Monthly Archives: March 2019

Below somewhere is an amazing photo that my pal Phil somehow managed to take — a scene at WonderCon not crowded with people. I'm guessing he got up at sunrise and then created some sort of diversion off-frame to lure the throngs out of this shot. Whenever I tried to machete my way through the area depicted in this photo the last few days, my way was constantly blocked by people in odd costumes plus ten times as many people trying to take photos of the people in odd costumes.

I love cosplayers but I think something about it makes a person — and anyone trying to photograph them — blindly unaware of when they're posing/shooting in a spot through which others have to pass. And if youre wearing a costume with a large weapon or other appendage, you have no awareness whatsoever of when your large weapon or appendage is swatting or poking others.

That said, some of the costumes this year were amazing — some for sheer beauty, some for sheer skill and others for clever and funny concepts. I liked the ladies — I saw more than one of them — brilliantly attired as the real Captain Marvel (i.e., the one who appears at the utterance of "Shazam!")

I am continuing to have a great time here and I'll write more about it when I get home. Right now, I'd like to salute a fine gent named Gary Miereanu who hosts almost as many panels at conventions as I do. Gary does his for Time-Warner and DC Comics and he does a good job of making them interesting and informative. Even more important to me though is that he gets them to start and stop on time. As a hoster of such events, I know that isn't always easy. It also isn't always a goal of those who run panels.

Sometimes, there's incompetence in play but often, it's a power thing: Someone thinks they're so important that they can keep their audiences waiting the way some rock groups do out of sheer contempt for their fans. And/or they think they can slop over into the time of the following panel and deliver some of their sales pitch to the folks arriving for that presentation.

Having done over 300 of these at various cons in various years, I have naturally encountered this at times. I once forgave Cookie Monster for running long (anecdote here) but have not been so forgiving of others.

Gary's adherence to schedules is impressive because I have dealt with folks who felt that if they were representing large companies as he does, the rules did not apply to them. There's a kind of person who loves to believe the rules don't apply to them because they feel so powerful and important when they break them.

I have also dealt with comic book creators with egos the size of the NATO Alliance. Some years back at a non-California con, I was to moderate a panel that followed a solo spot by a noted creator of comics.

Based on the last ten or so minutes of his scheduled stint on stage — which was all I caught — it was mostly talking about his own undisputed greatness. He then carried that theme well into the hour my panel was supposed to occupy. My panelists were standing by, waiting. Many people had swarmed into the room to hear us, not the guy on stage…but the guy on stage kept being reminded of just one more compliment he had to give himself.

A rather frantic room manager was giving him signals and flashing signs to wrap it up but still the World's Greatest Comic Book Creator, at least by his standards, went on and on. Perhaps he felt encouraged by the growing size of the audience before him. Finally, the room manager approached and whispered a polite reminder of the time. I was close enough to hear how polite it was and also to hear the whispered reply, which was along the lines of "I'll wrap it up when I'm good and ready. Now leave me the fuck alone."

He then stayed on stage long enough to prove to someone — maybe only himself — that he was not ending for any reason other than that he was done. Then he stayed in the room for a while, preventing our start by signing autographs which he could just as easily have signed in the hall outside.

When we finally were able to begin, we had thirty minutes instead of the advertised fifty since I was not about to do the same thing to the next panel that he did to us.

Contrast that to Ray Bradbury who, each of the many times I interviewed him on stage, would always say something to me like, "I'm counting on you to keep an eye on the clock so we don't cut into the next panel's time." That may have just been simple manners and playing by the rules…or it may have been because Ray Bradbury didn't have to prove how important he was. He had a whole shelf or two of books that did that for him.

Here's another number from the new Broadway version of My Fair Lady. This is Lauren Ambrose singing the heck outta "I Could Have Danced All Night." As is usual with these "cast album" videos, they shot the orchestra a few times and they shot the singers a few times. Then they edited it all together and synced it up to the final mix of the song so it looks like you're seeing them all doing it at the same time…

Yesterday at WonderCon, I ran into a friend who…well, I guess you'd call him a Trump Supporter but he deeply wishes, as do so many of you we wouldn't call Trump Supporters, that Donald J. Trump would disappear from the face of this planet.

My friend supports most (not all) of where the country is now heading and if Trump's the guy who's gonna get it there, okay. Still, he winces at the nastiness, admits Trump lies only slightly less often than he exhales and figures there are plenty of sleazy, illegal misdeeds in the man's past, including his recent past. He fears some of them will eventually drive the guy from office, if not to prison.

My friend and I do not debate Trump's unworthiness as Chief Exec. We talk about the proper role of government in our lives, how we should handle folks who are in this country sans proper paperwork, a woman's right (which he doesn't think she has) to control her body, what to do about guns…in other words, all the popular divisive issues. I'm not sure why we discuss these things.

In a casual, friendly discussion, he's no more likely to change my mind — or even say something about these issues that I haven't heard before — that I am to change his. Or his gender or height or anything. But our conversation did make me think of one thing about Trump I don't like and haven't written about here. It's how hard he makes it to not talk or even think about him.

I have so many thoughts that I'd rather have than the ones about that guy. There are so many good and constructive conversations that I could be having but they keep getting diverted or pre-empted by someone saying, "Did you see what Trump just tweeted?"

It's like someone rushes into the Oval Office and announces with an urgent panic in his voice, "Mr. President! Our secret monitoring of Mark Evanier's brain shows that he just had an idea!"

And Trump goes, "It isn't the one about the chocolate roller skates again, is it?"

To which the Aide replies, "No, it's worse. This one might make sense. It could even result in something very popular and successful!"

Trump looks puzzled. "Evanier? The guy who works with that immigrant on Groo the Wanderer? A good idea?"

The Aide pleads, "There's a first time for everyone. I don't think we can take the chance. He's mulling it over right now."

So Trump says, "All right. I have to go pass some reporters in five minutes to get to the golf course. I'll stop at their cameras just long enough to say something divisive and distracting. Is Evanier watching the news?"

"No," the Aide replies. "He's been cutting way back on that ever since your nineteenth explanation about how Mexico is going to pay for The Wall. You know, I never understood why you promised that. You didn't really have a plan to get them to cough up the money, did you?"

"Of course not. I was running for president and my supporters cheered it. Why should I need a plan? I'm thinking Explanation #20 will be that I meant Mexico was going to sponsor that game show with Chris Hardwick!" Then Trump adds, "Well, it doesn't matter if Evanier's watching the news. Some friend of his will call and ask him what he thinks about whatever stupid thing I go out and say. We'll get Evanier's mind off that so-called 'good idea' of his."

Okay, yes, I know: There's less than a one-in-three chance this actually goes on but I do keep having my thought process hijacked by what Trump did or said in the previous twenty minutes. I don't mind it now and then but I've lost so much of my ability to not have to talk about or even just think about it now.

I'll bet you have better things to put your mind to, as well. You'd have to, even if it's just about chocolate roller skates.

So I'm here in my room blogging away and preparing to go downstairs for another day of WonderConning. If you have no badge, don't bother coming here to Anaheim. Today and tomorrow are sold out, as we warned you here they would be. Today, I'm hosting the Quick Draw! at 4:30 and the Cartoon Voices panel at 5:30. I have an 11 AM biz-type meeting so I'll report back here later. If you're here and you see me, say howdy. I am rarely as busy as I sometimes appear.

As Kevin Drum points out, the new Trump modus operandi seems to be this: His people will propose huge, draconian budget cuts that destroy something people care about…and then Donald the Good will come along and override all or part of those cuts, thereby being the benevolent hero. I don't suppose they'll do this all the time but that's kind of what his staff and cabinet members are for.

Continuing our current subject — the revival of My Fair Lady playing at Lincoln Center in New York — here's Laura Benanti, who's currently playing Liza, singing "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" outside Macy's Department Store. Well, actually she and the company aren't singing. They're lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track and not doing the greatest job of matching their mouth movements but who cares?

I'm surprised the folks at Stephen Colbert's show haven't written a parody of this song and had Benanti come in, dress up as Melania Trump as she does so often for them, and sing it. She could be warbling how "loverly" it would be to be out of the spotlight, the White House and the marriage, not necessarily in order of desperation. It could go, "Someone not in the public glare / Warm and tender with real hair / Who won't destroy health care / Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?"

I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to the fallout over the Mueller Report, largely because I think the pressing issue is not what the Attorney General says is in it but what's actually in it. I suppose my position is exactly the same as any Trump supporter's would be if a brief summary of a 300+ page report was issued by a Democratic A.G.: Never mind the summary. I won't believe anything until they release the entire report plus all the supporting evidence. And I might not even believe it then.

We should not be surprised that Trump and his minions are running around claiming "total exoneration." For more than a year, Trump has been running around saying "No collusion" and claiming exoneration more often than Henny Youngman said, "Take my wife…please" and he'd misquote anybody. If a weatherman said there would be no rain Thursday, Trump would say, "The weatherman just said there was no collusion and I'm totally exonerated."

I guess the idea here is that (a) they'll stall and fight and stall and fight to keep the entire report locked in a vault somewhere with Trump's tax returns and (b) they'll assume his supporters won't — or maybe can't — read and will just accept and celebrate that it says what Trump says it says so the matter is settled forever.

And I don't mean they won't read that huge report that Robert Mueller's office put together. They won't read the little summary they now celebrate. They haven't or they'd know it says the exact opposite. On page three of the Attorney General's summary, he says…

The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as "difficult issues" of law and fact concerning whether the President's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

Only Donald Trump could take a statement that says "it does not exonerate him" and interpret it to say, "It exonerates me." Okay, well not just Trump but also Sean Hannity and Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway and the rest of that mob. I suppose they'd claim they mean it exonerates him on the colluding with Russia part and maybe it does. But that's not the story they're selling to their base.

A mystery has been solved, perhaps even by the Scooby Doo kids! It's why pieces of old Garfield telephones have been washing ashore on the Iroise coast in Brittany, wherever that is. Read all about it here. And thank you to the FORTY-FOUR readers of this site (so far) who have sent me a link to this story.

• The folks fighting to kill Obamacare don't have a plan that would provide affordable health insurance. They don't even want there to be such a plan for those who need it. They just want the "win" to establish they're in charge.

In timely fashion, here comes Randy Rainbow — and if you don't know the song he's parodying, it's "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues" from Follies, words and music by Stephen Sondheim. You can watch Mandy Patinkin singing it at a concert here.

Steve Bacher, who often sends in interesting questions for this page, sent two related ones…

You asked rhetorically: "Can you listen to Michael Jackson music after this?" and answered in the negative. I have a couple of followup questions…

1. What about music by the Jackson Five, when Michael hadn't even reached puberty at the time? (There have lately been TV ads for a drug called Trelegy which featured the J5's "ABC" with rewritten lyrics. As soon as the newsers started to cover the Leaving Neverland story, the commercials disappeared, which I expected would happen…until they reappeared recently. Of course, the original lyrics for "ABC" now seem a lot creepier in the light of what we know.)

2. What about radio stations (on the air and online) and stores that have taken down Michael Jackson product? Is he going to be erased from musical history? (If this trend persists, more than a few classical composers and jazz artists could receive the same treatment, though I suppose murdering your wife's lover as Gesualdo did in the 16th century perhaps doesn't rise to the same level of moral depravity.)

I suspect with time, Michael Jackson music will become a little more acceptable but not much. There are no strict rules about this kind of thing. Bill Cosby will forever be branded a rapist, whereas I haven't seen any indications that Mike Tyson is unwelcome anywhere. He went to prison for rape and now he has a kids show. And yes, he may have been innocent and merely made the mistake of hiring Alan Dershowitz as his attorney.

I don't think most people boycott things like Michael Jackson music because they want to punish posthumously. I think it just has a negative, unpleasant air about it now and since there's plenty of other music that doesn't, why not just play something else for now? One does not even have to consider if you'll start playing it again next month or next year or next decade. We can decide that next month or next year or next decade.

I'm curious if Michael has been yanked from the playlists of places in Las Vegas where "elevator music" is piped in while you gamble or dine. He was once one of the most-heard performers in those venues and now he'd be more of a distraction and probably bring some complaints from guests. I've sent a query to someone who might know and I'll report back here if I get an answer.

For now, I don't think we'll be hearing as much Michael as we once did but some of that will pass. It may seem unfair to abandon Jackson 5 music since obviously Michael wasn't sleeping with kids much younger than himself when "Never Can Say Goodbye" and "I'll Be There" were recorded…but the point isn't to punish those songs because the lead vocalist turned into a bad guy. If they're dropped, it will be because they reminded people of him and if that makes someone uncomfy, there's no real downside to any radio station that decides to now exclude those tunes.

The revival of My Fair Lady is still playing at Lincoln Center in New York. I saw it last June and as I wrote here, I really liked everything about it except the new — and to me, illogical — ending. But it was still a great show. Laura Benanti is now playing Liza and if she's still in it the next time I get back to New York, I will probably go see it again.

She recently extended through July 7. Harry Hadden-Paton, who opened this version as Higgins and who was in it when I saw it, is leaving at about the same time. Danny Burstein, who replaced Norbert Leo Butz as Doolittle, is leaving at the end of April. The show is still playing at around 85% capacity so I assume it's not going to close when the two leads depart.

Here we have one of the best numbers as recorded for the cast album or cast CD or cast audio download or whatever they call it these days. This is Jordan Donica, who plays Freddy, singing this song about as well as it's humanly possible to sing it…

David Letterman was on The Ellen Show last week and my first observation in that The Ellen Show is an hour of commercials that get interrupted every now and then for a smidgen of program. Yes, I know the broadcast channels have commercials but there's a ratio of ads to entertainment that makes me not want to watch the entertainment. I haven't done the math on exactly what that ratio is but watch Ellen DeGeneres' talk show some day with a stopwatch and you can measure it. I like Ellen and I like the little snippets of show they sneak in once in a while but they are hard to find.

Now, about Dave: I used to think this guy was the brightest, funniest thing on television but my admiration for him began to leak at the seams when he began acting like a guy who didn't want to be there and was bored by 90% of the guests he had on. I think Jay Leno deserves a lot of credit for doing a show that rebounded from second place and went on to dominate that time slot way longer than anyone could have predicted. But some of that victory was a forfeit on Dave's part. I found him on some nights very self-obsessive and unpleasant to watch.

In this clip, he says he thinks he stayed on television ten years too long. I think so too. He's also doing that "I'm an old guy" bit which, as readers of this blog know, I can't stand. Dave, you're 71 years old. That beard everyone hates isn't fooling us into thinking you're way older. You're 71. At least wait until you hit 80 to start acting like your next booking will be the morgue. The last interview I heard with him was all about that.

His Netflix series has yet to interest me and I grow a bit frustrated with him because I'd like to think he's better than that; that he could use all that ability to connect with an audience and make things interesting to connect with the audience and make things interesting. I hope the rest of his career's not going to just be things like this…

There might not be a whole lot on this page the next few days as I need to finish my taxes and my prep for WonderCon, plus there's this script that an editor of mine would like me to complete. The nerve of that guy.

I'm also not following a lot of news as I have no interest in firm, set-in-lucite opinions about the contents of the Mueller Report from those who have not read a word of it. I'm also not interested in the conclusions of anyone who has read it if they work for Donald Trump.

I'll be back later with something. When and what, I can't say.

The Mueller Report was supposed to settle something but the Attorney General's summary of it, which is all we have, is settling nothing. William Saletan reads between the lines of that summary and there's plenty to read there.

And Jack Holmes reminds us not to confuse the summary with the report. This country is going to spend the rest of Trump's time in office (and then some) arguing over whether the summary was a fair distillation of that report. And it may get worse if/when we actually have access to the full report.