Monthly Archives: July 2012

As you may have heard, actor-comedian Fred Willard was arrested the other night for alleged "lewd conduct" in an adult movie theater in Los Angeles. I don't know what he was doing there. I don't care what he was doing there. He's still a very nice and very clever man.

The only good thing about this news is that it's nice to hear the L.A.P.D. doesn't have anything more pressing to do than this.

As several of you have written to tell me, Amazon has a one-day sale on this: For $48, you can get Abbott & Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection. It's a boxed set of twenty-eight movies they made for that studio plus there are special features, trailers, commentaries, a couple of compilation films (like the one with Jerry Seinfeld) and even a little book about them. Unless Blu-ray matters to you for something like this, it's hard to imagine a better set of this material at a better price.

I really liked Abbott and Costello films when I was younger…and I still enjoy them as long as I don't view too much of them back-to-back and am prepared to fast-forward through the romantic subplots involving others. This is not their entire output of feature films but all their best pictures (I think) are in this package.

This is apparently a today-only deal. If you're going to order, order right away.

A Forbes report on the Five Guys chain. It's basically a rundown of how much money they're making.

For the last month or two, and this will go on for at least the rest of the year, I'm importing messages from my old blogs into this one.  (Actually, it's all one blog but I've changed software a few times and it's necessary to do some fancy footwork to get the old messages into this version.)

Anyway, every so often, I do something wrong and an old message gets imported with a new date.  Earlier today, a lot of you saw a message here announcing a forthcoming Stan Freberg lecture/tribute in Glendale.  That was a misdated post from 2003.  Sorry.  This kind of thing will probably happen several times before I get all the messages in here under one roof.

One of the many things DC Comics had going for it for years was Ira Schnapp.  The company had all these iconic characters and Ira was supremely adept at coming up with iconic logos to go with them.  I don't think the industry has ever seen anyone better in this area.  Matter of fact, I can't think of a single case where anyone has ever said,"Let's modernize the look of this comic" and come up with an improvement on an Ira Schnapp logo.  Ira himself did a few times but I don't like anyone's "upgrade" as much as what Ira did.  He was also responsible for a lot of the lettering in advertising and the story titles and blurbs that appeared on covers.

A lot of us are intrigued to learn more about the late Mr. Schnapp.  Recently, Todd Klein (who's a pretty skilled letterer himself) interviewed artist Neal Adams about his contacts with the man.  Here's some of what Todd has learned.

This piece by Ross Douthat strikes me as being a pretty good summation of where Mitt Romney is at the moment and where he's going to have to be soon if he's going to get to the White House. I'm going to guess that his soon-to-be-disclosed running mate has been selected with some of this in mind.

But I also think this campaign is ultimately not going to be about Romney's fitness to hold office. The folks wanting to unseat Obama have to make it about Obama…and I can't shake the feeling that at this very moment, they're meeting and talking and crafting the big story for September-October, which will be some scandal or revelation about Barack. Ideally, they'll want it to achieve three things. One is that it'll have to be the kind of thing which cannot be decisively disproven by Election Day or maybe ever. Secondly, it'll have to be one of those personality-oriented scandals that will make people who think he's a level-headed family man think that's been a façade and that there's some dark, aberrant side to the guy. And thirdly, it will have to be something that sets up the fear that if Obama gets four more years, you will die and the United States of America and your religion will cease to exist.

I have the feeling they're digging, trying to come up with it. It might be 100% fiction or it might be grounded in some small bit of reality twisted or enlarged to suit. But if Romney's going to have a shot at winning, his side has to fire up that base that equates a slight tax hike on millionaires with Socialism and lives in constant fear of a 9/11 on every block. They've got to be convinced that their lives are on the line in this one.

The man at left in the above photo is (I think) Paul Willson, a very clever actor and a nice guy who is irrelevant to this posting. The guy at right is who we're talking about. That's comedy writer Arnie Kogen responding when someone asked him how many truly funny jokes he's written in his long career.

You may know Arnie from his work for MAD magazine where he's been a major contributor since Alfred E. Neuman lost his front baby tooth. Arnie has also written for dozens and dozens of TV programs including The Carol Burnett Show, Empty Nest, Newhart, The Dean Martin Show and many, many others. He has three Emmy Awards. He also has a sterling reputation which he will risk later today by appearing on Stu's Show, the oft-plugged-here podcast for which each Wednesday, Stu Shostak interviews someone from the world of television. I don't recommend every episode of Stu's Show to you but I recommend this one. Arnie is a very witty man and he has achieved the impossible in show business: Everyone likes him. Everyone. Of course, they don't know some of the things I know.

There are two ways to listen to Stu's Show. There's the free way. "Tune in" while they do it live today at 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM in the East, other times in other climes. The show runs a minimum of two hours and sometimes goes longer. This is the best way to hear it because not only is it free but it somehow seems more participatory even if Stu doesn't get around to taking phone calls. Listen in at the Stu's Show website.

You can also listen to it the pay way. Go to that selfsame website after the live webcast. There, you can download it or any of hundreds of wonderful episodes for a measly 99 cents each. But to get the real deal, order four for the price of three. You will enjoy Arnie and you will enjoy just about anything else you select there.

I hosted two Cartoon Voice panels at the Comic-Con — one Saturday, one Sunday. Our video today is the Saturday one which featured Matthew Mercer, April Winchell, Jim Ward, Jack Angel, Debi Derryberry, Steve Blum, Chuck McCann and for the last 15 minutes or so, a surprise guest. If you just want to see the segment where I brought on the surprise guest and 3000 people stood and cheered, move the slider to around 56 minutes in. But I recommend you watch the whole thing…all 71 minutes of it because it was a pretty good panel. I can say that because other people did all the performing…

The phone just rang and the Caller I.D. said "Home Energy Mas." I answered and the call went like this…

SOME WOMAN: Hello, Mark?

ME: That's me.

SOME WOMAN: This is [some woman's name] with [some construction-type company with "home energy" in its name] getting back to you. Do you remember our call about eight months ago?

ME: No.

SOME WOMAN: Oh well, I just wanted to see if you're still interested in doing that new exterior coating on your house.

ME: You're lying. We never talked before. Don't ever call me again.

SOME WOMAN: Oh, okay. Goodbye.

Everyone's theorizing why Mitt Romney won't release all his tax returns. The prevailing theory seems to be that there will be years in which he paid zero taxes and that this would be embarrassing for a guy who has zillions of dollars and is running on a platform that the rich should pay less.

Maybe that's what he's hiding. Maybe it's something else like claiming George Will as a dependent. Maybe he's afraid that reporters will scrutinize the papers, do a bit of research and discover that he made a half-billion somewhere he didn't report.

But maybe it's a lot simpler than any of that. Maybe he just wants to not hand the Obama camp a pile of papers figuring they'll find something in there they can spin as illegal or unethical or hypocritical. Political campaigns these days — Romney's along with everyone else's — are really good at ginning up scandal out of the slightest oddment. He may just feel "the less they have to work with, the better."

I came back from San Diego to discover that Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and a bunch of other Viacom-owned channels had been suddenly pruned from my DirecTV satellite feed. Viacom and DirecTV are both offering up videos and press releases that essentially all say "The other side took away your channels because they're greedy bastards and they want to make more money off this arrangement." Both sides are basically correct, though it appears that the Viacom side is fibbing a little, making it sound like DirecTV made the decision to take those channels off the air when the negotiations reached the nuclear level. Obviously, they hope angry DirecTV subscribers will put pressure on the satellite provider and cause them to accept a worse deal. Maybe so. One wonders how Viacom advertisers feel about their commercials running in a lot fewer homes.

Ultimately, this is just a battle of companies that rake in billions but want to rake in a little more. The most likely outcome is that it'll all be settled soon, that my rates will go up and each side will be satisfied it's making more $$$. In the meantime, the big winner is Jon Stewart who got a very funny segment out of the dispute…

Women In Animation is a non-profit organization established in 1994 to promote the advancement of women working in the art and industry of animation. On Sunday August 5, I will be teaching a class in doing voiceover work for cartoons…but never mind that. The big announcement is that it will be part of a special reception honoring June Foray, who does that kind of thing better than anyone. Click here for more details.