Here's Stan Lee on a 1977 Canadian talk show talking about, among other things, how Spider-Man is like Woody Allen. I don't think any of the story points that Stan describes ever actually appeared in a Marvel Comic, at least when he was editor, but that's not the point. The point is that he's always been a good promoter for the industry and especially for his corner of it. A large chunk of Marvel's success was because of interviews like this one.
Hey, remember I said that I thought Conan O'Brien would eventually have some weak ratings that would cause reporters to write stories that suggested NBC had made a huge mistake displacing Jay Leno? Well, it look like we'll be seeing those articles a lot sooner than I expected. Like maybe in the next week or so.
I have to say I'm not enjoying his shows all that much and that my TiVo's fast forward button is being employed a lot. One of the problems, I think, is that Topic #1 seems to be the fact that Conan O'Brien is hosting The Tonight Show and Conan doesn't seem to have much more to talk about beyond that.
Last night, I was chatting with Hank Bradford, who was Johnny Carson's head writer for many of Mr. Carson's golden years. Hank knows as much about that kind of comedy as anyone alive and he made an interesting point. He said, approximately, "All these guys [Conan, Dave, Jay, etc.] all go on and on about how much they admired Johnny and follow in his footsteps...but they all think they can do that kind of a show without an Ed McMahon. Johnny knew how much it adds to have someone to talk to, someone who can function as a good straight man. He would never have done his show without Ed."
Conan has Andy Richter over at the podium doing a small part of Ed's old job. Come on...let's get him over to the couch. He's already on the payroll.
Comic book and animation artist Dave Simons has died at the age of 54 following a long battle with cancer.
David Lloyd Simons was a native New Yorker with a childhood passion for comic books. Art teachers encouraged and advised him, and while he was serving in the Coast Guard in the seventies, he began attending classes conducted by one of Marvel's star artists, John Buscema. Dave would later say he owed his career to those workshops, citing not only Buscema's teaching but also the friendships he forged there with other young artists, including Armando Gil and Ken Landgraf. At a 1979 comic convention, he showed his work to Rick Marschall, who was then an editor for Marvel, and this led to Dave getting work at the company. His first assignment was inking a Falcon story that I wrote and which was pencilled by John's brother, Sal Buscema.
Dave followed it with work on many Marvel titles including Howard the Duck, Tomb of Dracula, Ghost Rider, Red Sonja, Conan the Barbarian and many more, segueing from inking to also at times, pencilling. He also worked for DC and Disney, but by the early nineties, had moved more into animation work. Among the shows that featured his design and storyboard work were G.I. Joe Extreme, Captain Planet, Masters of the Universe, Exo-Squad and Courage the Cowardly Dog.
He was a very talented, enthusiastic artist. His work was well-liked and Dave was well-liked. A lot of folks are saddened to hear we've lost him.
Last week when I was in Las Vegas, I stayed at the Excalibur Hotel for the first but probably not the last time. Prior to this, I guess I was put off by the exterior decor, which is garish and which tends to make the whole place look like a colossal joke some very drunk architects played on their employers. Around 1993, during a period when a lot of ancient Vegas casinos were being imploded, one of the town's newspapers polled its readers on which hotel they'd like to see levelled. They meant for folks to vote for the old, dilapidated ones from the fifties and early sixties. Instead, the winner was the Excalibur, which was built in 1990.
But I picked it for a number of reasons. One was that it was cheap — $31 a night...which shows you how bad business is in that city. Usually, when you get a room that cheap, it either means it's in a flophouse or it's on fire or you have to share it with a live moose or something. As I was travelling alone, I didn't need any particular luxury.
Secondly, the Excalibur's basic rooms do not have bathtubs...just showers. This I like, having long endured the clumsiness I feel in those combos where you have to stand in a tub to take a shower. At check-in, the desk clerk asked me if I'd like a complimentary upgrade to a better quality room. I asked, "Does it have a combination bathtub and shower?" She said yes and I said, "I'd rather stick with the lower quality room." It was fine.
It was also (third reason:) perfectly situated. I had an invite to go see David Copperfield over at the MGM Grand, which is across the street from the Excalibur. And I was attending a convention at the Mandalay Bay, which is two hotels down from the Excalibur and connected by a walkway and a tram. Couldn't be easier.
Striding through the Excalibur, I kept seeing these signs offering Strip Poker...a game I have played in its basic form but once in my life. It was at a party when I was nineteen and the whole point of it was that there was one girl there who was dying to take her clothes off in front of everyone and somehow thought she needed a faux reason. So we played until Marla lost, which she accomplished by folding once with four-of-a-kind and once with a full house.
But that's not the kind of Strip Poker they're dealing at the Excalibur, which is probably a good thing. I've never played poker in Vegas but I've seen the kind of people who do. You wouldn't want most of them to take off their visors, let alone actual items of apparel. In the Excalibur version, they bring in a professional stripper and every time a player busts out, she takes off something.
Here are the rules. As you can see, they call for the dancer to remain "minimally though appropriately covered," which would apply to about half the women who shop at Trader Joe's in Los Angeles. And let me quote two other rules I find amusing...
Although the dancer may converse with the customers, the dancer will not engage in any solicitous activities at any time.
The dancer will dance and carry herself in an appropriate manner. Dances, physical movements and any other actions of an overtly sexual nature are forbidden.
It all strikes me as a perfect example of the inherent, quaint contradiction of Las Vegas. They want to offer you something naughty but it has to be "safe naughty" that can offend no one, cause no possible legal problem. I mean, you just know how this must have gone down. Someone came in one day and said, "Hey, you know the game that will get people excited? Strip poker!" And then someone else yelled, "Great! We'll combine gambling with sex. The only problem is that, well, you know...some of our poker players are pretty ugly." "No problem," said the first guy. "We'll bring in someone — a dancer or someone you'd like to see strip." And the boss proclaimed, "Okay, but we better protect ourselves. Get together with the lawyers and have them work out something so no one can get mad or sue."
And there you have it: Someone's actually figured out a way to strip most of the fun from Strip Poker.
I'll bet it won't last. And I'll also bet it won't make any money for them, either, which is not to say it couldn't. What they'd have to do is not get so corporate uptight with it...and also find a lady who looks exactly like Marla did in 1971. If they could, they just might have something.
As expected, the membership of the Screen Actors Guild has voted to ratify and accept the new contract that many campaigned against. The vote was 78%, which is a little higher than I was expecting.
If you scan the websites that have been tracking or debating the vote, you'll find a wide range of interpretations as to what this vote means. The 37,000 or so members who cast ballots probably had at least 3,700 reasons among them but I'll throw this one out as a likely one: Even actors who thought the contract was inadequate didn't feel their guild had enough solidarity or leadership to do anything about it. In order to get people to reject Plan A, you have to have a Plan B...and S.A.G. didn't really have one. Or anyone out front who could put one into place.
So now all eyes turn to June of 2011 when the contracts of the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, S.A.G. and A.F.T.R.A. all expire within a few weeks of each other, thereby melding into one big negotiation. Can four labor organizations that often go in different directions and sometimes sell one another out...can they instead link arms for their common good? Probably not...but I can't wait to see how they/we blow it.
June 11, 2009
