Category Archives: To Be Filed

Who needs Jerry Lewis when we can watch this guy?

• Trump keeps bragging about how great the economy has become since he took office and how rotten it was when Obama was in power.  As I look at the numbers, I see almost all straight lines and pretty much the same levels of growth.  If something was going up 2% a month under Obama, that was a catastrophe according to Trump.  Now, it's going up 2% a month and Donald is to be congratulated for rescuing us.  Jared Bernstein is a good guy to follow if you want to know where we really are.
• Here's an "explainer" for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which Trump is threatening to close down because, you know, non-white people.
• Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, brags that he's getting Trump to cut Social Security by finding ways to argue that those cuts do not violate Trump's campaign promise to not cut Social Security.  I don't get why you brag about this unless you're sure that Trump is so ill-informed, he won't read it.
• Daniel Larison affirms once again that the Nuclear Deal is working well.  This is the deal the Obama administration negotiated to keep Iran's nuclear ambitions in check.  Since Trump operates on the premise that all deals are lousy unless he made them, he wants to declare Iran in breach and then redo this whole deal…or just let Iran do whatever they want and count on U.S. might to keep them scared.
• While I'd be cautious to pin too much hope to it, it sure looks like Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is building a pretty vast case against various members of the Trump administration. I have no idea when this might be unveiled and I gather no one else does, either. But it'll be a Game-Changer if he does it and a Game-Changer if he doesn't do it.

Lastly: I continued to be fascinated that the worst insult in Trump's repertoire — the one he hurls at almost everyone he doesn't like — is that their business is "failing" or "their ratings are terrible." He almost always uses it against targets whose businesses are doing better and better or whose ratings are going up…but even if they were going down, there's that odd logic there: If your business isn't successful, you must be wrong about everything you say. How many failed businesses has this guy had now?

There's a comic book convention in San Francisco this weekend. I don't know a thing about it but some magazine just printed this little squib…

Is it really featuring artists, writers and celebrity guests in the comic world such as Jack Kirby?  If it is, I'm heading for the airport!  Wow, do I miss that guy!

MAD magazine editor Joe Raiola has some thoughts on when satire crosses the line to become offensive. I don't think there's an easy answer to this question. It has way too much to do with who your audience is and rarely are you reaching a homogeneous audience.

There are still seats available for this event but it will sell out. Admission is free. Send an e-mail to friendsofjuneforay@gmail.com and tell them (this address does not go to me) who you are, if you have any connection to June and whether you'd like one seat or two. A connection to June is not required. We'd just like to know who-all is in the house.

Then wait for a confirmation which may not come for a little while. If you receive one, be there early. If you don't receive one, watch this space for info about a stand-by line. This event will not be live-streamed on the web and because of all the copyrighted films being shown, it cannot be posted online, at least in full.

Shelley Berman was a great comedian.  He usually did what he did seated on a stool but he was still one of the greatest "stand-up" comics of all time, pioneering so much in that field.  His work was innovative, sincere and very funny, and an awful lot of great comics got into that profession because they saw Shelley Berman and said, "I want to do what that guy does!"  He was also a superb actor — comic and otherwise — and a very human, compassionate (but perpetually nervous) man.

I have stories but I have deadlines. I'll try to write more about him over the weekend. Just for now, let me say that he was really, really important in the history of stand-up comedy and really, really difficult sometimes to talk to.

On September 19, 2017, a group of June Foray's friends will gather to celebrate her life, her career and her all-around wonderfulness. It will be at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater which is housed in the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This awesome place is located at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, CA. There will be cartoons. There will be speeches. There will be rare clips of June speaking and performing.

Would you like to attend? If so, do not dawdle. Send an e-mail right this minute to friendsofjuneforay@gmail.com. Let me give you that address one more time: It's friendsofjuneforay@gmail.com.

Tell us if you will be one or two people. If you have some special connection to June, feel free to mention it but we're letting in folks who never met the lady and just loved her work. (Two per e-mail is the limit. If you have five people who want to be there, tell two of them to send in their own damned e-mails.)

And please, please read this: Sending in an e-mail does not ensure you a seat as we expect a lot more applications than we have seats. If we think we have room for you, you will receive an e-mail confirmation though perhaps not right away. And if you do receive an e-mail confirmation, understand that we may "oversell" the house so a confirmed R.S.V.P. might not guarantee you admission. This is what happens with free events like this one.

Other stuff you need to know: Doors open at 6:30 PM. The show starts at 7:30 and I would get there early if I were you. Complimentary parking is available after 6 PM in the buildings at 8920 Wilshire Blvd. and 9025 Wilshire Blvd. Dress for the occasion is "business casual." No antlers or squirrel tails, please.

This should be an amazing evening. But then, that's kind of what an amazing person deserves, right?

Phil Geiger writes…

Jay Thomas just passed away (R.I.P.). Got and stories or anecdotes about him?

Nope. One time when I embedded one of his famous Letterman appearances and the Lone Ranger story here, I got a nice note from someone who seemed to be him thanking me and telling me he enjoyed the blog. Mr. Thomas was a highly-popular radio personality and he did a number of highly-praised acting jobs but I'm sorry to say I neither heard nor saw much of him and so have nothing to say about him than he sure was funny telling that story almost every year in Dave's guest chair. If you want remembrances from someone who knew the man, check out Ken Levine. (I am sending you clicks, Ken, because I know I've been too busy to eat lunch with you lately.)

Recently, I wrote here about The Hollywood Show, where stars sit and sell autographs and photos. Jeff Gehringer wrote me to ask…

Just wondering if you knew the mechanics of these autograph shows. Are the stars compensated by the organizers? Are they guaranteed a minimum amount? I enjoy attending these events, and most of the stars are very nice with fans. Recently Dick Van Dyke attended the show. He was charging $80.00 for an autographed picture. At the end of the day, imagine his take home. But I was curious if you knew how the money worked? Just a curious fan, no connection to the IRS.

The money works all different ways at different shows and with different stars since different stars have different clout and value. A William Shatner or a Dick Van Dyke brings people in the door, whereas one of the replacement daughters on Petticoat Junction probably does not. The deals also vary due to geography. A star who lives in Hollywood and goes to a convention in another city is going to incur travel expenses and lodging, whereas someone who just has to take the 405 freeway to the show does not.

I can't tell you much about the Hollywood Show other than that they have to make an attractive offer to get the biggest stars to show up. In cases where the star has never done this before, they sometimes even have to get photos printed for them.

At most autograph shows, a Big Star may get an up-front payment on top of what they make at their table or as an advance guarantee. A Lesser Star might get travel and hotel expenses if necessary or they may just get a table. Sometimes, the "price" of that table is that they have to give X number of signed photos to the convention to sell at another time or place. I've never heard of the convention taking a percentage on the photos sold but I assume that's been done somewhere. Any sort of deal is possible.

By the way: If what a star charges for signing an autograph seems high, remember that it's usually the buyers who are setting those prices. If Dick Van Dyke charges $80, that means that some of those folks waiting in line to pay it are dealers who believe that it's a good investment; that they will soon be able to sell that photo for way more than $80. If the star drops his or her price for the average, "I love your work" fan, he or she drops it for the investors too.

We'll close with this one from Ben Varkentine…

It's been asserted on Twitter that in the '70s, women writers were forced into using male pseudonyms to write comics; that DC actually had a policy against women writers. To your knowledge, is this true?

Not the way you phrase it. There were some editors who thought women were only good for writing love comics or anything thought of as a "girl" comic and that it took a man to write adventure stories. But no firm policy was necessary because so few women applied.

The assertion probably was inspired by Mary Skrenes, a fine writer who wrote some comics for DC in the seventies that were credited to "Virgil North." That was not a pseudonym to fool editors into thinking a guy had written those scripts. The editors — who included a lady named Dorothy Woolfolk — knew Mary well and knew she was the author. Perhaps some editor had the lunkheaded notion that a female name in the credits on adventure or ghost comics would scare away male readers…but then again, they did love getting Ramona Fradon to draw for the company. In any case, if Mary or anyone was forced to use a pen name in the credits, that was wrong and short-lived.

So no, there was no policy against hiring women. There were editors who were skeptical women could write anything but love comics and since there was a limited number of assignments there, that may have translated into a kind of discrimination. Those days seem to be long past and I would guess that ageism is more prevalent than sexism nowadays.

Barbershop Week on this site continues with another selection from the Kentucky Vocal Union. Betcha this is exactly what Michael Jackson wished he'd done for his video of this song…

In the last few days, I've seen a number of articles on the web (like this one) where someone says, "This is not the time to discuss whether Climate Change was responsible for what happened in Houston." This, of course, comes from people who think there's never a good time to discuss Climate Change and especially not when there's so much evidence on all our screens of what could happen more and more if most of the folks they call "alarmists" are right.

In the linked article, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said the "left-wing media" is trying "to make this seem like it's climate change, that climate change is responsible, it's actually America's fossil fuel consumption that's caused this tropical storm." It's a shame he feels that way. Before he was brought in to gut the E.P.A., Mr. Pruitt's income came from coordinating with the oil and gas industry to roll back consumer protections. If only he'd come out for taking Climate Change seriously, he could have lost both his careers at the same time.

It seems like every time I see Marco Rubio talking about Climate Change, he says that obviously something is happening there but it will cost so much to start fighting it that it's not cost-effective. Will someone ask that man how cost-effective it is to have to rebuild Houston every few years? Even if you set aside the costs of human lives and misery and people losing everything including their livelihoods…leave all that aside and just focus on what it costs to repair the damage, how is that any sort of bargain?

I seem to be really bad at promoting my own writing. Last week, DC Comics released the Darkseid Special I wrote for them. It's one of six specials this month — Jack's centennial month — featuring characters done by him and now interpreted by current writers and artists. The story I did was illustrated by the extremely popular (justifiably so) Scott Kolins and there's a back-up tale of Omac by Paul Levitz and Phil Hester. All six of these books also carry short articles by me about Mr. Kirby. Since it's extremely unclassy for a writer to tell you his work is good, I won't. I'll just link to two reviews — this one and this one — where others say that and I'm a little embarrassed to even find myself doing that.

Also, the second issue of the Grumpy Cat/Garfield crossover mini-series will hit stores on September 7. The second issue? Didn't you promise to tell us when the first one came out? Yes, I did. But remember: I'm really bad at promoting my own writing and besides, no one told me. I haven't seen #1 either.

Anyway, you might want to check them out if only to consider how different the two stories are. One is about a sinister presence that enslaves those around them and forces them to be subservient and to live in fear. And the other one is about Darkseid.

I've decided to declare this Barbershop Quartet (or Mob) Week here on newsfromme.com. Here's the Kentucky Vocal Union…

Donald Trump says the media is dishonest in their reporting on him. Matt Taibbi says the media has rolled over for Trump because he's good for business and it's making America stupider.

And speaking of stupid, a lot of people sure seem to think Barack Obama was the president who screwed up on Hurricane Katrina. I get the feeling that some of them, once informed of their error, don't care if their stated reasons are true of not.

Jonathan Chait says we should brace ourselves for an avalanche of lies, the main one being that the economy is in desperate need of lower taxes on really, really rich people.

Matt Yglesias on how all this talk of "simplifying" your taxes is smoke and mirrors. No matter what else they may say about their goals, the point of every Republican-backed tax plan or proposal is to lower taxes on really, really rich people. Ain't we got fun?

The last few days, I've been occupied by (a) planning for the June Foray Celebration Event, (b) finishing an actual writing assignment and (c) a lot of concern for the people in Houston and surrounding areas. I'm not thinking of anyone specific there. It's just a feeling of, "Oh, those poor people" — "poor" not in the monetary sense but in the sense of "that should not happen to human beings." I would imagine though that a lot of them who weren't already poor in the financial sense will be that way from now on.

No one can say with absolute certainty how much Global Warming may have contributed to the unprecedented strength of Hurricane Harvey but it sure looks likely, doesn't it? The saner folks who argue against doing what can be done to arrest climate change have arguments that it's not cost-efficient; that it will cost America too much cash (and cost businesses too much of their profits) to justify the expenses of fighting it. When the final bill for Harvey is tallied, I hope they'll reconsider the cost/benefit factor and also give some consideration to the human misery factor.

I fear though that the opposition to Doing Anything About It is largely driven by people incapable of admitting they were wrong and that people they hate like Al Gore were right. And that that's about as far as their thought process extends on this topic.

The Masters of Harmony with a weather report for Los Angeles. Not that I'm complaining…

I've been watching The Daily Show with Trevor Noah lately. You know, if Jon Stewart had never hosted this show, and if we didn't have Jon Oliver, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Bill Maher and Saturday Night Live mining the same veins, this would be a must-watch show.

Never forget that when Donald Trump treats Alex Jones like he's important, he's giving credibility to a guy who thinks the Sandy Hook Massacre didn't happen, the government is using juice boxes to make children gay, and Michelle Obama has a penis.

If God had wanted people to eat cole slaw, He wouldn't have made it the most repulsive, disgusting thing on the planet.

Why do people say they have a strong feeling in their guts? How do they know that isn't their pancreas? And how much weight would you give a thought that came from someone's pancreas?

Is there any fast food restaurant or manufacturer of frozen food that offers a breakfast item that doesn't have cheese on it?

A few years ago, Republicans were more outraged about Obama wearing a tan suit than Democrats are that Trump has all sorts of Russian ties that he repeatedly denied he had.

More to come.