Actually, I do have some baby panda footage for you. PBS is now airing (check your local listings now) Panda Tales, an hour-long special on Zhen-Zhen of the San Diego Zoo. Here's a three-minute preview...
The U.S. Supreme Court makes some of its wisest decisions by just deciding not to interfere and to allow the rulings of lower courts to stand. Yesterday, they declined to interfere with a California decision that says, basically, that state law officials cannot ignore local laws that allow Medical Marijuana to be grown and used. Good for them.
That's a photo of Gene Colan. If you read a Marvel Comic in the late sixties or seventies, you know and love the work of Gene Colan. He drew most of their books at one time or another but was especially noted for long runs on Daredevil, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck. Great guy, great artist.
If you are anywhere near Mountain View, California this weekend, you have a rare opportunity to meet Gene Colan, shake the hand that drew all those great comics and maybe buy a signed something. Gene rarely ventures far from home these days but on Saturday, December 6, he'll be at Lee's Comics in Mountain View from 2 PM to 4 PM. If I could get there, I would but I can't. Here's all the info you need to do what I can't do.
All right, I know what you want. You want to hear a good ukulele orchestra playing "The Theme from Shaft." Okay, okay. Just remember — I'm only doing this for you...
People in Show Business love failure — others', of course, not their own. They flock around it, gloat about it, talk about it and occasionally even learn from it. Recently, a new Cirque du Soleil show opened in Las Vegas, toplined by magician Criss Angel and while it's too soon to write off Criss Angel Believe as a failure, there's already a flurry of schadenfreude in the air.
That may be understandable as it's the union of two entities that some have been dying to see suffer. Cirque du Soleil produces magnificent shows but they're a little pretentious, a little overpriced and in Vegas, a little too ubiquitous. The phrase "stretching themselves too thin" has been uttered. There are presently six Cirque shows playing there with at least three more rumored as in development. That's a lot of Cirque.
Criss Angel is a successful entertainer but his work — previously almost exclusively on television — has been criticized for certain excesses of ego and of maybe/sorta/kinda skirting the magician's television code. That's the unwritten credo that says that you don't employ camera trickery, you don't put anything on the screen that you couldn't put on a stage in front of a live audience. Most magicians who appear on the tube have stretched that principle or found loopholes in it...for example, editing a routine down so it goes much faster on television (and therefore seems more remarkable) than would be possible live. Or doing an exterior levitation feat and cropping the shot so the home viewers don't see the overhead cranes that were clearly visible to anyone who was there on tape day.
Many in the magic community admire Angel's showmanship and ingenuity but feel he has broken that credo. His partisans — and he has many — said that was nonsense and that his new Vegas show would prove how incredible he could be in a live setting. Well, Believe ain't proving anything of the sort. Not so far, anyway. There have been bad reviews and reports of terrible business, along with the inevitable jokes about the magician making his audience disappear...and those who savor the flops of others couldn't be happier.
I haven't seen the show but a magician friend who has reported that it has a few stunning and new effects — one or two that are almost worth the hefty admission price alone — but that it all fails to coalesce into a coherent, consistent presentation. Renovations are said to be underway and I'd sure like to see them pull this one off. If Cirque du Soleil and Criss Angel can simultaneously live up to their reputations, it could be a helluva good show.
Several folks have sent me links to the above photo, which is in the UCLA Photo Library. You can glimpse a larger version of it at this link. The caption on it reads...
COMIC BOOK HEAVEN — Rick Durell, El Segundo, left, operator of a gasoline station, and Burt Blum, manager of Cherokee Book Shop, 6607 Hollywood Blvd., look over comic books in store, largest center for them in the country.
In '65, I was thirteen years old and an occasional patron of Cherokee Book Shop. It was a business which claimed (probably rightly) to have been the first store in the world to sell old comic books to true collectors. At the time, America was dotted with second-hand booksellers who offered any old comics they came across at a nickel-or-so apiece. Cherokee sought out the earliest books in the finest conditions and priced accordingly.
The business got a lot of publicity — newspaper articles that were incredulous that anyone would pay ten (gasp!) dollars for an old comic book, even if it was Superman #1 — and the impact of those articles was huge. First and foremost, it sent people scurrying to their attics and basements in search of lost treasures. They'd find old comics, phone Cherokee and wind up selling them for what seemed like glorious found money...usually less than 10% of the resale price. Then the articles would also drive new customers to Cherokee and, of course, they spawned hundreds of copycat businesses, including several within a few blocks of where it all started.
A visit to the store was an adventure. I don't believe Burt Blum was actually the manager of Cherokee Book Shop. I think his brother Jack was. But Burt presided over the comic book division, which was upstairs and open whenever Burt felt like being there. You'd sometimes go in and be told Burt was off surfing...so too bad. Even when open, the business revolved around Burt's whims. No prices were marked. You had to ask him and he'd charge you whatever his mood (and his estimate of your desperation to own that issue) told him to charge. Some fans went to enormous lengths to get on Burt's alleged good side, which I'm not sure I ever saw. Most of the time, I'd see him barking at kids to unbutton their jackets. He treated every one of us as a potential shoplifter, which was justified. There was much thievery, though usually not by the folks he suspected.
He made his real money off customers like Rick Durell, who I also knew. Rick, who passed away around fifteen years ago, claimed to have started this whole business of paying real money for real old comics. As the story went, he walked one day into Cherokee, which specialized in rare antiquarian books of other kinds. There, he met Jack and/or Burt and offered cash for perfect condition copies of Golden Age Comics. Soon, the store was locating them and in the process, it developed a client list of buyers like Rick who built huge collections — in some cases for investment; in others, to recapture their childhoods. The Durell Collection — I have no idea what became of it — was amazing. At one point, he claimed to own two dozen copies of Action Comics #1, all in perfect condition.
I never bought many comics at Cherokee. I couldn't stand the little game of humbling yourself before Burt to ask the price of a comic you wanted. The prices were often steep and you felt like a pauper if you declined the deal. Some fans I knew had developed a cozy enough relationship with Blum that he was willing to haggle a little...but he could also turn on you, decide you weren't a serious customer and order you off the premises.
But it was an interesting place to be, even if the cramped quarters and atmosphere weren't conducive to hanging around. You might meet someone famous (I met Jules Feiffer there) and you might make friends with a fellow lover of fine comics. You might also see the second act of the following drama: A kid would come in and spend, say, fifteen dollars for a copy of Batman #4 from 1941. A few days later, the kid would be back with the comic...dragged there crying and screaming by a father who'd accuse Burt of cheating his son and demand a refund. I wasn't there that often but I saw it happen at least twice, and a friend of mine who worked there estimated it as a twice-monthly occurrence.
At some point, Burt's supply of Golden Age Comics seemed to dry up. The last time I was up there, the oldest book on the premises was a Wonder Woman #12 or thereabouts. The day had passed when Burt could idly fan out a bridge hand of thirteen copies of Captain America #1, just to gloat. He began catering almost wholly to buyers like Rick Durell and opening the room upstairs only when one of them had an appointment. I have no idea when the whole enterprise closed down because by then, I didn't know anyone shopping there.
Burt Blum surfaced years later running a pretty good old book shop in Santa Monica but according to this article, it shut down in 2002. I was in there once and I knew it was Burt because someone had told me. But I didn't buy anything there that day. I was afraid I'd have to ask him the price and then, if I didn't want to pay it, he'd throw me out of the store. (No, that's not true. He was an okay guy and I wish I'd had the time or inclination to interview him about his Cherokee days. He was a pretty important part of comic book history...)
December 3, 2008
