This is as good a time as any for me to thank all the friends I've made doing my two little websites and all the help you've been to me and each other. I'd also like to thank those of you who've sent bucks. When I started this, I was getting a certain amount of […]
The next few days, I'm going to post a mess of reviews, most of them recommendations, for new books about comic book writers and artists. A wide void is suddenly being filled, and while any book about some of these people is welcome, most of those we're getting are very good and pretty damn exhaustive. […]
The calendar may be about to say 2004 but it's starting to look like 1984 (the book, not the year) as the PATRIOT act gets expanded once more. According to this article, if the FBI now wants to know anything about you and what you do with your money, all they have to do is […]
Speaking of lettering, as I think I just was: Richard Starkings practically invented the lettering of comic books via computer. If you've been thinking of purchasing any of the splendid fonts he sells over at Comicraft, there will never be a better time than tomorrow. New Year's Day only, he has 'em discounted to a […]
How about a good interview with Tom Orzechowski, who's one of the best letterers the comic book business has ever seen? […]
In honor of the new year, NBC has decided to cause trouble by shifting most of their weeknight prime-time shows a minute or two one way or the other. You may think (to pick one example) their Monday night schedule is three one-hour shows: Fear Factor at 8:00, Las Vegas at 9:00, Average Joe at […]
My favorite place to see stand-up comics in the Los Angeles area is not in the Los Angeles area. It's the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach. That is not as far as it sounds. The room is friendly, the prices are reasonable and the food is decent. Only the parking is sometimes a […]
If this article is to believed, an honest lady police chief is being fired for the outrageous offense of giving honest answers to a reporter's questions. I assume there's another side to this story and if anyone sees one online, I'd love to read it. But in the meantime, it sure looks like the kind […]
Lex Passaris suggests I link to an obituary for Dick St. John, who was one half of the musical act, Dick and Dee Dee. The obit lists their main hits but somehow omits the fact that they performed the infamous song, "Bupkis," written by Rob Petrie and "Sticks" Mandalay. It was originally credited to Buzzy […]
Jimmy Breslin on the way images of our war dead are being hidden from the American public. I hear conflicting reports as to whether this is standard procedure or unprecedented but either way, I think it's putting politics above respect. […]
As noted, Comedy Central recently aired a marathon of what they claimed were the "50 best" episodes of Saturday Night Live as selected by visitors to their website. They never posted the actual list anywhere but someone sent me a rundown of which episodes were run. And as expected, there were none from the first […]
For some time now, a major frustration in the comic strip community has been the failure of Mort Walker's International Museum of Cartoon Art. Walker started it in 1974 and it moved about before settling into a beautiful and permanent (Mort thought) home in Boca Raton, Florida in 1992. But tourists didn't flock to the […]
Years ago, I was a serious player of Blackjack, usually in Las Vegas. The way I played it, I usually won but it required a helluva lot of time, study and concentration, and it eventually came to feel not just like work, but work that I did not enjoy. At the time, I was way […]
Here's an interesting site. Some analysts claim that they've identified certain indicators that tip off the gender of the author of a given piece of writing. The Gender Genie attempts to apply those rules to a hunk of text (preferably 500 words or more) that you upload. I tried ten pieces from my online articles […]
Vince Waldron (a fine author, whose website is a haven for us sitcom fanciers) writes in reference to our earlier item on the series, Hank… Just saw the Hank piece question, on which I have no more to add. (I think that one may have been before my time.) However, I did have a "wait […]