Monthly Archives: December 2013

We continue with our tour of the top fast food chains that I have patronized…

I haven't been to a Wendy's in at least ten years because…well, I haven't found myself near one in those occasional moments when I need to grab a bite, A.S.A.P. When I last dined at one, I thought the burgers were a notch above McDonald's, the fries were a notch below…and everything else on the menu seemed to be whispering to me, "You don't want to eat us…order a burger and fries." But that was then, this is now, and I've heard so many folks say Wendy's is the best of its kind that I may try to be near one, next time I'm desperate.

Then there's this: I have a friend who has a little art studio business down on Pico Boulevard in a part of L.A. that seems to attract homeless people. He's often approached for handouts as he goes to and from work and that creates a dilemma. He'd like to help those who are truly hungry…but there are liquor stores aplenty in that area and he doesn't want any money he dispenses for food to instead be spent for alcoholic beverages.

So he came up with this idea: There's a McDonald's in the area so he went in, bought a fistful of gift certificates and when street folks say they're hungry, he offers them a couple of those.

Reactions, he reports, have been mixed. One person who'd just said, "I haven't eaten in two days and I'm hungry," responded to the offer with "I'm not that hungry." Most accept the gift. A few have said they want money or nothing. And one, he tells me, actually said, "Don't you have any from Wendy's?"

The nearest Wendy to that area is over two miles away. Now, that's a recommendation.

Darn near my least favorite business on this list is Burger King. Their burgers always taste burnt to me and their fries taste like they've been PermaPlaqued. And what I really bemoan is the same thing I don't like about cole slaw, which is the way the world keeps trying to force it on me. It seems like every time I find myself in an airport and need to eat something, my only real dining option is Burger King. They seem to have some sort of exclusive in terminals I fly in and out of.

That's just about the only circumstance in which I've ever eaten at a Burger King and increasingly, I decide hunger is preferable. About twenty years ago, my friend Scott Shaw! and I were engaged to whip up some promotional comic books for the Burger King Kids Club. We did four issues that were sold or given away (I'm not sure which) in a test effort at selected Burger Kings across the land. I guess whatever they were testing didn't test so well because we were never asked to do more. I suspect the problem was they didn't encourage customers to read the hamburgers and eat our comic books.

Somehow during the project, I wound up with about $30 in Burger King gift certificates. I probably should have followed the lead of my above-mentioned friend and handed them out to the homeless but I figured the homeless had enough problems. So instead I put the coupons into my laptop case since, as I said, the only time I'd ever eat at a Burger King is in an airport and I always have my laptop case with me in an airport. By the time they expired — which was five years or around half the shelf life of a Whopper — I'd used less than half of them. When the kids in the Burger King commercials used to sing, "Have it your way," I wanted to sing back, "My way is for you to direct me to the nearest Fatburger!"

The last time I patronized Burger King in an airport was about a year ago. On the recommendation of a friend, I tried and did not truly dislike a relatively new item…the Chicken Parmesan sandwich. It doesn't taste like chicken and it doesn't taste like parmesan. It barely tastes like a sandwich but it's not bad. It's also not available in all of the small food court/airport Burger Kings. I asked at one and the lady at the counter said, "No, we don't carry it. We should because people keep asking for it."

As with Burger King, I usually only experience Pizza Hut at their stalls in airports…and I know, I know: You should never expect good pizza in a chain, especially a large chain…and you should never expect edible pizza in an airport. The closest thing I've found to good pizza in an airport is Pizza Hut…and it ain't bad if you think of corporate pizza as a completely different food item from real pizza.

Actually, one time I did find actual good pizza in an airport…and it was at a Pizza Hut in the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. My friend Len Wein and I had a layover whilst changing planes and the Pizza Hut there had a special kind of personal pan pizza I've never seen anywhere else. I believe it had "bistro" in its name, like this was the special Bistro line, and it was a buck or so more expensive than the usual Pizza Hut airport offerings.

It was good…and I mean "good" as in: If I had that pizza in a restaurant near my house, I'd go back there. Yes, it was corporate pizza, which is usually not wonderful and yes, it was airport pizza, which is usually terrible. But it was good.

I looked for it in other Pizza Huts in other airports along that journey and didn't find it. I looked for it the next time I flew and the next. One time, I found a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King. The Burger King didn't have the chicken parmesan sandwich and the Pizza Hut didn't have the better Pizza Hut pizza. Once home, I called Pizza Hut Customer Service and asked a nice lady there about the pizza in Phoenix. She had to do some research and call me back. When she did, she said, "Apparently, it was a line we test-marketed and it didn't do well so we discontinued it…I think."

That would be a shame but I think I know why. Most people already think those one-person pizzas are overpriced and don't believe that airport pizza is very good. So they weren't about to spend even more than usual for one-person pizzas in an airport. I did and I'd do it again…but I don't think I'll get the chance. The regular Pizza Hut is okay though, especially if you snag one that hasn't been sitting there since the last flight to Cleveland departed ninety minutes ago. I'll settle for a fresh one…especially when the alternative is Burger King…or Carl's Jr. If you think I'm hard on Burger King, wait'll I get to Carl's Jr., a chain that does the impossible. You'd think no one could make that many calories taste that bad.

This series will continue.

If you don't have this recipe, you need a copy. And make sure you read the reviews.

Seth MacFarlane performs "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man. He does a decent job but he shouldn't have added in the part where he sings about seeing Marian the Librarian's boobs…

I'm watching a little "how to" video for my TiVo and a nice lady is telling me about Advanced Features. One of them is way to set the TiVo to record everything that airs featuring a certain star. She's saying, "You can even use your TiVo to create your own Will Ferrell Film Festival." This is an advantage in what way?

For some reason — groping for an excuse not to care, I guess — a lot of people think that if you're unemployed and collecting unemployment payments, you're a lazy, shiftless sponger who doesn't want to work. In fact, the ratio of open jobs to those trying to find one is around 1:3…and to collect anything in the way of that kind of government assistance, you have to show that you've been trying to find employment.

Still, tomorrow 1.3 million long-term unemployed will lose the meager payments that have been keeping them in food and shelter. You'd think Washington would wait until the Christmas decorations were down to do this to people. I wonder how many folks in Congress think that's a much less important matter than lowering taxes for the owners of Walmart.

Animation expert Jerry Beck did a great Christmas Day show on KPFK radio here in Los Angeles — an hour of vintage cartoon music. You can listen to it below but if you do, you have to promise to do something in exchange. Send an e-mail to the General Manager at KPFK — or at least post a message on the program's Facebook page — and demand more episodes. Jerry has a whole library of these goodies and we want to have them (and him) on the radio.

The hottest attraction these days at Disneyland isn't a ride. It's turkey legs.

Here's another one of those "full" episodes of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show (complete except for some music cues). This one's from December 30, 1982 and much of it is Suzanne Somers plugging her upcoming TV special. If you want to watch this, watch soon. It's free now but at some point, it'll probably cost you two bucks to view…

Josh Marshall believes that the battle to stop Gay Marriage is effectively over. I've been sure for a long time we'd eventually see same-sex marriages become legal in all or most states…but for some, the battle will never be over. I mean, there are still people out there determined to prove Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered or to have Barack Obama's presidency nullified because, you know, he was born in Kenya. And for some, it will always be a litmus test to determine if a candidate is the "right" kind of human being. So it'll still be a long time before a Republican can run for public office in anything but the bluest of states without vowing to save America from moral ruination by outlawing two men or two women getting hitched.

Obamacare is here to stay. Actually, I think the folks in Congress who've been vowing to repeal it have known for some time they couldn't but they also knew that a lot of their constituents would have considered them "quitters" if they admitted as much. There's a certain segment of the population that doesn't accept that there's any such thing as a lost cause; that if you don't give up and accept the law of gravity, you will eventually levitate.

• I'll tell you how skeptical I am. I don't even believe there's such a person as James Randi.

I said some time back here that I was working on a new comic book with characters I'd always wanted to handle. The fine folks have finally announced it so I can say it's a four-issue mini-series of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the first issue of which comes out at the end of March. Each issue features a complete tale of Moose and Squirrel in two parts with a brief adventure of Dudley Do-Right, both expertly illustrated by Roger Langridge. What I've seen so far of the artwork looks terrific.

I'm doing this somewhat to scratch a long-held itch. For years and years, going back to the days when Jay Ward and Bill Scott were still around, I kept being approached — and in some cases, actually hired and paid — to write Rocky 'n' Bullwinkle projects that fell through.

The one I regretted losing the most had me working with Bill Scott who was, as you probably know, the head writer/producer of most of what Jay's company produced. He was also the voice of Bullwinkle, Dudley, Mr. Peabody, Fearless Leader, Super Chicken and so many more. At the time of his death in 1985, he and Frank Welker and I were writing a screenplay for a live-action Dudley Do-Right movie for MGM. This had nothing to do with the one made by others in 1999 with Brendan Fraser.

Bill's tragic passing was not the main reason our script never got made. The main one was a rights problem. Having an arrangement with Jay Ward turned out to not be enough.

Back then, the control of those properties was a morass of competing claims and partners, silent and otherwise. Most animation historians will tell you that the reason Jay stopped producing cartoons was that he was fed up with having to deal with network interference. That was certainly a reason but another was that he didn't want to, or maybe couldn't deal with those who claimed to own or control some or all of his most famous properties.

Our project disappeared into that morass…and I'll tell you how messy it all was. A few years later, I was approached by a major animation producer who said, "We have the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we want you to write a special for us." I said fine, terrific, I'll do it. Before we got around to the part where I'd sign a contract and they'd pay me money, a different major animation producer called me and said, "We have the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we want you to write a special for us." I said yes to them, too.

For a brief time, I hoped I could get them both to pay me for writing the same script but the attorneys began duking it out and all plans were off. Much the same thing happened a couple of other times. It got so when someone called and asked me to write Rocky and Bullwinkle for something, I'd say yes and then think to myself, "Well, let's see how long it takes this one to collapse." Boris Badenov couldn't kill Moose and Squirrel but for a time there, the legal profession was doing a darn good job of it.

What changed? Well, eventually, a wise and dedicated lady named Tiffany Ward stepped in, spent pots of dough on lawyers, and managed to free Rocky and His Friends from various claimants. Now, controlling her father's characters free and clear and alone, she licenses 'em to the right folks to do good things with them. I hope our comic proves to be one of them.

So that's one comic book I'm writing these days. Another is Groo the Wanderer, which will be returning to the comic book racks shortly. I'll post a message soon about that. And I'm still writing most (not all) of the Garfield comic book published by Boom Studios. Solicitors and dealers advertise it like everything in it's by me but a clever gent named Scott Nickel, who works for Jim Davis, pitches in now and then when I'm swamped with other work. He did several stories while I was immersed in Garfield TV projects and didn't have time to squeeze out any additional lasagna jokes. His are pretty good and he deserves credit for 'em. End of plug.

Number three hundred and twenty-one in a series…

About eight people so far have written to expand my view of the word, "chronic." One who asked not to be named wrote…

Just FYI, "chronic," as in the tacos you mentioned, means strong and powerful these days. Ask any pot-smoking teen or rapper. They all seek out anything "chronic," sort of like when the expression "bad" suddenly changed to meaning "good."

As anyone doing an impression of Johnny Carson would say, "I did not know that." The smoking of anything — pot, tobacco, hams, etc. — is an area about which I know very little. Thanks to all who wrote in to educate me.

Trust you had a nice Christmas Day. No, I haven't had time to watch my DVD of Saving Mr. Banks yet but maybe this weekend. About half my friends who've expressed an opinion on it have loved it and half have hated it without a lot of middle ground from any quarter. I think they're counting on me to break the tie.

Gay Marriage unexpectedly came to Utah while no one was paying attention. Wasn't Utah the state that everyone said would be the last to get there? I seem to remember people saying that same sex couples would be wedding on Saturn before that happened in Salt Lake City. I have no idea if that judge's decision will get overturned but even if it is, the fact that that state had one brief shining moment of tolerance on this matter is significant. Someone's going to notice that human beings of the same gender married and neither the world nor the institution of "traditional marriage" ended.

I'm always amused by products and businesses that are named in negative ways…like Fatburger or those hot sauces with names like "Destroy Your Stomach Hot Sauce" or "Certain Suicide Hot Sauce." Roller coasters are sometimes like that, too. You wouldn't fly to Pittsburgh on "Certain Death Airlines" but roller coaster fans will rush to ride the "Certain Death Roller Coaster." Anyway, yesterday while driving about, I laid eyes for the first time on an outlet of a chain called Chronic Tacos and now I'm imagining two guys discussing what to name their new restaurant. One says, "We want to say 'tacos' but we need an adjective that people will associate with disease…"

I awoke this morning thinking I was on vacation…which in my world is defined as "I have an assignment but it isn't due tomorrow." The vacation lasted 'til I got to my computer, read my e-mail and found an urgent plea to write something and send it in by first thing in the morning. Ah, Christmas was nice while it lasted…