Thinking of taking Amtrak to Comic-Con? My pal Dana Gabbard let me know (so I could let you know) that they're adding extra trains. How many other events do they do that for?
I haven't had time to listen to all of it but SyFy Wire has posted Part One of a podcast of the history of Comic-Con. I think I'm in there somewhere.
Today, as many of us gather in San Diego for the fiftieth Comic-Con in this town, my thoughts lean towards a man I was privileged to know named Jack Kirby. It is a privilege of the ongoing variety since I continually realize it was an even greater privilege than I previously thought.
I really hope that when I write about him, as I so often do, it comes across as me wanting to share my good fortune with you, not me bragging that I knew him and you didn't, nyah nyah. If you'd had extraordinary access to any of the great thinkers of the century (any century), you'd feel an obligation to share with the world, everything they said and everything you'd observed. Well, I did and do.
He was a true visionary in every sense of that overused label — not always right, not always prescient…but right and prescient enough to set him way ahead of all the bogus visionaries who are right and prescient about as often as one of those Magic 8-Ball toys.
And one of the things Jack was right and prescient about was this convention. In its earliest days — 1971, 1972…around in there — he said something about it which I was there to hear. I remember it vividly and I also remember how we around him nodded in concurrence even though we thought it was kinda looney at the time.
Lots of things Jack said seemed looney when he said them. When in the sixties he told the folks running Marvel that Thor, X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four and all those properties he co-birthed would someday be the basis for smash-hit motion pictures, they thought he was outta his friggin' mind.
What he said about Comic-Con is being quoted a lot this week because, as things turned out, it wasn't looney at all. Not the least bit looney. He may have said this in other forms to other people but I think all the ones I see quoting it are quoting me quoting him and a few are getting the words wrong. Here is exactly how I remember it. Referring to the city of San Diego, Jack Kirby said…
The day is going to come when we're going to take over this town every year. This will be where Hollywood comes to sell the movies they made last year and to find out what they're going to make next year.
End of quote. That's either precisely what he said that day or very, very close. It's certainly very, very true.
This is one of those police chase videos but it's not what you'd expect. I watched this live and it didn't seem like any of the others. The pursuing CHP officers were treating the "suspect" with great care and once he was stopped, they were not afraid to approach his vehicle. Watch and you'll see why…
Given much of what's in the news this week, it seems appropriate for me to rerun this post from March of 2016. If you object, you must hate America…
A phrase I keep seeing in political discourse is that So-and-So "hates America." It's a great thing to accuse someone of because it sounds awful, it's vague enough to apply to anyone and there's no way they can disprove it. Is it a cheap shot? Of course. That's the whole point of it. And unless you have a video of them saying "I hate America" (which you probably don't), it's grossly unfair.
Donald Trump keeps saying "Islam hates America." There's no mention of America in the Qur'an, and plenty of folks who practice Islam have worked long and hard to get to this country and sure act happy to be here. But it's probably a good thing to say if you want to whip up a real, not an imagined hate in retaliation to that premise.
Googling, you'll find a lot of bloggers saying that Hillary Clinton hates America or Ted Cruz hates America or Bernie Sanders hates America or Marco Rubio hates America. Apparently, you have to really hate America to want to run it.
Columnist Ben Stein keeps saying Barack Obama hates America. The other day, Stein said, "I don't think that there's much question he doesn't wish America well. He has a real strong hatred of America." What is the evidence of this? Near as I can tell, it's that Obama does things that Ben Stein doesn't like, though other Americans do…things like lowering unemployment or causing more people to have health insurance. If that doesn't demonstrate hatred of America, what does?
Right-wingers like to say the Left hates America. Since to them, "the Left" is probably anyone who votes Democratic, that's sometimes a majority of Americans who hate America. Maybe, like Mr. Stein, they mean that anyone who doesn't agree with their political agenda must hate America. I suspect they just aren't fond of the idea that there is an opposition party, which I always thought was the basic premise of America.
I've decided to try and promote the concept that anyone who accuses someone else of hating America must hate America. I don't have a real strong explanation as to how that tracks but no one seems to need one to hurl the "hates America" charge. Also, people who don't read the books I write or watch the TV shows I write must hate America. That seems pretty obvious.
You may not agree with my view on this. If so, don't complain to me about it. Instead, do a little soul-searching. Ask yourself why it is you hate America.
That's the weather forecast this week for San Diego. Doesn't get much better than that, does it? And for those of you who still think Comic-Con oughta move to Las Vegas, it'll be 34° hotter there on the same days.
I feel like I should say something comforting to the folks who want to attend Comic-Con but can't get tickets. And if I knew what the hell that was, I'd certainly say it. You know there's a numerical problem here: The convention center can accommodate about 130,000 people. My guess is that if they had unlimited room, they could sell 400,000+ tickets. There will never be space for everyone who wants to attend. The building may be expanded in the next few years but I have a feeling the number of people who want to attend will expand at an even higher pace.
All I can tell you is to keep trying. Each year, there are plenty of folks who get in for the first time…or the first time in many years. And a guy I know who's never been told me, "When I do get to go, I hope I have a miserable time. That way, I won't resent it when I can't get a badge the following year. I'll even be happy!"
The forecast for this blog in the coming week is Light Posting with an 80% chance of reruns. My schedule is insane with 61 panels, interviews, parties, social dinners, business meetings and at some point, I may squeeze in a little sleeping. It's as exhilarating as it is exhausting to live at that pace and I certainly couldn't do it very often…but 4-5 days a year, I can handle. Maybe I'll get so fatigued that I'll sleep through next year's Comic-Con, thereby freeing up space for someone else to attend in my stead. I hope he or she knows how to run Quick Draw!
I have dozens of things to do today in preparation for that…that thing that's taking place in San Diego the rest of this week. It sure would help me do most of them if I had electricity.
It went out last night. Actually, it went out and it came back on and it went out and it came back on and it went out and it came back on and it went out and it came back on and after a few more times going out and coming back on, it decided it liked "out" best and has stayed that way 'til now…since about 10 PM last night. If I look stupider than usual at the convention, just remember I may have packed in the dark.
Hey, those of you who live in or near the Los Angeles area may be spending money by the time you finish reading this. Saturday night, August 3, the one/only Dick Van Dyke is making one of his too-too rare live appearances. This time, he's back at the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood. I don't know exactly what he's going to do there but they have a stage and Dick Van Dyke will be on it. How can that not be a wonderful evening?
I just bought my tickets. You can buy yours here. And I'll tell you how magical it is when Dick Van Dyke performs. In the midst of writing the above paragraph on my iPhone, my power came back on and I'm finishing this message on my regular, plugged-into-the-wall computer. Honest. Thank you, Dick!
The photo of Al Jaffee I posted earlier today is all over the Internet, apparently from various sources. Some people are saying I took it. As I thought the text made clear, I did not. I don't know who did. If the person who did will step forward, let's do what we can to give him or her credit.
Andre's was (and happily, still is for now) a little Italian cafeteria in Los Angeles that I love very much. I have been to many famous restaurants where you could pay two to three times as much for a plate of pasta and get one that was one-half to one-third as good. It's a friendly neighborhood joint situated in a shopping mall…no fancy decor but the food's good and they do such a brisk business that it's always fresh. Saturday or Sunday evenings, there's a line out the door and once you eat there for the first time, you're quite willing to wait in it every time.
Around a year ago, it was announced that the proprietors of the mall had big expansion plans. When the lease on a KMart there expired, as it would soon, they were going to tear down half the mall and replace it with a massive structure, variously described as between 19 and 26 floors and full of new retailers and housing units. It looked unlikely that there would be room in the massive structure for a little Italian cafeteria that was much-loved by many.
Protests began, most of them at least in part about the possible loss of Andre's. But neighbors also felt the proposed development was too big and too disruptive to the area, including a public school that was adjacent to the land in question. Some of the protesters appeared before the Mid City West Community Council in August to argue that the development should not be permitted. I was one of them.
I felt that evening that we had made a strong case but that it probably would not make a difference. People who want to spend a lot of money usually get what they want. I figured what they wanted was to build 13-15 stories and so had proposed the bigger monstrosity so they could scale it back and get it approved.
The owners 'n' operators of Andre's did not seem to think their little shrine to red sauce would survive. They pressed ahead with a plan to open a new restaurant — essentially Andre's under a new name — in the city of Canoga Park. Canoga Park is a great town but, alas, it's too far away for me to visit even a tenth as often as I visit Andre's. There, they would open that new place and in the meantime, they'd operate and we'd enjoy Andre's as long as it was there to enjoy.
That's still the plan but a few things have changed since I last reported on the situation there…
In September, it was announced the KMart was definitely closing, as so many KMarts (and their sister stores, Sears) have done. One interesting element of this whole matter is that some of us stare in stark amazement at how two once-mighty retail chains have merged, crashed and burned so thoroughly. If you and I had been put in charge of them and, knowing absolutely nothing about running department stores, had made every decision by flipping a coin, we could not have done a worse job. Hopefully though, we would have collected the huge salaries that corporate management has pocketed for doing essentially nothing right.
Just before Thanksgiving, the KMart was emptied and all its employees got the wonderful holiday gift of unemployment. The store remains empty to this day. Some of the other businesses in the mall, like a big Payless Shoe Store, are also now vacant. But Andre's is still serving up spaghetti and meatballs and ravioli and lasagna and other fine, sloppy meals…
Ah, but for how long? The last time I reported on all this was last October and Andre's seemed to be safe through the end of 2019, at which time the developers would probably start tearing down the east half of the mall and Andre's with it. We're hearing now that that will not happen until at least June of 2020.
Earlier this year, there was what seems to have been a final ruling on whether they could build their proposed 19-26 story tower of apartments and retail outlets…and as expected, the answer was no. But they didn't get 13-15 stories either.
Instead of a 26-story tower with 381 apartments and 81,000 square feet of commercial ventures, what was approved was an eight (8!) story structure, no more than 100 feet in height, containing 331 residential units and just under 84,000 square feet of business tenants. Don't ask me how you can lose eighteen stories from your proposed plans and still have that close to the same number of apartments and stores. But that's where we are right now.
Current plans call for it to be all completed by 2023 so that probably means 2025 or 2026. It may be quite some time before we know whether Andre's will be a part of it…and of course, plans may change again and again and again.
In the meantime after many delays, the Andre's clone in Canoga Park has finally opened! It's the Grandi Italiani, located out there at 21730 Sherman Way. I haven't been yet but since it has pretty much the exact same menu and cuisine and management as Andre's, it's already one of my favorite restaurants.
And hey, if you're anywhere near CBS Television City (which is undergoing a similar scenario) or Farmers Market, check out Andre's. It's in the shopping center at 3rd and Fairfax, just to the left of the Whole Foods Market there. The place just might wind up outliving all of us…except, of course, Al Jaffee.
Over at that bastion of Liberalism, the National Review, David French writes that when Donald Trump says something divisive and racist, Republican leaders will not so much as give an "ahem" to express slight disapproval…
There are many GOP leaders who, quite frankly, understand that they criticize even the president's racist speech at their own peril. The grassroots have spoken. Loyalty to the president must be absolute, or one risks a primary challenge. Yet individual voters have responsibilities as well, and they must understand that extraordinary loyalty to a malicious man broadcasts their own disdain for their fellow citizens.
I still kinda think that Donald Trump's loyalty to Donald Trump is so total that there's no room in there for racism; that he says "these things" because they thrill his base and he knows that nothing good will happen to his political career if he doesn't keep that base enthusiastic. But I've given up trying to explain the difference between (a) being racist and (b) saying racist things because you want the support of racists. And I don't even think that Republicans who are up for election next year are going to be able to back away a bit from him once it's too late for a primary challenge. They're going to have to ride his train all the way to Election Day.
[UPDATE, a bit later: Since Mr. French wrote the above article, a number of Republican politicians have stepped up to denounce Trump's rhetoric. But not nearly enough and some couldn't do it without condemning Democrats even more.]
Several folks have sent me this photo which is making the rounds of the Internet and it obviously belongs on this blog. It's cartoonist Al Jaffee, who at age 98 has actually managed to outlive MAD Magazine, to which he has been contributing since 1955.
I have this thought that when someone in the vast Time-Warner hierarchy, probably in the Really Bad Ideas division, decided MAD should go all-reprint, someone else said, "Hmm…how about if we wait to do that until Al Jaffee retires?" And the first person said, "But what if he keeps working for another twenty years?"
Look at that photo. Could you be the person who would decide to put that man out of a job? I'll bet if you folded-in the sign he's holding, it would read "Will Give Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions for Food."
I still have the feeling MAD will be back before anyone expects…maybe before the folks currently controlling it at Time-Warner suspect.
They have this item up over at fivethirtyeight.com…
A new study from Pew Research found that 64 percent of U.S. military veterans do not think the Iraq War was worth fighting. In addition, 58 percent think the war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting, and 55 percent say the same about U.S. involvement in Syria. The numbers are almost identical among the general public.
…and what I thought when I read it was this: It wasn't so long ago that if you said any war that this country fought was not worth fighting, you were accused of being anti-military, hating the troops, wishing they'd be killed, being against a strong America, being a "French surrender monkey," wanting to see America fail, etc., you treasonous coward. Quite a change.
If you read this blog regularly, you're sick of me of telling you about my pal Frank Ferrante, who tours the U.S. with his unbelievable simulation of Groucho Marx. Well, for the next few months, you can be sick of me telling you about him in his other identity — that of Caesar, the outlandish host from time to time of Teatro ZinZanni.
Teatro ZinZanni is…well, it's more than a show. It's an experience. You enter a beautiful tent or room staffed by beautiful people, one of whom shows you and your party to your table. You eat superb food and you experience a live performance singers, clowns, acrobats, dancers and often-unclassifiable entertainers, all accompanied by live musicians. I guess some would call it a dinner show but that's selling it way too short. Maybe this will give you a brief sense of it…
There is a Teatro ZinZanni in Seattle. There was one in San Francisco and there will be one again. They had to close in one location and the new one isn't quite ready yet. And before the week is out, the new one in Chicago is opening with a show hosted by Caesar, aka Frank.
I believe he's scheduled to be there through the end of September and I'm going to try to get back to see him. The evening I spent at Teatro ZinZanni in San Francisco years ago is still vivid and warm in my memory. If you're anywhere near a Teatro ZinZanni, go. You'll like it. And take someone you like because they'll like you more for taking them.
Another article on the upcoming 50th Comic-Con in San Diego. I've been interviewed for a whole bunch o' these and I have six interviews scheduled at the con. I hope it always comes across that I enjoy the convention tremendously and think the folks who run it do the best job humanly possible.
"How do you think it's changed?" is the inevitable question. I think it's changed as the world has changed, as the comic book industry has changed, as we all have changed. Yes, there are elements of cons past that I miss but some of them — like sitting by the pool and talking comics with Will Eisner or Jack Kirby — were not endless and were going to disappear on us, no matter what. And some of the smaller, intimate experiences can be had simply by getting one's self to smaller conventions, of which there are plenty.
A friend unloaded on me the other day why he's not going to the con this year, just as he hasn't done for many years, past and future. He had a golden time at them in the eighties and it's not going to be like that again, in large part because he's not going to be 27 again.
At one con back then, he got an exciting job offer and he met Joe Kubert, who was his all-time favorite maker of comics. Not only that but he struck up a conversation with one of several attractive ladies then cosplaying (we didn't use that word then) as Red Sonja and that led to them sharing a mattress and each other that night. "You can't tell me all that's going to happen again if I go this year," he said…and he's right. I can't, especially since we lost Joe Kubert and since the Red Sonja ladies all started dressing like Harley Quinn.
But good things always happen at that convention. That's why I never miss it.
A few days ago here, I wrote this…
As you know, I'm a big fan of the 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World…though really only when it's on a big screen in an actual movie theater with a lively, packed audience. As far as I'm concerned, if you haven't seen it that way, you haven't seen it. I still recommend the superb Criterion DVD/Blu Ray release of the film with me and two pals on the commentary track…but please experience the film as God and Stanley Kramer intended it before you watch it in your den.
I am informed that between now and Halloween, there will be a chance for those in the Los Angeles area to see the picture on a big screen in an actual movie theater with a lively, packed audience. The details will be announced here as soon as I get them.
Our pal Heidi MacDonald writes about the fact that we're all about to attend the fiftieth Comic-Con down in San Diego…and what that means.