Monthly Archives: September 2009

This is another photo of something Sergio drew on the wall of his art exhibit — the one I wrote about in this post. The outlet was just sitting there in the wall and he decided it needed to be made funnier.

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame is teaching a one-day Comedy Writing Seminar at the Peoples Improv Theater in New York. The one day is Saturday, October 17 and as of this moment, it does not seem to be sold out. But I'll betcha it will be within 48 hours. Click here for more details or to sign yourself up.

You only have one day left to listen to this so hurry! It's a half-hour BBC documentary on the newspaper strip, Calvin and Hobbes. No, Bill Watterson is not interviewed in it. Thanks to Greg Ehbrar for letting me know about it.

Roman Polanski did a despicable thing when he drugged and raped a thirteen year old girl. It's not the worst thing one human being ever did to another but it's still pretty awful.

Still, he has suffered for his actions of thirty-one years ago and the victim — now grown — has asked that he not be prosecuted and there does seem to have been a double-cross in his trial and prosecution, and no reports of him molesting anyone since…

…and what we have here is a very annoying situation. I don't want to feel any sympathy for a guy who did what he did, but I do, at least a little. Somehow, this does not feel like justice to me…or the most important matter that the Justice Department had to pursue. You have to wonder how many other rapists and even murderers have not been pursued with this kind of unrelenting determination. If Polanski had just tortured the girl, they wouldn't be after him.

My e-mail suggests that recent video embeds on this site have won Craig Ferguson a number of viewers. This is good to hear. If you liked the "Istanbul" lip-sync, you might enjoy this video that he did on another episode.

One interesting point to make about his show: Boy, is it cheap. It holds its own against (and sometimes beats) the Late Night program over on NBC and I think it does so with about a fifth the budget. Ferguson does not have a huge writing staff, does not have a band, does not go on location shoots, etc. He often tapes two shows in one day, even. It's really a network show done for Public Access use fees.

Even more interesting is that while Dave, Jay, Conan and the two Jimmies jockey to get the biggest stars with the current hit movies — a competition that is heating up these days — Ferguson gets decent ratings with guests who often don't have all that much to plug. I also don't think he gets anywhere near the promotion and advertising of Jimmy Fallon's show. The more I watch him, the more impressed I am.

Josh Olson, who will not read your f'ing script, suggests I suggest something you can read. Over at E-Reads, it is now possible to download (for a fee, of course) e-books of darn near all the published volumes of Harlan Ellison. Since I have all these as real books, I probably won't. But you might find them enjoyable…and note some irony in the fact that a man who still insists on writing on a manual typewriter has his work available in this format.

Speaking of Harlan: Many years ago, I happened to mention Dr. Seuss in his presence…and I pronounced it the way you probably pronounce it — to rhyme with "juice" or "loose." Instantly, Harlan corrected me. It's pronounced "soyce," he said, rhyming it with "voice" or "choice." And he had this on very good authority, he did. He had met the legendary Theodor Seuss Geisel and heard that pronunciation from the man's own lips.

Of this, I have no doubt. But it seems to me that somewhere along the line, the Good Doctor gave up on this, or decided that though his actual middle name was pronounced "soyce," he might as well go with the book-buying majority and accept "seuss" (rhymes with "goose") as a preferred alternate for his pen name. In every documentary, his business colleagues and family members pronounce it to rhyme with "deuce." Ellison was the last holdout. For a recent online audio (a Seuss-style paraphrase of Josh's article), he pronounced it "soyce."

We discussed it recently and I convinced him to give it up and pronounce it the way everyone else does. This, believe me, is no small achievement. I've known Harlan since 1969 and I think this is the first time I've heard him abandon a cause. Odds are good it'll be the last, as well. So enjoy it while you can.

As I've mentioned here many a time, my partner Sergio Aragonés is currently being celebrated with an exhibit of his artistry at the Ojai Valley Museum in Ojai, California. The show is up 'til October 4 so if you're thinking of going, don't dawdle.

Carolyn and I drove up last evening for a special showing and party and barbecue for Sergio's friends in the cartooning world — a function of CAPS, the Comic Art Professional Society, which was founded in 1977 by writer Don Rico, Sergio and me. Among the CAPS members present were Scott Shaw!, Stan Sakai, Floyd Norman, Matt Groening, Mell Lazarus, Cathy Guisewite, Bill Morrison, Chad Frye, Bob Foster, Mike Kazaleh, Dean Yeagle, Steve Greenberg, Bobby London, Bill Riling, David Folkman, Pat McGreal, Nat Gertler and why did I start this list, knowing full well someone will be pissed at me for being left off it?

The exhibit is great fun. The walls are lined with Sergio drawings, a few of which date back to his childhood. At least one cartoonist, upon viewing drawings done at age eight, remarked, "Finally! A Sergio drawing I think I can do better than!" Most of the pages are of more recent vintage…from MAD or Groo, mainly. Then in one corner of the hall, Sergio has erected a facsimile of his studio, complete with a life-size cut-out of the man. That's what you're looking at in the photo above. The photo below is Carolyn examining a display of Groo posters.

One of the highlights of the exhibit is that the Ojai Valley Museum was nice enough to let Sergio draw all over their walls. He actually drew marginal-style cartoons (i.e., like the marginals he does for MAD) along the baseboards and in any blank wall space he could find. Among attendees, there was much discussion of how sad it will be if and when the museum paints over them all and brings in French impressionists. Here's one such doodle that I noticed on my way to Guess Where after the long drive…

I shot some others I may post later in the week. But if you're within easy driving range of Ojai, try to get to this thing before it closes. You won't have as good a time as we did because there'll be no barbecue and there probably won't be a room full of cartoonists. But you'll have a good enough time to make the drive worth it.

Dick Cavett offers up another video interview of Richard Burton.

Every so often, someone floats this idea, which is that we do away with tipping in this country and just tack on fixed service charges to instances where one is now expected to tip. This particular proposal is a little different from others I've seen. They were all about how it would just spare us, the tippers, from having to do math or even wondering what the proper percentage is for a given situation. (I'm still not sure, when I go into a restaurant and pick up a "to go" order — or when I dine at a buffet — what's appropriate.)

This one says that we'd benefit because better, more responsible folks would be attracted to the job. Maybe. But I can't recall having too much trouble ever with waiters or servers because they weren't dedicated or able human beings. My problems in that arena always flow from decisions made by management — not having enough servers or commanding the ones they have to do silly things.

The most notable in places I dine, and it seems to be a growing trend, is that if you take a respite in your consumption — i.e., stop eating for a sec — your server is supposed to be right there to simultaneously say, "Are you still working on that?" and attempt to snatch your plate away. I don't get why they do this since almost none of these places are crowded to the point of having folks waiting for tables.

I'm also tired of the occasional hardsell on desserts, especially of those big productions that you have to order before you get your entree — "You'll really love our Chocolate Rose Bowl Float with eleven varieties of ice cream, complete with caramel and marshmallow drizzle in the design of the Rose Parade Queen. But it takes twenty minutes do prepare so you have to order it now." You kinda wish they'd be more candid and say, "We're afraid if we don't sell you the $12.00 dessert now, you won't want it after you're stuffed full of pork chop."

That too is a management policy. I really can't think of any problem I've had with the waiter or waitress for a long time, other than these things the boss tells them to do. That, and the fact that most restaurants just plain don't have enough personnel on the floor so you practically have to haul out Semaphore flags and wag them to get someone to come by and refill your water glass.

What I think might be a good idea is if restaurant checks had a little box where, instead of entering a tip amount, the diner could just check a box that said, "Add 15% Gratuity" or maybe "Add 18% Gratuity" or both, also leaving you the option of writing in an amount instead. I'm guessing someone's experimented with this and found that if they specify a low percentage, it leads to lower tips…and if they plug in a higher number, it leads to patrons feeling pressured to tip big. But maybe if more establishments tried this, customers would get used to it and we'd move towards standardized tipping. I wonder if servers wouldn't prefer it just because it would make their financial lives a bit more predictable.

An awful lot of people have written to inform me that They Might Be Giants were/was not the first recording artists to record "Istanbul, Not Constantinople." I know…honest. In fact, I have the hit version by The Four Lads on the jukebox in my living room. I didn't say They Might Be Giants had written or originated the song, folks; just that Craig Ferguson and his puppets were performing to a tune by the group.

Geoff Boucher takes a look at the collaboration of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.