Anyone here use Microsoft Money? If not, ignore this message. If so: Do you have any idea what it means when the second column over (the one titled by a red exclamation point) shows a little envelope icon with a red question mark on it? I keep seeing this on certain of my entries and I have no idea why. I searched the manual, I asked someone at Microsoft, I asked someone on the Help line of my bank. No clue. Someone reading this will know.
This coming weekend, my co-conspirator Sergio Aragonés and I will be among the guests at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. On Saturday, we're doing a panel on our work together at 1 PM. Then at 2 PM, I'm on a panel about writing comic books and at 4 PM, I'm on one about writing animation. On Sunday, I'm on a Creator Rights panel at Noon and then at 4 PM, I'm on a panel about comics on TV and in movies. When I'm not on a panel, I'll be roaming about the hall, talking with people, buying a few things and trying to figure out the money.
If you have a donation for the "Let's Restore Len Wein's Comic Book Collection" Project, I won't be accepting them but there will be someone present who's volunteered to take 'em and ship 'em back for me. So find me and I'll tell you who it is.
Much fuss has been made the last few days about President Obama (gee, that's fun to type) being cordial with "evil" heads of state. Frankly, I think the policy of the U.S. oughta be that we're willing to sit and engage in gentlemanly talk with anyone, especially a guy like Hugo Chávez who, whatever else one thinks of him, is the duly-elected head of an important country. Turning our back on someone powerful and refusing to even confront him on a social level is a lot like what I did in fourth grade when I was scared of the class bully and thought that if I pretended he didn't exist, he'd go away.
For some reason though, some folks think it's a sign of "strength" to stubbornly refuse to meet with these people. I think those are the same people who believe that any day now, our policy of sanctions will bring Fidel Castro to his knees. They also seem to like to invoke the name of Neville Chamberlain and point out how only weakness came from his cozying up to Hitler. Apparently, if you shake hands with a dictator, it's almost the same thing as giving him half of Czechoslavakia.
Naturally, as Republicans have been attacking Obama for not bitchslapping Chávez when he had the chance, Democrats have hauled out the photos of Rumsfeld's warm greeting with Saddam Hussein, of Bush hand-holding with Prince Abdullah, etc. Also mentioned is the meeting between President Richard M. Nixon and Mao Tse-tung…but Bill O'Reilly on his show the other night said that wasn't true; that Nixon on his fabled trip to China met with Chou En-lai, not Mao Tse-tung. Of course, as the above photo and many others prove, O'Reilly doesn't know what he's talking about.
So would anyone like to bet me this won't be on Keith Olbermann's show this evening?
George W. Bush takes a strong, principled stand against torture.
I usually think online petitions are a waste of time but this one somehow feels worthwhile. Five boys named Marx grew up in a home on East 93rd Street in New York. Developers are aiming to eradicate the house of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and even Gummo. Take a moment to go to this page, read a message from Woody Allen, and sign two petitions they have there — one to preserve the home, the other to rename the block "Marx Brothers Place." If they can name things in this country after every lousy elected official we've ever had, we can name something after the Marx Brothers.
The Garfield Show, the new series I've been working on, starts May 5 on Boomerang UK, meaning England. There's a sparse page about it here and at the moment (this will change soon), there's a preview video on this page.
The series is already airing in France and several other nations. It's been sold just about everywhere except, they tell me, Japan and the United States. It'll get to both those places eventually, I'm sure. We just don't know when. In the meantime, we're starting production on Season Two…
Back in this dispatch, I gave a highly-biased recommendation for a new book, The Best of Simon and Kirby, featuring epic work by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. At the time, it wasn't out…but it is now. Check your local bookseller or order it online.
And if you're still not sold, check out this online preview. Read an early Simon-Kirby story and one of my several chapter intros from the book. Or better still, just read the Simon-Kirby story…and remember: That's the kind of thing those guys were doing when they were just starting out. They just got better and better and better and the book is full of examples.
Adding to the depths of trivia that interests me enough to post, I have this from Ken Tucker…
I've been a fan of your blog for a while now. I know you're a fan of the old game shows on GSN, though you're not that fond of Password. (I've got to admit I'd rather have What's My Line? back instead of Password myself!)
Anyway, there's an interesting phenomenon with these old Password shows that I don't know if you're ever noticed or commented on. In some episodes there's apparently some "print-through" on the audio track, so you can hear a faint "ding-ding-ding" just slightly before someone guesses the right word. It's more apparent in some episodes that others, but has been particularly noticeably in the Barbara Rush-John Forsythe episodes shown this past week. It's especially funny to see in cases where someone suddenly realizes what the word must be — first you hear the ghostly ding-ding-ding, and then you see the person's face light up and they say the word, and then you hear the real ding-ding-ding.
I'm sure you know that this happens when audio tape is wound on a reel and stored for a while, and some of the magnetic information from one layer of the tape gets transferred to the next layer. I assume these early color videotapes had the video information stored in diagonal tracks from a spinning head, just like in a modern (if you can still call it that) VCR, but the audio information must have been in a linear track on the edge of the tape.
Anyway, just a curiosity I though you might find worthy of mention in your blog.
I hadn't noticed this…but then I've only watched Password on occasion lately. I remember enjoying the show when it first aired but I find it slow-paced and repetitive these days. In fact, it made me realize that what I liked about the reruns of What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth was not so much the game as the history. On any of those shows in their recent GSN rebroadcasts, you were transported to a different era with performers and newsmakers of the day. Password doesn't do that for me…though if what you say is so, it may make for more surreal viewing. I'll have to give it another look.
Five minutes of Monty Python. Nobody funnier.
One other thing about waterboarding. There seems to be a growing fad among pundits and journalists — especially those who wish to defend the Bush administration — to announce they've had themselves "waterboarded" and it's no big deal.
I'm no expert on this but it seems to me the premise of waterboarding in the real world is to make the prisoner think he's about to die; that this could be the time they go too far with it. Being waterboarded by someone who cares about your welfare — who probably would go to prison if you actually did die — is not the same thing. To simulate the experience of an enemy prisoner being waterboarded, you have to be waterboarded by someone who wouldn't be all that upset if you drowned…and might even get some jollies from it.
For a while, those decrying our country's use of torture were arguing that above and beyond its illegality and immorality, it just plain doesn't work and is most likely to lead to false confessions. What seems to be emerging now, thanks to this story from the McClatchy News Service, is that false confessions — particularly of a Saddam-al Qaida link, were precisely what were wanted.
Before he was on late night, Dick Cavett had a morning show on ABC. It went on the air on March 4, 1968 under the title, This Morning. Later, they changed the name to The Dick Cavett Show but it didn't make a lot of difference. Nobody watched under either name and it left the air as of January 24, 1969. It was a great program in absolutely the wrong time slot. (In 1980, NBC made the exact same mistake with a kid they'd found named David Letterman.)
Cavett went from the AM show to a brief summer replacement series in prime time…and then on to a late night slot that he inhabited for three years of steady telecasts and two more in a rotating format with other shows. Before he left the morning slot, he did a prime-time special replaying some of his most interesting segments. Our video embed today consists of excerpts from that special — about twenty-five minutes of it with a few abrupt edits. In it, you'll see Groucho Marx, Jack Burns, Bob Hope, Woody Allen, Pat McCormick and a few other folks. I wish someone would just rerun these shows intact.
Norm Coleman wants the appeals process in that Minnesota election to take as long as possible.
A Democratic group has cleverly set up this fund whereby people who want Coleman to go away pledge to donate a dollar to the Democratic party for each day it takes until Al Franken gets seated. It's a good idea but I get the feeling that some wealthy Republican is paying Coleman something like $20,000 a day for each day he can delay it.
Nate Silver thinks the Republican Party is morphing into the Libertarian Party. Some might argue it's the other way around.
At age 14, when the TV series Family Affair first appeared on my TV, I had a tiny crush on Kathy Garver, the lovely young lady who played Cissy. She was a bit older than me but, hey, it's not like I was ever going to meet her and act on said crush.
Plus, she was cute and I felt an odd "closeness" to the family on that show. The apartment building in which they allegedly resided — the building used for exterior shots — was and still is on Wilshire near Beverly Glen, not far from where my family lived. We drove by there all the time and though I knew the show actually filmed somewhere else and that it was all fictitious, it was still kinda fun to imagine them in there. I'd guess that Mr. French was scurrying about to try and find Mrs. Beasley before Buffy realized she was missing. And I'd guess Uncle Bill was rubbing his face in exasperation because that was the main thing Brian Keith always did on that show: Rub his face is exasperation. He was very good at it.
Then, about the time my crush on Kathy Garver was winding down — or, more accurately, being transferred to Yvonne Craig on Batman — I got the chance to go on the set of Family Affair. The lady who lived next door to us, an actress I've mentioned here, was playing Brian Keith's secretary in a couple of episodes. I can't recall why but I remember my father driving us over to watch a little of the filming and I remember a certain excitement that I might get to see Kathy Garver in person. It was accompanied by a little fear that I might have to talk with her. At that age, I didn't do well conversing with famous people. At times, I still don't. Anyway, I'm not sure if I was disappointed or relieved but Ms. Garver wasn't on the set while we were there.
Flash forward to a few years ago. Kathy Garver has long since become a fine grown-up actress…one who does a lot of voiceover work, including cartoon voices. I met her at a convention, had her on a couple of my Cartoon Voice Panels and generally got to know her. She's a very bright, smart lady with loads of great stories to tell of all she's done in show business — on Family Affair and so many other shows. You can hear some of those stories — yes, this is a commercial and I tricked you into reading it — tomorrow (Wednesday) on Stu's Show, the Internet-only talk show that I often recommend.
This is not a podcast. You can't download it and listen to it whenever you want. You have to "tune in" when it's on — 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM to 9 PM Eastern. They do the show live on Wednesday and it reruns on other days, usually in the same time slot. But try and listen live and if you do, you can even call in and ask Kathy a question. Just go at the proper time to the website of Shokus Internet Radio and click in the appropriate place. And while you're there, check out the schedule for some of the other fine programming you can hear on that station.