Monthly Archives: July 2012

Holly Gilliam has been digging through her father's personal archives and posting things she finds on her blog. Why do you care about this? Because her father is Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame, that's why. Go look at some of the neat stuff there.

I would like to complain about something. Lately, I've gotten (or just paged through) a lot of publications with stunning, innovative graphics that were designed by an Art Director who didn't seem to think it was all that important that people be able to read the text. This is a generalization and there are plenty of exceptions. But what I see happening in these days of digital book and magazine design is that designers are sitting there with way too many fancy fonts at their disposal and it's way too easy to flow text in unnatural shapes around illustrations or to put yellow type over a green image background or something. The result is often a lot of showing-off at the expense of legibility.

I have a couple of prejudices here, one being that as (primarily) an author of prose, I want text to be easily readable. Not just readable. Easily readable. Last year I did the foreword for a book and did not see a proof or anything before the book went to press. Asked what I thought of the finished version, I told the editor that I wasn't wild about what his designer had done with my words. The editor said, "I think that section looks great." I allowed as how it did…but it was hard to read. That to me makes the art direction a failure no matter how attractive the pages seem at arm's length.

"No, no," the editor said. "You can read it." And he was right that you could. You can also usually see (to some extent) a drawing that's been printed badly with dropped-out detail and fuzzy linework and maybe even get a sense of what the artist intended. But the point is that you shouldn't have to do that. The material is not being properly-served if you have to work at it. In reproducing artwork, any editor would tell you he or she wants the crispest, cleanest reproduction of the material possible so you can see every microscopic detail the artist put into it —

— and what I'm saying here is that not always but too often, the same respect is not shown to the text. The designer puts "How do I make this page attractive?" ahead of "How do I make this page legible?" To read text, you shouldn't have to squint and put it under an extra-strong light and concentrate hard on it.

Here's another one of my prejudices. If I can't read it easily, it's wrong. I have near-perfect vision. Lately, I sometimes find myself struggling with an article that I've written. It happened with the foreword I recently did for a book. Even though I have 20/20 orbs and even though I kinda already knew what it said, I had trouble reading my own article. Which of course got me to wondering what it's like for someone with poor vision who's coming to this piece cold.

And here's another: There's nothing wrong with black type against a white background. For my book on Jack Kirby, I turned down a couple of Art Directors, one of whom seemed to think there was; that it was "old-fashioned and boring." He wanted to flow the text over and around Jack's drawings and make collages of Kirby figures to frame my paragraphs. I, on the other hand, wanted Jack's art left the way Jack did it and I didn't want the Art Director's design sense (or my words) intruding on what Jack did. You know, it was kind of a book about Jack Kirby.

Ultimately, we did not hire that particular Art Director. I think what he had against black type against white is that people might look at those pages and think about what I was writing instead of about what a brilliant Art Director he was.

At the Comic-Con, I said some of this to a friend of mine in publishing and he agreed it's getting worse. His theory was that it flows from books being designed on computer screens instead of on paper. Said he, "You don't give enough thought to the font size when you're designing on a screen because it's one click to enlarge it on there. Unfortunately, it's not one click when it's printed out as a book or magazine."

This is more or less the end of my complaint for now and I want to emphasize that it isn't this way with every book and every magazine. It may not even be the majority…yet. I just think it's a trend that's got to be nipped in the bud, as the great philosopher Barney Fife would say. I wrote this to throw this thought out there for public perusal and also to remind myself of something. From now on, when I negotiate my fee for writing something, I think I'm going to try negotiating my font, as well — and make them promise not to try layering my text over a picture or graphic. Because while that may look great in InDesign or Pagemaker, it rarely works as well on that old, primitive, non-layered display thing called paper.

Here's an interesting relic: A manila envelope in which Stan Lee mailed something (we have no idea what) to Jack Kirby in January of 1968.  Under the "J" in "Jack," there's a "D" so it looks like whoever addressed it started to address an envelope to Don Heck or Dick Ayers, then realized the error.

I have really nothing to add to this. Just came across it in my files and thought it should be shared with the world.

Ari Fleischer, who used to be George W. Bush's spokesperson, writes an article that sums up what a lot of this election is about. Though wealthy Americans are paying less in taxes than they have in decades, Fleischer thinks they ought to pay even less. And we oughta be grateful that they pay anything at all.

I'm a little uncomfortable with anyone questioning someone else's religion…but Frank Bruni is right. It's hard to reconcile Michele Bachman thinking she's a godly woman with some of the things she does.

As Jonathan Cohn notes, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has again scored the projected costs of the Affordable Care Act and again they say it will save this country a lot of money.

I posted one of these then got busy with other things. On July 9, there was a screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Motion Picture Academy. Billy Crystal was the host and here's some of what he said that evening…

I never debate people about Gun Control. I mean, I suppose I would if there was any evidence that anyone's mind was ever changed by discussion but there isn't. People getting killed doesn't seem to change many minds either.

My friend Roger tried to engage me on the topic the other night to no avail. I don't think I understand his view on the issue and I know he doesn't understand mine. His sounded like he thinks that the First Amendment does not give you the right to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater but the Second Amendment does gives you the right to fire an AK-47 in one.

That can't be what he thinks. I must not have understood him.

He thinks mine is that all firearms should be banned. That's not my view at all. I mean, even if it were possible, which it's not, that's not the ideal situation. There is a place for private gun ownership and even use. Roger is making the mistake which too many firearms owners make, which is to assume "Gun Control" means "Gun Confiscation." It doesn't, any more than licensing cars has led to banning cars. As long as a lot of folks think those are the same thing, nothing will change. Which is why nothing will change.

I believe there are a lot of responsible gun owners out there. They are sane and they know how to store their guns safely and fire them safely. They have no fear of gun registration or of law enforcement efforts to make guns more traceable and responsible with things like background checks and waiting periods. They also have no desire to own automatic weapons or ammo clips that let you kill more than five people before you have to stop and reload, and might feel safer in a nation where those things were a little harder to obtain.

I'm sure there are such people and I even believe that they're a solid majority of gun owners in the country today. I just think it'll take more than one or ten or a hundred Aurora-like massacres before those folks have any meaningful say in how our gun laws are written and enforced. Saner gun laws will not be instituted by the kind of person who'd never have one in the house. They'll be passed by responsible gun owners who decide that their interests are not being served by the N.R.A. and similar organizations these days. And who are sick of being viewed as part of the same group as that asshole in Colorado we're all hearing way too much about.

Fred Willard is back and Tweeting. You can follow him at this link…

Most Republicans have taken this silly pledge to not raise taxes even a penny, no matter what…and of course by that, they mean not raise them on wealthy Americans. They can always find loopholes to raise them on the poor.

Bruce Bartlett thinks he may have found the reason that some will tear up the pledge and enrage Grover Norquist. Deep and automatic cuts to Defense Spending are looming. Many have taken another blood oath to not let that happen and there doesn't seem to be a way to keep both promises.

The conspiracy-minded radio host Alex Jones believes the Aurora, Colorado massacre was arranged by the Obama administration as a step in their ongoing plan to empower the United Nations to take away every American's guns. I'm afraid he's wrong about this one. It was all engineered by Fred Willard to get his name out of the headlines. And you know what? It worked!

You know all those nigglin' little charges you now incur when you fly? The fee for checked baggage…the fee for booking over the telephone…the fee to buy a beverage on your flight…those charges. Well, last year they added up to an extra $22.6 billion. And most of those airlines are still losing money!

Our friend Joe Brancatelli tells you about five ways the airlines grab you by the ankles, invert you and shake to get a little more cash out of your pockets. Read these not only for the specific examples but also to get an idea of how these people think.

We recently had Rose Marie on an episode of The Garfield Show and I've gotten to know the lady a bit over dinners and such. She even came to my birthday party. This is the woman who was on The Dick Van Dyke Show…who was a child star as Baby Rose Marie…who starred on Broadway with Phil Silvers in Top Banana…who has been breathing show business since she was a tot. A wonderful, amazing performer and person.

Years ago, she toured in a show called "4 Girls 4" which included Rosemary Clooney, Margaret Whiting and Helen O'Connell. Their driver was Rosemary's nephew George who is now an actor, I hear. For that gig, she had songmeister Sammy Cahn write special lyrics for the tune, "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore." Here's the song as she performed it then…

We appreciate it when you want to link to an item on this website. On the old site design, there was a little word — LINK — on each item and most folks knew to link to that. This design doesn't have that but there's an item-specific link in each headline. So for example, if you wanted to link to this item, you would right-click on its headline ("Happy Blogkeeping") and that would give you the direct address that links to this item. One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to embed Facebook and Twitter links.

Voice actress and Disney Legend Ginny Tyler has died at the age of 86. Ms. Tyler's voice was heard throughout various Disney projects including movies, records and Disneyland attractions, plus she occasionally worked for non-Disney projects. She was, for example, the voice of Jan on the original Space Ghost and of Invisible Girl on the 1978 Fantastic Four cartoon series. I never met the lady but I sure know the voice. So do you. Here's the L.A. Times obit.