Last year, the year before and the year before, the fine folks at TwoMorrows Books published fine collections of my silly articles. The first volume was Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life. The second was Wertham Was Right. And the third was Superheroes in my Pants. There is no new volume this year. I've […]
Mark "Deep Throat" Felt has reportedly closed a book and movie deal to tell his tale…what he remembers of it, anyway. Since his identity became known, one of my correspondents has bombarded me with messages, trying to convince me that Felt is not and never was a man of any honor. My pen-pal seems to […]
The folks putting together the forthcoming DVD set of The Yogi Bear Show are trying to make it as complete as possible, including getting the right credits on all the cartoons. This is, of course, admirable and to be encouraged. Alas, there are two for which they need our help. There was a Yakky Doodle […]
My favorite segment lately on The Daily Show: Host Jon Stewart takes A Relatively Closer Look at the use of Hitler in our political rhetoric. (If that link doesn't work, go to the Comedy Central homepage and look around for the clip that mentions Hitler.) […]
David Thiel is the Program Director at WILL-TV, a Public Broadcasting System station in Urbana, IL. He writes the following in reponse to my comments the other day… Just read this morning's political rant. There's some truth in what you write, and I'm sure that most of us in the public broadcasting system would prefer […]
Congress is moving to sharply reduce — and perhaps, eventually eliminate — funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In other words, less funds for Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow and other programs that are paid for, at least in part, by your taxes. I'll probably find myself on the opposite side to many of […]
I love seeing movies at the Motion Picture Academy down on Wilshire. Some say it's the best movie theater in the country, at least in a tech sense…and if it isn't, it's darn close. Everything I see there reminds me of that "special" quality of film that you can never get at home watching a […]
Over at IGN, Fred Hembeck is ripping the lid off one of the best-kept secrets of The Marvel Age of Comics. While he was publishing the vintage Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four and other comic book masterworks, the firm's owner, Martin Goodman, was also putting out a line of ultra-cheap men's magazines. For some of them, he […]
Fred Kaplan parses the Downing Street Memo for us. […]
Over at The Onion, Billy West talks about cartoon voice work — an area at which he excels. Billy complains, and rightly so, that a lot of producers would rather pay zillions of dollars to a "celebrity" voice who'll give a mediocre performance than to hire a reasonably-priced specialist who might not have the reputation […]
Gore Vidal on how democracy is supposed to work. […]
In addition to voicing an astonishing percentage of the funniest cartoons ever made, Mel Blanc was also an accomplished recording artist. He did funny records for kids, many of them based on his cartoon roles. He also did silly songs for adults and while I have a pretty good-sized collection of them on 78 and […]
Fans of the Deep Throat/Mark Felt story will not want to miss this article in The Nation. You'll especially love this aspect of the tale… …Felt's role as the most famous anonymous source in US history was even more complex and intrigue-loaded than the newly revised public account suggests. According to originally confidential FBI documents […]
I think I've learned two things by following as much of the Michael Jackson trial as I followed. One is how unbelievably rotten the news coverage of something like this is. You may or may not agree with the verdict but clearly those jurors, like the ones in the Robert Blake case and maybe a […]
Here's my entry into the "What the Democrats Oughta Do whirlwind." I figure, everyone else is playing so I can play, too. What I think they oughta do is find a candidate. I don't think there's anything wrong with the Democratic platform or philosophy or battle plan — Okay, maybe the battle plan. They're too […]