Monthly Archives: August 2020

New York Times obit for Joe. It's a shame there probably won't be a big public memorial for him. A lot of people loved Joe and I would have liked to hear more stories about the man. He was a very important guy in his field.

I've tried unsubscribing to these things but I continue to get them. Maybe I continue to get them because I've tried unsubscribing to them…

Mark, you've been identified as one of President Trump's BEST supporters, and we wanted to reach out to let you know about your EXCLUSIVE offer.

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Please contribute ANY AMOUNT RIGHT NOW to help us CRUSH our End-of-Month Goal and your gift will be 700%-MATCHED.

The President will be reviewing the updated list of Deadline Donors later tonight. Will he see your name on it?

I don't quite get how this works. Trump says to his guys, "Tell them that for every $100 they give, we'll get $700 instead of $600." Who from? It makes it sound like Trump is donating the money to himself but only on the condition that I send some money first. If I don't send him the $100, he won't give himself the other $600.

And this e-mail arrived in my e-mailbox around 4:00 in the morning so by the time I saw it, the one hour was long over. So I guess now if I were to give him the $100, he wouldn't give himself the extra money so what's the point? Oh, if only he'd made his generous offer to himself good for six hours.

But I do believe Trump's personally going to look over the list of donors tonight and notice that my name is not on there. And he's going to turn to some aide and say, "What's with Evanier? He used to be one of my BEST supporters." And maybe someone will gently break the crushing news to him that I've never given him a nickel and I've always thought he was a horrible, destructive human being.

Is there anyone more appropriate to introduce a great plate-spinner than an Ed Sullivan impersonator?

I started to write a piece about Trump and about a third of the way into it, I suddenly got sick of thinking about the guy and stopped. Sometimes, it's so on my mind that I have to write about it just to get it out of my head. Sometimes, I can stop by just stopping.

I've been out of the house a bit lately to some stores, two "to-go" restaurant pick-ups and even one car wash. I don't think I saw one person not wearing a mask even though a few of them don't seem to understand that it's supposed to cover at least the bottom half of your nose. I even saw a couple of homeless people with them on.

Got a message from a guy writing to ask how come I haven't written anything condemning the violence we're seeing in the streets a lot these days. Has it come to that, America? That if someone doesn't explicitly state that they're against looting and vandalism and shooting people in the back, they just might be in favor of them? Hey, in case I forget to mention it, I'm against the torturing of puppies. And all those other things.

For those of you who asked: I thank everyone who wrote in with suggestions about my broken DVD player. A lot of the suggestions — like just throwing it in the trash — had occurred to me. But one person — Mike Frank — recommended a repair service that ain't that far from me and the folks there say that if I bring it in, there's a good chance they can get it working. We'll see. Either way: Thanks, Mike!

Just had a lovely phone call with my ol' neighbor Betty Lynn, who sounded great on the phone. I couldn't get through to her yesterday because she got so many Happy Birthday calls…and couldn't go out to celebrate because — well, you know. But I told her than when all this COVID stuff is over, I'll get back to North Carolina to see her again. This is the most optimistic thing I've written in months.

No further Cartoon Voices Panels are scheduled. There will be more…I just don't know when. But I'll be doing my Tuesday Night Conversations for a while and this Tuesday, I'll be talking with a great magician and a very wise gent named Max Maven. Magic is one of my interests and if I had fewer interests, I'd probably be a lot better at all of them than I am…but magic especially.

One of the topics I want to explore with Max is the difference between the magician lying when he says "I just put the three of clubs in my pocket" and lying when he says "The person I selected from the audience to aid in this illusion is a complete stranger and we have never met or planned anything." I have on a couple of occasions been an Audience Plant and I still feel guilty about it. I also want to discuss the many parallels I, at least, have observed between performing magic and performing stand-up comedy…and many other topics. Join us if you can.

• You ever get the feeling that somewhere, the Republican Party we've known for so many years is bound and gagged and being held as prisoners while Trump and his minions impersonate them? The guy playing Lindsey Graham sure ain't convincing in the role.

Where oh where are the great plate-spinning acts of today?

This article by Roger Friedman has a major error in it. It's right that Marvel CEO has been a major financial supporter of Donald Trump and other Trump-affiliated Republican candidates. It's dead wrong that Stan Lee sold Marvel. You can't sell what you never owned.

Today is the mumble-mumble birthday of the lovely Betty Lynn, who had a grand career in movies and television and who is best remembered as Thelma Lou, the romantic interest of Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. But to me, she'll always be that wonderful lady who lived next door to the house in West L.A. in which I grew up. She was not a relative but she always felt like one and it was a joy last year to travel to Mt. Airy, North Carolina (where she now lives) to see and hug her once again. I wrote about that trip here.

Betty was a wonderful neighbor and there are still people who think that the coolest thing about me is that I lived next door to Thelma Lou. Sadly, they may be right. I just tried to call her to wish her a happy day and got her voicemail. I figure she's out, celebrating painting Mt. Airy red or at least a decadent shade of pink. I'll try again later but at least I can wish her one now, here on the Internet. And I can say that I hope she has many, many more.

The comedian Jim Gaffigan has been tweeting some fierce (and sometimes very funny) lines about Donald Trump lately. That causes pushback, of course, from Trump supporters and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Free Speech is only Free Speech when it's a two-way street.

But can we all agree that "Celebrities should shut up about politics and just entertain us" is a pretty lame argument unless — note the italics for emphasis — you also condemn celebrities who say things with which you agree? I wouldn't endorse that principle but at least it's a principle and not a hypocritical way of trying to get the other side to just shut up. Have any of the folks telling Jim Gaffigan he has no right to be heard said that about James Woods?

I actually can understand that some people think like this: [Name of Celebrity] didn't get famous because of his political punditry. He got there because he told great, funny jokes about eating at McDonald's or he starred in some movies or whatever. How come that buys him a soapbox that I, a guy who drives a truck for a living, doesn't have? Sports figures became famous because they can run or shoot free throws or hit a ball. What entitles them to be heard so loudly about who to vote for?

And I get that but it's simply the way fame works and always has. What entitles them to get paid megabucks to endorse products? Answer: The public responds to it. Tom Selleck — an actor I like and one who probably wasn't starving — must be getting paid a fortune to sell those stupid, evil Reverse Mortgages. Why are they paying him so much? Because he gets more results than an anonymous, unknown spokesguy would. So why can't Jim Gaffigan — who is not being paid to do so — sell us Joe Biden?

After all, Scott Baio was at the Republican National Infomercial selling us Trump. I'm guessing he'd rather be selling the Reverse Mortgages. It pays better and either way, the result is the same: Lots of people losing their homes.

Remember last week when Mei Xiang, the female giant panda housed at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. gave birth to a cub? Well, here's what the newborn panda is looking and sounding like these days. It's pretty much how you looked and sounded when you were one week old…

I am under no delusion that this blog — or perhaps any blog — can change the minds of those who want four more years of what we now have in this country. But I sometimes feel better when I post things like this observation from Ezra Klein…

So this is the core of Trump's reelection message: You should give him credit for the economic recovery he inherited from Obama. And you should blame someone else for the disastrous response to the coronavirus.

I think that's absolutely right. Mr. Klein explains at greater length here.

Today, Jack Kirby would have been…I think it's 103, though so much about him remains timeless. I have written zillions of words about this man and I find myself talking about him every day and thinking about him more than that. I probably should have saved this Conversation with Steve Sherman and released it today. If you want to hear two guys who really knew Jack talk about Jack, most of the discussion is about him.

If you don't have the ninety minutes, here's a quick summary: He was a great guy with a huge heart and some of the biggest ideas to ever come out of a human being. When you were around him, you felt smarter and better and totally treated as an equal even though you knew you weren't one. You can see on paper how well he drew. If you met him, you'd have been amazed at how well he thought. Idea after idea poured out of him and his observations were mostly brilliant, even though they weren't always the easiest concepts for we mere mortals to understand right away.

There's a reason he has the reputation he has. If you don't see it, you need to read more Kirby.

My pal Shelly Goldstein told me I would appreciate Stephen Colbert's remarks last night and want to link to them. She was, as she usually is, right…

• This morning's newspaper is so full of anger and hatred…I'm afraid to do the crossword puzzle because it might be full of racial slurs.

Joe Ruby was a very important person in the history of TV animation and — of way less importance — my career. A native of Los Angeles, Joe graduated from Fairfax High School, spent time in the Navy and eventually wound up at Disney Studios in a program that trained young artists to become animators. That had always been a dream of Joe's — to work in cartoons or comic books — but the immediate financial prospects at Disney forced him to transfer to a more lucrative position as an editor in their music department.

He worked as an audio and film editor elsewhere before landing at Hanna-Barbera where he met his lifelong friend/partner, Ken Spears. H-B needed writers so he and Ken submitted some story and gag ideas…and I'm pretty sure Joe said they started with interstitial gags for the Huckleberry Hound show. Eventually, they were writing (not cutting film on) many Hanna-Barbera shows and their work found great favor with the networks. This was at a time when the studio was selling shows to CBS, NBC and ABC and there were many instances when the execs at one of those networks would say, "We'll buy this show if you put Joe and Ken on it."

At one point, Fred Silverman at CBS reportedly told H-B that they would buy nothing from the studio unless Ruby and Spears were employed exclusively on what CBS bought. Fred did the same when he moved over to ABC and finally, ABC just hired them…which is why Joe and Ken created and supervised, for example, segments like Electra-Woman and Dynagirl or Wonderbug on The Krofft Superstar Hour…on ABC.

They worked on many shows but their biggest hit, of course, was Scooby Doo. I don't know if Hanna-Barbera and its various owners ever formally acknowledged Joe and Ken as the creators of TV animation's longest-running character but almost everyone in the industry seemed to. They were also responsible for a dozen or more shows at H-B including Dynomutt and Jabberjaw, for The Barkleys and The Houndcats for DePatie-Freleng and on both the live-action and animated TV versions of Planet of the Apes. I am leaving out an awful lot of credits here.

In 1977 with the financial backing of Filmways and a commitment from ABC to buy programming from them, Joe and Ken founded their own studio, Ruby-Spears Productions. Their output included dozens of shows including Fangface, The Plastic Man Comedy-Adventure Hour, Thundarr the Barbarian, Saturday Supercade, Mister T, Alvin and the Chipmunks and the 1988 Superman series.

They also produced a number of ABC Weekend Specials and it was for one of those that Joe Ruby hired me to write my first animation script. He also hired me to write my second animation script, my third, my fourth…I wrote a lot of material for that company. At that point, Joe and Ken — somewhat replicating the division of labor between Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna — had things divvied up so Joe handled most of the selling of shows and writing of them, while Ken handled the actual animation and production. So I worked with Joe a lot.

He was bright, honest and great to work with, especially over lunch, especially when he grabbed the check. He had very definite ideas of what should and should not be in a script but once you understood those parameters, it was a joy to write a script for Joe. At the time, the studio paid its writers and artists a bit better than its competitors but I would have worked for them if they'd paid a bit less…maybe even more than a bit less.

I did not think the studio was well-served by its business people and at times, I think it was undermined by the mighty H-B. It was then bought by the corporation that owned Hanna-Barbera, whereupon it was treated even worse. Some of what happened then caused me to leave but I was always fond, personally and professionally of Joe. And Ken, for that matter.

And I should mention the following for the benefit of Comic Book Historians reading this: At a time when Jack Kirby could not find a good place to work in the comic book industry, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears kept him working and drawing and very, very happy with how he was treated.

Joe had been in poor health for some time and he passed away yesterday at his home, surrounded by a large and loving family. He was 87 and one of the best people I ever knew in the cartoon business — or any business, come to think of it.