Monthly Archives: November 2006

We've already told you (a couple of times) that Shokus Video is a great place to look for copies of old TV shows, as well as a fine service for transferring your old home movies to DVD format. Now, my pal Stuart Shostak is branching out and building his media supremacy into the challenging world of Internet Radio. He won't be officially launching his online network until early next year but there are already some preview shows available online at Shokus Radio. The kind of programming he has planned will appeal to the kind of person who comes to this weblog, and I've agreed to be a frequent guest on the channel. It doesn't cost anything to listen so hop on over and see what's playing at the moment. This schedule page will tell you what that is and there's a place somewhere there you can click and begin enjoying Shokus Internet Radio.

An e-mail from comic shop entrepreneur Joe Ferrara just reminded me that today is the 91st birthday of Marty Nodell. Mr. Nodell had a long and wonderful career as a cartoonist and advertising designer and managed to launch not one but two great American icons. He was the artist creator (along with writer Bill Finger) of Green Lantern and he was the first artist to draw the Pillsbury Doughboy. I used to get them confused and try poking Green Lantern in the tummy to hear him giggle.

It's been a pleasure to know Marty and to have him on many convention panels. He's a fine gentleman and a wonderful source of comic book history…and hey, how many of us get to start one great character, let alone two? Congrats, Marty! Hope to see you again soon.

This may interest game show fans and it may interest animation fans. In 1969, there was a short-lived daytime game show on NBC called Lohman and Barkley's Namedroppers. It was hosted by Al Lohman and Roger Barkley, who were two very funny Los Angeles radio personalities back then. (This was when every city in America had at least one set of guys on the radio who were more or less imitating Bob and Ray. Lohman and Barkley were the best of many who did it in L.A.)

Namedroppers was kind of like To Tell the Truth, only backwards. There were three celebrity guests in each game and the hosts would bring out someone who had a relationship of some sort with one of the celebs. Each celeb would then tell a different story about how he or she knew that person, and then twenty contestants (who played for a week at a time) would vote on which story to believe and win cash and prizes if they were right. I recall it as a pleasant show that ran around six months without capturing the rapt loyalty of daytime viewers.

All of that is for the game show buffs. What will interest the animation folks is that in this clip, the "namedropper" is Ward Kimball. He was there plugging, "It's Tough to Be a Bird," which is a short he directed and co-wrote for Disney in '69. (It won the Academy Award that year for best animated short subject.) He's identified as a casting director but he was actually one of the all-time great animators. He's the guy who animated most of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. He's the man who animated the crows in Dumbo. And he's the one who animated the wild musical sequence in The Three Caballeros, which a lot of cartoon scholars think is the funniest bit of animation ever done. He was also, as you'll see in the clip, a pretty good liar.

Someone reading this will have a brilliant suggestion. I have a couple of crates of old 35mm slides that I want to have scanned into computer images — jpgs or tifs or bmps or whatever's easiest. I'm not looking for anyone to crop or color-correct them. I'll do that. I just want them transferred and put on a CD Rom.

Who does this without charging a couple of appendages? Depending on the price, I may want somewhere between 100 and 400 transferred and I also have about a hundred 35mm negatives that could use digital conversion. I could buy a scanner and do it myself but I'll never get around to making the time so I'd like to have someone else handle it. Anyone have a thought?

I have a new favorite book of comic strip reprints. I'm not sure what the previous holder of that honor was but it now goes to the first volume of Popeye: I Yam What I Yam, which is just now coming out from Fantagraphics and which I received today. This is not the first time they've reprinted the classic strip by Elzie Segar but it's one of those rare times when I don't mind an "upgrade" that compels you to buy something for a second time. The previous issuance resulted in some nice volumes which I've read over and over. But now, the Fantagraphics folks have given a first-rate treatment to a first-rate strip…a much more attractive volume with more complete runs and better reproduction.

If you only know Popeye from his cartoon appearances and the later comic strips, you don't know how wonderful he can be. Mr. Segar was a brilliant cartoonist who created some of the most vivid, well-rounded personalities to ever appear on a page of newsprint funnies. Popeye…Olive Oyl…Wimpy…their exploits are positively addictive and Popeye is a much more interesting guy than the animated version who gets in trouble, pulls out a can of spinach and punches out Bluto to save the day. (And I'm not knocking the cartoons, which were fine for what they were, especially in the Fleischer era. But like I said, if you only know them, you don't know Popeye.)

The worst thing I can say about this first volume is that it collects early strips (1928-1930) and that the material got even better after that. The dailies are in crisp black-and-white and the Sundays are in color and the whole package is an enormous bargain at about twenty bucks. Here's a link to order it from Amazon. The entirety of Segar's work with the squint-eyed sailor will be collected in six volumes so this isn't even a very expensive commitment on your part.

Fred Kaplan on what Robert Gates may be able to accomplish as Secretary of the Defense.

The whole O.J. Simpson murder case was full of odd twists and outrageous developments but I'm not sure any were odder than what's happening now. On November 27 and 29, Fox will broadcast a two-part interview with the man entitled, O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened. This will presumably cover the same ground as a forthcoming book in which Simpson will "theorize" how he would have committed the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend. The book's publisher, Judith Regan, is conducting the TV interview.

A lot of people are expecting this to be a confession in which Simpson will explain how he did it without explicitly admitting that he did it. I don't know why they assume this. He could well "tell all"…but he could also decide to make the explanation of how he killed those two people too complex and full of things that could not have happened. In other words, this could be an attempt to argue his innocence by saying, in effect, "Look…even if I tried to confess, the confession doesn't fit with the known facts."

Of course, this is being logical and very little about this case has ever been logical. Simpson could be so punchy and reckless by now, he might not be operating with an ounce of sense or even consistency in his guilty noggin. That recent "hidden camera" show he did suggests a man who doesn't know what he's doing…or maybe doesn't care. But he does have that huge judgment hanging over his head, and Fred Goldman has stated several times that he would waive it if Simpson would just confess. O.J. stands to make something like 3.5 million for the interview and book, and that's a pretty big invitation for the Goldmans to haul his murdering ass back into court to try and claim that money. To confess without confessing — assuming he doesn't go the route described above and turn the "confession" into an argument for innocence — doesn't make a lot of sense just from that standpoint. To confess for real might enable him to keep that 3.5 mil, or at least to put Fred Goldman on the defensive if he goes after the money. ("Hey, the guy promised to drop that if I confessed and I've confessed.")

Then again, it's got to have driven Simpson crazy (or crazier) that stardom and financial reward have been so elusive since his acquittal. He obviously thought that there was an exploitable market out there for him. 30-40% of the country told pollsters they thought he was innocent, and you'd think you'd be able to make billions selling product to 30% of the country. You could also, you'd imagine, sell books, TV specials, merchandise, etc. to the curious folks who thought he was a brutal double-murderer. After the first verdict, Simpson had a whole game plan to wring cash out of those audiences…dozens of deals that fell through. He never got the book deal he imagined. The pay-per-view interview that was supposed to net him five million bucks never happened. The cheapo videotape he did instead was a spectacular flop that proved that even people who thought he was as innocent and cute as a baby panda weren't willing to shell out money for his side of the story. His Internet TV station ("OJTV") did even worse.

It's dangerous to try and think, "What would I do if I was in his position?" You and I wouldn't have done anything he did. But at some point, it has to have dawned on the guy that the only thing he has to offer that anyone wants is that confession and whatever closure that brings to those of us who followed that ghastly trial. It's kind of fascinating that he still clings to the idea that he can sell the confession and sell his innocence at the same time.

And for what it's worth, I'd like everyone to know that for 3.5 million dollars, I would gladly confess to the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. In fact, this week only, I'll do it for half that and I'll also take responsibility for the Iraq War, the killing of Robert Blake's wife, and the NBC Fall schedule. Act now.

In 1966, the humor of MAD Magazine was molded and reshaped into an off-Broadway musical revue called The Mad Show. It played for quite some time in New York…871 performances, which would usually be enough for a small musical with a cast of five to turn a nice profit. Legend has it, however, that the show lost money and only ran as long as it did because of a serious cash infusion from the magazine's publisher, William M. Gaines. The story — and this doesn't sound like it's true but with Gaines, you never know — was that he'd bet a friend one hundred dollars that the show would run for a certain length of time. When it became apparent that it wouldn't, he spent tens of thousands of bucks to keep it running that long, just to win the hundred dollar bet.

There were other productions of the show after that, mostly in and around colleges, but it didn't have a long life. The only part of it that's ever performed these days — and not very often — is a song called "The Boy From…" which was a parody of the then-popular "The Girl from Ipanema." The spoof had lyrics credited to Esteban Ria Nido and music by Mary Rodgers, and it was and is no secret that "Esteban Ria Nido" is a rough translation of Stephen Sondheim's name into Spanish. Mr. Sondheim was then close with Ms. Rodgers, the daughter of Richard Rodgers and a fine composer in her own right. What they wrote is not much of a song but apparently, it was quite funny as delivered by Linda Lavin on stage. In any event, the Sondheim connection causes it to be heard on occasion, long after the rest of The Mad Show has been consigned to wherever they consign scores that no one does any longer.

Here, from some TV show in the eighties, we find Peggy Lee singing the deathless Ria Nido-Rodgers collaboration. One presumes that Ms. Lee was doing this voluntarily and not because anyone was holding a loved one hostage…but she doesn't look all that happy about singing it. By the way, the place the boy is from in "The Boy From…" is Tacarembo La Tumbe Del Fuego Santa Malipas Zacatecas La Junta Del Sol Y Cruz. Someone once remarked that Sondheim writes lyrics like a man who knows he'll never have to get up in public and perform his own material.

We hear a lot about "supporting our troops," sometimes from people who use that as emotional blackmail to get people to back George W. Bush's plans. But there are meaningful ways of supporting our soldiers. This article tells you about how they are — and are not — getting what they need. It's called "Shafting the Vets."

If you're thinking of driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas (or vice-versa), think again. Major construction work is being done on I-15 and you might be better off walking. Check this page for all the details.

William Saletan on a new front in the political wars: Biotechnical research. I think he's right that it's going to be a major issue in all elections to come.

One of the most-heard, most-imitated voices in the world belongs to Don La Fontaine, aka "The Movie Trailer Guy." There are at least a dozen other announcers working today who quite consciously emulate his sound and delivery. One guy who'd quit smoking years ago told me he took it up again because he thought it would add "texture" to his voice and make him sound more like Don La Fontaine.

We've linked before to this video of Don and four other top v.o. specialists. Here's a four minute segment with Don that appeared on Good Morning, America in February of '05. And thanks to Robert Spina for the suggestion.

My cable modem, which used to connect to Comcast, now connects to Road Runner High-Speed Internet. What's different about Road Runner High-Speed Internet? Well, the Internet connection goes out every now and then…and e-mail often doesn't go through…and the Road Runner home page is so loaded with complicated Flash animation that it doesn't load properly…and you can't get anyone on the phone for Tech Support…and I'm getting ready to see if I can find some sort of Wile E. Coyote software that can kill the damned Road Runner.

Several e-mails — including an important one from one of my lawyers that he's now re-sent several times — have never arrived. Of course, we have a double disadvantage in that transmission because he just got converted to Road Runner High Speed Internet, too. As a matter of fact — and I'm not kidding about this — the system seems most likely to lose the most important messages. The Cialis vendors are all getting through with no problem.

This is obviously a variation on the chip that's installed in all printers…you know, the one that makes them more likely to jam when the pages you're printing out are of vital importance and have to be done in two minutes.

Eric Boehlert notes how much of the pre-election press coverage got things wrong…including a lot that seemed to have been dictated by Karl Rove.

A few months ago here, we plugged the hell out of Zero Hour, a play written by and starring my old pal Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel. I am pleased to announce that last night at the L.A. Stage Ovation Awards, Zero Hour was named the Best New Play of the 2005-2006 Season. I wasn't there but I hear that an extremely nervous and exuberant J. Brochu was presented with the award by David Hyde-Pierce. Congrats, Jim. Now, get busy and do the play again somewhere.