Sympathies to everyone in Missouri and everywhere that's had devastating and unprecedented bad weather lately. How much of this is it going to take before certain people say "Hmmm…maybe there is something to this Climate Change stuff"?
Missouri recently passed a restrictive abortion law. Today, it was hit by a devastating tornado. If they'd passed a pro-choice law, some self-proclaimed Evangelical yahoo would be tweeting right now that the hurricane was God's way of punishing them.
Costco is now selling a 27-pound bucket of macaroni and cheese. It sells for $89.99 but it is not, as you might assume, a bucket containing 27 pounds of mac and cheese all mixed together. Instead, the bucket contains six 30-serving zip-sealed pouches of elbow pasta and six 30-serving zip-sealed pouches of cheddar cheese sauce.
Nice to know you don't have to eat the whole bucketful right away. The special packaging has a shelf life of twenty years so you and your family would only have to eat 30 servings every 3.3 years. That doesn't seem too excessive, does it?
When I saw this, I thought at first they must be giving out free samples of this mac 'n' cheese at Costco warehouses across this great land of ours. It would be nice if we could taste it before we commit to that much of it.
But then I thought, "Maybe not." This is the kind of food that people purchase to have available in case there's a catastrophic tragedy and, say, all the Ralphs Markets are nuked or sentient iPads are now running the world and controlling the food supply. (Take a look at the "suggested serving" image above. After a hurricane has wiped out your city, a tiny garnish of parsley would certainly make things more appetizing.)
Whenever I see "Disaster Prep" meals, I remember some guy on TV back in the sixties who sold this kind of thing. Someone asked him how tasty it was and he said something like, "After a nuclear holocaust, you won't care how tasty it is. Your family will be thrilled to be able to eat my products instead of each other!" I thought that was a damn good sales pitch because, you know, nobody really wants to eat Grandma.
The team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis split up in 1956, playing their last engagement together on July 25 of that year, ten years to the day after their first booking as a duo. Over the years, they received many offers to appear again together — if only for one performance — but the offers were never accepted. Many would tell you that the next time the world saw them on the same stage was September 5, 1976 when Dean made a surprise appearance on that year's annual Jerry-hosted telethon to combat Muscular Dystrophy.
I linked to a pretty good video of that reunion in this message and then we had a more detailed discussion of the moment in this message.
Ah, but was that really the first time the two had appeared together since the split? No, there were a couple of other encounters, one reportedly on an Eddie Fisher Show in 1958. The word was that Eddie and guest Jerry were screwing around and then Dean and Bing Crosby did a brief walk-on. The stories of this alleged moment made it sound like it wasn't planned; like Dean just happened to be in the studio while Eddie and Jerry were doing a live show and Dino decided to poke his head in for a sec.
I never saw this video and the people I heard about it from had never seen it, either. Some of us kinda doubted its existence but it has now turned up and you can watch a not-great clip of it below. A couple of points: The clip is twelve minutes long and not very funny except for the few seconds when Dean pops in, about six minutes into it. There's time code on the video and Dean enters at 03:24:53:05 but if you're going to watch just for that moment, start watching a minute or so earlier so you get the context.
Secondly, it's obviously a planned bit which Jerry was expecting. I think the closest thing to a real surprise was that it looks like Dean was supposed to enter earlier so Eddie and Jerry had to ad-lib and stall until he could actually make his entrance. Bing Crosby, who then might well have been the biggest star of the four, goes mostly unnoticed. Thanks to Dan O'Shannon for alerting me to this…
Two of the nicest, most wonderful people it was ever my privilege to know were Daws and Myrtis Butler. Daws was, of course, the great cartoon voice actor who spoke for countless characters but the best-known would include Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Mr. Jinks, Hokey Wolf, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie, Captain Crunch, Elroy Jetson, Wally Gator, Lippy Lion, Peter Potamus and the list goes on and on and on. He was also one of the nicest men I ever met…the kind of person you feel privileged just to meet once, let alone really know. Daws died in 1988.
Equally wonderful even if she didn't do a zillion voices was his wife of 45 years, Myrtis. They met during World War II in Washington D.C. He was serving in the Navy. She was working at the Pentagon. They wed and moved to Los Angeles in 1945 where Daws quickly became a much-employed actor in radio, animation, records and other fields where one is heard but not seen. Daws teamed with Stan Freberg in 1949 for Bob Clampett's pioneering TV show, Time for Beany, and Myrtis reportedly helped make some of the puppets.
Daws and Myrtis Photo by Jackie Estrada
She and Daws had one of those perfect marriages where each is obsessed with caring for the other. She supported his career and later in his life when Daws taught his amazing Voice Workshops in the guest house behind their Beverly Hills home, she played Den Mother to his students. They included many who went on to become top voice actors of the generation after Daws.
I have just learned (thank you, Georgi Mihailov) that Myrtis passed away last November 15 at the age of 101. I wish I'd known at the time so I could have attended the services and posted this more timely. One of Daws' students, the late Earl Kress and I used to go over and take her to dinner occasionally but after Earl left us in 2011, I only did that once and then it became one of those things you keep meaning to do but never quite get around to doing. We did invite her to the June Foray Memorial in September of 2017 but were told she was not well enough to attend. I had to say something here, better late than never. She was a great, great lady.
The fine folks who run Comic-Con International today announced…
Mike Friedrich, E. Nelson Bridwell to Receive 2019 Bill Finger Award
SAN DIEGO – Mike Friedrich and E. Nelson Bridwell have been selected to receive the 2019 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.
"Once again, we have two winners who are way past-due for some rightful recognition," Evanier says. "Both were among the first human beings who went from reading comics to writing letters-to-the-editor that were published in comics and then on to writing the comics themselves. And both wrote some very fine comics that were appreciated at the time and appreciated in reprints — but, we think, not enough."
The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 thanks to a proposal by the late comic book legend Jerry Robinson, who knew and worked with Finger. As Evanier explains, "We need to point out those wonderful bodies of work by writers who have not received their rightful reward and/or recognition," "When this award began, the late Bill Finger received almost no credit for his role in the creation of Batman. He does now, but there are still plenty of writers who have not received their proper rewards and/or recognition."
Nelson Bridwell photo by Jackie Estrada
Mike Friedrich began his writing career as a teenager, incessantly writing letters of comment to comics publishers. Over 50 of them appeared in print, and by the age of 18 he was writing professionally, at first for DC with scripts for Batman, The Flash, The Spectre, Challengers of the Unknown, Green Lantern, Teen Titans, House of Mystery, The Phantom Stranger, and many others, including an extended run as writer of Justice League of America. In 1972 he moved to Marvel, where he served as writer of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, Warlock, Ka-Zar, and many more. He assisted artist Jim Starlin in introducing the characters of Thanos and Drax, featured in the Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. He then shifted to the business side of comics. He was one of the first alternative comics publishers (Star*Reach, 1974¬1979), then created the Marvel Comics Direct Sales department (1980–1982), and then founded the first business management company for comics artists and writers (Star*Reach, 1982–2002). Along the way, he also co-founded WonderCon, ran retailer trade shows, and became a union representative for research scientists and research technicians at the University of California Berkeley. More recently, he attended the Pacific School of Religion, where he obtained a Master of Theological Studies degree, then was ordained by the United Methodist Church. As Mike describes it, he started out writing stories about men who put on costumes to bring justice into the world, now he puts on his own (religious) costume to bring justice into the world.
Edward Nelson Bridwell (1931–1987) grew up in Oklahoma City reading comic books, science fiction, and practically everything else he could get his hands on. His first published work was a text story in Adventures into the Unknown #9 (Feb–March 1950), and as comics began to feature letter pages, the name of E. Nelson Bridwell was often seen in them. He had a letter published in MAD #27 in 1956 and began writing for the magazine with MAD #34 the following year. He freelanced for MAD and other magazines before landing a job with DC Comics in 1965 as an assistant to editor Mort Weisinger. In addition to proofreading and handling mail, Bridwell rewrote scripts (often extensively) and wrote scripts his own for almost all the major DC features, including Superman, Batman, Superboy, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. He also wrote his own co-creations including The Inferior Five, The Secret Six and The Angel and the Ape, and did notable runs on Shazam! and Super-Friends. His writing was marked by a wicked sense of humor and a strong devotion to depicting others' characters faithfully and always in accord with their established histories. All of this was in addition to serving as editor for the firm and the house expert on DC history and continuity, as well as selecting most of the stories for reprinting during his time there. When Bill Finger's (and other writers') names started appearing on reprints of their work, it was because Nelson Bridwell made sure they were added. He cut back his work for DC in the early eighties and died from lung cancer in January of 1987.
The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first — and, some say, most important — writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.
In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.
The major sponsor for the 2019 awards is DC Comics; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson.
The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented by Evanier along with Bill Finger's granddaughter Athena Finger during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con International on Friday, July 19.
Additional information on the Finger Award can be found on this page.
I'm following my own advice and not paying a lot of attention to Donald Trump at the moment. I don't know how much longer he'll be in office — somewhere between 48 hours and Forever, I imagine — but I'm pretty sure that for the balance of his occupancy, they'll be a possibly-significant announcement every three hours we're all awake. At 10 AM, a court will find against him. At 1 PM, he'll proclaim his defiance of it. At 4 PM, there'll be some new revelation of financial impropriety. At 7 that night, Bill Barr will clear him…
I never cared much for watching tennis matches or badminton competitions or Ping-Pong and I can't really follow this, either.
The other day, he came out firmly against requiring employers to use E-Verify to make sure whoever they hire is not in this country illegally. So I guess his position is that we don't want those undocumented immigrants here but we sure don't want to stop any business from being able to use them as cheap labor.
It's kinda like how he doesn't want to go to war with Iran but he still has great faith in his national security advisor, John Bolton, who really wants us to go to Iran…and just about every other country larger than Luxembourg.
This concludes my thinking about Donald Trump for today. The announcement of this year's recipients of the Bill Finger Awards should be out shortly. You still have time to get a bet down.
If you leave aside joints that ache or are in need of replacement, I've been a pretty healthy person all my life. Oh — and you also have to leave out my first twelve years. Back then, I was sick an awful lot of the time, including missing an entire semester of elementary school due to Scarlet Fever. Scarlet Fever is, as its very name would suggest, a very nasty thing to have.
So are chronic, crippling stomach cramps often accompanied by violent seizures and vomiting. Quite apart from the Scarlet Fever, I had a fair amount of them in my early years and in some sense, the stomach problems were even worse. At least my pediatrician was able to identify the Scarlet Fever so he knew how to treat it. The tummy cramps mystified everyone. I went through test after test and at one point, they even took out my appendix. It was somewhat inflamed and they thought that might be the cause. As it turned out, my appendix did need to be removed but doing that did nothing to stop the occasional explosions of my belly.
My pediatrician was a fine, wonderful man named Dr. Arthur Grossman. He got me through the Scarlet Fever and other childhood diseases…like when I had the measles. This was back before skillful vaccinations had pretty much eliminated measles as a deadly communicable disease in our world. That was sure a great thing. I'm so glad parents today are all wise enough to get their kids vaccinated.
The only thing wrong with Dr. Grossman was that he wasn't part of the in-house network of the Kaiser Permanente Health Insurance plan. My father worked for the Internal Revenue Service and when I was nine or so, they offered a super bargain deal to the families of federal employees.
It was too good not to grab and my parents were both on it for the rest of their lives, paying a lot less and getting more for their money than if they'd switched to any other health insurance available, including plans Kaiser has offered since. When my mother had her cataract surgery at age 85, she got a flawless operation for a $5 co-pay. I had to pay seven bucks in the parking lot to pick her up after it.
So it was a great health plan…but it meant I could no longer go see Dr. Grossman. Then again, I was getting a bit old to be going to a pediatrician.
What I thought would be my last visit to him occurred a week before our Kaiser plan kicked in. That was when he suggested that my appendix might have to go. Two weeks later on my first visit to a Kaiser physician, I got a second opinion that was in agreement and the surgery was scheduled. My father saved a bundle over what it would have cost to remove that pesky vestigial organ a few weeks earlier.
But as good as the Kaiser doctors were, the stomach cramps mystified them too. I was having one or two small attacks a week and about every three months, I had one that was so awful, my folks would rush me back to Kaiser where some baffled medico would wrack his board-certified brain for what it might be. After a year or two of tests there failed to identify the problem, my mother had a wise longshot idea. Even though it would mean paying for a visit, she wanted to take me back to Dr. Grossman. Why? Because she didn't know what else to do and he was the wisest doctor she'd ever met.
He was also the nicest as proven by the fact that he never sent us a bill for that visit but, bless him, he did give us the solution. My mother had obtained a copy of my medical records from Kaiser and my former pediatrician reviewed all the tests they'd done. Some stray comment one of the examiners had written caused Doc Grossman's stethoscope or something to light up. "I should have thought of this years ago," he said. "We need to have Mark tested for food allergies." Kaiser had such experts but on his recommendation, we paid outta-pocket to go to an esteemed Beverly Hills specialist he knew.
I don't recall the exact numbers but they went something like this: They tested me for 40 common foods and I had a bad reaction to around twenty-eight of them. In some cases, it was not an allergy but an intolerance and if you want to know the difference between them, read this. From the standpoint of me telling people I can't eat certain things, it's pretty much the same thing so I say "I'm allergic to that" when a more correct statement might be "I have a food intolerance to that."
Further tests were done and at some point, I was handed off to the Kaiser experts. But I immediately began limiting my consumption to foods the tests indicated I could eat…and the stomach aches went away. Or at least when they happened, I knew why. My well-known aversion to cole slaw comes from the fact that it does real, real bad things to me.
In the (roughly) 55 years since I was properly diagnosed, I've had — this is a guess — about thirty tiny episodes and ten modest ones. I've also had — this is the actual count — four serious ones, none of them lately.
This article is the first of at least two parts, maybe more. The next part will will tell you how I learned to handle the problem most of the time and what caused the thirty tiny episodes, the ten modest ones and the four serious ones. In a number of cases, it was Mark Being Stupid, which has also been the cause of any number of calamities that did not involve food.
By the way: The visit to Dr. Grossman wherein he figured out my problem might be food allergies was not the last time I saw the man. I told that story a number of years ago on this blog. It's here just in case you weren't already a huge fan of The Legendary Dr. Grossman.
Locked in here writing today. I have some half-finished blog posts but lack the time to bring one to completion so I'll post a rerun in a little while.
Since some of you asked: My shoulder is doing better. I dunno if it's the shot of cortisone I got in it or the physical therapy I've been receiving. The pain could even be disappearing slowly the way some pains just disappear for no apparent reason. This one started for no apparent reason so maybe that's how it stops. Or it could be some combination of those remedies. I'll just be glad in a few weeks when it'll be gone, at least if the current trend continues.
As the author of the Garfield-Grumpy Cat crossover comic books, I feel a sense of loss to hear that Grumpy Cat has left us at the too-young age of seven. At about the time I did that, I made a personal appearance at an event with an awful lot of kids who were that age. I can't think of too many things I've ever done or could conceivably ever do that would have impressed that crowd more than that I was writing something about Grumpy Cat. Hope she cheers up in at least some of her remaining eight lives.
Yes, I've heard that the Renault company in France has made some live-action commercials using the characters from the Saturday morning animated series, Dungeons & Dragons. People who know that I was involved in that series are writing to tell me that…and in a volume greater than the number of votes that some announced candidates for the Democratic Presidential Nomination will receive. Whenever the finished commercial is posted to the 'net, I will link to it.
Please Note: I did not create or design those characters. I did name one of them and yes, I know — there are folks who claim creator credits because they thought of one name. I don't do that and if I'm not saying I created the show, you shouldn't be saying I created the show. My actual credit was "Developed for Television by…" which means I took a whole lotta stuff other people had done and rearranged and winnowed and refined and rewrote until it was in a form CBS would buy.
59 days until this year's Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego…which means that folks will probably begin camping out soon to try and get a seat in Hall H. Do you know that though I have never missed a Comic-Con, I have never set foot in Hall H? A couple of times, I have been asked to be available as a back-up moderator for some event in there and then not been needed. If I ever am, I'm going to have to find out where it is…and also hope that I don't need to get in line days and days and days early to be allowed in to do my moderating.
I'm many episodes behind in watching the installments of Fosse/Verdon that have accumulated on my DVR so I haven't been commenting on the show here. When I catch up, I will. Don't tell me how it ends.
Hey, I know how to make each and every Donald Trump tweet contain half as many childish insults and lies. We get Twitter to go back to the 140 character limit!
I'd be more enthusiastic about Joe Biden as President if I saw anyone anywhere who was enthusiastic about Joe Biden as President. Yeah, "He's not Donald Trump" is a terrific quality but almost anyone the Dems might nominate will probably have that going for them.
Here's the premise: What if Michael Jackson's "Thriller" had been recorded in the thirties? Wayne Brady and Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox answer that musical question…
A man in Greenbelt, Maryland is concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism in this country and he's come up with an interesting way to fight back against it: By showing Three Stooges movies.
This post originally ran here on October 8, 2012. And no, I'm still not going to tell you who the Big Time TV Star is…
Back when my mother worked at that high-priced gourmet grocery store in Beverly Hills, they charged twice as much for their meat as Ralphs Market…but the meat, she said, was not twice as good. Where it really got pricey though is if you wanted the market to cook it for you. They had stoves on the premises and if you wanted, say, a roast turkey, you could buy it raw there for a high price or buy it cooked for about thrice as much. Not a lot of folks did…but there was a Big Time TV Star (the lead actor on a popular primetime series) who apparently loved the food there. Almost every day, someone from his staff would order a cooked turkey or a cooked prime rib or a cooked something plus a number of Stouffers frozen side dishes.
Folks who worked in the store were amazed at the frequency and extravagance of these orders. "That guy must be making a fortune on that show of his," they'd say. His monthly bills were in the many thousands of dollars. Everyone who worked at the market knew about this because the butcher would tell them, "I'm doing a pork roast for the Big Time TV Star." (They referred to him by name, of course. I am withholding it here.)
One day, the Big Time TV Star came into the store himself. He had ordered a fancy gift basket that would be presented to a friend and he wanted to add an item to it. It was a very valuable antique teddy bear that apparently would mean a lot to the recipient. The Big Time TV Star brought the bear in himself and since he was the store's best customer, his order would be wrapped by the best gift-wrapper in the store and probably the city, my mother. He took it back to her little work area, explained to her what he wanted and asked if she could do it while he waited so he could take it with him. She said "Certainly" and offered him a seat.
As she arranged the teddy bear amidst rare cheeses, crackers and small bottles of spirits, the Big Time TV Star chatted amiably with her. He remarked how well the store treated him. She replied with something about how that was logical, given how much he spent there. He allowed as how, yes, he did spend an awful lot. "Some months, I can't believe how high my bill from here is," he said.
My mother turned to him and said, "This is none of my business I suppose…but wouldn't it be cheaper for you to hire a chef?"
"I have a chef," the Big Time TV Star replied. "A very fine one. He trained at Le Cordon Bleu and he's won many cooking awards."
My mother was a bit worried she'd get fired for what she was about to say…but she looked about and none of the management team was around. She told the B.T.T.S., "We're cooking all your food here. Your chef or someone at your home calls up and orders it that way." She later told me the gent looked skeptical, then thoughtful, then worried. "Excuse me," he said and went to find the manager.
In the manager's office, he went over his recent bills and got all the abbreviations translated. Sure enough, it looked like the graduate of Le Cordon Bleu had not cooked a dinner in years, if ever. Not unless you counted the Stouffers side dishes he heated up to serve along with the store-prepared entrees. It turned out the chef's culinary skills did not extend much beyond the frozen foods. The police determined he'd never been anywhere near Le Cordon Bleu after they arrested him for fraud, theft and Impersonating a Gourmet Cook.
A few weeks later, the Big Time TV Star came into the store again and slipped my mother a big tip. He and she didn't want the management to know about it because…well, they weren't all that happy that the Big Time TV Star's purchasing had suddenly dropped from thousands a month to a few hundred. That happened after he hired a chef who actually cooked the meals.
That's really all there is to this story but you probably want to the know who the Big Time TV Star was. Well, I'm not going to tell you but I will let you in on the irony. You know that popular prime-time network TV show he starred in? Well, on it he played a detective.
Some detective. Didn't even realize his cook couldn't cook.
