Monthly Archives: January 2017

A couple of folks have sent me a link to an essay by Adam Gopnick about the beautiful music of America…beautiful music that the Trumps of the world cannot hear.

Mr. Gopnick suggests (somewhat) that the reason Trump can't get any great musicians to play at his Inaugural Gala has something to do with him lacking a certain music in his soul.  There might be something to that.

Others are suggesting it's because entertainers are mostly Liberal and even the ones who are Conservative are afraid of being blacklisted or shunned within their industry.  There might be a little more to that but I would suggest that there are more Conservative folks in The Industry than may seem apparent. Seems to me they aren't more vocal because they just plain don't want to have the conversations.

I have a few friends who still believe that Trump will be far better for America than Hillary would have been.  They just don't want to have to defend the "grab them by the pussy" video (and others) and the lies and insults and all the flip-flops on promises and the increasing likelihood that Trump is going to leave the presidency many billions richer for having exploited it.

It's awkward to argue that someone will be a great leader while at the same time having to admit that in some areas, he's a pretty slimy, rude S.O.B.  One of those friends used to insist that Obama had to release his birth certificate, college records and every other document he had…and if he didn't, that was a prima facie admission that that was something incriminating in those papers.  Okay, so how does one now explain why it's fine and dandy for Trump — a man with a history of crooked business dealings and mounting evidence of Russian money — to withhold the tax records that are commonly made public?

Which brings me to what I think is the main reason they can't get entertainers to appear at his gala. I think people — and this includes many who are really, really glad he got elected — are afraid to gamble on being linked with Trump unless they see a good possibility of a really, really big payoff.

Remember the aforementioned "pussy" tape? There are rumors of other tapes around that are as bad or much worse. And that Russian dossier may be partly or wholly phony but given Trump's reckless "I can do anything and get away with it" attitude, how confident can anyone be that it's not real or that there won't be a similarly-bad real one released next Tuesday?

One of the things that brought Nixon down was when it became known that (a) there were tape recordings of hundreds of hours of private White House conversations and (b) that they'd probably be made public. At that point, lots of prominent Republicans who might have continued as Nixon defenders dove under their desks and stopped backing the man. They all thought, What if I throw all my integrity and effort behind this guy on Tuesday and then on Wednesday, a tape is released showing he ordered the Kennedy assassination? Or even the Watergate break-in or anything clearly illegal?

Some might even have worried the tapes would yield proof that Nixon had interfered with the peace talks to end the Vietnam War in order to boost his election chances. That sure seems to be confirmed now but it was rumored then. Would you put your reputation on the line for that guy?

You might gamble it on Trump if you thought he could make you zillions of dollars, as many do. I don't think you'd risk it to sell a few thousand more CDs. Imagine if you agreed today to appear and then next Monday, someone released one of those rumored tapes from the set of Celebrity Apprentice with Trump using racist epithets. Imagine reporters pounding on your door to ask if you're going to take a stand against that by canceling your appearance. There's a no-win situation.

I'm not saying such tapes actually exist but there have been so many embarrassing revelations about Trump that you can't be all that sure. It's not a gamble most people would take with so little possible upside.

In the early eighties, I got to spend an hour or two with Sammy Davis Jr. Someone else in the room asked him about the famous photos of him hugging Richard Nixon and he said with a note of real shame, "I'll never live that down." A lot of entertainers are refusing to perform at Trump's coronation because, like most people in this country, they didn't want him as president.  But some of them are thrilled he won and they're saying no because they don't want to be linked with a guy who has a 37% approval rating…with a great many easy-to-imagine scenarios out there that could drive it even lower.

And by the way: I really am trying to think less about this stuff, which will lead to writing less about it. But I'm not doing very well at that, am I?

And as we all know, it's customary for the 24,006th post on a blog to be a rousing game of Numberwang! Let's go!

• Oops. Paul Anka dropped out.

• Inaugural Gala show now down to 3-4 Rockettes, "water" ballet by Russian whores, flute-playing unicyclist, trained seal act and Paul Anka.

• Trump disapproval at 51%. Know what might help? Signing bill that takes away millions' health care and gives huge tax cuts to rich people.

• Gallup places Trump popularity behind cholera and slightly ahead of projectile vomiting. Of course, that's during his "honeymoon" period.

Following the grand Internet Tradition, the 24,001st post here is an episode of everyone's favorite game show. Let's play Numberwang!

Once I put up this post, a little counter that I can see but you can't will say that there are exactly 24,000 posts on this blog.

And despite what you might think, less than half of them are about Donald Trump, Frank Ferrante, people who've just died and/or cole slaw.

The San Diego Chargers are moving to Los Angeles.  There is no human being on this planet who cares less about football than I do so this is of interest to me for one and only one reason: It ends any possibility that the demands of that team's owners to make more money will jeopardize Comic-Con.  In fact, it means that Comic-Con is now probably the most important "event" in San Diego and has more clout than ever.

In an e-mail to me, my pal Douglass Abramson reminded me that San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer really, really wants to be Governor of California.  As is, he probably stands about the same chance of attaining his goal as I do of becoming Lord Great Chamberlain of the United Kingdom but Faulconer could lower his chances if he presided over the loss of both the city's NFL franchise and its biggest tourist magnet. So maybe that convention center expansion will finally happen.

Apparently, I was wrong. Republicans did everything humanly possible to support Barack Obama when he took office and all that crap about blocking his agenda and him actually being born in Kenya came from racist Democrats.

A person I like a lot sent me an impassioned e-mail to please, please, please for the good of America, stop bashing Trump and give the man a chance to do some good. "We need to be united because we're all in this together," my friend wrote. "And if he succeeds, we all succeed."   I immediately thought of eight things to say in reply…

1. Trump has never been reticent to bash others.  He calls people losers, liars and idiots.  He calls women "fat pigs" and other lovely terms designed to bring us all together.  When he can, he hurls an insult that someone's business is failing because in Trumpworld, if your business isn't successful, no one should listen to you about anything — an odd position for a man who's had so many bankruptcies and failed enterprises. It would be different if the man was trying to reach out to others but he only expects others to reach out to him. So why exactly should anyone avoid divisive rhetoric when the guy with the gigantic bully pulpit doesn't?
2. You way overestimate my power and influence.  This blog reaches a microscopic fraction of the world.  If Trump's efforts can somehow be harmed by me posting that I don't like the guy, those have to be the most feeble, fragile efforts in the history of politics.  I'm not even a pundit with a following.  I work on Groo the Wanderer, remember? I can't even get restaurants to stop serving cole slaw.
3. You call what I do bashing? I have one of the more moderate anti-Trump voices out there. I don't compare him to zoo animals or presume sexual aberrations.  Go to Google and enter any obscene thing you might call someone you loathed, then add the name "Trump" and run a search.  See how many hits you get.  See how much nicer I am than most of them.
4. Most people in this country already don't like Trump.  He has a 37% approval rating which is disastrous for a guy who's supposed to be enjoying his honeymoon period.
5. I didn't do that to him.  No blogger did.  He did it to himself and he continues to do it to himself.  People think he's a liar because he tries to convince them that he got a huge victory and that he can't release his tax forms because he's under audit and dozens of others.  (Here's a partial list to help you out.)  People think he treats women badly because there are tapes of him bragging about it.  People think he's slippery and dodges questions because…well, watch yesterday's press conference.  I don't blame him for attacking the press because his only defense is to try and get people to disbelieve the reports of what he's said and done.
6. One of the reasons I don't like Trump is because I don't believe "if he succeeds, we all succeed." Nothing about Trump has ever made me think he cares if anyone succeeds but him. He strikes me as a guy who pays lip service uncomfortably to helping the poor and the needy and the sick and even the middle-class because he wants some of their votes and as much of their respect as he can get. But even his personal charity to aid others turned out to be a sham and not a particularly helpful sham.
7. When Barack Obama took office, you had Rush Limbaugh declaring "I hope he fails" and Fox News declaring his presidency an irreparable disaster before it was a month old and you had G.O.P. leaders plotting to block every single action of his possible to try and make him a one-term president. I'll scratch this off the list if you can show me where and when you objected to that and wrote how we needed to not bash the incoming prez and to unite behind him.
8. Lastly, at least for now: I don't think you want me to stop criticizing the guy for the good of America. Like I said, I don't mean that much. I think you just like the other things I post here and to get to them, you don't like having to scroll past me linking to articles about what he's actually saying and actually doing. You know he's lying left and right and that he's installing unqualified insiders in his cabinet, replenishing the swamp he promised to drain, plus he's flip-flopping daily on positions and running up a long list of conflicts of interest. That's got you even more worried than some of us are. We only have to worry about what he and his mob will do to the country. You have to worry about that and about how duped you'll feel if there's a disaster.  Because you voted for this person.

I am probably going to cut back on the political stuff but not because my friend doesn't like it.  It's because I don't want to think about this stuff as much as I do.   I have to dial that back before I can dial it back on the blog…and work on that, I shall.

Today on Stu's Show, Stu Shostak will be talking with authors Mark Wanamaker and Michael Christaldi about the history of Paramount Pictures. That means they'll be talking about the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Hope and Crosby, Hope without Crosby, Crosby without Hope, Betty Boop and Popeye, Star Trek and some of the best movies ever made. It's kind of amazing how much history passes through one of those studio lots so there'll be plenty to talk about.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three…a consideration with is of paramount importance.

I awoke this morning to seven e-mails from Trump backers telling me that the "golden showers" story about Trump has been thoroughly debunked and proven to be a hoax. The story most related to me about who perpetrated the hoax and how sounds to me like a hoax itself. As I said yesterday, the original story sounded like a hoax, too. I just watched some of Trump's press conference and most of it sounded like a hoax, as well.

At least two of the folks who wrote me, I recognize as having written me years ago telling me that there was definitely something to the story about Obama not being born in the U.S. There was no proof that was ever true just as there's no proof that Donald paid hookers to wee-wee for his enjoyment. But there's certainly some political advantage to keeping certain probably-false rumors in play. Trump did very well pushing the idea that he was just inches away from having solid proof that Obama was a Kenyan.

I understand why the Kellyanne Conways of the world go out and insist that every single negative thing you've heard about Trump is a blatant lie and every bad thing about his opponents has been proven beyond any doubt. She's being paid to do that and she surely sees great opportunities for career advancement if she does it effectively. I don't understand why some people are willing to abandon their credibility and their sense of what's true and isn't true without compensation.

I think Donald Trump is a terrible, uninformed and dangerous man who cares about the popularity and wealth of Donald Trump…and nothing else. His recklessness and his willingness to say and do just about anything makes it real easy to believe — or sell to anyone seeking more reasons why he is unfit for office — just about any story about him being a pig or a misogynist or a swindler. But they can't all be true. Not every bad thing said about any politician is true.

In Trump's case, I think those of us who want to argue that he's a terrible, uninformed and dangerous man have plenty to work with just from what he's actually said and done. There's no need to make stuff up or to believe unverifiable stories out of nowhere…especially if he keeps having press conferences like the one today.

Want to know how to break into writing for comic books? Well, I have a link for you but it won't tell you step-by-step how to do that. It's an essay my pal Kurt Busiek wrote a few years ago about he did it…and what he wants you to learn from it is that everyone's route is different. This applies to any kind of freelance writing or drawing and it probably applies to acting and directing and a lot of other positions…and not just in comics, There is no one pathway. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you may be able to find a path that works for you.

The British cast of Jersey Boys performs a 12.5 minute sampler from their show. I wonder how many people who see this show know that Frankie Valli is still around and still performing…