A very talented writer and actor named Lorenzo Music died yesterday following months of brutal, heart-breaking illness. He was — like his distinctive, well-known speaking voice — unique. Those who cast him as a voiceover performer often said that just to hear him, no matter what the script or ad copy, was curiously comforting and […]
My longtime pal, Ken Gale, is the anchor of the premier radio talk show in the country devoted exclusively to comic books. 'Nuff Said has been broadcasting since 1993 with guests from the world of comics (including, three or four times now, Yours Truly) and it's presently heard every Tuesday night at 10:00 pm, Eastern […]
Saturday evening (Aug. 4) and Sunday morning (Aug. 5), TV Land is rerunning Inside TV Land: Get Smart, a fine documentary on the making of a sitcom that was very funny, at least for its first few seasons. The TV Land presentation interviews most of the surviving cast members and creators and gets into the […]
Carolyn and I spent last evening listening to one of the world's great jazz artists, Chick Corea. There's a certain beauty in watching someone do something — anything — about as well as it can be done. When the skill is playing great jazz piano, so much the better. His new trio includes bassist Avishai […]
One of the all-time great comic book writers, Bill Finger, passed away in 1974. Among his many achievements was that he wrote the first Batman story and most of the early ones that established the character and his supporting cast. Some have argued that Finger should be billed as co-creator of Batman but, for contractual […]
This is your last reminder that this Sunday, August 5, PBS is debuting an episode of Great Performances subtitled Recording The Producers: A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks. What it is is a documentary about the recording of the cast album/CD, filled with generous excerpts from the score and (I'm told) a lot of kibbitzing […]
The David Letterman show sent a video crew to the Comic-Con International in San Diego to shoot a segment. It's tentatively scheduled to run on Late Show this coming Monday, July 30. A few months ago, I recommended a visit to Gary Grossman's website and the purchase of his terrific book on the George Reeves […]
Back in 1995, the fine folks at Wildstorm issued a set of Groo Trading Cards that are still avidly collected. The main set consisted of 153 cards drawn by Sergio Aragonés with clever-but-difficult-to-read quips on the rear by Yours Truly. The same set also included nine harder-to-find "Images of Groo" cards featuring artwork by Mike […]
As I hope I made clear in an article I wrote and posted on this site, I treasured my friendship with the late, great Bob Clampett. (That's Bob at lower left on the set of Time for Beany. The puppeteers are, left to right, Daws Butler and Stan Freberg; the gent with the clipboard is […]
Several of you have written to ask that I keep pointing you towards non-partisan articles about the Florida recount. They are few and far between, for most who write about it seem to be breathlessly spinning to say that their guy deserves to be in the White House, damn all laws and precedents. But you […]
I have now received something like twelve e-mails which had attachments bearing the W32.Sircam.Worm@mm virus. The way this sucker works is that, if your system becomes infected, it picks a random file from your hard disk and e-mails an infected version of it to everyone in your address book. It comes in a message that […]
Now, here's a scary image: Above, you see a gentleman named Buck Steele and, yes, that's his real name. I know it sounds like a great TV western star of the fifties but Buck Steele is, in fact, 42 years old and he manages an AutoZone parts store in Pahrump, Nevada. This year, perhaps from […]
Well, I don't know about you, but I had a pretty terrific time at this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. If you were there, you probably did, as well. The place was packed and while no official attendance has yet been reported, they probably cracked the 50,000 mark with ease — which is all […]
While I'm off at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, I thought I'd post some links and recommendations here, starting with a plug for Randy Skretvedt's terrific book, Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies. I never like to use the word "definitive" to describe something because it asserts that there's no reason for […]
Lastly: The other night, my friend Carolyn and I went to the Greek Theatre here in Los Angeles to hear a wonderful concert by jazz/blues legend Nina Simone. I got my seats through Ticketmaster and couldn't help noticing some tiny print that appeared on the obverse of my stub… Warning: Pucks, hockey sticks, balls, bats, […]