Saturday, March 7, 2009

Pledge Break

It's been more than six months since I posted one of these. I have to pay for a bunch of stuff I just bought off eBay. So if you've been thinking, "Gee, I have to make a donation to that wonderful weblog," now would be a grand time. Thank you.

• Posted at 10:54 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

You rarely see an interview these days in which a host asks a guest a genuine, valid tough question..."tough" in this case meaning that it punctures the guest's entire shpiel. Bill Maher did in the other night on Real Time when he had on billionaire T. Boone Pickens.

Pickens is out pushing an "energy independence plan" that would harness wind power to get us off oil. There are those who claim that this is not altruistic; that the man has set up companies that would make zillions from any such plan. Never mind that for the moment. He's also been a big supporter of candidates who actively crusade to take us in precisely the opposite direction. He was, for example, a major backer of those "Swift Boat Veterans" ads that helped keep George W. Bush in the White House. In the last three or four minutes of the interview, Maher brings up these contradictions...and Pickens really has no answer...

• Posted at 7:36 PM · LINK

Saturday Morning

Among the Conservative writers that I occasionally like (and even sometimes agree with) is a gent named David Frum. It's kind of fascinating to me to watch as, lately, he's being fileted and attacked for advocating some viewpoints which...well, I won't presume they're dead-on accurate but if I were a Republican seeking to rebuild my party's strength, I'd sure afford them the dignity of serious consideration. Instead, they're being treated like blasphemy that must be shouted down at all cost.

A little less than a year ago, I attended a symposium where the panel included Frum and also right-wing radio talker Hugh Hewitt. Mr. Hewitt went on and on about how the Democrats would be committing political suicide to nominate Barack Obama; how there was no chance of him being elected president and it would be like Thelma and Louise driving off the cliff. That was a specific metaphor he invoked...and he made a lot of other predictions which have proven to be about as wrong as wrong can be.

I gather Hewitt does this often — predict exactly what does not then happen — and it impairs his stature as a pundit not one bit. Pundits, left and right, are almost never faulted for their bad predictions, no matter how confident or emphatic they were about them. If a doctor was 50% wrong, you'd never go near him except perhaps to sue for malpractice...but people return again and again to a pundit who tells them what they want to hear, even when it's wrong nine times out of ten. That day at the panel, I didn't (of course) know how incorrect Hewitt would prove to be about Obama but I did get the following sense — that Hewitt was just interested in putting on the show that right-wingers enjoyed, whereas Frum was interested in actually winning elections. Which is not to say everything Mr. Frum said that day was accurate...though he could have predicted Alan Keyes would win thanks to a massive write-in vote by Venusians and he'd have been no less off than Hugh Hewitt. At least though, Frum was trying to be realistic.

Lately, he's been fragged for suggesting that Rush Limbaugh might not be the ideal leader for the G.O.P. if it expects to win back power. Not that I have the best interests of Republicans at heart but I can't help but think so, too — and for the same reason that Hugh Hewitt wouldn't be a good de facto voice for the party. He's more interested in his own glory than in the party's, and his glory may even be greater when the party doesn't win.

Here's David Frum writing about his recent battles with Conservative radio host Mark Levin. There's a link in there to a conversation they had on Levin's show and it demonstrates exactly why I don't like most talk radio these days, and also why you usually can't win any debate with a host who has home court advantage. Levin keeps interrupting, so terrified is he of letting Frum finish a sentence and complete a point...and this isn't even Levin arguing with someone who wants to turn America into something he would find loathesome. This is Levin arguing with a guy who just has a different idea of how to achieve most of the same goals.

I don't know how long Barack Obama has to deliver some tangible improvement in our country before his approval ratings will drop towards any danger level. But it may have a lot to do with how long guys like Levin and Frum are mud-wrestling over Rush.

• Posted at 11:48 AM · LINK

Working Out

The FedEx company is making a nice gesture to help folks who are unemployed. On Tuesday, if you take your résumé to one of their offices, they'll print 25 copies for you on "high-quality paper." That's quite commendable...but if they really want to do something to help the employment situation in this country, they might try hiring more than two people to do the work of twelve in the FedEx offices near me.

[UPDATE, made a little later: Ken Quattro writes, "There's a correction to your FedEx post on your blog that should be made. The résumés should be taken to a FedEx Office location, formerly known as Kinko's. Do not take them to the regular FedEx locations where the couriers are and the packages are loaded onto trucks for delivery. Please make that distinction." So noted.]

• Posted at 9:59 AM · LINK

John Carbonaro, R.I.P.

Bob Sodaro informs me that his friend John Carbonaro passed away on February 25 at the age of 58. John was a devout comic fan who turned publisher in 1981 when he acquired the rights to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic which had been published in the sixties by Tower Comics. Bob wrote the story of this enterprise up for this article but basically, John bought the property and then launched into a series of unsatifactory arrangements, sometimes publishing new T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comics himself and sometimes licensing the characters out for others to market. He also fought and won several battles to prove he owned the property and that it was not, as some claimed, public domain.

I knew John a little and was involved with some of his plans. He struck me as an enthusiastic lover of comics who was as interested in seeing Dynamo, NoMan, Menthor and others treated right as he was to make money off his investment. His quest to achieve both did not always result in either but he kept at it, always trying to find the right place for the material.

Bob says that while he is unaware of the details, he knows Bob made arrangements for the disposition of the property after his death. I hope whoever winds up with the rights will do right by the franchise. That's what a lot of fans of those characters would like to see and that's what John sure wanted.

• Posted at 9:52 AM · LINK

Rave Review

As we all know, a man named Harvey Kurtzman and a talented crew of artists created the original MAD comic book which later morphed into a hugely successful humor magazine. Kurtzman and most of those artists left after a little more than two dozen issues and went on to do a slicker humor magazine for Hugh Hefner's company. It was called Trump and it lasted a big two issues. This was in the early days of Playboy and Hef was not yet financially stable enough to endure the cost overruns and disappointing early sales of Trump.

Finding themselves out on the street, Kurtzman and his artists decided to start yet another humor mag, this time financing it out of their own pockets. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time...and it might have been, had they known how to publish. Instead, they designed their new magazine, Humbug, as a cheap package — comic-book sized but without the interior color and with a higher price tag than comic books of the day. The smaller size ensured the magazine would be placed on the comic book racks, not over near magazines of similarly adult appeal...so potential buyers couldn't find it at their newsstands. That is, if it even got to their newsstands. Another grand mistake was to hook up with a particularly weak (and perhaps not totally honest) distributor. The whole thing was a disaster that lasted all of eleven issues.

So did they do anything right? Yes. They filled the pages of Humbug with brilliantly witty stories illustrated by top artists like Bill Elder and Jack Davis. If you could find it, you probably loved it...but not many people had the chance to read Humbug.

This has changed. Fantagraphics Books has just released a superb two-volume boxed set that reprints Humbug in full, plus it also contains proper introductions and interviews with some who worked on the magazine. The material is excellent. It's Kurtzman, Elder, Davis, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth and a few others working at the peak of their awesome powers. The package is excellent. It's well-designed and well-printed, and I can't think of a way in which it could have been improved. We've seen a lot of fancy comic book reprint projects lately but this may be my favorite.

Buy it. Just buy it.

• Posted at 1:37 AM · LINK

Sign Out, Please!

For many years now, I've enjoyed the late night reruns on GSN of vintage game shows like What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth. Those are the two they've been running lately but it all ends March 30. The network is doing a major schedule revamp and the old shows are nowhere to be seen. We can only enjoy them 'til then and hope they'll be back one of these days. (Thanks to all who let me know about this, especially Jim Newman.)

• Posted at 12:00 AM · LINK

March 8, 2009 • Current • March 6, 2009