I said that the Fish Grill chain in Los Angeles serves clam chowder. What was I thinking? It's a Kosher chain. They don't have shellfish on the premises. What they have is a great fish chowder that actually reminds one of clam chowder. Thanks to Geoff Klein for catching my blunder.
Also, I said in the previous posting that I was bad at plugging my work here. Kurt Busiek informs me that I'm even worse than I thought I was. He writes, "I don't think you mentioned your participation in the finale of Steve Gerber's Dr. Fate story, either." He's right. When our pal Steve Gerber passed away, he'd written (or helped write) seven parts of an eight-part story that was running in DC's book, Countdown to Mystery.
Rather than have one writer write The Ending to Steve's story — which almost certainly would not have finished it off the way Steve would have — editor Joey Cavalieri asked four of us (me, Gail Simone, Mark Waid and Adam Beechen) to each write An Ending for that issue, thereby quadrupling the chance that there'd be something in there close to what Gerber would have written. This issue came out a few months ago and I was proud to be included, saddened that it had to be done.
I'm real bad at plugging stuff I have coming out. It's been eons since I've mentioned Will Eisner's The Spirit, which comes out every month, or our upcoming "Groo Meets Conan" series...and I don't think I've made any reference at all to an upcoming Indiana Jones book I'm writing for Dark Horse. This is because there are more important things in this world to write about...like alarm clocks that wake you up to the smell of bacon.
But I should mention this: Years ago, a talented gent named Will Meugniot conspired with me and we came up with a super-hero series called The DNAgents (which way too many people referred to as "The DNA Agents") and it lasted a few years and was enormous fun, at least for us, while it lasted. Will left at some point and I continued it with others...and the Evanier/Meugniot issues (including a sequence or two drawn by Dan Spiegle) are about to be reissued in a fancy paperback with new color covers and mostly-old black-and-white interiors. DNAgents: The Industrial Strength Edition comes out the middle of October from Image. It's 452 pages, some of which contain special features by Will and a new foreword by me, for a paltry $24.99. Will is personally supervising the production of it so it oughta look real good.
And that's about all I have to say about it except that if there's sufficient reaction (i.e., sales), I assume they'll reprint the other issues, as well as some of the spin-off books we did like Crossfire. You now know just about as much as I do about this. The only difference is I don't have to pay for my copy and you do. You can advance order a copy from Amazon by clicking this here link. It's only sixteen and a half bucks from them...such a deal.
One "by the way." The little animation above of our character Rainbow was something Will did a few years ago, just for fun. We still occasionally have interest in doing a cartoon series of these characters (also, in a live-action film) and in the book, I'll have a long article recounting some of our adventures in that area. It's been...interesting.
One of the joys of being at the Comic-Con last week was spending time with Mike Peters. Mike is this brilliant friend of mine who draws editorial cartoons and a splendid newspaper strip called Mother Goose and Grimm, and he's just as funny as anything he does on paper...which is pretty danged funny. We worked together years ago on an animated version of his strip and every moment around Mike was a moment I would have paid to experience. Most of the time, I just let him talk and I make like Oliver Hardy, pretending to be annoyed when I'm actually loving every minute of it.
I did that for an hour at the convention on Saturday, ostensibly moderating the Mike Peters Spotlight. I have never felt as useless and unnecessary in my entire life. I asked Mike something like, "How are you?" and he talked for the next twenty minutes about everything under the sun except how he was. Over on this site, you can see a few minutes of that one-sided conversation.
Just before that panel, I hosted one with four folks who were vital to Mad Magazine in its earlier days...and three of them still contribute to said publication. The one who doesn't is Al Feldstein, who was the editor there from 1956 to 1984. Still gracing its pages are Arnie Kogen (who started writing for Mad in 1959), Al Jaffee (there since '55) and Sergio Aragonés (a relative newcomer, having joined up in 1962). Someone shot shaky, handheld video of some or all of the proceedings, and they've posted the first 40 minutes of the panel to YouTube in six parts. I've aggregated the six parts into one video embed and here it is for your dining and dancing pleasure. Here they are...the Usual Gang of Idiots! (Well, some of them, anyway...)
And at the same time, I should say I'm sick of politics that attempts to define someone by what they eat or drink. The fact that someone eats arugula or pork rinds...that they sip lattes or chug-a-lug beer...that they like their Philly Cheese Steaks with the "wrong" kind of cheese or don't know the proper slang when ordering...
All of that is nonsense. If you're trying to get me to not vote for someone because of that kind of stuff, it must be because you can't find anything really wrong with what he might do in office. Either that or you think I'm so stupid that his lunch matters to me more than his plans for Iraq.
Beth Slick (thank you, Beth) found for me the L.A. City Council's definition of fast food. The whole bill can be read as a PDF file at this link but the definition about which I was wondering turns out to be as follows...
...any establishment which dispenses food for consumption, on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders, and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.
Okay, first point: As far as I can tell, there are no more specific definitions in the bill. Nothing says how many menu items a place has to have to not be "limited" or even how they count. (If a place serves hamburgers, cheeseburgers, double hamburgers and double cheeseburgers, is that one item or two or four?) How fast does something have to be prepared or heated to constitute "fast food?"
There are also easy loopholes. A Wendy's could send one kid out to occasionally take an order at one table and it would no longer be a "fast food" establishment by these rules.
And there are places that fit these rules but are obviously part of the solution to the alleged problem. For instance, in L.A. we have a small chain called Fish Grill. They have fewer menu items than an Arby's, some of their offerings (like the clam chowder) are prepared in advance, they have no table orders and everything comes on paper plates. What do they serve? Grilled fresh fish, salads, fish tacos...healthier fare. Come to think of it, a place that just serves salads — they're prepared quickly — might fall right into the same classification as a KFC.
So just what are we trying to stop here? Restaurants that don't serve a wide selection? Restaurants that don't take a long time to prepare each meal? Restaurants that don't employ servers or use real plates? Is any of that a danger to anyone?
The premise of this bill is that the public health is suffering because of...well, here. I'll quote it from the bill:
...the linkage between fast food, poor nutrition and serious public health issues, such as obesity, hypertension and heart disease. In low-income communities, such as South Los Angeles, these issues are exacerbated by the lack of access to healthier alternatives.
That's the supposed wrong they're trying to right, not that food gets served in disposable containers. I could almost buy the argument that there's a public interest in making sure that "healthier alternatives" have a chance of establishing themselves amidst the flurry of Taco Bells out there. But at least part of the reason we don't have such places is that there's no evidence of any real demand for them...and legislation and a moratorium on opening new Yoshinoya Beef Bowls is not going to create that demand.
And if you could make it possible for folks in this area to eat healthier...well, what's wrong if that healthier food comes on paper plates, is prepared quickly and so forth? People go to McDonald's at least in part for the convenience. If someone want to replicate that convenience but offer organic goodies, why stop them? That might be the best way to create a marketplace for those "healthier alternatives." You market them exactly the same way as the Triple Whopper with Cheese and a King-sized order of fries (1850 calories, 1060 of them from fat).
I'm not sure the government has a lot of business trying to limit the sale of legal food. But to the extent they do, they oughta be going after the unhealthy menu items...not targeting some silly definition of a "fast food restaurant." Fast isn't the problem.
Glenn Greenwald has more on the story that's not going to go away — the question of who hyped the post-9/11 anthrax scare into a justification for the invasion of Iraq. We've all heard the accusation that the Bush administration "lied us into war." Here's another lie that got us there...and it looks like some members of the press are still protecting confidential sources that crafted that lie.
A nice article on Bunny Hoest, who took over managing the comic strip, The Lockhorns, when its creator (her husband) passed away. Thanks to James H. Burns for the link.
Friday night, Conan O'Brien's show aired a nine-minute segment of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (Robert Smigel) heckling folks at the Comic-Con in San Diego. I'm embedding it here even though I must admit that the one joke — convention-goers are all obese losers who can't get laid — has been pretty well beaten into the ground by now. Smigel's one of the cleverest, funniest guys on TV and I love the fact that he doesn't even try to be a real puppeteer as he manipulates Triumph. One of these days, I'm sure, he'll have more to say about fans and conventions.
And now here, running seven minutes, is the totality of Triumph's speech at the con, an excerpt of which is in the above video. I don't know why the "f" word is bleeped some times and not others but such are the ways of television...
August 4, 2008
