Monthly Archives: May 2025

Back in this post, I wrote about folks on the Internet who tell you what is good for you to eat and what is bad. There's been a recent explosion of them, inspired (I suspect) by the fact that a gent named Bobby Parrish, who I wrote about then, and a few others seem to be making very tidy livings with such videos. It feels to me like there are thousands of them now and that at least 95% of them don't know what the hell they're talking about. It also feels to me like I haven't the time or knowledge to winnow out the 5% who might.

Some of them imply or outright claim to be doctors…and who knows? A few of them might actually be real ones. It almost doesn't matter because you have one guy explaining how seed oils will kill you and a lady telling you seed oils are great for you and someone of indeterminate gender telling you that seed oils won't have any effect on you, good or bad, until you've consumed enough to fill an Olympics-size swimming pool. As a person with numerous food allergies, I have never believed in one-size-fits-all advice on what I should or shouldn't eat. That's one of the gripes I have with online medical and food recommendations — that myopic attitude of "This is good for me so of course it'll be good for you!"

I haven't been in a Costco lately but from the looks of some of my Instagram browsing, their stores are all filled with people making little videos telling you what to buy, what to eat, what not to put in your mouth, etc. Most of them seem unaware that there's a pretty good chance that what's sold in their neighborhood Costco might not be sold in everyone's neighborhood Costco…so even their reports on what's new or available aren't very useful to me. And a lot of them seem to think that they're the only human beings smart enough to read the label on something.

I've started skipping these videos and whenever possible, I click whatever I can click to try and be shown less of them…but it's difficult. To give health advice on the Internet, you don't have to know anything about medicine or nutrition or the contents of our food. You just have to know how to upload. I'm fully expecting Trump to appoint one of them to oversee our nation's health…because you just know whoever's next in that job will know even less than Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Obit for Peter David by Gavin Edwards in The New York Times. There will be a gathering to remember Peter at Comic-Con International in San Diego this year.

When I was a kid, we had no home video: No Betamax, no VHS, no Laserdiscs, no DVD, no Blu ray, etc. The only way most of us could watch a movie in our homes was to buy 8mm movies like those offered by a company called Castle Films. They weren't cheap if you were a kid. They also weren't very long. Castle Films took many of the great Universal monster movies and released them as one-reel movies of approximately 10-15 minutes. They even cut some of them down to four minutes!

The first time I saw the 1943 classic Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, it was a Castle Film that a friend of mine had purchased. Castle took the movie — which was an hour and fourteen minutes in its original release — and hacked it down to a little over four minutes. Later, I got to see it in full and I realized that with the Castle Films version, I really wasn't missing much, plus I saved seventy minutes!

Everyone who wants to cut funding for anyone's health care claims they're only cutting waste and fraud…but the statistics they're citing don't seem to support that insistence. Glenn Kessler looks at the numbers that House Speaker Mike Johnson is citing and finds them lacking in this thing called accuracy.

Speaking of health care: To the surprise of (I would think) no one, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr is justifying much of what he's doing with faulty reports. They cite studies which either never existed or which drastically misrepresent what the studiers reported. ABC News (and just about every other news source) has the details.

And — surprise, surprise! — He also has some really unsubstantiated views on vaccinations for COVID. Or so Politifact is reporting. Putting this man in charge of our nation's health was like entrusting the nuclear codes to Gomer Pyle. Which, for all we know, Trump has also done.

Sonny and Cher starred in a rather popular show — The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour — on CBS from 1971 to 1974. Then they got divorced and each one starred in their own series. The Sonny Comedy Revue went on the air for ABC on September 22 of '74 and didn't do too well. It was pretty much the same show, sans Cher, but that seems to have made a big difference.

Its last episode aired December 29, 1974. If it had stayed on another six weeks or so, it would have been on opposite Cher's new show which had its first airing on February 12, 1975. Hers did a little better, perhaps in part because of better guest star bookings. It lasted until January 4, 1976, after which time the two of them reconciled and did a new Sonny & Cher Show which ran a year and a half.

This is the first episode of Cher's series with guest stars Bette Midler, Elton John and Flip Wilson. It got pretty good reviews at the time, more for the musical spots than for the comedy material. Personally, I never thought I'd see a TV show and think, "This needs Sonny Bono!"

Is there a single thing Marco Rubio has said lately that is not the direct opposite of something Marco Rubio said a few years ago? Glenn Kessler tackles some of Rubio's latest twistings of realities.

I keep reading posts online that say that Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" contains provisions that would allow him to cancel or delay elections. But Snopes says this is not so.

But Snopes does verify that Donald Jr. really did write that stupid thing about how a visit to Arlington National Cemetery reminded him of family's sacrifices. Whatever Senior may have lost by running for President, I suspect he's getting it back many times over these days accepting bribes.

"Seth" — who I assume has a last name but he didn't tell me what it is — wrote to ask…

I also watched the Pee-wee documentary this weekend, and reading your thoughts got me thinking about two questions for you:

1) The recollections on the doc about how Saturday mornings were the "wild west" and that they could get away with so much material seem very different from your own battles with Standards and Practices. Any thoughts about why the Playhouse team had such a different experience?

2) Thinking about Gary Panter and the 80's-90's underground comics (comix?) movement, that isn't an area that you write a whole lot about. Were you interested in those books at all? Any favorites? Anything you currently read?

Pee-wee's Playhouse was on CBS for 45 episodes that aired between September of 1986 and November of 1990. Overlapping those years, I wrote, voice-directed and co-produced 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends for the same folks at the same network. I had — and I am stating this clearly and with no ambiguity — absolutely no real problems with the network or the Broadcast Standards 'n' Practices people. I heard from the BS&P department maybe twice a season, always about something minor, always about something that was fixable in two or three minutes of unheated discussion.

For example, I once had a joke about a character eating something doused in Tabasco Sauce and the Standards guy called up and said, "That's a brand name. Could you change it to 'hot sauce?'" Fine. I changed it. I know writers who feel compelled to die on every hill for every battle but my attitude is "Save your ammo for when it really matters" and that never became necessary on that show.

The changes they requested were few, far-between and no more injurious than that. Once in a while, there was a problem because a storyboard artist would put in something as a joke to amuse others in the office. He knew it would be cut out but the crew at BS&P called to make sure. (And I know this will sound like a George Carlin joke but I kept thinking that "BS&P" were two things you couldn't have characters doing on a show for kids.)

So the answer to your question is that the people in charge at CBS then were smart and reasonable and courageous and I'd like to think that had a lot to do with some very high ratings for most of their programming then.

I did have problems galore with the "standards" people at NBC and ABC. I think I've told some tales here about a lady at ABC who felt it was her mission in life to remove everything funny and the whole concept of kids thinking for themselves from Children's Programming. I also came to realize that some of the hassles I was having on shows were the fault of the animation studios that employed me.

They were often too quick to give in to network demands. At one point, I was simultaneously story-editing an ABC Saturday morning series and writing for an ABC prime time series. On the latter, when BS&P demanded changes, I could usually talk them out of 90% of those demands. I could talk them out of their demands on the cartoon show too but then I'd discover that a producer who shall remain nameless (it was Bill Hanna) had already made the cuts and changes for which they'd asked.

That did not happen on any show I did for CBS after around 1983. It didn't happen with Dungeons & Dragons. It didn't happen with The Wuzzles. It didn't happen with Mother Goose & Grimm. It didn't happen with Pryor's Place or all those CBS Storybreaks or a few other shows I worked on for CBS. So there's your answer: Smart people at the network. I know it sometimes may not seem like there are such human beings but there are. Sometimes.

As for underground comix: I have crates of 'em from back when they started. Liked some, didn't like others…which, of course, was just about everyone's reaction. A lot of them, I think were very much products of the time in which they were done, which is not a real negative. I just haven't been tempted to reopen those crates for a couple o' decades.

I don't know that the term "underground" applies today because we no longer have the situation where a couple of publishers — DC, Marvel, Harvey, etc. — have the stranglehold those firms then had on the marketplace. Nowadays, there are countless publishers putting out graphic novels and comics that present individual, personal statements by individual writers and artists…and to me, that's all underground comics ever were: A marketplace via which people could write and draw freely without conforming to someone else's idea of what they should write and how they should draw — and they could even retain some or all ownership of their work. And today, I like some and don't like others…which is how it always works.

On the World Wide Web, you can find — and often, not avoid — horrible news and stories about people who don't seem to give a damn about anyone or anything but their own immediate needs or desires. I have some cleansing moments watching these videos (and there are a lot of them) of people who go out and help turtles covered in barnacles or seals trapped in fishing lines or nets or other things uncaring humans have dumped into the oceans. I've been donating money to the folks who help seals. If I were young enough and physically able, I think I'd go out and join them.

Well, to be honest, I probably wouldn't but I am sending some cash to help out. But I'd like to think I've helped make scenes like this happen. Click to go over to the YouTube page if you want to donate. And yes, I really am up at this hour…

I am at a loss to explain why I am so interested in the fate of Thrifty Ice Cream.  I gave up eating ice cream and things like that in 2007 but I'm still following this story which, briefly, goes like this: Once upon a time, there was this big chain of Thrifty Drug Stores.  They sold everything other drug stores sold but also had a stand in every store that sold real good ice cream for real cheap prices.  Thrifty Drug Stores all eventually became Rite Aid Drug Stores but now Rite Aid is going out of business and selling off its assets.  So what, many are wondering, will become of our beloved Thrifty Ice Cream?

I wrote about this back here and said that "…the company that owns Von's Markets (and Safeway and Albertson's) has purchased the Thrifty ice cream business." That was what was said at the time but that deal fell through and now the fate of that frozen commodity is less clear. I'm not the only one wondering about it as this big and recent story in The Los Angeles Times shows.

But here's the thing: It's just ice cream. The Thrifty version was good but, you know, there's other good ice cream in this world. In fact, as I recall when I used to eat it, there's very little not-good ice cream in this world. Even if no one acquires the Thrifty Ice Cream factory in El Monte and finds new outlets for its output, you'll still be able to find good ice cream. It may not be as cheap as it was back at the Thrifty Drug Stores but nothing is.

The only real thing that distinguished Thrifty Ice Cream from all the rest (besides its price) was the unique cylindrical shape in which it was served…and you can replicate that in your home. They're selling the special model of ice cream scoop that Thrifty used. If I was still eating ice cream, I'd buy one. I may even buy one and see if I can use it for potato salad.

Comic-Con International 2025 convenes in 58 days and I'll be doing my usual sixteen-or-so panels…but that's not what I want to talk about at the moment. Let's talk about the San Diego Convention Center. It opened in November of 1989 and has since undergone a vast amount of renovation and expansion…but not enough. As this article explains, the place is going to need an awful lot of renovation in the coming years.

I think it's a wonderful place to hold a convention. It's well-designed, well-situated and surrounded by great hotels and great restaurants…but it's getting on in years and as the article states, it's going to need hundreds of millions of dollars in repair and upgrades. I do not think it's going to close down. There's too much commerce built around it. I don't think Comic-Con is going to move elsewhere. The alternatives are not great. I just think an awful lot of money is going to be spent on it…and some of that, directly or indirectly, is going to come from attendees. Donald Trump may even slap one of his big, beautiful tariffs on the place.

We'll keep an eye on this matter. I wouldn't expect a major impact right away but something's going to have to be done and it's gonna cost someone a lot of money.

Thanks to my pal Douglass Abramson for keeping me up-to-date on the topic.

Folks are sending me links to other videos with Stan Ross in them. Brent Seguine pointed to this sketch that The Three Stooges did on The Ed Sullivan Show for 2/10/1963. Ross turns up at the very end as the punch line…

And several people made reference to this music video by David Lee Roth. Stan Ross is in there in a pirate costume but only for two quick shots of about 1.5 seconds each. If you watch of it, just think of it as a six-and-a-half minute videogame of "Where's Waldo?"…

Dick Van Dyke was born on December 13, 1925. Despite what many click-baiting sites are claiming, he is not 100 years old today. He is 99 years, 5 months and 13 days old. His hundredth birthday is 201 days from today.

This has been a Dick Van Dyke Fact Check. Thank you.

Donald Trump and those doing his bidding insist that his "Big, Beautiful Bill" will not cut "anything meaningful," just "waste, fraud and abuse" in Medicaid and nothing about Medicare or Social Security. Politifact and CBS News both say this is not true.

Meanwhile, Trump's doing a lot of things that if they'd been done by Biden, Obama or any Democratic Prez would have Republicans screaming about naked bribes and selling presidential favors. Steve Benen discusses how feeble the excuses are for what Donald's doing.

Hope you're all having a memorable Memorial Day. It might be the last before Trump renames it Trump Bitcom Super-Sale Day.

I watched both parts of the Paul Reubens documentary last night. My first reaction was that I really didn't need to hear that much about his sexuality. But then I don't think I need to hear much about the sexuality of any consenting adult. Based on some of the exchanges that were included between Paul and his interviewer, I got the feeling that Paul felt the same way. It reminded me of once when a gent I knew — somewhat of a celebrity — remarked to me about what the tabloids were publishing about who he was sleeping with and what they were doing. He said (approximately), "I don't even understand all that…how come all these strangers who've never met me think they do?"

One thing the documentary got quite right, I think, was the impact of the first live Pee-wee Herman show which was staged Saturday nights at Midnights at the Groundings Theater. It was an incredible production as I wrote here some time ago when a revival of it was playing at the Nokia Theater…

Around '81, it got to the point where there was a Midnight show done every Saturday night…a surreal evening that went on a little long, though its length somehow added to the quixotic nature of it all. Pee-wee showed cartoons and public service films. He lobbed Tootsie Rolls into the audience, including one, inadvertently, directly into my eye. He welcomed an endless array of odd friends onto his playhouse stage. And at the end of the show, he learned how to fly, which I gather is the plot of the new show, as well. Two people who later became friends of mine separate from one another — Dawna Kaufmann and Bill Steinkellner — were highly responsible for assembling the proceedings, and it was full of fine performers including Phil Hartman, Edie McClurg and John Paragon.

Pee-wee had a sweetness then. The character changed back and forth in the years after. Sometimes, he was a real innocent ten-year-old boy who just happened to be played on stage or screen by a much older man. And sometimes, he was a much older (and meaner) man who in some sort of sick dementia thought he was a ten year old boy. On the Saturday morning program, you generally got the sweeter Pee-wee, and that's why I thought it all worked. That was the Pee-wee of the Midnight show.

The night I went to it was one of the more memorable and oddest nights I've spent in a theater. It was sold out for the duration of its run and I was only able to get seats because I'd met Bill Steinkellner, who'd directed it. I took a lady friend of mine named Bridget Holloman (sad obit here) and we were there on time but the show was not. An understudy was going on and needed extra rehearsal so we all stood in the lobby for a half-hour or so…and then there were tech delays. The festivities started around 1 AM and went on and on and on, apparently a lot longer than they usually did. To make timekeeping matters even stranger, it was a night when we set the clocks ahead so when we got out two-and-a-half hours later, it was not 3:30 AM but 4:30 AM. And the show wasn't over.

No one at the theater had uttered the words "Canter's Delicatessen" aloud but somehow everyone there knew that was the place to go. Without consultation, we all piled into our respective vehicles and caravaned over to that wonderful open-24-hours deli on Fairfax. This included many of the cast members, some still in costume or at least character. It was like the third act of the play with corned beef added. People were performing at their tables or in the aisles and the Canter's waitstaff was sidestepping them and acting like this was the most natural thing in the world. In the booth next to ours was Phil Hartman, still wearing about half his makeup as the gruff Captain Carl and barking out his order for Matzo Brei the way an old sea cap'n would order Matzo Brei.

It was well after 5 AM, maybe closer to six when Bridget and I finally got back to my home. I asked her if she'd enjoyed the experience and she said, "I don't know…but I wouldn't have missed it for the world." The folks enjoying the current offering down at the Nokia may well feel the same way but I can't believe it's as memorable as the all-encompassing dinner theater production we attended. It was so very special to visit the playhouse and stay up with Pee-wee 'til that close to dawn.

For what it's worth, I think the documentary understated the contributions by others to the success of that show and Pee-wee in general. John Paragon, Phil Hartman and a few others predeceased Mr. Reubens but there are still others around who could have talked more about what they did and how they might have felt shorted in terms of money or credit. But then interviewers assigned to put the spotlight on one subject often inflate the importance of their subject — and therefore, their interviews. In so doing, they often minimize the contributions of others.

Another thing I wish they'd made a bit clearer was that after Paul got busted in that porn theater in Florida and CBS dropped Pee-wee's Playhouse from their Saturday morning schedule, the series was already out of production, probably forever. Paul had no intention of doing any more — maybe ever but certainly not for a long time. That was why the mug shots from his arrest showed him with long hair and a beard.

After his arrest, sponsors fled and some CBS affiliates decided not to air the fourth runs of the last dozen or so episodes so the network put something else on the schedule instead. That is not the same thing as canceling the series. It was already self-canceled. Still, when I went over for meetings at the network, I had to wade through some folks with signs demanding CBS renew the series. I still sometimes read that the show ended because of the arrest.

But I think the documentary did make clear that Paul was not the easiest guy to get along with and that he was pretty insistent on things being done his way. As I said the other day, I got along fine with him but there was never any reason for us not to get along fine.

I thought he was a very talented, creative guy and that if he wanted to keep large parts of his life secret, fine. That was his right. At one point in the doc, he said he was doing it because he wanted to set some stories straight. I hope that if he could have seen the finished two-parter that aired on HBO, he would feel that he had even if some of us might feel it was a matter of Too Much Information.

With sadness but no great shock, we're hearing that Peter David died last night. The sadness is because he was a helluva nice, funny guy. The lack of shock is because Peter has been in and out of hospitals with one serious ailment after another for years now. I actually first-drafted an obit a long time back like real news sources do but I don't feel like using it here today. Hearts all over the comic book/fantasy community are going out to his wonderful wife Kathleen and to his family and loved ones.

Peter got into the comic book industry first in the marketing/sales end of things, then segued to writing…mostly for Marvel first, then for everyone. He also wrote novels and TV scripts and just about everything. I'd say "I don't know anyone who didn't like the guy" but in truth, his success and popularity were so immediate and total than a couple of folks were nakedly jealous of him. If you wander around Facebook over the next week or so, you may be stunned at how many friends and fans he had…and he deserved every accolade.

Wikipedia has a better rundown of his career than I could possibly assemble and I really don't know what else to say. I'd say "I'll miss him terribly" and that would be true…but even truer is that I've missed him for years now. We used to spend a lot of Comic-Con time together and every shared minute and every shared meal was a joy. So was reading something he'd written and I'm sure people will continue to do that for a long, long time.