Actors who do voices for video games are concerned about the pay scales for what they do...and rightly so. Some of those jobs involve doing literally thousands of lines of dialogue and/or screaming for hours on end. I have one friend who spent two days recording a game...for not-wonderful money. And at the end of the second day, his throat was so raw that he couldn't talk (i.e., work) for almost a week. This article will tell you about it...and don't miss the audio sidebar featuring Dee Bradley Baker, who's one of the best.
I've written a lot here about the folks down in San Diego in the early seventies who started the convention that has since morphed into the Comic-Con International. Here's a photo that I took of some of them in 1972...at the third convention and the first of many fine ones held at the El Cortez Hotel in downtown S.D.
In the back row, left to right, we have Mike Towry, William Caron and Richard Alf. Mike and Richard were the co-chairpersons that year. The gent with the straw hat is Roger Freedman, who is now on the faculty of U.C.S.B. and is a frequent expert on science-type shows one sees on the Discovery Channel and elsewhere. In the front on the left is John Pound, a fine artist who's probably best known for his work on the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. And the guy with the hostile happy face shirt is Scott Shaw!, cartoonist extraordinaire.
All these guys get mentioned and the early days of the con are discussed over on the tribute website for their recently-departed collaborators, Shel Dorf and Ken Krueger.
I've been wondering here how much of the opposition to the current Health Care Reform proposal is because people think it will bankrupt us and kill Grandma, and how much is because people think it's been watered down to less than it should be. Kurt Busiek (thank you, Kurt) sent me this link to Nate Silver's analysis of a poll that begins to answer that question.
Matt Taibbi on what passes for "the left" in today's political climate. I'm not sure a lot of folks who hurl the word "Liberal" as a curse would know a real Liberal if he, she or it came up and taxed the rich right in front of them.
Most people know a lot of famous instrumental TV theme songs but don't know that those songs almost always have lyrics. There are lyrics to the Mission: Impossible theme. No one ever plays them but the composer, or someone working with the composer, wrote lyrics. There are lyrics to the Hawaii Five-O theme, too as we featured back in this link. The theme for M*A*S*H also had lyrics...and I wonder how many people who watched the TV show knew that song was called "Suicide is Painless."
There are even lyrics to the theme from The Odd Couple. As with M*A*S*H, they were written for the movie. Unlike M*A*S*H, they were not sung in the movie. Last year at a party, I got to meet the composer of the Odd Couple theme and many other memorable tunes, the late Neal Hefti. Obviously, I met him before he became the late Neal Hefti. As I mentioned in the earlier item, we talked about the (also obscure) lyrics to the theme he wrote for the movie, How to Murder Your Wife. I didn't mention it then but we also talked about the Odd Couple lyrics and I asked him who had written them. For some odd reason, Mr. Hefti wouldn't tell me. With a smile, he deftly changed the subject.
When I got home, I did some Googling and found the assertion that Sammy Cahn had written them. Hard to believe, thought I. Sammy Cahn was a pretty good lyric writer and these did not sound to me like the work of a pretty good lyric writer. For a time, I figured it was just one of those Internet errors we all know so much about...but later, it dawned on me to check the ASCAP database. Sure enough: Sammy Cahn. Oh, well. Even Rembrandt had a worst painting.
Here's a "video" of the theme from the movie soundtrack album. The lyrics kick in around a minute and 20 seconds in. Remember: These were penned by a man who notched 22 Academy Award nominations, won four and also gave us some of the most memorable pop tunes of the 20th century...
December 6, 2009
