Category Archives: To Be Filed

Standing in line with a lot of people who look like Trump voters.  If I were a defendant today, I'd start plea-bargaining right now.

Off to do jury duty today. You may or may not hear from me during it depending on the wi-fi in the jury room and whether I have someone life's in my hands.

Here's a roomful of college students performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

• Donald Trump's visiting Mexico tomorrow. Is there any way to have that wall to keep undesirables out of the U.S. built overnight?

Jamelle Bouie on why Donald Trump — or anyone likely to be the nominee of the current Republican party — can't possibly connect with black voters. It has something to do with what Trump is accusing Hillary of: Treating them just like useful votes, not like real human beings who deserve their seats at the table.

Ed Kilgore says that some Republicans are already prepping the post-election spin if/when Trump loses: "We're really the majority party…as would have been obvious if we'd nominated a real candidate." Or something like that.

And you know who's helping Hillary prep for the debates? The guy who ghost-wrote Trump's The Art of the Deal, AKA the best book ever written other than The Bible.

Douglas McEwan, who I quoted here recently, posted this to Facebook and I'm sure he won't mind if I stick it up here, too…

We all love Gene Wilder, and we all loved Gilda Radner, but can we dial back the on "Gene and Gilda are reunited in Heaven" stuff please? First off, no, they're not. They're dead. Secondly, it's an awfully queasy cliché.

And thirdly and most-importantly, it's disrespectful to his widow Karen, who nursed him through his final illness, and to whom he was married far longer than he was to Gilda. She's alive and grieving, and should be shown respect, not shunted aside because we all want to feel that Gilda was the Love of His Life.

This is another whole bunch of people performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Yesterday was the birthday of Jack Kirby but it was also the birthday of Chase Craig, who was my editor when I wrote comic books for Western Publishing's Gold Key line in the early seventies. Jack was very important to my life and career but so was Chase. Jack hired me as kind of a trainee-assistant. Chase hired me as a professional and treated me no different from guys who'd been writing comics for him for 15 years. Any writer who has ever been in both roles will tell you there's a big, important difference there.

Any professional writer will also tell you about an important moment in his or her life. It was the moment that he or she said to themselves, "Hey…I just might be able to make a good, steady living doing this." I told the story in this post of how I got to that moment…thanks to Chase.

He edited most of the comics for Western that featured the Warner Brothers characters — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc. He edited all the comics with Disney properties except for the movie adaptations, and he edited the Walter Lantz comics (Woody Woodpecker, mainly) and the DePatie-Freleng titles (Pink Panther and The Inspector) and the Hanna-Barbera books.

As I soon learned, an important thing he brought to that job, along with wisdom and experience, was that the various licensors trusted him and largely left him alone. The one time I met Walter Lantz, I mentioned I'd written Woody Woodpecker comics for Chase Craig and Mr. Lantz went on-and-on about how wonderful Chase was and how he didn't even have to look at the books Chase edited. Not before publication, at least. He like the others knew his valuable property was in good hands.

Chase was also, as you may know, the main editor for Carl Barks when Carl was doing his legendary Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics for Western. First time I met Carl, he told me at some length about how lucky I was to be working with Chase.

I don't want this to be all about how great Chase was so I'll tell a story that I don't think has ever been in print anywhere.

Chase edited a few adventure-type comics — Tarzan and Korak, Son of Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter. The other editor in the office, Del Connell, edited a few others. Both worked out of the Los Angeles office of Western which, when I worked for them, was located in the office building on Hollywood Boulevard directly across from the Chinese Theater.

Most of the artists who drew for them were guys moonlighting from (or retired from) working for the animation studios in town — Disney, Hanna-Barbera, etc. As a result, Chase and Del had access to a lot of guys who could draw funny animal and cartoony comics but not a lot who could do adventure stuff. For internal company reasons, they were asked to come up with a few new books in the veins of adventure and/or mystery.

Finding a writer was no problem. A local writer named Don Glut had some ideas that Del and Chase both liked. But the few adventure artists they had — like Dan Spiegle and Paul Norris — were already booked to capacity. They had to find someone new…and it would help if the guy could not only draw the interiors of the comics but also do paintings for the covers. Western liked to have painted covers on its adventure titles and the guy who was doing most of them, George Wilson, was also pretty busy.

One day when all this was an issue, Chase and Del went to Farmers Market here in Los Angeles — then as now, a great, historic place to eat and/or shop. They dropped in for lunch and as they were walking in, they saw a gentleman sitting at a little easel, doing caricatures for cash. You've seen such folks in venues that attract a lot of tourists. This gent was Filipino and though his work was good, no one was lining up to pay him money to draw them.

He had samples of his other artwork on display and one of the pieces was a painting with a science-fiction theme. Chase noticed it and wondered if this could be their guy. Conversation was difficult because the artist did not speak English well but Del and Chase managed to find out that he had been a comic book artist in his native Philippines. He had recently come to Los Angeles and had no idea where to get the kind of work he did back home…so he'd answered an ad in the newspaper and hooked up with a promoter who placed caricaturists in promising locations. It wasn't working out. The artist's income hinged on people buying caricatures and they weren't…so he was in some serious financial distress.

Chase and Del asked him to bring samples of his comic book work up to their office. The man came in the next day, they liked what they saw and they put him to work. His name was Jesse Santos and among the comics he drew for Western were Don Glut's Dagar the Invincible and Doctor Spektor. Jesse also painted the covers for the books and readers were very happy, as was Jesse to be back doing the kind of work he loved and earning enough money to bring his family over from the Philippines to join him.

I didn't hear that story first from Chase. Jesse told it to me — sort of — but since his English hadn't gotten much better, I wasn't sure I understood it properly. So the next time I saw Chase, I asked him about it. He told me the tale but shrugged off any suggestion that he and Del had done something nice by rescuing a fine artist from menial, poorly-paying employment. He said, "We needed an artist. He was a good artist. We weren't doing him a favor. It was good for us."

Then he added — and I've never forgotten this — "My job is to hire the best people I can find. You don't deserve any special credit for just doing your job."

Maybe so. But Chase did so much good for my career, I have a hard time not thinking of him as having done me a favor. A big one.

Ken Levine has a great guest post from writer-producer Tom Straw, who knew Gene Wilder in a way that you envy.

Boy, I wish I had a personal Gene Wilder story. I met him only once for about two minutes and didn't even have time to tell him how absolutely marvelous he was in everything he did but especially in The Producers and Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and — oh, hell — everything he did. He was in some bad movies but he was never bad in anything.

I would have told him that. I might have told him that I've heard more than one actor and acting teacher suggest that actors who want to better themselves would do well to watch a movie with Gene Wilder in it and pay particular attention to him in a scene when someone else is speaking, someone else has the focus. He was always acting in those moments too, reacting or listening in perfect character and supporting the scene with his presence. A lot of good actors are good when they have something to do. Gene Wilder was good all the time.

And I'm not sure what else I would have told him. I heard him speak a few times and I remember he was asked, "When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?" He replied, "I wanted to be whatever Danny Kaye was" and I thought that was a great answer. I also thought he'd achieved it. If Danny Kaye had been younger and easier to work with, wouldn't they have cast him as Willy Wonka? He would have been great. But Gene Wilder was better.

The above photo is (of course) from The Andy Griffith Show, a series that has had one of the most stunning afterlives of anything that ever appeared on television. There probably isn't a moment any day in this country when some station somewhere isn't airing a rerun and though five of its eight seasons were in black-and-white, people are watching. The man in the picture is Don Knotts and the lady is Betty Lynn, who played his lady friend, Thelma Lou.

Betty Lynn now resides in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, a town which has patterned certain streets after Mayberry, the fictional city in which The Andy Griffith Show took place. For years, various Mt. Airy events and promotions would fly Betty in to be a guest and its citizens and tourists were thrilled to meet her. She finally decided to move there and now she spends a lot of time making personal appearances, posing for photos, signing autographs and telling people about that iconic TV series.

She's doing a lot of it today. Today is Betty's 90th birthday. I hear they have her booked for a full day of parties and honors and signings and personal appearances…and given the time difference, she'll probably have done about eight of them by the time I get this piece posted to my blog.

When she finally gets back to her home there, I hope someone has delivered the flowers I sent her. Yeah, other people are doubtlessly sending her gifts and flowers but they can't possibly love her as much as I love her. Here's a photo that may help explain why…

That's a photo of Betty that I took when I was around fourteen years old. I took it in my back yard and it's of her in her back yard. Betty was my neighbor when I was growing up.

You may have an "aunt" or "uncle" to whom you are not actually related but you feel like you are. Betty was like an aunt to me — a wonderful, sweet aunt who was always doing things for me. I always tried to be a good "nephew" and do things for her.

Our homes were not far from the Twentieth-Century Fox movie studio in West Los Amgeles. Fox had her under contract starting in 1947 and her first two movies, both released in 1948 were Sitting Pretty, which also starred Clifton Webb, Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young, and June Bride, featuring Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis. In 1950, her family bought that house and in 1953, the Evaniers moved into the home next door with their one-year-old son, me.

The Lynns were wonderful neighbors, always coming to our aid and vice-versa. One time back when I was in high school, another kid punched me in the mouth. I'm not sure why he did that…maybe because I had punched him in the mouth first. (He's still the only person I've ever struck in my 64 years.) Anyway, the school nurse helped stop my gums from bleeding and being over-cautious, she suggested that I go see my orthodontist and have him check the damage. My parents were both working so when I got home, I went next door and got Betty to drive me to Dr. Seltzer's office in Beverly Hills where he said everything was fine.

A day or two later, I got to return the favor. Betty had locked herself out of her house and I knew how to jimmy open a certain window, climb in and open the front door from the inside. She locked herself out at least a dozen times over the years. I got to be pretty good at breaking into her house.

One time, she and her mother went off on a trip to Europe and her mother somehow left a big pot of ox-tail soup cooking on the stove. Her mother was the sweetest woman who ever walked this world but she was sometimes a bit — shall we say? — forgetful.

A few days after their departure, my mother came running into my room in a panic and said, "I think the Lynns' house is on fire!" There was a thick, black smoke billowing out of all the windows near the kitchen that had been left open a crack. My mother called the Fire Department but by the time they got there, I had broken into the house, made my way through the smoke to the kitchen and turned off the soup. Most heroic thing I ever did in my life. I would have done anything for the Lynns.

I'll tell some other stories about my lovely ex-neighbor one of these days. Right now, I just want to wish her the Happiest of Nineties. She really is an amazing lady.

As an actress, she did lots of things besides playing Thelma Lou. She was in quite a few movies, including Meet Me in Las Vegas, which I wrote about here. She was in quite a few TV shows, including Texas John Slaughter, which I wrote about here. I'm glad they're celebrating her entire career today. You can read about the celebration and about her life in this article.

In it, you'll notice they say that her home in West L.A. was robbed twice, which helped prompt her move to North Carolina. Yes, I was good at breaking into that house but I have airtight alibis for both dates. Besides, I would never have done anything to harm this woman. She was…and still is so wonderful.

We — and by "we" of course, I mean "me" — would like to see Comic-Con International remain in San Diego forever and ever. It's the perfect town for an event like that and as I've explained in other messages here like this one, I think the con would be greatly harmed by relocation elsewhere. I've also said that I think it will remain there indefinitely as long as the city doesn't do something really, really stupid.

Something really, really stupid might be to pass Measure C on the November ballot in that town. Measure C would raise San Diego hotel taxes by more than $1 billion to build a new NFL stadium and convention center annex in downtown S.D. It would be the new home to the Chargers and would keep that team in San Diego for decades to come. It would also make a ton of money for the owners of the Chargers and would put the city on the hook for all sorts of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls. Has anyone ever built a stadium and convention center without cost overruns and revenue shortfalls?

Now in the interest of Full Disclosure, I should probably stop here and tell how I feel about football. I don't care about football. In fact, I can't think of too many things I care about less than football. I don't just mean I wouldn't care if my local team moved away. I wouldn't care if the whole sport ceased to exist. If you love it: Fine, great, whatever. Its extinction wouldn't bother me and I'd be happy if cities in this country no longer raised taxes and cut social services and schools in order to ram more tax money up the buttocks of zillionaire team owners, lest they take their lucrative franchises elsewhere.

It sounds to me like Measure C could cause San Diego to lose a fortune and maybe have to divert money that should be used for street repairs and other civic improvements. It also could be very bad for the continued future of Comic-Con in that burg. They might be able to find a way to carry on there but they also might not.

Not being a San Diego resident, I can't vote on Measure C but I'm sure someone reading this can. For more info, this website has been set up by opponents of the measure. And this article summarizes what the whole battle is about and will link you to a piece giving the Chargers' view of all this. It sounds to me like the Chargers' view is that they'll make acres of cash from this new stadium and that they feel about the well-being of San Diego the way I feel about football.

This is another bunch of men performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

There's a Red Skelton movie called A Southern Yankee in which he plays a spy who goes back and forth between being a soldier for the North and a soldier for the South. At one point, he has to walk the battlefield between the warring factions and he gets cheers from both armies because he's wearing a uniform that is half-and-half — a Yankee costume on one side, a Rebel costume on the other, plus he's carrying a flag that is North on one side, South on the other. So each army sees him as a patriot for their team. It's a great joke, one that is often attributed to Buster Keaton, who was employed as a gagman on this and other Skelton films.

And I keep thinking of it as I hear Donald Trump attempting to walk the line on Immigration, trying to convince one side he'll throw "criminal illegal immigrants" outta the U.S. within an hour of being sworn in as prez but also trying to convince folks who are against mass deportations that he is, as well. It didn't work for Skelton and it won't work for Trump.