On Sunday, September 28, I'll be among the authors talking about our books and writing our names in copies at The West Hollywood Book Fair. There's a whole section of programming devoted to comics and graphic novels and I think I'm appearing on a podcast taping at 5:00, but I expect to be around before that. The podcast is for comicsoncomics.con, a web show where comedians sit around and gab about comic books. If I don't let you know when it's posted to the Internet, it'll be because I made a bigger jerk of myself than usual.
Then the following day, I'm going to be speaking about my latest book at the Santa Monica offices of Google. As I understand this, the event will be transmitted to all the other Google facilities and will be available at some point on Google Video but it's not open to the public. Once again, if I don't let you know when it's posted to the Internet...
Lastly for now: The evening of October 14, I'm going to be part of a panel discussion at USC about the impact of political humor on the current election and, I suppose, on other ones. But I'll tell you about that when we get closer to the date.
I often plug Stu's Show, an entertainment-themed talk show on Shokus Internet Radio, a station you can hear on the very computer you're using to read this here website. I would like to really, really plug/recommend this week's installment, which is a two-hour conversation with comic legend Shelley Berman. Not only is Shelley one of the great geniuses of stand-up comedy (occasionally performed seated on a stool) but he's a thoughtful, wise man with much to say about the evolution of his art form. He is disarmingly candid in this chat with Stuart Shostak and Christopher Bay, and if you're interested in comedy, it's a very educational and fast-moving two hours.
The show first aired last Wednesday and it reruns each day until next Tuesday, so there's your window of opportunity to listen. Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, it airs at from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific Time. On Sunday, it's on from 9 AM 'til 11 AM Pacific Time. Go to the website of Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time and click where they tell you to click. You'll be glad you did.
I have never harassed you about political statements, but I have this question. You say that if Sarah Palin want the media to lay off her family, they should stop parading them around. Didn't Barack Obama put his family on display at the Democratic Convention? And wasn't it he who said that kids are off limits? Must Sarah Palin hide her children away just so they won't get picked on?
To some extent, yes...and even that wouldn't stop it altogether. Remember back when John McCain and Rush Limbaugh used to make jokes based on the premise that Chelsea Clinton was ugly? You're always going to have a certain amount of that. When you go into public life, you drag your family along with you.
Now, there are degrees of how much you're inviting folks to pay attention to your kin. Certainly if you claimed your son is a straight-A student and then reporters got hold of his report card and it was full of Ds, that would get mentioned. And certainly if the kids don't trot out on stage or pose for pics, it's a little more inappropriate to focus on them. But it's going to happen either way and those who enter public life need to just accept it.
A lot of it is like actors or performers who struggle to become famous and to enjoy all the perks and rewards and ego gratification that come with fame...and then complain about the downsides. There are many: You get pestered for autographs when it's inconvenient and you get hate mail and stalkers, and there are other drawbacks. But you can't have it both ways and you also can't erect a little firewall around yourself that keeps both away from your friends and family. It would be nice if you could but it doesn't work that way.
Yeah, Barack Obama rolled his kids out for inspection, too. I would have admired him if he hadn't but I guess that wouldn't have spared them from the spotlight...merely caused his opponents to suggest he was hiding them because he was ashamed of them or they weren't really his or something. I think one of the stupider things we consider at election time is whether the candidate can line up his or her family and look like a Norman Rockwell painting for twenty minutes. Not to belittle the "values" those photo-ops are supposed to represent but a lot of those portraits are illusory and even when they aren't, so what? It would be quite easy to be a good parent and still be a lousy or corrupt president or senator or whatever.
Sarah Palin's kids seem quite happy and/or willing to be used as campaign props. So were Obama's daughters and of course, so is his wife. I don't like the term "fair game" because I don't think it's a game...but as far as I'm concerned, when a candidate says, "Leave my family alone," what they're really saying is "Don't interfere with the image we're trying to sell of my home life." Similarly, when they say, "Leave my opponent's family alone," they're being gracious...and maybe distancing themselves from comments they know are inevitable. They're probably also positioning themselves to say "Leave my family alone" when applicable.
By the way: I corrected a typo in Sam's message when he referred to "Sarah Plain." Make up your own comment about that one.
I agree with this piece by Ted Anthony. If the McCain-Palin team wants some privacy for the Palin family, they oughta stop parading them around as campaign props.
Still on that deadline but here's something I had to put up here. As you all know, master voiceover guy Don LaFontaine passed away the other day. Don had been having a mess of medical troubles since about last November...a lot of ugly stuff involving growths on his lymph nodes and a collapsed lung and something really nasty called Subcutaneous Emphysema — and that isn't even the half of it.
A few weeks ago, he wrote and had circulated a letter within the voiceover community. It described all his problems and his determination to lick them. It also included, down near the end, the following paragraph. I think Don would have wanted it to reach a larger audience...
But the real point of all this is the genesis of the condition. I was a smoker, on and off, for thirty years. I quit nearly twenty years ago, but that crap has a tendency to lie doggo in your system. It finally caught up with me, and as you've just read — it ain't pretty. For those of you who are in the Voice Over business, and you think that smoking is adding some wonderful quality to your instrument — WAKE UP! Quit! Today! Whoever you are — if you smoke — Stop! All you are adding is garbage to your vocal cords, and a nice deep layer of tar and poison on the linings of your lungs.
It's especially significant that Don LaFontaine said this because, and I am quite serious about this, there have been a number of actors who kept on smoking (or even STARTED) because of him. I've heard v.o. actors say they thought it would make them sound more like Don LaFontaine and might therefore get them more work. One of them was my pal Greg Burson, whose obit you read here recently. I don't know how much smoking contributed to Greg's death but it sure didn't help.
Today is the birthday of my longtime friend, Scott Shaw! (That's Scott above at left, me at right.) Scott is a clever and gifted cartoonist, a historian of bizarre comic books and a heckuva nice guy. This year at the Quick Draw! game at Comic-Con, he dazzled the audience with a feat worthy of Ricochet Rabbit. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Hanna-Barbera — an occasion noted by me and, as far as I can tell, no one else on this planet — I made him draw fifty (50!) Hanna-Barbera characters in a matter of minutes. He did it, like just about everything else he does, with stunning skill. Have a great Scott Day, Scott!
Are you familiar with The Monty Hall Problem? It's sometimes called The Monty Hall Paradox.
Here's how it works. You're on a game show not unlike Mr. Hall's legendary Let's Make a Deal. There are three doors. One of them conceals a new car. The other two have goats behind them. You get to pick a door and you will win the prize behind it. Obviously, the idea is to go home with a car, not a goat.
So you pick your door. Then the host (who knows where the car is hidden) says, "Let's see what's behind the door you didn't pick!" He opens one of the doors that conceals a goat. You feel lucky you did not pick that door.
The host then asks you, "Before we reveal the prize behind the door you selected, would you like to swap? Would you like to take the other door instead of the one you picked?"
The problem: Should you swap? Would it make you more likely to win the car, less likely...or would it make no difference?
Most people say it would make no difference. Amazingly, they are wrong. You double the odds of winning the car if you switch.
Just why this is so is hard to explain. There are dozens of videos on the 'net in which folks attempt to explain why one should always switch and most of them are incomprehensible and confusing. The one below is the best one I've come across.
If you'd like to see an interesting test of this situation, this webpage allows everyone to play the game and it tallies up the results. As you'll see, those who choose to swap win twice as often as those who don't. I know it's counter-intuitive but if you think about it, it makes sense.
It's not quite time for Cream of Mushroom Soup but we are still battling deadlines here; ergo, not much opportunity to watch the Republican Convention. About all I saw was Huckabee and a little of Palin...not enough of the latter to have an opinion. I liked Huckabee but did not understand his line about how Sarah Palin running for mayor of that town she was mayor of got more votes than Joe Biden got for president. Biden got something like 75,000 votes for president. Even if every single citizen of Palin's town (including minors) had voted for her five times, she wouldn't have gotten 75,000 votes. Anyone have any idea what's up with that?
I started to write a post here today that said that if the G.O.P. wants some privacy for the Palin family, they should stop parading them out for photo-ops and as campaign props. But it seemed kinda obvious so I didn't finish it.
I do hope to finish a post about how I wish people wouldn't spread the silly idea that those who live in Big Cities think everyone who lives in a Small City is a relative of Gomer and Goober Pyle...or Larry the Cable Guy or some other redneck/hick stereotype. I've lived in a Big City all my life and somehow never encountered anyone who had the snottiness towards rural communities that troublemakers like to claim we do. I mean, you do have people in this world who insist that wherever they live is the inarguable single best place on the whole planet to live. You also have folks in so-called blue states who think that a majority (not everyone but a majority) of those who live in red states are foolish to vote as they do, just as you have folks in red states who feel that way about blue states. But apart from that kind of thing, no. I don't think that's a real mindset of any significant group.
So it's back to deadlines with me. I have some prewritten posts to stick up here but I won't be penning anything new for the blog for a day or two. Unless, of course, someone dies...which'll probably (sigh) happen.
September 5, 2008
