Monthly Archives: April 2006

My longtime chum Scott Shaw! has moved his wonderful Oddball Comics site from Comic Book Resources over to its own domain. Things aren't completely set up over there yet but he already has a fun message board and the first Oddball Comic review in his new digs. Henceforth, when you want to see a comic book that'll make you go, "What the hell were they thinking?", click your way on over to www.oddballcomics.com. That's where you'll find 'em.

I went over to the Souplantation near me this afternoon for one last bowl of their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup. That's it in the photo above. The particular soup was only supposed to be in the pots for the month of March but I knew from past experience that the weekend is a transitional time. A lady who works there told me it was the last day but they'd had so many requests to bring it back that she assumes they will.

I was not the only person there for it. Someone else was using the ladle to fill their bowl as I approached. Thinking I was reaching for the soup next to it (Texas Red Chili), he said, "Hey, try this. It's great and this is the last day." He was very happy when I said, "That's what I'm here for." Two strangers bonding over a good bowl of soup…there's a commercial there.

This month, your local Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes outlet is on a Hawaiian kick, meaning that the employees are all wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis and that most of the non-permanent items have pineapple in them. There's no Pineapple Soup but they have a Curried Pineapple and Ginger Pasta that looked like something you'd buy at a live bait shop, Carrot Pineapple Muffins (with Oat Bran) and Wowie Maui Pineapple Focaccia (with ham). This was in addition to the much-promoted Pineapple Coconut Slaw. I used to think just plain cole slaw was the most disgusting thing on the planet that anyone ever voluntarily puts into their mouth. But there were people eating this stuff so I stand corrected.

About eight of you all wrote me at once to point out, as I should have realized, that the time stamp of 01:02:03 04/05/06 will come again…in a hundred years. And then again, a hundred years after that and a hundred years after that and a hundred years after that. Of course, by the time next time around, the only one of us who'll be around to see it will probably be Charles Lane. So enjoy it while you can.

(Nat Gertler notes that it will happen twice in one day for those folks who aren't on military time.)

Mike Tiefenbacher sent me the following…

One fact in your write-up on Treasure Chest is incorrect. I never had a subscription — that seemed to be limited to students who attended Catholic school, and I was only a Friday afternoon visitor for my weekly Catechism class — though Jerry Sinkovec did, and had actually "bound" (he punched holes in them and put them together with o-rings by year) his issues together so as to easily keep track of them, and re-read the serials. Since I'd see them in the classrooms on Friday afternoons, I presume the subscription copies were delivered and distributed like the Weekly Reader was in public schools, and that kids didn't get them through the mail (though that was probably an available option).

Anyway, my cousins (who also attended Catholic school) also had a subscription, and somehow I got an issue from them circa '60 or so, which had a Joe Sinnott story about Pope John XXIII, which held my interest in finding out more about them eventually. This is why I was fully aware of the subject matter when Treasure Chest showed up on newsstands about…well, obviously by '71 to '72, the last volume and the first one that was issued monthly. I'm wasn't certain when this was, exactly, but my memory of it — and I'm rather sorry that I ignored it at the time, because then I could determine exactly when it was — was also that it was 35-cent giant, which I see is the actual cover-price on those last eight issues. They are also the only volume to display the Comics Code Authority stamp — ironic, since the subject matter could hardly have ever been in danger of triggering anything by them. I treated them then like I treated Classics Illustrated (and all humor comics): I rarely gave them more than a passing glimpse. Had they continued, by the mid-'70s I probably would've started collecting them, like I eventually did everything else…except Classics Illustrated.

Now, I'd like to see Boys' Life put their comics online…

Now that you mention it, I do seem to recall seeing Treasure Chest on a newsstand or two, late in its existence. I'm guessing that circulation via the old method had declined a lot and someone decided to see if it could hold its own against Spider-Man and Batman on the racks. I'm also guessing it didn't. But I think you're wrong about the Comics Code stamp. Scanning that website I linked to, I see a lot of Code symbols on books from earlier years.

The in-class distribution I recall from elementary school in Los Angeles was of Scholastic Books, sometimes known as Tab Books. Once or twice a semester, they'd pass out these little catalogues to us and we were encouraged to order very cheap paperbacks from it. You'd pay your money in and the teacher (or some designated pupil) would compile a bulk order for the class and send it off. Then a few weeks later, a big crate would arrive and we'd all get our books.

A couple times, I was the pupil in charge of the order and I recall taking the job very seriously, keeping careful records of who'd ordered what and collecting all the money. I had to count it over and over to make sure I had the right amount and then take it all down to the principal's office where they'd write one big check for all the orders that were going in from the school. Then every single day, my classmates would ask me — like I had any more information than they did — when their orders would be arriving. When they did, all learning stopped for about an hour while I opened the crate and passed out the books. There were always a few missing but there were also always extras included. I could usually use the extras to appease the kids who hadn't received what they'd paid for. Also, there were other snags in the system…like what to do with the books ordered by a kid who'd been expelled the previous week. I think in that case, I just took his books home and kept them for myself. Which is what you'd have done. Admit it.

I still have a number of these paperbacks on my shelf. I believe some of them — like a nifty collection of the newspaper strip, Miss Peach — were only available through this program.

Getting back to Treasure Chest: I know there have been other comics distributed by this method. Were the EC Picture Stories from the Bible and their other educational items sold this way, either exclusively or in addition to some other means? Does anyone know? And a big Thank You to Mike for the additional info.

This may be my favorite Monty Python sketch. Yeah, I know: It doesn't really have an ending. Most of their sketches don't have endings. But this one makes me laugh a lot every time I see it. It's from their live show at the Hollywood Bowl in 1982. In fact, if you listen hard, you can probably hear me laughing in the fourth row. This particular story never appeared in an issue of the Treasure Chest comic book.

Voice wizard Gregg Berger sent this to me. I assume it's ricocheting all around the Internet and we'll all have it in our e-mailboxes the next few days…

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. This won't ever happen again.

I'd better make a note to stay up late that night. Wouldn't want to sleep through that. [Correction: It will happen again. See here.]

Every so often, George Will writes a column that makes you wonder if wearing bow ties causes the brain to shrink to the size of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Then you watch Tucker Carlson and you become think, "Hmm…maybe an Altoid."

Today, Will ponders the notion that maybe Global Warming isn't such a bad thing. Hey, maybe it'll even be good for us. Yeah…and maybe a nuclear bomb going off in one of our cities will do wonders for urban redevelopment.

The way I think the argument should be made is something like this: Yes, we know there are some scientists who don't think Global Warming exists…and it may turn out to be a false alarm. We hope it'll turn out to be a false alarm. But this is way too serious to not start acting upon now. If a couple of visitors in your home smell smoke, you go investigate. You don't wait until you actually notice a wall erupt in flames to take some action.

At a party last year, I got into a debate with a pro-Bush guy who felt that even though it turned out Hussein didn't have the weapons we thought he might have, we couldn't take that chance. But then later, when the topic of Global Warming came up, the same guy seemed to think we can take that chance; that we don't need to act until it's a proven fact and it won't be a proven fact until the consensus among scientists is unanimous. Never mind that the consensus among scientists isn't even unanimous about whether Listerine kills germs.

The fellow was going on and on about how he hated environmentalists (he called them "eco-terrorists") who are always telling us that we need to save the rainforests and the endangered species and how that's all bunk because the ecology is exactly what it was thousands of years ago and it never changes. And all the time he was saying this, he was drinking bottled water.

One of the most widely-circulated comic books in history is one that, I must admit, I know very little about. The Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact was a comic published by George A. Pflaum of Dayton, Ohio (and later by T.S. Dennison) especially for Catholic schools. It ran from 1946 to 1972 with contents that were educational and enlightening and not always preachy. The concept — at least, I'm extrapolating this from the handful of issues I've read — was to reach young minds in a familiar format but to provide them with not only Biblical lessons but also non-violent stories with an emphasis on what we now call "human values." There were some nice tales of racial and religious understanding but there were also a few issues that Joe McCarthy might have used to read his grandkids to sleep, harping on the Soviet menace, particularly in an ongoing series of stories called "Godless Communism." (In some of those tales, which I talked about earlier in this item, things could get a little gorey and — dare I say it? — comic bookish.)

Treasure Chest was not sold on newsstands. You had to subscribe and most kids subscribed via forms distributed in their classrooms, which probably meant that their parents gave them the money. As each bi-weekly issue came off the press, the publisher would ship crates to parochial schools around the country and the comics would be passed out to the subscribers, with plenty of extra copies sent along for the school library. The comic usually suspended publication during the summer months when school was not in session but would publish the occasional special. I have heard a wide range of estimates as to how many copies were sold, including one artist's belief that it sold enough to be a "gold mine" for its stingy publisher. Since the book lasted something like 500 issues, I think it's safe to say it was at least profitable. (Near the end of the run, it it probably wasn't. They cut its frequency to monthly and cheapened the package considerably.)

Among the talents who contributed to the title and whose names would be known to readers of mainstream comics are Joe Sinnott, Bob Powell, Fran Matera, Reed Crandall, Dick Giordano, Joe Orlando, Murphy Anderson, Jim Mooney and even "Ghastly" Graham Ingels, drawing material that was a far cry from Tales From the Crypt. Although neither Pflaum nor Dennison paid very well, most of the artists enjoyed the creative challenges, if not the subject matter. A lot of their pages show vast amounts of research and care, and most of them liked how steady the work was, especially during periods when the newsstand comic book market was pretty shaky.

The American Catholic History Research Center came upon a collection of Treasure Chest and they've decided to scan the pages and put them online for all to see. They don't have all the issues there but they have more than you'll probably read. Pick one at random and you may be impressed with some very nice storytelling and some very fine illustration. Here's the link and now I think it's time to pass the collection plate…

I'm always fascinated by a kind of event that turns up on C-Span two or three times a year. It's these dinners where much of Washington will gather to dine and hear speeches, and they bring in some comedian to entertain. They usually pick someone who does political material, which gives the comic quite a challenge. I mean, it's one thing to do jokes about the president and quite another to do them in front of the president and a ballroom full of people who work with or around the president. For the most part, the comics wind up tempering their acts and/or throwing in a lot of "I'm just kidding" disclaimers, and things often do not go well. Last year, for instance, Lewis Black spoke at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner and while he certainly didn't bomb, he also didn't get the kind of response he usually gets from an audience.

The tape of this year's Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner was on C-Span a little while ago. It airs again in an hour and will probably be rerun later in the week and posted to their website. The entertainer this year was impressionist Frank Caliendo, best known for his work on Mad TV. Caliendo's a good mimic and a funny guy, and his versions of John Madden and George W. Bush are especially good. Bush wasn't present for the event but Dick Cheney was about eighteen inches away from the rostrum as Caliendo went through his routine, peppering it with more assurances than were probably necessary that he liked Bush and had voted for him. The audience, including Cheney, seemed to have no problem laughing at a good George W. Bush impression…and even at one joke about Cheney and his rifle. (Cheney got a lot of laughs during his part of the program, especially with a slide show that poked fun at himself.)

Coming up later this month, I believe, is the White House Correspondents Dinner for which the president is usually in attendance. Entertainment will be provided by Stephen Colbert.

In the meantime, I'll post a link to the video of the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner whenever it's up on the C-Span site. And here's a link to three minutes of Frank Caliendo doing his George W. Bush and Bill Clinton material on Late Show With David Letterman…

It may be the most famous movie no one's ever seen. In 1972, Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in The Day the Clown Cried, a film about a clown named Helmut Doork who was employed during World War II in a most unclownlike task: Entertaining little Jewish kids in a concentration camp until it was time to put them to death, lest they grow up to be Adult Jews. The film was based on a work by Joan O'Brien and it said that Ms. O'Brien hated what was done to her story and would not allow the movie to be released.

Ordinarily, this would not matter in a movie deal. Writers almost always waive all control once they accept the check. But in this case, the producers of the film got into trouble while it was being made and just plain ran out of money. This caused two things to happen. One was that production was shut down with many scenes yet to be filmed. Jerry, who believed passionately in the movie he was making, actually financed the last week or so of filming out of his own pocket. But he stopped with many scenes left unshot when he and his lawyers realized the other thing that had happened, which was that the ownership of the movie was thrown into question. Jerry was paying to make a movie he might not be able to own…that perhaps no one would ever be able to own.

So he stopped shooting and began assembling a rough cut of the film without the missing scenes. The idea at that point was that the lawyers would straighten things out and once ownership and more financing were secured, Jerry would go back and film whatever he needed to complete the picture. Didn't work out that way. It took a long time to even begin to iron out the contractual mess and it was impossible to do it without the cooperation of Joan O'Brien, who refused to cooperate. At some point, Jerry reluctantly realized that too much time had passed; that he had aged too much to play Helmut in further scenes, plus the sets and costumes were destroyed, other actors were unavailable, etc. On top of all that, several articles about the debacle had destroyed the film's reputation without it even reaching completion. Reportedly, he continued to edit and re-edit the footage, just to see if he could make something of it…but he has declared it will never be shown, not even in its unfinished state. Unavailability has given the project a legendary status.

In 1997, Life is Beautiful — a film with a not-dissimilar premise — won acclaim and an Academy Award for its star, Roberto Benigni. It was a partial vindication for Lewis in that it disproved the claim of some that he had tackled an impossible storyline. Still, one cannot go and rent The Day the Clown Cried from Netflix. It's an unfinished film forever and as I said, Lewis will not allow anyone to see it. But videos have a way of making the rounds and about twenty minutes (some of it in work print form, with crayon markings and bad splices) recently turned up on the bootleg circuit. You can decide for yourself but personally, I found the scene with the fat kid rather funny and the one where Helmut puts on a puppet show for the children without having any puppets, rather touching. See if you don't agree…