Monthly Archives: August 2010

You know what bothers me most about this whole "Obama is a Muslim" thing? It's that it seems to really come from nowhere. I used to get annoyed (more than I do now) at people who were utterly certain that 18,000 conspirators got together to murder John F. Kennedy but at least those folks had some actual evidence, however misinterpreted, that the official version was suspect. The Obama-Muslim meme seems to come down to "We don't like what's happening with the economy so the rumors must be true he's a Muslim. Especially since he's black." An awful lot of the folks saying that don't seem to know what a Muslim is, either. But then most of those same people don't seem to know what a Socialist is, what a Fascist is, what a Communist is, etc. All those terms are getting reduced to generic, interchangeable insults you hurl at anyone you don't like. "Hitler" is now a euphemism for "opponent."

Dan Kravetz read my posting about Los Angeles kid show hosts and sent the following…

I was a devoted viewer of Cartoon Carousel when Skipper Frank switched dummies in about 1960. The original was named Julius and also had a last name which I can't remember. I don't recall the Skipper mentioning on the show specifically that Julius had been stolen from his car, but he did create some sort of mystery about his pal being missing, and on one episode displayed a "letter" from Julius that read, "I have been kidnapped by Jimmy Weldon!"

The new dummy was named Ziggy Zachary, but before it was ready, the Skipper did a bit of ventriloquism with a temporary replacement named Pancho Blinkey, a kind of mitten puppet that could be purchased in toy stores. I started watching Carousel around 1954 or '55, when the cartoon fare was the earliest Looney Tunes starring
Bosko and Buddy. I seem to recall that his show lasted an hour, from 4:00 to 5:00 PM, at which time one could switch to KABC for the original hour-long Mickey Mouse Club. When Mickey moved to a half-hour at 5:30, that made it possible to catch Tom Hatten and Popeye at 5:00. I believe Engineer Bill came on later, during the dinner hour, and Sheriff John was on at noon, during school, so I didn't get to see them nearly as often, but all were fine men whom youngsters could respect, even when they were pushing products.

I believe Cartoon Carnival (Skipper Frank's show) went on in '56 but I do remember him showing the earliest Looney Tunes. I don't remember that letter from Julius. I watched every day and would have laughed my head off at the mention of Jimmy Weldon, who was on Channel 13 opposite Skipper Frank.

And I had my own Pancho Blinkey, which was just a white glove printed with the kind of face Señor Wences drew on his hand. It was a lot of fun for about the first three minutes you owned one.

Another memory I have of Skipper Frank is what I believe was his final series for KTLA, Channel 5. Their afternoon bloc of kids' show hosts had gone away so late in the sixties, he did a morning show for them and it was done as a live remote. You'd turn it on and there would be the Skipper coming to us from somewhere in Los Angeles, broadcasting from a truck that the KTLA newsmen would be using later in the day to cover stories. Someone back at the studio (I guess) would be rolling in the cartoons he introduced.

This might have been a good idea if he could have done it from local events — fairs, public gatherings, places where things were occurring — but it rarely was. The show aired at either 7 AM or 8 AM (the latter, I think) and nothing much was happening at that hour. So it would just be Skipper Frank inexplicably standing by the KTLA truck in some parking lot somewhere. For a time, they did it like a contest. They'd drive around L.A., pick some residential street and do the show from outside someone's house. If it was your house and you came outside and said you were watching, you got some sort of prize…but I don't recall that anyone ever did.

I watched him while I was getting dressed for school and wondered why they were going to the trouble and expense of taking the truck out every morn to basically do the show from nowhere. Later, I realized it was probably the cheapest way they could have done the program, broadcasting from a truck with a crew that was probably about two guys, rather than opening the studio. Doing it on location like that meant no lighting men, no security staff, a one-camera shoot, etc. That it was still watchable television had everything to do with Skipper Frank's great ability to just talk on camera and be interesting. I don't see a lot of people on my TV these days who can do that.

A lot of things bother me about this whole "mosque" business in New York, not the least of which is that a large part of it is being driven by those who think "Muslim" is an evil cult, not a religion or that all Muslims are responsible for the 9/11 attacks or even that the proposed project is a mosque (it really isn't) built immediately adjacent to the "hallowed" grounds of the World Trade Center (it, of course, is not). It's one thing if that mindset and distortion of reality is directing traffic in the debate. It would be quite another if grown men and women were discussing it.

There are polls out where an amazing (and sad) number of Americans say no to questions like, "Do you think that Muslims have a constitutional right to build the proposed mosque?" Again, it really isn't a mosque so the question is distorting the true issue somewhat. But what's really distorting matters is that no one seems to be asking those same people what to me would be the really pertinent question: "Do you think that Jews [or Catholics or Presbyterians, etc.] have the right to build a place of worship anywhere they can secure a site?" If someone answers "no" to all of those, that person isn't necessarily a religious bigot or a shredder of the First Amendment. He or she could just be a strong supporter of zoning laws.

Me, I think religious freedom means that my government doesn't single out any religion; that it treats them all equally. The protests against the Park 51 project strike me, first of all, as one of those things people are screaming about because they think they can grab some moral high ground and put their political foes on the defensive. For these folks, it's not about the building. It's about who's running this country and they think this is an opportunity to show it's them. But at its core, this is the crusade of those who want their government to operate on the premise that Islam is not to be treated like a "real" religion. It's not unlike those people (many of them the same people) who want their government to operate on the premise that a relationship between two people of the same sex cannot possibly be a "real" relationship.

It's pretty darned hot in Los Angeles this week…but you know what makes it more uncomfortable than it has to be? People telling me it's pretty darned hot in Los Angeles. I get through this kind of weather much easier if I don't have to hear every ten minutes how hot it is. Friends keep bringing it up as if there's some dissenting opinion on the matter…and if we could only just all agree that it's pretty darned hot, it would get cooler.

Okay, fine. I agree. It's pretty darned hot. Right you are.

There. I agreed. Is it cooler yet?

Peter Beinart on the "Ground Zero mosque being built next door to the site of the World Trade Center." The fact that opponents of the proposal have to lie and characterize a multi-purpose cultural center a few blocks away that way should suggest the moral bankruptcy of that position. And Beinart's right. We sent U.S. troops to die on behalf of peaceful Muslims in Iraq and now the Fox News mob has declared war on the ones in this country.

As close friends of mine will attest, things happen to me…bizarre coincidences that defy common or even uncommon logic. Back in this post, I told a story about an amazing one that involved a wonderful friend of mine, Kristine Greco. Kristine figured into another incredible bit of impossible synchronicity in my life. I told the tale recently to a friend of mine who suggested it belonged on this blog so okay, here it is. If I didn't know me as well as I do, I might have a tough time buying it…

I started writing professionally in 1969…mostly magazine articles. The following year, I began writing comic books and in 1976, I broke into television work, teamed with a clever gent named Dennis Palumbo who I've mentioned here often. Our most lucrative gig was the one season we did as story editors of the TV series, Welcome Back, Kotter. It was an amazing experience — fun, educational, prestigious, even lucrative. (It was the last time I knew I was making more money than John Travolta.) It was also an exhausting job that merely consumed every waking moment of my life. For months, I could be found either at the ABC Studios or at Gabe Kaplan's house, getting home only long enough to sleep, shower and dash back to one of those two venues to write and rewrite and then rewrite the rewrites.

In the final weeks of that season, Dennis and I decided amicably to go in separate career directions and neither one of us wanted to go back and do another year of Kotter. It was pretty much the same reason that neither of us wanted to sit around in the hot sun all day breaking cinder blocks over our heads. I wasn't sure exactly what I did want to do but I knew it wasn't another season of that show, however beneficial the job had been.

Immediately following the taping of that season's final episode, there was a huge wrap party on the stage where, knowing I wouldn't be returning, I said my goodbyes to the cast and crew. Kristine was at the party since she had appeared several times in bit parts on the show and as an extra in Mr. Kotter's classroom. We had kept our relationship secret around the Kotter offices and stage because she didn't want anyone to think she'd gotten her job on the show by dating one of the writers. (In truth, that couldn't have been the case because she was hired on the show before I was.) We left the party around 2 AM and went back to my apartment.

The next morning, I woke up and realized something stunning: I was out of work. For the first time since I started writing for money, I had no assignment to write something for someone…and after my fatiguing year on Kotter, it felt good. I mentioned it to Kristine and she asked, "Well, if you could have any job in the world, what would it be?"

"That's too big a question to answer," I told her. "There are way too many possibilities."

"Then if you could get back any job you had in the past, what would it be?"

I thought for a few seconds and it was an easy answer. After all, at that point I hadn't had that many jobs. A few years earlier, I'd had a very brief-but-happy experience writing the Scooby Doo comic book for Gold Key Comics. The editor was a fine gentleman named Chase Craig, who was very nice to me and something of a mentor. The artist was one of my long-time favorites — also a fine gentleman — named Dan Spiegle. It was the first of many times Dan and I would be teamed up and every Scooby script I wrote for him was a challenge (for me) of the enjoyable kind. I had to figure out how to bring something different to that property and I had to write something that was reasonably close to worthy of being drawn by Dan Spiegle.

It was also the first time in my career I felt reasonably "in charge" of a comic. I'd written many by then but when I wrote Bugs Bunny, I was one of several guys writing Bugs Bunny, trying to roughly approximate the way everyone wrote Bugs Bunny. I was one of several guys writing Woody Woodpecker, etc. Even though I didn't consult with the others (or even know some of them) it felt highly collaborative. There's nothing wrong with collaborating on some projects but every so often, I get the urge to work alone; to create a finished product — at least, as "finished" as it gets at my end of the process — before others start discussing the joke on page eight or the plot twist on page eleven. Writing Bugs Bunny, as wonderful as the wabbit can be, I didn't feel free to interject my own sensibilites and to reshape the feature. But when I was writing Scooby Doo for Chase, I was the only person writing Scooby Doo for Chase. I'm not thrilled with those stories today but I sure enjoyed them then…and so I felt a great sense of loss when Gold Key decided not to renew their license with Hanna-Barbera, thereby ending the comic.

After all those months on Kotter — discussing every line with the producers, every line with the director, every line with the cast members, every line with the network — I guess I wanted that feeling again. So I told Kristine that what I would do if I had such a magic wish was to write Scooby Doo comics for Chase Craig to edit, Dan Spiegle to draw and Gold Key to publish. That would not be my choice today but it was on that morning. She said, "Well, why don't you call up and see if you can get that job back?"

"Would that I could," I told her…and I then explained that (a) Chase Craig had retired, so that let him out of the mix, and I didn't get along with his successor at Gold Key; (b) Dan Spiegle was now busily working for DC Comics; and (c) Gold Key no longer published any Hanna-Barbera comics. Another company, Charlton, now had the license and for a wide array of reasons, I didn't want to work for Charlton. So going back to that was simply not possible.

She shrugged and we went on to other topics. It was less than a half-hour later that my phone rang and there on the other end of the line was Chase…

"Hey, I've come out of retirement to edit a small line of comics for Hanna-Barbera. They've taken the license away from Charlton and we're doing them here out of the studio. One of the four books we're doing is Scooby Doo and I managed to get Spiegle to draw it. He asked if there was any way you could be persuaded to write it.  I know you're busy working in television now…"

I asked him what the other three comics were. He said they were The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and Dynomutt. I asked him who he had writing them. He replied, "Well, no one yet. I'm just getting started on this project."

I said, "I'll write Scooby Doo if I can write the other three, as well."

He said, "You got 'em. Hey, you free for lunch today?"

The above-quoted conversation with Kristine occurred around 9:45 AM. The call from Chase was around 10:10. I met him for lunch at 12:30. And by 3 PM, I was home writing Scooby Doo comics for Chase that would be drawn by Dan Spiegle.

I've never believed that if you wish for something hard enough, it will happen. Quite the opposite. I think you have to make things happen or they usually don't. I know people who expend a lot of effort wishing for a dream…and since they confuse that with actually doing something about it, the dream doesn't have much of a chance. But in this case — and admittedly, this was a pretty small dream — I didn't lift a finger to make it happen because I didn't think it could. And it not only happened, it happened right on cue. Literally, as I rolled out of bed, it was there waiting for me.

It turned out to be a very nice bit of employment. After a year or so, the H-B comic book output was increased — more comics for America but also comics to be printed overseas. We never (for instance) did a Jabberjaw comic book for this country because the show was no longer airing here. But it was on in France so we did Jabberjaw comics that were translated and printed in France. Chase, who didn't want to work that hard, had them hire me as the editor of everything he wasn't doing. Not long after, he decided to take his retirement back into full-time mode and suddenly, I was the editor of Hanna-Barbera's comic book division. I did that for about six years while writing other things for them and other studios. One of these days, I'll post some tales here about that chapter of my silly existence.

And I'll tell more stories about the odd coincidences that have dotted that existence. I don't understand why they happen, either. I briefly thought they had something to do with hanging about Kristine but then realized they started before that…and they've continued since we broke up late in the seventies. I know these occur in lives other than mine (no need to write and tell me yours) but I guess they just feel more amazing when they happen to you.

Fred Kaplan, who gets mentioned on this blog more often than I do, interviews Robert Gates, your Secretary of Defense. How did this guy (Gates, not Kaplan) ever fit in with the Bush administration?