Category Archives: To Be Filed

Republicans are charging that Hillary Clinton is running for Obama's third term. Jonathan Chait wonders what's wrong with that? So do I.

This whole argument about Hillary Clinton's health is pretty ridiculous, especially the parts where her foes are believing and spreading stories of what's "really" wrong with her that obviously did not come from anyone in a position to know. But as Eric Levitz points out, it's really a non-issue because no one who was going to vote for her or not vote for her is likely to change that vote even if she is gravely ill. (And of course, there's no actual evidence that she is.)

Dominoes. And I don't mean the bad pizza…

Bob Cesca reminds us that once upon a time, Republicans believed that if you opposed the Iraq War, you were a coward and a traitor and you didn't love America and if you sought public office, your opposition alone made you unfit to lead. Here's one of several money quotes from the article…

The party that engaged in a nationwide lynching of anyone and everyone who opposed the Iraq War, including, by the way, anti-war celebrity liberals like Bill Maher, Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks, has nominated Donald Trump. Apart from being an extreme dilettante and an unstable nuclear weapons fetishist, Trump has been vocal throughout his 15-month campaign that the Iraq War was "the worst decision ever made in the history of our country." That's a direct quote, by the way.

Heck, I can remember when the worst thing some Republicans could say about Bill Clinton or anyone who wanted your vote was that he was a Draft-Dodger who had never served his country.

Here's an interview with Penn Jillette about how he and his partner Teller work together. I find those guys kind of fascinating in the way they work…and how much they work. I don't mean how often people want to hire them. I mean the sheer volume of things they say yes to.

My pal Keith Scott is not only a top voice actor but probably the leading historian out there about those who preceded him in that profession. Here, he writes about Mel Blanc, specifically about Mel's many contracts over the years and how his fame and fortune rose. It has been widely believed that Mel's various deals with Warner Brothers precluded the other voice actors in those cartoons from getting credit — a belief spread by many of those other actors saying that was the case. Keith says it's not so.

Aidan Colvin is a 16-year-old boy with dyslexia, who has been writing to successful dyslexics for advice on how to cope with his condition. He got some sound advice from Jay Leno.

Here's a handy-dandy guide to Donald Trump scandals. In another year with another candidate, any one of these would lose him the support of many of those who now hail him as their savior.

Two film critics rate all of Woody Allen's movies from worst to best. This is one of those lists that you read just so you can go, "Are they insane? They think Interiors is better than Radio Days?" But it does remind us of something amazing; that Woody Allen has made 47 movies…and made them pretty much on his own terms and without pandering to any visible notion of what's commercial.

Two days before 9/11/01, George Carlin performed in Vegas, prepping and honing lines he'd perform on his forthcoming HBO special, which was tentatively called, I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die. Ian Crouch fills us in on what happened to that material when a lotta people did die.

Lastly for now: Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwanese-American scientist who in 1999 was indicted, first in the press and then in courtrooms for allegedly stealing secrets about the U.S. nuclear arsenal and passing them on to the People's Republic of China. He spent nine months in solitary confinement and had his life largely ruined by the accusations…but eventually everyone had to apologize to him and some paid him a lot of money, though he probably did not receive enough of either. Lowen Liu looks back on this injustice and how it impacted the way Chinese-Americans view the United States.

John Oliver has an interesting view of birds…

Claude Teacher writes…

I'm a long time reader (started following you when you started doing POV in the CBG), but first time caller. Here is my question for discussion: at what point in the 1970s is the end of the Silver Age?

I've been taking part in a Marvel Reading club where we have been going through Marvel year by year and recently went through the early seventies. A lot of comic book historians debate the point, citing events and trends. So I wonder, as someone who is familiar with a large number of the creators from that period, do you have any insight on the topic?

Yes. My insight is that there are no rules for this and anyone can set the years of the Golden Age or the Silver Age or any other age wherever they want to. In fact, you can just make up your own rules if you like. Personally, I say the Silver Age ended in 1970 and the event that ended it was that I got into the business that year. That's when a certain generation of quality ended.

And really, that's as good a marker as anything. For the end of the Silver Age, you can select the years that DC and Marvel had corporate takeovers, the year Kirby left Marvel for DC, the year Carmine Infantino took over and started a major revamp of DC, the year Marvel changed distributors and doubled the size of their line, the year they started beating DC, the year comic book prices went up to 15 cents, the year the standard size of comic book original artwork was reduced, the year Marvel launched the Conan the Barbarian comic, the year DC put out Green Lantern-Green Arrow, the year the San Diego Comic-Con started or several other events.

That gives you a range of about 1967-1971. I'd still opt for 1970, the year I got in. It's been all downhill since then.

We all have our stories on where we were the morning of 9/11/01 when we heard. I don't think I've ever told mine here but it was no more remarkable than yours and maybe less.

I had my phone ringer off and my voicemail poised to answer any calls while I slept. I woke up, staggered to the bathroom and then noticed the number of waiting calls on my answering machine. I think it was something like 14 and I instantly thought, "Something has happened." It could have been very good or very bad, but when I played back the first message, I knew instantly it was in the "very bad" category.

It was from my friend Tracy and she was near hysterics, crying and moaning about "those poor people in New York." But she didn't say what it was that had happened to those poor people in New York. I listened to other messages and got a snatch here and a snatch there of what it was, then I rushed into my office, turned the TV on to CNN and sat there for hours with, I'm sure, the "Springtime for Hitler" look on my face. I was sitting right where I'm sitting now to write this.

I think I started watching about 8:30 AM Pacific Time. That was 11:30 in New York. By that time, the twin towers of the World Trade Center had each been hit. Each had burned for a time. Each had finally collapsed. The Pentagon had been hit. All air travel in the United States had been halted. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had ordered evacuations and other emergency efforts. (Whatever happened to that fine, brave man of that morning?)

Most of the shockers were over by the time we West Coasters joined the trembling audience but we didn't know that. We were still wondering: What can happen next? Is there another plane somewhere? Is there more to this? When the unthinkable happens, you brace yourself for more unthinkable things.

I flashed back, as most of us of a certain age have to with moments of tragedy, to 11/22/63 and the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Immediately upon hearing, we were all desperate to know: What can happen next? Will someone now assassinate the Vice-President? Is there more to this?

On both days, what had already happened was horrifying enough. But part of the horror was that sense of suddenly being in another world where that kind of thing happened…and you had no idea if or when something else like it would follow. On both days, it took a while to accept that maybe we were back to where most things made some sort of sense.

I'm thinking about that today and also about what would happen if a tragedy of that magnitude occurred today. I think we'd still have that feeling of being lost and helpless for a time. I'd like to think we'd have at least some of that feeling of togetherness and of being one country indivisible, with partisan differences set aside. But I don't think it would last very long.

I think the President of the United States would be impeached, and for many people that would be a higher priority than tending to the dead bodies and living victims. Even if that President had snapped into action, rather than sit in a classroom and read to children…even if that President hadn't ignored certain warning signs, I think we'd immediately have hearings like the ones on Benghazi, only bigger and more of them with real, not manufactured outrage. Four Americans died in the Benghazi attack. When Americans and others were killed by attacks on U.S. eembassies during the administration of George W. Bush, no one cared. No hearings were held. No one was blamed.

I'm not saying that was right or wrong; just that that's how it was.

3000 Americans died in the 9/11 attack and perhaps another thousand have died indirectly because of that day. So instead of seven investigations like we've had over Benghazi, we'd have 7,000 over an attack the size of 9/11…and yes, I know the math is ridiculous. I'm just trying to suggest scale here. Another tragedy the size of 9/11 or even a tenth the size would be a lot worse than Benghazi, right?

I don't think 9/11 brought our country to our current level of partisanship. We were well on our way to it back when they impeached Bill Clinton.

So now we have the situation where no matter who gets elected in November, 40-49% of the country will be livid and will be hating our new president and predicting the imminent destruction of the United States of America. Some will even in a way be hoping for it so they can say "See?" to those who voted "the wrong way."

So as I sit there — in the same place where I stared aghast at the morning of 9/11, sitting in the chair I bought to replace the one I was sitting in on that day — I don't think I'm scared of another tragedy of that size and scope. Of these days, there will be one, just as there will be hurricanes and earthquakes and massive fires and plane crashes…and I just accept that as the downside of being alive. The upsides are good enough that I can live with those possibilities. We've had them before and we survive them or we don't.

What does scare me are the unprecedented disasters, the ones that don't follow any history, the kind that leave us desperate to know, "What will they do to us next?"

And then, because of the way this country has changed in the last few decades, I'm really scared of what we'll then do to each other.

Much to write, much to do so I'm taking the day off from blogging…I hope. Seems like every time I do this, I have to scurry back here and post an obit. Let me see if I can get through all of today without that happening.

In the meantime, here's Adam Davidson debunking Donald Trump's claims about unemployment in the U.S. and Josh Marshall explaining why Hillary Clinton must not back down from her statement that a lot of Trump's supporters are "deplorables"…except that as you'll see in the update, she then did, partially.

Jersey Boys, which opened on Broadway November 6, 2005, will close there on January 15. When it does, it will have played 4,642 performances. It's already the twelfth-longest-running show in Broadway history — a distinction it will probably retain for a long, long time.

The Book of Mormon would assume that position on the chart if it runs for another 295 weeks, which does not strike me as likely. The next contender would be Kinky Boots, which would have to stick around for another eight years…also not likely. The longest-running show, of course, is The Phantom of the Opera, which will not lose its top status in our lifetimes or maybe Elroy Jetson's.

We'll take a look back at the long-running hit that is Jersey Boys in a moment but first, these headlines from the Great White Way…

The current production of Fiddler on the Roof has announced the cancellation of its October 11 performance. Why? Because someone suddenly noticed that was the eve of Yom Kippur. Not a good night for Jews to be working. I want to know why they just now figured this out.

This production of Fiddler closes December 31 and appears to be going into the books as a money-loser. Broadway vets will surely debate why and I'm guessing two reasons will be suggested. One will be that its Tevye, Danny Burstein — though widely hailed in the role — wasn't a big enough star. I doubt that's the reason but someone will say it would have done better with Martin Short or Kerry Washington in the role.

The other reason is the one I favor: That it was simply too soon for yet another revival of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. This one opened only nine years after the last one closed. The last Broadway revival of Gypsy — the one with Patti LuPone — probably had the same problem, opening as it did less than four years after the revival there with Bernadette Peters.

There is still apparently talk of another revival of Gypsy in New York next year — an import of the stunning London production starring Imelda Staunton. If you haven't seen the video of this yet, lemme tell you: It's really, really good. It will be aired in this country on PBS on November 11.

And now, this…

Kevin Drum explains why there isn't and never has been any real scandal in Hillary Clinton's e-mail handling or in the activities of the Clinton Foundation. This is how I feel, too…and I'd throw in Benghazi and certainly this whole ginned-up attempt to convince people they shouldn't vote for her because she's secretly very, very ill.

The first three have been investigated and scrutinized and in some cases, she's even been cleared by Republicans who were repeatedly investigating, hoping to find a smoking gun on their fifth or sixth inquiry. Then on the health front, you have guys like Rudy Giuliani running around, screaming (actually screaming) that she's really on death's door but when pressed, Giuliani had to admit he has no evidence.

It would be one thing if the opposition to her was built on an actual fear or criticism of what she'd do as president. I'm not comfy with some points about her seeming fondness for military intervention and maybe a few other things. But it's like her opponents made one or both of two decisions: That they couldn't beat her on policy and/or that the American people were too dumb to understand that stuff.

No one who's tried to lecture me about the e-mail thing or Benghazi or the Clinton Foundation has convinced me that there's anything there…or even that they would be outraged if the exact same thing was done by their side. And some of these things have been. Colin Powell did much the same thing with his e-mail as Secretary of State and no Republican cares that much. There were deaths aplenty at American embassies during the George W. Bush years and no one cared then or now. The Trump Foundation had all sorts of questionable conflicts along with the added negative of not having done much good for anyone but Trump.

No one cares. If you want to convince me Hillary did something that disqualifies her for the office, at least try to act like it would bother you if your guy did it…and he probably did.

• I'm giving up Meatball Hot Pockets. They changed the recipe for the bread, reduced the amount of cheese and removed the headphone jack.

We're coming up on another anniversary of the 9/11 attack. I just spent some chilling moments reading an article from 2002 I hadn't seen before: The account of Michael Wright — who was working on the eighty-first floor of the World Trade Center when a plane hit it that day — and how he survived.

And here's a debunking of some of the conspiracy theories about that day. It has been my experience that people who want to believe in conspiracies (or in the evil of certain politicians they are inclined to hate) will believe no facts that get in the way of what they sense in their souls. If they think Martians killed John F. Kennedy, then any evidence that proves otherwise is simply fake evidence…and since there's fake evidence, that's further proof of the Martians.

Here's a short essay on lettering in comic books. The gent who did it knows a lot about his subject but no one seems to have told him that nobody in the business ever refers to the shape around the words as a "bubble." It's a "balloon." The word "bubble" refers to the bubble shapes that serve as a pointer on a scalloped-edge thought balloon (one that tells us what someone is thinking rather than what they say). Other than that, good video…

Jerry Lewis is giving interviews again, in this case to promote his new movie, Max Rose. I find Jerry Lewis interviews fascinating, not necessarily in a good way. He loves being interviewed and most of his public appearances these days are all or almost all Q-and-A with the audience. About half the Qs seem to be audience members who are thrilled at the opportunity to tell Jer how much they love him and to ask nothing of substance.

The rest go like his press interviews do, which is that he's asked for his viewpoint or about some historical point and he bristles if the question touches upon one of his many, many sore points…and then his A is either hostile or incomplete, or he just plain talks about something else altogether. I heard that his appearance last week at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica was pretty coherent and friendly but the times I've seen him, he seemed guarded and afraid…and sometimes angry if someone asked him to talk about something he didn't want to talk about. And yet he professes to love the Q-and-A format.

Naturally, we are interested in the fate of the Nutty Professor musical. Jerry used to keep announcing it was all set to open on such-and-such a date or at such-and-such a theater when clearly no such arrangements had been made. It did play a limited engagement in Nashville to fair-to-good response, Jerry announced it was definitely going to Broadway by a certain date…and then it disappeared. In this interview, we get this…

There had been discussions of Lewis' The Nutty Professor heading to Broadway in musical form. Under Lewis' direction, the musical version premiered at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in 2012, and Lewis said the musical had a "bright future" in 2014.

But during his latest interview, Lewis said the classic 1963 comedy, redone by Eddie Murphy in 1996 (with a Murphy sequel in 2000), should be left alone.

"It's too important to leave it just like it is and not take advantage of it," says Lewis. "You don't steal from yourself, at least you try not to. But it's a constant problem, because it was perfect. You want to see how you can revamp it to make it work again. But that doesn't work. Kiss it goodbye and get on with the new stuff."

What the heck does that mean? When he says "it was perfect," does he mean the original movie or the musical? Which one does "you can revamp it" refer to? Beats me but since he doesn't say otherwise, I guess there are no plans to do the musical anywhere again.

Then in this interview, we get this…

It was reported in 2015 that Lewis' archives were going to the Library of Congress and that The Day the Clown Cried may at last be available for public view in 10 years' time. Lewis has other thoughts on the matter.

"Never," he said as to whether the film would finally be shown publicly. "After I'm dead 30 years you won't see it. I've got it worked out so there's nothing to show."

Anyone want to hazard a guess what that means? I mean, apart from the obvious fact that Jerry likes to keep his interviewers off-balance with cryptic answers? No wonder he loves Trump.