Category Archives: To Be Filed

Stephen Hawking sings the Monty Python "Galaxy Song"…

Here are 136 photos from The Late Show with David Letterman over the years. There are many photos of Bill Murray, many photos of sports stars, many photos of people being flown on wires, many photos of people riding horses…but if there was a decent shot in there of Paul Shaffer or Alan Kalter, I missed 'em.

Our pal Steve Stoliar wrote a piece for the Hollywood Reporter about the Gary Owens Memorial.

Hannibal Tabu covered the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at WonderCon for Comic Book Resources.

Hey, did you know that Stan Freberg was once the voice of Mickey Mouse? Greg Ehrbar recalls that and some other great records where Stan was a hired hand — or rather, voice — rather than the creator-writer.

That's three links. Count 'em yourself if you don't believe me.

I got back from WonderCon a week ago last Sunday. Since the day after, I've been suffering from what my most excellent Orthopedist has now decided is a cervical strain of my left shoulder. WonderCon did not cause this, though I might have by not bringing along my contour pillow and therefore sleeping instead on a plain ol' hotel one. Or maybe, as my doctor says, it just happened then for no discernible reason — the accumulation of stresses and strains for many months and years.

That's why my knees keep reminding me I'm 63. As if getting eight ads a day from AARP doesn't do the trick.

The symptoms of my shoulder problem? Well, it's odd. I can go hours without feeling much of anything and then suddenly — again, for no discernible reason — it feels like someone plunged an 18 inch Tramontina Bush Machete into my shoulder. That is not a fun sensation. Here — I'll show you what one of them looks likes…

Ugly-looking thing, isn't it? I've been trying for more than a week to figure out what I'm doing that triggers the machete and it seems to be utterly random. It doesn't seem to happen when I'm lying down no matter what position I'm in so sleep is uninterrupted. I'm more apt to be stabbed when I'm standing up than when I'm sitting down but it always comes as a surprise…like phone calls from people selling solar paneling, a most unwelcome surprise.

Last Thursday, it was so bad that I called my doctor to make an appointment. He was away on business and the first opening was Monday at 3 PM. I took it. On Friday, the pains disappeared so, fool that I can be, I called up and canceled the appointment. Then on Saturday, the machete was back and the next day, it became excruciating.

Sunday Morning was fine but then about two-thirds of the way through the Gary Owens Memorial, I was called on to speak. I walked up to the podium, got one whole sentence into my speech and — Whammo! — down came the machete.

My first thought was not to yell or show pain. Not at Gary's memorial, not in front of all those people. Also, Joanne Worley had just spoken and I figured she was loud enough.

I managed to not yell but I thought my grimace and manner must have given away that something was seriously wrong. I looked out at the audience and the first face I noticed looking back at mine was Sergio Aragonés'. He was seated on the aisle about six rows back and he didn't look like he thought anything was wrong except that I'd lost my place in my speech and was fumbling to locate it. Okay, I thought. It didn't look as bad as I think it did. Just go on with it. So I went on with it.

Ordinarily when I give a talk of any importance, I write the whole thing out, then see how much I can not look at the paper. I try to tell it rather than read it, referring to the text only when I get lost. This time — shaken and still wincing in pain — I just read it almost verbatim. The pain subsided before I finished and stumbled back to my seat in the front row. I was able to sit there and watch the other speakers without much discomfort.

A reception and food followed the ceremony. About five minutes into it, the machete hit again worse than ever and I decided I'd better get out of there before I disrupted things. I left and drove myself to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. A gent there doing triage filled out the paperwork and told me to take a seat, cautioning me that there were many ahead of me with more severe ailments.

By now, the pain had pretty much evaporated. I decided to sit and occasionally stand for a while in the waiting room and just wait. If they saw me, fine. If I went an hour without another machete and without seeing a doctor, I might leave. After an hour of neither happening, I went back to the triage guy…

"I told you it might be a while," he said. "We just took in several people who were in a major auto accident in Beverly Hills."

I said, "My pains have gone away…not that I'm complaining. Be honest with me. What are the chances that in the next hour, I will be seen by someone who's ever been to medical school?"

He said, "About 50-50." Just then, the automated doors that led to the street opened and a frantic young man rushed in pushing an elderly, obviously ill woman in a wheelchair. It reminded me of one of the umpteen times I delivered my mother to a different emergency room. The triage guy said to me, "Your odds just went down."

I told him I was going home…which turned out to be a smart move. I had Aleve® at home and I doubt the hospital would have done a lot more than give me something like that. The rest of the day, I had no machete attacks. First thing Monday morning, I called my Orthopedist's office and I was in luck: That 3 PM slot was still open.

I had two full-blown machetes yesterday. One occurred at my doctor's office while a nurse was posing me for x-rays. (By the way: The camera loves me.)

The other was while I was waiting on line an hour later at a CVS Pharmacy, clutching a prescription he'd given me for a topical pain-killing creme. The doctor ordered that, hot compresses and physical therapy. He thinks I'll be fine. I think I'll be fine. I considered not mentioning it here but when you feel obligated to fill a blog every day, you pretty much use everything you've got.

Longtime comic book artist Herb Trimpe passed away Monday night. Herb worked on many comics and characters during his career but is best associated with two: He drew The Incredible Hulk for Marvel for seven years and in one issue, he first drew the hero Wolverine. He was also a staff artist at Marvel for many years and his handiwork impacted books all across the line where he designed or rendered covers, did art corrections and had much to do with the "look" of Marvel. He was also a very nice, much-liked man.

Herb was born in Peekskill, New York in 1939. A longtime comic fan, especially of the E.C. line and of artists Jack Davis and Wally Wood, Herb attended the School of Visual Arts. One of his instructors there, Tom Gill, often employed students to assist him on his comic book and strip work, and that's how Herb got into comics. Gill was drawing for Western Publishing and Herb helped out with inking and backgrounds. So did another S.V.A. student, a friend of Herb's named John Verpoorten.

Trimpe served in the Air Force from 1962 to 1966 and upon his discharge began looking for a way to get into comics on his own. Verpoorten had begun working for Marvel and he helped Herb secure a job there running the photostat machine in the office. It was a low-paying position that involved inhaling photo chemicals all day but it got him into the office and it was not long before he segued into part-time art jobs and then full-time. He had arrived just when Marvel was trying to double the size of its line and many more hands were needed.

Herb drew other characters besides Hulk and Wolverine. His work could be seen at different times on Iron Man, Captain America, Sgt. Fury, Ant-Man, Killraven, Machine Man, Godzilla, G.I. Joe, Shogun Warriors, The Transformers and many more.

He lost his staff position in the mid-nineties when financial problems forced Marvel to downsize for a time but he continued to freelance for them. As he got older though, his style fell into disfavor with the current editors. In the year 2000, he wrote this article for The New York Times about ageism in comics. It got him some work but mostly, he was teaching art then instead of creating it. He also became a frequent guest at comic book conventions where fans lined up to commission sketches from him, mostly (of course) of Hulk and/or Wolverine. Later on, after he had been ordained a deacon by the Episcopal Diocese of New York, he offered to perform marriage ceremonies at cons.

After the tragedies of 9/11, Herb spent eight months working at and around Ground Zero in New York as a chaplain, helping people to cope with the death and destruction. As noted here, he later authored a book about his experiences and observations. In 2002, Comic-Con International recognized his work in this area and presented him with the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.

I met Herb in the Marvel offices in 1970 and always enjoyed visiting with him, mostly at conventions. Occasionally when he stayed with friends in Los Angeles, we'd get together for an evening. He was a very interesting, friendly guy who cared about doing good work in comics and also cared about many, many things that had nothing do with comics or his own career. He seemed so vital and alive that it's a real shocker to hear of his passing at the age of 75. A real shocker, indeed.

Keith Bowden writes…

I'm hoping you might have a minute to address this in your blog. It's been observed that the poster, etc., credits have been revealed for the upcoming Warner Bros. feature Batman v Superman and though Wonder Woman is in the movie, William Moulton Marston is not credited alongside Bob Kane and Siegel & Shuster. Gal Gadot, the actress portraying her, appears in the credits. I'm sure Marston will be listed in the end credits crawl, but why isn't he in the main credits? What are the WGA rules on such things?

The Writers Guild has nothing to do with that. They only determine and have rules about credits for those who actually write on a movie or TV show. The "created by" credits on Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman (etc.) are all contractual matters between DC Comics and the parties credited.

Incidentally — because I've been asked about this — the Writers Guild determines screen credits based on actual written material. Every so often, I hear or read an interview with someone who had verbal input (they claim) into a movie or a TV show based on a comic book and they say, "I was promised a writing credit." No one can promise you a writing credit when multiple writers are involved because the WGA has final say on that. And Sam Shmidlap is not going to even be eligible for a writing credit unless the credit arbitrators can read a treatment or script that was committed to paper and which says "Written by Sam Shmidlap" on it. Beware of those who claim they wrote a movie or TV show but have no paper to show for it. (And of course, even paper may not prove they wrote enough of it to earn a credit.)

This is the Sesame Street parody of Game of Thrones. I'm not certain why Sesame Street does parodies of movies and TV shows that its target audience hasn't seen or shouldn't be seeing. But here you are…

Steven Howearth reports of the panel I did at WonderCon with Sergio Aragonés and Stan Sakai. Yes, we're working out the details of a big, complete hardcover reprinting of Groo and some other things we've done.

And this article lists what it says is the guest list for Dave's final shows. Leno is not listed and neither, oddly enough, are Bill Murray or Regis Philbin. [UPDATE, a few hours later: The official CBS press release does list Murray.]

Ah, we're nearing the end of David Letterman's long and amazing tenure on The Late Show. This article says what I've been hearing from folks closer to the situation: That Dave intends to wind down his time there without a lot of hoopla. A friend at CBS told me that the network would have liked the final weeks to be loaded with Big Stars, regardless of how close those people were to Dave and his show, but Dave is going to book his favorite guests and that while some may be Big Stars, that's not the criteria.

No word on if or when Jay Leno might be in the guest chair. A person I'll just describe as a decent source says that he assumes Dave desires some closure and healing with that feud so that's why Jay might be on. A reason he might not be on is that Jay is very busy since he left The Tonight Show with a new cable series and dozens of stand-up appearances and guest shots lined up. Dave, my friend says, might not like the contrast as he has nothing planned and can't seem to find anything that he wants to do now.

A lot of folks seem to be under the impression that Johnny Carson made a decision that once he retired, he would never appear on TV again except for the few brief cameos that he did. That wasn't it. When Johnny left his late night job, he had every intention of doing something else. He just didn't know what it would be…and never found anything that didn't feel like a giant step down. Johnny had been in the position to observe many one-time Superstars whose main source of fame atrophied and who were reduced to doing anything just to get in front of a camera.

He didn't want to be one of those people but he also didn't want to spend the rest of his life playing tennis. I sure get the feeling that's the problem for Dave: What do you do? Do you start all over at the bottom with some other kind of show? Do you risk devaluing your rep by doing something that might be a disaster? Personally, I'd love to see Letterman do a one-on-one interview show with the kind of guests he really likes…but I have no idea where that might go on what schedule.

In other news: Have I mentioned that I canceled my TiVo Season Pass for James Corden's show? As with Jimmy Fallon, I like the guy but I don't find his program interesting. I'll tune in when I see a guest I like but there doesn't seem to be one in the next week or two. I really want to have a late night program I look forward to and at the moment, the only one is The Daily Show…and that may or may not remain one with the next host. I'm counting on you, Stephen.

Here's an excerpt — unaired, I believe — from John Oliver's interview last week with Edward Snowden. In it, the discuss what's a safe password to use in the age of computers…

I don't know a lot about this topic but I do know that no matter what someone tells you would be a safe password, there's some other so-called expert who'll tell you that it would be a pushover for someone to crack. Snowden suggested "MargaretThatcheris110%SEXY." This fellow says that even leaving aside the fact that Snowden mentioned it on TV, that's not very secure at all. He says to assume that a would-be cracker would be capable of one trillion guesses a second.

I went to this site which evaluates how difficult a password is to guess and I entered Snowden's example. The site calculates that at one hundred trillion guesses per second, cracking that one could take 8.47 thousand trillion trillion centuries. If someone wants to wait that long to get into my GMail account, they're welcome to anything they can find in there.

What's interesting is that if Mr. Snowden merely added an easy-to-remember exclamation point to the end of this phrase, it becomes astronomically harder to guess. Instead of 8.47 thousand trillion trillion centuries, it would take 8.04 hundred thousand trillion trillion centuries. Two exclamation points make it 76.43 million trillion trillion centuries and five make it 65.53 trillion trillion trillion centuries. I'm sure someone will tell us that's not good enough.

Gary Owens left us in the middle of February. This afternoon, a tiny percentage of his friends attended a memorial gathering. As the emcee John Rappaport remarked, they couldn't have let all of Gary's friends in because the Coliseum was booked. I'm not sure even that place would have held them all.

It was a nice, intimate celebration. Gary's sons Scott and Chris spoke. His beloved wife Arleta spoke. And then came the friends and co-workers.

Some of us who spoke or were present wrote for Gary's radio show when we were starting out, then went on to careers in television and elsewhere. John Rappaport, who was one of Gary's closest friends, has had a very impressive career and he was a very impressive host, introducing — in this order — Monty Aidem, George Schlatter, Joanne Worley, Ben Fong-Torres, me, Fred Willard and Arnie Kogen.

You know Fred Willard and you probably know that George produced Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and that Joanne was a cast member. Ben Fong-Torres was a friend of Gary's for fifty years and he got a huge laugh with the opening line of his speech. He said, "Even though I work for Rolling Stone, what I'm going to tell you is true." The rest of us are comedy writers. Here's what I said, following a montage of Gary's work in animation…

You just saw a tiny sampling of the hundreds of cartoons in which Gary's familiar and friendly tones were heard. True, Mel Blanc probably did more but Mel cheated a little. Mel had nine hundred and ninety-nine more voices than Gary did. Gary got hired for his one great one.

Gary was heard on dozens of shows — and what's interesting is that not only did all those characters sound like Gary but a few of them even looked like him. There were commercials for Flintstones cereals directed by his friend Scott Shaw! here with Gary essentially playing himself. It looked just like him except that he was barefoot, wearing a mastodon skin and the hand over his ear only had four fingers.

Oh — and you know how in the Flintstones world, everyone's name has to have a rock pun in it? Well, the name didn't get into the commercials but on the model sheets, it said that he was Quarry Owens.

Now, in the midst of all this praise, I think someone ought to tell you something they didn't like about Gary. I didn't like how modest he was. It's just not right to be that good and that beloved and not be at least a little arrogant.

When Gary showed up for one of our breakfast gatherings or a Yarmy's Army meeting or a lunch, we'd all say things like, "Hey, Gary! What's wrong? I just heard someone doing a voiceover and it wasn't you." This is how you know you've really made it in this business: When the only thing your friends can find to ridicule you about is that you have way too much work.

And Gary would always say, "Well, I've been lucky." No. Nobody is that lucky. Nobody works all the time unless they're the absolute best at what they do. Okay, maybe Will Ferrell. But nobody else.

Here's why Gary worked so much. Those of us who cast and direct voices live in constant fear of something. It's when the person above us — the producer, the sponsor, the network, whoever it is — says, "Why did you hire that jerk?" No one ever got in trouble hiring Gary. Ever. He was the safest casting selection you could possibly make.

He was always on time. Actually, he was always early and he never complained about anything. If you asked him to read the copy fifty-seven times, he read it fifty-seven times even though he knew the first one was fine and you'd probably wind up using Take Three. He made it so easy for everyone on the other side of the glass. Here's how you directed Gary…

"Hi, Gary. Here's the copy. Use that microphone. All right, let's roll tape…"

[SHORT PAUSE]

"Great. Let's do one more for protection."

[SHORT PAUSE]

"Perfect. Thanks, Gary!"

The man was so good at voice over that he even became a direction that was given to other announcers and voice actors on those rare occasions when someone else got a job. More than once, I heard a director tell someone, "Do that line again and try to give it a little Gary Owens."

That meant, "Put a little more smile in the voice. We want to like the announcer more."

Still, as impressed as I was by Gary at a microphone, I think I was more impressed with Gary not at a microphone.

I met him in 1970. I recognized him in the old Collectors Bookshop up on Hollywood Boulevard and we stood there and talked about comic books for about an hour — until he had to hurry off to KMPC and talk to everyone else in Los Angeles. He was disarmingly polite and friendly and funny and this is not a brag on my part because he treated everyone that way. Everyone in this room. Everyone he met. Even people he probably didn't like or at least shouldn't have.

Working with him was always so educational. Not only could you learn about how to be funny…you could also learn a little something about being a truly good, decent human being.

Like most of us, I haven't really mastered it either but I think I know the secret. Be generous with your time. Treat everyone with respect. No matter how poorly you may feel at a given moment, give everyone a smile and a kind word…and whenever possible, make it a funny one.

In other words: As you go through life…as you meet people…always try to give it a little Gary Owens.

The best line of the afternoon was probably Arnie Kogen's. He itemized a list of favors that Gary had done for members of the Kogen household, many of whom are in the entertainment industry. Then he concluded, "I realized Gary's done more for my family than I have."

Well actually, Gary got the biggest laugh. The ceremony concluded with the playing of this famous clip from one of his eighty zillion radio broadcasts…

It was a great afternoon. But then, how could a bunch of people talking about Gary not be a great afternoon? Boy, do we miss that guy.

What's an eclipse? Why, that's God's way of telling us he doesn't approve of Barack Obama.

We've been having a lot of police chases in Los Angeles lately. The other day, a man who was reportedly armed with a gun carjacked a taxicab and led police on a two-hour pursuit until large, armored SWAT trucks came in, spun the cab out and then surrounded him. Along the way, crowds gathered on sidewalks to cheer him on and a few citizens even ran up and high-fived the guy during the low-speed portions of the chase.

We'll probably never find out what, if anything, was on the fellow's mind. Of all the vehicles out there to carjack, why would you pick a lime green taxicab? Even if you didn't know that most cabs today are equipped with the kind of G.P.S. that makes them easily trackable, why would you want a car you couldn't sell and which was easily identifiable? Also, this particular cab was a Prius. That's a good auto for driving to the Whole Foods Market but it's not the ideal vehicle for trying to outrun police cars.

I suppose the answer is that nothing rational was on his mind. Fleeing from the cops is not a particularly rational act. Your chances of getting away are darn close to zero. Your chances of having a collision that will kill or injure you are considerably better.

We always hear the reporters covering these chases saying, "He probably figures he has nothing to lose." But of course, he has his life to lose. And once these guys are caught and taken into custody, we rarely hear much about who they are and why they might have done it. How many of them really were "three strikes" criminals who figured that once caught, they were going to the slammer for the rest of their lives? How many really had "nothing to lose" by running?

I wonder about that and I wonder about two other things. They can't all be irrational or stoned. How many of them are running just because they know that if they can evade the cops for ten or fifteen minutes, helicopters will magically appear above? How many like the idea that they'll be on most of the TV channels in the city for a few glorious minutes or even an hour or two?

And in a related wondering: How many think these days, "Well, I'm going to prison no matter what I do. I stand a better chance of not being shot if I'm on live TV when the cops take me in"?

Looks like I'm not going to have time today to post more than this. Hey, don't look at me like that. I posted plenty of content last week.

A couple of folks online are disputing my claim that Stan Freberg had the longest career of anyone who ever did cartoon voices. They say June Foray has been doing it longer. That would be true if you believe the earliest credits for June that are listed in the Internet Movie Database but I do not and at least when I co-authored her autobiography, June didn't either. Both Stan and June did their last cartoon voice work last year — in 2014. Stan, we know, did his first in 1945 for cartoons that were released in 1946.

There is some dispute over what June's first cartoon was. Her first inarguable credit was in Cinderella, which was released in 1950. I don't know when she recorded her part but it probably wasn't before 1948. There are three or four earlier cartoons in which people think they've heard her but I don't think any of them are her. To get a second opinion, I played some of them for her and she said, "That's not me."

Of course, June is still with us so it's not impossible she could do further work that would best Freberg's record. If she doesn't, it might be a long time before anyone else could. I can't think of a single other person currently doing cartoon voices who did them in the forties or fifties. There are a few from the mid-sixties. Perhaps around the year 2036, one of them will match Stan's longevity.

I'll be back tomorrow.