Monthly Archives: July 2012

Can't believe I forgot to mention that Dave was the guy behind Thorney's Zoo, a long-running newspaper strip that ran in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and perhaps a few other venues. You can see today's installment and other recent ones at this link. Thanks to all who wrote in to remind me.

No obit up for him yet but I expect it'll be a big one. He was quite a celebrity in Paradise.

Sad to hear of the passing of Dave Thorne, a fine cartoonist and a fine person. Dave was passionate about two things in life. One was drawing silly pictures and he did it well and loved to share his talents with others. He would draw a picture for anyone at any time and/or dispense a cartooning lesson. His work was filled with joy and humor and you could just look at the drawings and sense they were created by someone you'd like.

His other passion was Hawaii…or as he usually called it, "Paradise." The Hawaii Tourist Bureau should have had this guy on retainer. He thought it was the greatest place on Earth and was on a one-man mission to get everyone on the planet to move there and love it as much as he did. He was always sure they would.

Scott Shaw! (who just called me with the sad news) remarked that if Dave had pressed his talents in some major city in the continental U.S., he could well have been a successful mainstream cartoonist. Instead, he chose to live in Hawaii where he got involved in using cartoons to educate and inspire. He may hold the world record for the most "chalk talks" given and the most young people inspired to pick up a pen and learn to draw. In that venue and context, he had a wildly successful career and Scott and I concur that given the choice, he would have preferred that to any other option.

He had recently had a series of strokes and last night, he had one so massive that the decision was made to remove him from life support. I believe he was 82 though the last time I saw him — maybe ten years ago at a Comic-Con in San Diego — he looked barely fifty. He bragged about his age, attributing his (then) good health to living in Paradise. I think loving his work as much as he did probably had something to do with it, too.

Here's Dave doing what he did so well and with such delight: Drawing for people. Aloha, Dave!

We're having tech problems this weekend that make this site slow to load and even slower to update. I will post more when I can.

Fred Kaplan tells us what's up with Syria…another one of those battles that no matter what happens, we won't like it.

Mel Brooks on directing movies.

A couple of things bother me about this case…and in the interest of Full Disclosure, let me state that I have met Fred Willard a few times. I wouldn't call him a friend but he has always been charming and gracious to me. We also have a lot of mutual acquaintances and they are unanimous in their love of the guy and admiration for his talent.

The offense he's accused of committing strikes me as one of those laws that police should not be enforcing…you know, like in some states, it's illegal for a married couple to have sex certain ways. That cops spend time patroling X-rated movie theaters seems to me a misuse of a precious resource…and this ties in with a piece I've been meaning to write here, which is that the current mania in some corners of this land to slash budgets and not raise taxes has left a lot of essential government functions understaffed. Even most staunch Tea Partiers and Libertarians would kinda like it if, say, they called the police in an emergency and there were sufficient officers to respond.

I'm currently involved in two police matters where we're basically waiting for the L.A.P.D. to have the manpower to go out and arrest several people who committed real crimes…the kind with victims. The police have all the evidence — I played gumshoe and compiled it all for them and when I handed it over, the detective described it as "airtight." But every week or so, he just phones me up and says it's still "Cat 2." That means "Category 2," a case they'll act on when they have time because no one's life or well-being is threatened. Next time he calls, I'm going to suggest that police could make one less sweep of the Tiki Adult Theater and instead send those officers out to arrest some actual thieves.

(And this is not just a matter of me wanting my case handled for my reasons. It's more than likely that the robbers in this case think by now that they got away with it. Which means they're probably using the same modus operandi to rob others.)

So that's all one thing that bothers me about what's happening with Fred Willard. Another is this: Latest reports say that he can avoid prosecution and incarceration by — well, here. I'll let you read it for yourself…

Fred Willard will not have to face jail time after police, during a routine inspection of an East Hollywood theater, arrested him on suspicion of engaging in a lewd act earlier this week. Willard will be able to enroll in a "pre-filing diversion program" in lieu of a criminal filing, said Frank Mateljan, spokesman for City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. The program is administered by an outside vendor and costs about $380. There are diversion programs for a variety of offenses, including drug and alcohol abuse, in addition to sex-related crimes.

"I want to stress this was and is a fileable case, and should the defendant choose not to enroll or not complete the program, we have the option of filing criminal charges within a year," Mateljan said.

In other words, he can admit guilt and get off (no pun intended) for almost nothing…or he can fight it out in court which will take time, money and a lot of stress, plus he's running the risk that he'll get some sort of dysfunctional trial and be found guilty and get a year in prison and probably other severe punishments.

If he's guilty, it's a great deal. But, uh, what if he's not guilty?

He might not be. The theater owner says he never saw Willard in there before and didn't see him doing anything illegal that night. He says the police frequently come into his place and hassle patrons. Let's imagine for a moment that it isn't Fred Willard in this matter; that it's you and you didn't do it. Let's even imagine that a trial wouldn't come down to your word against the cops. Let's imagine you have other witnesses who were present and willing to testify that the arresting officer was either mistaken or lying. What would you do?

You'd probably do the same thing you'd do if you were guilty and grab that deal. For $380 — a teensy fraction of what you'll pay your attorney — you can end this, put it behind you and not spend what could be months wondering if you'll get a looney judge who'll ignore the evidence and send you off to the slammer. Look at all the people who've spent years on Death Row before it was determined that they were innocent. Are you willing to gamble your freedom on that judicial system? Not likely. A trial might also involve a lot of uncomfortable questions about your sex life and what the hell you were doing in that theater and it would prolong the negative publicity and the stories in the tabloids and…

No, you'd end it all and enroll in the program. Even if you were utterly innocent.

That's what I'd do. They've made pleading guilty relatively painless and quick, whereas proving your innocence is costly in terms of time, money and stomach lining, plus it's risky. In Willard's case, it's extra-risky since he apparently has one previous incident of "lewd conduct" on his record. Judges and juries often think, "Well, if he did it before, he probably did it again." He also lost one job already — seemingly within seconds of the arrest — and might lose more if the matter goes on and on and on.

I realize that "plea bargains" are a long-standing and generally-effective way to unclog our always-crowded courts. They have their place. But I suspect Fred Willard is going to effectively plead guilty not because he's guilty (though he may be) but because it just plain costs too much to be innocent these days.

I helmed two Cartoon Voice panels at Comic-Con — one on Saturday, one on Sunday. A complete video of the Saturday panel can be viewed here and in it, you'll hear those actors perform a reading of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." The video below is from the Sunday panel — the same script read by that day's panelists who were, from left to right on the dais, Rob Paulsen, Audrey Wasilewski, Gregg Berger, Misty Lee, Fred Tatasciore and Dee Bradley Baker.

A certain amount of these demonstrations involves the actors screwing around with the dialogue. I deliberately chose a bland, unfunny script so anything humorous you hear was put there by the performers. In a real recording session, they'd be following the script closely. However, I think there is much to be learned by any aspiring voice actor who takes the time to compare the two versions. And they were both hilarious…

I'm having problems today with the server that hosts this site and I now see that a message I posted earlier about the tragic shooting in Colorado didn't get up here. Basically, it said that I didn't have anything to say beyond the obvious. Very sad. Very scary.

Those thoughts — sad and scary — would also apply to these messages I'm suddenly seeing from folks who are saying this could have been stopped (or the killing, minimized) if everyone there had been armed. Pro-gun arguments seem to always flow from two premises, one being that absolutely anyone who wants them should be able to obtain and pack as many firearms as they want. The other premise is that these people will all become expert marksmen, will know precisely what to do within one second if trouble erupts and will remain calm and heroic in those situations. This is a skill set that not all policemen possess even after extensive training but it can apparently be acquired from watching a few Clint Eastwood movies.

DirecTV (my satellite provider) and Viacom have announced an agreement to end the stalemate that took Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other Viacom stations off my TV…

DirecTV says in its news release that Viacom "has returned all affected networks;" Viacom said at 6 am ET that the channels "will return to DIRECTV's channel lineup immediately." Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Presumably, this is so. But here it is, five and a half hours after that statement and the channels aren't back on my set yet. How much time does it take to flip that switch?

We are but days from the opening of the musical version of The Nutty Professor in Nashville. I'm somewhat intrigued by this show, not only because everything Jerry Lewis does is interesting in a Jerry Lewis kind of way but because it isn't following any past conventions. It has always been an unwritten rule of Broadway that a director needs experience in stage productions and he can't be too old…but Jerry is directing. Mel Brooks, who is younger and had more years working on Broadway, was not qualified to direct the musical version of The Producers but Jerry is directing this show. Apart from Rupert Holmes (book and lyrics) and Marvin Hamlisch (music) and an experienced choreographer, this does not seem to be the work of folks with a lot of Broadway cred.

For a long time, it didn't look like this show would ever get on a stage anywhere. Jerry kept announcing try-outs and openings that were obviously not grounded in reality…yet here they are, a week from opening. If I wasn't swamped with deadlines, I might hop on a plane and be there for Opening Night, for which tickets still seem to be available. I wouldn't go to chortle at what doesn't work. I'd go to cheer whatever did because I think it would be great to see this thing succeed. Given how hard it seems to be to secure theaters in New York — at least a dozen shows are currently trying to get in somewhere — it looks like it won't make it to the Great White Way. Then again, it looked like it would never get into a theater anywhere. So who knows?

Here's an article about the production. If Jerry can pull this off, he may well be worthy of that "genius" tag that people like to hang around his neck.

As you'll hear me say in this video, I love what Comic-Con is these days but I also loved what it was when it was <3000 people back at the El Cortez Hotel in the seventies. As Mr. Wolfe said, you can't go home again…but I think you can go to places that remind you of home. Mike Towry, who was one of the main folks responsible for starting what is now Comic-Con is spearheading the San Diego Comic Fest which runs October 19-21 and which seeks to recapture some of the intimacy and non-commercial fun we had at the El Cortez.

I may over-explain this thing when I mention it in the months to come because I fear some people think all comic book conventions are like what we had last week in San Diego only smaller. This is not a "mini" version of the same thing. It's a con more like they used to be without major corporations attempting to have a "presence," without movie stars, without defining "comics" as loosely as they are now defined. As I understand it, it's mostly going to be people just talking about and maybe selling comic books, plus I'm sure there'll be a lot of reminiscing about The Old Days. If that sounds good to you, you can find out more about the Comic Fest at this website, plus you should watch the following video…

I want to note the death of Saturday Night Live writer-producer Tom Davis at the age of 59. I never met Mr. Davis, nor do I have any sense of how much that came out of the writing-performing team of Franken and Davis was him and how much was his partner, who's now the junior senator from the great state of Minnesota. But the material that team did produce was usually sharp and innovative and funny and obviously a lot of it was Tom Davis. It's always a shame to lose someone who thinks up clever things like that.