Yearly Archives: 2013

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Republican from Kansas, authored this article making his case against Gay Marriage…and if you go read it, do yourself a favor and don't read the comments thread. It consists of about five smart people and fifty (from both sides) whose rudeness is in inverse proportion to their knowledge. I think Mr. Huelskamp has lost the battle he's waging but I was especially struck by the degree of misdirection in this paragraph…

The Justice Department argues that children do not need mothers. The Obama administration makes the incredible assertion that motherhood is superfluous to rebut an argument that the traditional two-parent family, led by both a mother and a father, provides the ideal situation to raise a child. In defiance of biology, nature and common sense, the administration argues that children need neither a father nor a mother and that having two fathers or two mothers or more is just as good as having one of each.

That's about as large a misrepresentation of an opposing viewpoint as I've ever seen. I'm of the opinion that one of the biggest reasons why Gay Marriage has gained so much acceptance the last few years — more than anyone expected — is that folks who were once against it are finally hearing the real case for it. Not long ago, a lot of them were buying into the fear that letting Amos marry Andy would ensure a replay of The Fall of the Roman Empire. Now, they're getting that it's just about whether gay folks will be allowed the same dignity and respect that all human beings deserve. They're also noting that in the states where it's been legalized, locusts are not descending.

The quoted paragraph gets to core of a key point. Huelskamp also argues, "There is overwhelming social science evidence to corroborate the benefits of raising children in homes with both a mom and a dad." Let's say that's so. I mean, there's also overwhelming research that if kids don't have both, they can get along fine. But let's pretend he's right; that having one male father and one female mother is better than anything else.

My question then is: What are Huelskamp and his allies doing to make that happen for kids apart from demonizing gays? We have a huge divorce rate in this country. People vow to stay together 'til death do them part and then eight weeks later, file for separation. One report says 48% of all first births are happening outside of wedlock. If it's so important that every child have two parents, one of each gender, why is no one doing anything to outlaw or even discourage divorce? Why are women who aren't married even allowed to have sex?

The particular argument of Huelskamp's that I quoted really has nothing to do with gays getting married. If his supporting evidence was true, it might be a good case against gay adoption. There's almost no effort to stop that in this country, either. The folks arguing that everyone should conform to their template of a family unit need to explain the following. Why is it that the only thing they're doing to alleviate this great threat they perceive is to try and prevent gay marriages — unions which may very well involve no child whatsoever?

The great comedienne Imogene Coca originated the role of Letitia Primrose in the 1978 Broadway musical, On the Twentieth Century and if you click below, you'll get to see her re-create at some later date, her big show-stopping number from that show.

I had the pleasure of knowing (and even directing) Ms. Coca late in her life and she was just a joy to be around. One night in New York, I took her to Sardi's for dinner and then across the street to see the show, Crazy For You. At her request, we then went for a walk all around Times Square and she started pointing out theaters in which she'd worked, upstairs rehearsal halls in which she'd rehearsed, the locations favored night clubs and restaurants, etc.

We stopped outside the St. James Theater on 44th Street, which is where she'd done On the Twentieth Century in '78. The show then inhabiting the St. James was The Who's Tommy (that was the official name of it) and she joked that maybe she should go inside and sing this song to the audience there…

How each of the Major League baseball teams got its name.

Bob Clarke, one of the most prolific and versatile artists in MAD magazine, died yesterday from complications of pneumonia. He was 87.

Clarke began his career as a professional cartoonist at the age of 15, assisting and eventually drawing much of the popular syndicated panel, Ripley's Believe it or Not. He would later draw parodies of it for MAD. While serving in the army, he contributed artwork to Stars and Stripes, then upon discharge found gainful employment as an advertising illustrator. Among other accounts, he is said to have designed the label on Cutty Sark whisky.

He was stagnating (he felt) in all that advertising work in 1956 when he heard MAD might be looking for artists. MAD was. Its original editor Harvey Kurtzman had departed and taken two of the publication's most valuable cartoonists, Jack Davis and Will Elder, with him. New editor Al Feldstein needed folks who could draw and when he saw Clarke's samples, he instantly knew he had a godsend. Clarke had a knack for working in other artists' styles and was especially skilled at replicating the look and feel of commercial illustrators and advertising artists. Whatever MAD wanted to spoof in print, Clarke could make the spoof look like the original.

His work first appeared in #30 (December, 1956) and he had four articles in the next issue, four in the one after, etc. For a long period, he rarely had less than two. He did covers (including the famous 1960 flip covers congratulating both Nixon and Kennedy on their victories) and when Spy Vs. Spy creator Antonio Prohias became unable for health reasons to draw his famous feature, Clarke took it over. He began to cut back in the nineties and only made a few cameo reappearances in the publication after 1997.

He was a great talent, much loved by his compatriots. Tom Richmond, who's part of the current Usual Gang of Idiots contributing to MAD, has some thoughts about him here.

Donald Trump drops stupid lawsuit against Bill Maher. Now, Maher just has to worry about legal action from orangutans.

True condolences to my friend and occasional employer Marty Krofft on the passing of his wife, Christa. She passed last week of natural causes at the age of 70.

Christa was Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 1962. That was a little early for me to have a crush on her but when I went to work for the Kroffts, all my male friends who were about four years older kept asking me, "Have you met Christa? How does she look?" The answer was, yes, I'd met her and she was still a stunning beauty. The last time I saw her she was just pushing sixty and the answer was the same. I'm sure that did not change and it also applied to their three daughters, Deanna, Kristina and Kendra. Everyone told Marty he was lucky his kids took after her mother instead of him and he enthusiastically agreed.

She was Christa Speck when she first appeared in the magazine and became one of their most popular models. She became Christa Krofft when she and Marty were married in 1965. She remains a wonderful memory and an iconic symbol of pure, natural beauty.

Here's Stooges Sunday one day late. This is Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise, which was released October 6, 1939. Late in their short-making career, when Joe Besser had become the Third Stooge, they did another oil well story — "Oil's Well That Ends Well" — and reused the footage from this one of Curly Howard (actually, his stunt double) riding the oil well aloft. I remember noticing the reuse when I was first watching Stooge shorts on KTTV Channel 11 as a kid. Of course, KTTV did make it easy for a time by running the films in alphabetical order so these two were aired back-to-back…

Dave Gordon writes…

I realise you want to put a positive spin on the Wondercon experience, but have you considered that someone who's 6' 3" may have a different experience in a crowded room to someone who's not that tall. I touched on this once before, years ago, when I thought you may not be getting the standard visitor experience at Comic-Con where, for much of each day, you have a seat reserved for you. I guess being tall is not your fault, or even cause for criticism (jealousy, sure), but it has to colour your experiences and consequently your opinions. I would think that having your head "above the crowd" doesn't seem as crowded as not being able to see more than a couple of feet.

I'm only posting because I thought you may have been having a dig, consciously or unconsciously, at the guy who sells more stuff on less crowded days. It's rather jarring to hear someone who normally takes great pains to present a balanced view, seeing both sides, dissing someone with an honest opinion reinforced by evidence.

No "dig" was meant, consciously or unconsciously, about that dealer. I said his view "makes sense, I guess." I'm curious if others have the same experience.

Yeah, I know my experience at Comic-Con or WonderCon may not be precisely the same as someone else's. Being tall probably gives me some advantage in a crowd. Then again, being wide puts me at some disadvantage. Others can squeeze through some gaps between people that I can't navigate.

You know the folks who really have trouble getting around a comic convention hall? I mean, besides the ones with disabilities and impaired mobility? The ones who commit themselves to starting on one side of the room and walking up and down every single aisle in sequence. There will always be a few rows that are jammed, often because the exhibitors stage games and demonstrations intended to attract congoers to mob around their booths. I skip those aisles. If I forced myself to plunge down each one at the precise moment I arrive at it, I'm going to hit logjams.

Actually, my biggest problem getting around a convention is that wherever I try to walk, there's often some photo op — someone in a costume, one or more folks with cameras — who just stop for pose-'n'-shoot, not giving a damn about impeding traffic. Sometimes, they're conducting video interviews and such without the slightest concern that they're inconveniencing others. And my second-biggest problem is dodging cosplayer weaponry. If you could ban these categories of blockage, moving about any convention floor would be a breeze.

Sunday at WonderCon was a bit less crowded than the first two days. An exhibitor there said something interesting to me about that. He claimed he made more sales when the room was at around 70-80% of capacity than he did when it was at 100%. "When it starts getting really packed in there," he said, "people can't and don't see as much of the con. They skip crowded aisles, get tired out sooner, go down aisles without being able to see half of what's there. When it's like this, most people can wander by and see what I'm selling." Makes sense, I guess. Even when it was at capacity though, it didn't seem that difficult to me to get around in that hall.

A lot of the talk was not about what WonderCon was but what it may be. Based on this past weekend, it certainly seems to have the potential to turn into a near-clone of the Comic-Con International in San Diego. I don't think it could ever be quite as big. For one thing, in San Diego, we pretty much take over that whole part of the city — every hotel, every restaurant, etc. Around the Anaheim Convention Center, we could never be anything but a supplement to the Disneyland traffic. On the other hand, if I were a publicist promoting a new movie or TV show, I bet it would be a lot easier to get my stars and/or showrunners down to Anaheim for a day as opposed to San Diego.

The folks who run both conventions plan to continue trying to run both conventions — perhaps with a greater distance from each other in dates — and to re-establish WonderCon in San Francisco at some other point in the year. Personally, I'd be happy to do Anaheim in March, San Diego in July and San Francisco in November. They'd also need to squeeze the annual A.P.E. — Alternative Press Expo — in there somewhere.

My favorite moment of the weekend? Well, I really enjoyed the presentation I did today about Writing for Animation. They scheduled it for a room I thought was way too big but we had enough folks there that it didn't seem empty at all. It was just me babbling on about the cartoon business for 55 minutes but from the stage, I saw a lot of expressions that seemed to suggest, "Hey, this might be useful." I hope it was. I don't like to discourage anyone but I do think it helps to knock down the kind of optimism that is based on fantasy, not reality. It's real easy to tell beginners and wanna-bes what they want to hear, especially if (as I don't), you're also selling classes on how to attain that particular dream. Personally, I always prefer to understand what I'm up against. Then the points in which you can find reason for optimism become ever so much more real and it's easier to capitalize on them.

I also enjoyed wandering around outside the hall where there were some food trucks and a general party/gathering in progress. There were many folks in costume, including an Aquaman whose outfit made him look so gay, he should have been lounging on the bottom of Elton John's swimming pool.

There were a few folks with large yellow placards warning all to "Repent and Accept Jesus." I saw one gent saying over and over to people who snubbed him or made rude remarks, "We're not the Westboro Baptist Idiots, honest" and I couldn't resist asking, "What have those folks done for your cause?" He said, "Set us back to the stone age." I said, "You mean, before Jesus?" He chuckled and said, "I guess so." I have a certain limited respect for anyone who cares about a belief to make that kind of effort but I find it hard to believe that any human being has ever considered accepting Jesus Christ or any religious premise because of anything done by a guy with a sign standing outside a comic book convention amidst people dressed like Star Wars troopers and members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

I'll probably think of other good moments in the days to come. And I'll tell you about an interesting lunch I had on the way home.

Okay, I'm up now, getting ready to head back for another day of WonderConning. At 12:30, I'm giving a talk on How to Write Animation so I have a little more than three hours in which to learn.

One thing that struck me about the convention here is this: Folks often complain the comic book conventions these days don't have enough comics for sale. That's not the fault of the convention operators who are presumably not refusing to sell space to dealers who want to sell comics. Some of those dealers have simply found eBay and other outlets to be better ways to sell their wares.

Something I don't think many people have ever realized about the folks who haul long boxes of old comics to conventions is how hard it is. I mean, how physically demanding and exhausting it is to load one's truck, drive it to the con, unload it, set up in the exhibit hall, tend the booth throughout the convention, then reverse the entire process at the end of the last day. Often, they do all this for non-vast amounts of money…and sometimes, they lose because buyers think, "Oh, that's a buck cheaper on eBay." On eBay, you're not paying for quite as much labor.

Anyway, what I've noted is that such exhibitors at WonderCon are not being replaced so much by the dread Big Hollywood but by individual artisans — people who've designed delightful (often) dolls or jewelry or art prints. There are two or three dealers down there selling superb, homemade Henson-style hand puppets. And there are of course some fine small-press self-published comics. A lot of them. There's nothing wrong with people selling comics and books that others made but there's something a bit special about people selling unique items that they themselves made.

I don't recall if I've mentioned this but a few Comic-Cons ago, some friends of Carolyn's attended — friends who didn't strike me as all that interested in comic books or even most of the movies and videogames and such being hawked. They loved it and when I asked them what they found of such interest, the reply was, "It's so exciting to be around all these creative people…all these people who've drawn something or made something." One said, "It makes me want to run home and write or draw something." Everywhere they looked, they saw that.

That's a lot of what I'm seeing here at WonderCon…creative folks creating. There's a beauty to that even if you don't particularly want to buy any one person's wares. I loitered a while at one table where someone — I think it may have been a small-team effort — had these wonderful, funny stuffed animal toys. They were small creatures with the most wonderful silly, organic expressions and if I had room in my home to display one more thing larger than a Rice Krispie, I would have purchased several. As it was, I watched one convention attendee spot them, fall in love and instantly buy all the ones I would have bought.

I like that about conventions. In my youth, I always used to cringe at the use of the term, "contact high," which I guess denoted some sort of osmosis-related transfer of the effects of some drug. It came to mean any sort of sharing of good feelings and I guess it's applicable to this. It is exciting to be around talented, enterprising people. Perhaps it evokes some jealousy or resentment but when it has the opposite effect, it can make you feel awfully good. I'm not sure I could ever make an adorable hand-sewn frog like the ones I saw at that booth but I sure admire the people who did. And I sure like being in a convention hall full of them.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have to pack my gear, stow it in my car, grab something to eat, get to the con and figure out how to write cartoons. I think it has something to do with finding reasons for characters to say, "Let's get out of here!" I'll talk to you more tonight when I get back to L.A. It oughta be an easy drive. How could the freeways around Disneyland possibly be crowded on Easter Sunday?

Friday sold out at WonderCon and so did Saturday. I don't know about Sunday when Easter may keep some away as folks attend services, prepare for dinners and/or look for hidden eggs. (By the way, Passover started last Monday and I still haven't found the danged Afikoman. And the embarrassing part is that I'm the one who hid it.)

In any case, the big story at WonderCon seems to be all about the big story at WonderCon: How huge it was, how it'll doubtlessly get bigger (we don't even have all the available space here at the convention center here in Anaheim yet). As big as the Comic-Con in San Diego? I doubt anyone who tried to navigate the floor space today in the exhibit hall would bet against that happening.

I'm having a great time…but then I always have a great time at WonderCon. More about that great time tomorrow. Right now, I have to go moderate a panel sleep.

This is a full episode (with commercials) of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show from 1960. The guest lineup includes Johnny Carson, a few years before he'd take over The Tonight Show, which of course was started by Mr. Allen. Also on board are Diana Dors, songwriter Johnny Mercer, comedienne Belle Montrose (Steve's mother) and Steve's little "stock company" of comics: Louis Nye, Pat Harrington, Dayton Allen, Don Knotts, Bill Dana and Gabe Dell. There are, alas, no credits but I'll betcha the writing crew consisted of not too many guys — possibly just Stan Burns and Mike Marmer plus maybe one other — Herb Sargent or Bill Dana — plus Steve. They did not put a vast amount of prep into these but they still managed to be quite entertaining. Take a gander, at least at the opening segment with Mr. Carson…

Dick Cavett, who knows a thing or three about late night talk shows, writes about the early days of J. Carson on The Tonight Show. He's quite right that they didn't go swimmingly and that many thought NBC had picked the wrong guy to succeed Jack Paar. Johnny did get the numbers though and eventually, he won over the critical voices that argued that Merv Griffin would have been a better choice.

Cavett refrains from mentioning it but among the reasons later on why some did not recognize Carson for the class act that he was…was Dick Cavett. I remember a time when Cavett, over on ABC in a competing time slot, was the witty, urbane guy preferred by critics and Carson was a hayseed from Nebraska whose only skill was nudging starlet guests into saying naughty things and then he'd make a face to the camera and/or utter some cheap double-entendre. Carson's stature now as the Undisputed Greatest Talk Show Host Ever was late in coming and only really solidified when he announced his retirement. Once upon a time, his ratings victories over Cavett were prima facie evidence to some that America was a nation of dolts.

In this and other recent articles, Cavett quotes Johnny as having second thoughts about his decisions to relocate The Tonight Show from Manhattan to Burbank and later to trim it from 90 minutes to an hour. I've no doubt he said those things to Cavett but at times, he said the opposite to others…and he had it well within his power to reverse both choices and didn't. Personally, I always regretted the change to an hour because it eliminated too many guests who weren't there just to plug their new movie. The conversations all seemed more rushed…more eager to get on to the punchline. The trend on talk shows away from conversation to recitations of pre-interviews didn't start with Jay and Dave. It started when Johnny went to an hour.

I zigged when I shoulda zagged and posted the wrong video in the previous link. It has now been corrected with the proper one. I hope.