts by writing, "Imagine it's early 2003, and President George W. Bush presents the following case for invading Iraq:"

We're about to go to war against Saddam Hussein. Victory on the battlefield will be swift and fairly clean. But then 100,000 U.S. troops will have to occupy Iraq for about 10 years. On average, nearly 1,000 of them will be killed and another 10,000 injured in each of the first 5 years. We'll spend at least $1 trillion on the war and occupation, and possibly trillions more. Toppling Saddam will finish off a ghastly tyranny, but it will also uncork age-old sectarian tensions. More than 100,000 Iraqis will die, a few million will be displaced, and the best we can hope for will be a loosely federated Islamic republic that isn't completely in Iran's pocket. Finally, it will turn out that Saddam had neither weapons of mass destruction nor ties to the planners of 9/11. Our intervention and occupation will serve as the rallying cry for a new crop of terrorists.

...and you can read onward from there. I hope you do.

• Posted at 10:44 AM · LINK

me on the radio

Tomorrow (Wednesday) between the hours of 4 PM and 6 PM Pacific, you'll want to click on the banner above so you can listen to Yours Truly when I guest for the eleven thousandth time on Stu's Show, the flagship program on Shokus Internet Radio. That's right. I'm doing it again and for a change, we're going to talk about me! We'll probably spend a little time on my new book, Kirby: King of Comics, but Stu wants to spend most of the show discussing my work for eight years as writer, co-producer and voice director on Garfield and Friends...the job that has put me where I am today: Writing more Garfield cartoons.

We'll not only be chatting about that show but there may even be a phone call from one or two folks involved in that show, plus there'll be the golden opportunity for you to phone in and ask questions. Sounds like a plan.

Just to make sure everyone understands: This is not a podcast, not something you can download and listen to whenever it pleases you. This is like radio only it's over the Internet. You have to tune in when the show is broadcast, which is tomorrow at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM on the East Coast, other corresponding times in other places. It repeats, usually in the same time slot, throughout the following week but you won't have the fun of listening to it as we do it and you won't be able to call in.

So listen tomorrow, which will mean clicking on one of the links here and following the brief instructions. You can actually tune in to the channel right now and hear something you'll enjoy even if it isn't me. Go test and see how easy it is and notice how you can go right on working on your computer, downloading porn or mass-mailing Cialis ads or whatever you do all day, while you listen.

• Posted at 10:25 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This is a two-part video link. It runs about fourteen minutes and since YouTube has a ten minute limit for most clips, it's been chopped into two videos. You can play one right after the other in the player below.

With all that in mind, we bring you today's feature: Mr. Magoo Gets a Colonoscopy. Sorry it's a little out of sync...

• Posted at 2:39 AM · LINK

Go Read It!

The latest catastrophe in news of the environment: The cost of popcorn is going up.

• Posted at 2:27 AM · LINK