Category Archives: To Be Filed

CNN and other sources are saying Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. That seems to me like a good choice although I didn't think the list of folks she was considering had any bad choices. He's certainly a fine contrast to the guy Trump chose to be his running mate. Trump can't even bring himself to say that JD Vance is qualified to be president on Day One if some tragedy occurs…but then, Trump lives in a world where Donald Trump is the only human being qualified to lead this country with the possible exception of Vladimir Putin.

Trump and his minions are trying really hard to make this election be about Kamala being unfit for the job but I don't think that's going to work with a lot of swing voters. Making her out as some sort of racial opportunist ain't gonna do it. The last few days, he almost seems to have given up on that, instead opting to claim she's stupid…and that certainly won't stick. Put the two of them on a debate stage and even Fox Moderators won't be able to make that work for him.

Donald won the presidency once by convincing just enough voters that Hillary Clinton was unfit. He seemed to be coming close to winning it again because just enough were feeling that way about Joe Biden. Now that's no longer in play, whereas Harris certainly has enough talking points to convince the swings that Trump is the one who's unfit. He can't make this election be about her but she can sure make it about him.

Before we totally leave the subject of Guys and Dolls: I mentioned that Abe Burrows wrote the book for the show and then I received a message from someone who writes me often but never signs his or her name. The message said, "Jo Swerling co-wrote Guys and Dolls and had a great career. Abe Burrows cooperated with HUAC and betrayed writers."

Yes, Burrows testified — twice, I believe — before the House Un-American Activities Committee. I wasn't commenting on him as a human being; just saying that he wrote the book for the show. If my correspondent was objecting to me not giving Swerling credit…okay, so noted. But when one of the producers of Guys and Dolls, Cy Feuer, penned his autobiography, he wrote — and I quote…

…we saw that Swerling was the wrong guy for us. It was basic. Irreconcilable differences. We finally had to fire him, although he insisted that he still receive first billing in the credits for the play and retain some small percentage of the royalties. This in spite of the fact that not one of his words ever appeared in the show.

That's from a book called I've Got the Show Right Here and in it, he says that when Swerling left the show, it didn't even have Nathan Detroit or Adelaide in it. So make of that what you will. I also think that, though he may have done a very bad thing by testifying, Abe Burrows had a pretty good career too.

If we're going to talk about Guys and Dolls and the blacklist, I should probably post the following video of Tom Pedi, a longtime actor who was in the original Broadway production in the role of Harry the Horse. I had the pleasure — and believe me, it was one — of dining a couple times with Tom not long before he died in 1996. He was the cousin of my friend Christine Pedi, who has been mentioned often on this blog. Here's a photo I took of Tom, Christine and my dear buddy Howard Morris at one of those dinners…

Tom was a genuine blacklisted actor as he states in this interview. The actor he mentions, B.S. Pully, was also in the original company of Guys and Dolls, having originated the role of Big Jule. When they made the movie, they hired a lot of actors who did the show on Broadway…and Pully was hired but Tom Pedi was replaced by Sheldon Leonard. Guess why. As you can see in this interview from late in Tom's life, he still had a lot of anger about the blacklist — justifiably…

Apparently, we find out tomorrow who Kamala's running mate will be. I don't have a preference just as long as it's not Donald Trump. Since I haven't heard anything, I guess I didn't make it through the vetting.

Kevin Drum explains — and I think he's spot-on — the working premise of Trump's attacks on the blackness of Kamala Harris. Well, it's that plus Trump's insistence on attacking the honesty and integrity of anyone who isn't on his side.

If you didn't catch John Oliver's show last night and you're thinking of voting for Robert Kennedy Jr., you might want to catch John Oliver's show before the week is out.

And now we have two more installments of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live. This is where it really starts to get interesting. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd decamp before the start of Season Five but producer Lorne Michaels really doesn't have a farm team. No one is "on deck" to assume the kind of spot that Belushi and Aykroyd had on the show so it's a rough season…

And then comes Season Six with an all-new cast, a new producer, mostly new writers and a lot of reviews about Saturday Night Dead…

The other night, the City of Centerville, Ohio and the Centerville Arts Commission presented "Hooray for Hollywood," a concert in Centerville Pops! series consisting of music and film clips from great movies. The program featured the Centerville Community Band, the Centerville Community Chorus, the Centerville Pops Strings, the Centerville Pops! Vocalists and students from the Ballare School of Dance performing "Hooray for Hollywood" followed by excerpts from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Batman: The Movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, some James Bond flicks and The Phantom of the Opera.

Naturally, it is the inclusion of my favorite film — It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — that interests me most. The conductor preceded this section of the program with some "trivia" about the film and managed to get an awful lot of it wrong, repeating a lot of things that my pals Paul Scrabo, Mike Schlesinger and I debunked on the commentary track of the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray. Oliver Hardy, for example, did not pass away just before the movie was to begin filming. Hardy died in August of 1957 and Mad World began shooting in April of 1962. Jack Benny was not driving a Model T Ford in the film. It was, I believe, a 1932 Cadillac. And so on.

But here is the entire program as it was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. If you'd like to just watch the segment on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, you can jump to the start of it with this link.

Wanna know where I think the election currently stands? Here's my answer — which is probably good until the polls close on November 5: It's gonna be up and down, up and down, up and down…with many moments which will, at least at first, feel like game-changers.

We've already had plenty of these. Trump getting shot at was one. Biden doing so poorly in the debate was one. Biden dropping out was a big one. Trump getting convicted of 34 felonies was one. The big Supreme Court ruling was one. There will be more. If Trump feels he's going down, he might generate a half-dozen of 'em. I think it's a roller coaster election and that may not stop on November Fifth. If Harris and Whoever win that day, Trump will probably start a campaign to try and get Vice-President Kamala Harris to not certify the election for President Kamala Harris.

I believe Trump will lose but we've got a long way to go before that happens.

If you want an answer less generic than mine, go read Josh Marshall. I think he has a very realistic assessment of where things stand at this moment.

I don't go to a lot of conventions but I seem to get someone mad at me every time I do. After the con, I get an angry e-mail from someone who says they brought a whole pile of comics for me to autograph and carried them around and couldn't find me. Once, the incensed message was from someone who'd hauled such a stack to a convention I never agreed to attend and which had not advertised my presence. I still don't understand that one.

I just got one of these messages from someone who couldn't find me at Comic-Con in San Diego and, again, I don't understand: They give you a Program Guide listing all the panels and what time they are and what room they're in…so the guy had fourteen notices of where I was. Even Groo could figure that one out. And because of my mobility problems, a Galapagos Tortoise could have caught up with me.

Instead, this fellow somehow spent his time at the con wandering around the exhibit hall I never entered, looking for a table I never sat behind. Every so often, you hear about someone who claims that reading comic books make you stupid and maybe, once in a rare while, they're right.

Skip this if you're sick of hearing about Guys and Dolls and especially about the 1992 revival with Nathan Lane, Faith Prince, Peter Gallagher and Josie de Guzman. I saw it with the original cast and enjoyed it a lot. (It ran for a little less than three years and for 1,143 performances. After Mr. Lane left the show, Nathan Detroit was played at various times by Adam Arkin, Jonathan Hadary, Jamie Farr and a couple of other gents. A friend of mine who saw Jamie Farr said he was pretty good.)

This is an hour and a half of press coverage, including opening night, and various talk show appearances. You'll see a lot of snippets of numbers in here…

Here are two more installments of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live. This series is obviously done in cooperation with — and perhaps on assignment from — Peacock or some entity that controls or markets the series but it's still very informative. Here's their overview of Season Three…

And here's Season Four…

Today's COVID test was negative so I'm going to stop testing until there's a reason to think I might have had a new exposure.  I made it through Comic-Con without infection and my sympathies go out to those who weren't as fortunate.  My left foot's a lot better, too.

I'm also pretty happy with the political news, as well.  I'm sure there will be moments between now and 11/5/2024 when I won't be but right this minute, things seem to be going in the right direction.  It's kinda fun seeing George Conway going on every single TV show and podcast to tell the world that Donald Trump is a a narcissistic sociopath. Before long, I expect to see him saying this on Sesame Street, House of the Dragon, The Price is Right and…well, just about everything except Presumed Innocent.

Gonna spend my Saturday writing but I have some posts "in inventory" which might turn up here later today.

Like a lot of films that spawn many imitations, the 1980 movie Fame doesn't seem quite as special a few decades after I first saw it. But I watched it again recently and still liked it a lot, especially this number performed by Irene Cara…

It is said that the financial empire that is Las Vegas was built on people who are bad at math. I sometimes think the same about McDonald's.

I don't like many fast food hamburgers but I enjoy theirs every so often. The pricing though can be puzzling…and I should explain here that all the prices I cite are what I presently see on the McDonald's app. They may change tomorrow or they may be showing you different pricing based on your geography.

I should also mention that I prefer my McDonald's burgers with no pickles and no cheese but that omitting these elements does not alter any prices. No matter what the size of the burger, they charge me forty cents if I ask for an extra slice of cheese but don't deduct a cent from my order if I have them leave the cheese off a burger that comes with cheese. Now then…

I can order a regular McDonald's hamburger for $2.79. That gives me a burger with ketchup, mustard and onions and one hamburger patty that weighs a tenth-of-a-pound, which I assume is the pre-cooked weight. The app will let me add a number of extra items for upcharges like bacon, mayo or shredded lettuce but it won't let me add another patty.

For that, I have to order the McDouble, which is the same thing but with two of those tenth-pound patties. That's $3.49 so the extra patty costs me seventy cents. That, as you'll see, is a bargain but this is the only time an extra patty will cost me seventy cents. If I want to add two or three more of those same patties, these will cost me $1.29 each. A McDouble with three patties would therefore run me $4.78.

Or for no good reason, I can spend eleven cents more and order the Triple Cheeseburger — the exact same thing with three patties — for $4.89. An additional patty on one of those is again $1.29. That's for the same-size patty that cost me seventy cents when I upgraded from the Hamburger to the McDouble.

Ah, but let's say I decide I don't want any of those translucent tenth-of-a-pound patties. Not for me! Feeling more carnivorous, I decide I want quarter-pound patties. Your basic McDonald's Quarter-Pounder which comes with one of them is $5.79. That's right: A McDonald's burger with .25 pounds of beef in it costs ninety cents more than a McDonald's burger with .3 pounds of beef in it.

If I decide to add another quarter-pound patty to my Quarter-Pounder, that's $2.49 more so that burger would be $8.28. Or I could save a buck twenty-nine — the same amount as one of those extra tenth-of-a-pound patties — and purchase a Double Quarter Pounder for $6.99. Both of those Quarter-Pounders are cheeseburgers but I would have them omit the cheese and, like I said, that doesn't lower any prices.

This is all very confounding. Do you ever get the feeling that this company is run by a clown?

Some of you are going to get hooked on this. Two gents named Jon Schneider and James Stephens have started a YouTube show called Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live — a history of that now-institutional late night program. Every week or so, they put up a new episode of roughly 10-15 minutes summarizing what transpired in one season: Who was in the cast? What were the memorable sketches? What were the firsts? That kind of thing.

The info seems solid and the clips are well-chosen. It's really a very well-done presentation. Here's the first episode covering, of course, Season One…

And here's their coverage of Season Two…

They're currently up to Season Seven and it gets especially interesting in Season Six when the original cast and most of the writers depart and NBC has to rebuild. I'm going to embed them all here, two a day until we catch up…but if you don't want to wait for me, you can find subsequent episodes on this page. I would suggest though going in order. It's a remarkable story about a remarkable show.

Another COVID test. Another negative result. I think I'm safe.

I need to keep reminding myself that five days at Comic-Con is not just five days at Comic-Con. There are also several days of prep and several of recovery. I'm almost unpacked. I'm almost back to my normal pace of work. I'm almost caught up on sleep. Here are some other things I oughta mention…

One of the "challenges" I gave the cartoonists this year at Quick Draw! was to draw something that would show us what the con would be like if it moved, as some have suggested, to Las Vegas. When I mentioned that possibility, just about everyone in Room 6BCF gave out with a pretty loud groan of disapproval. I think the folks who want to see Comic-Con move to Sin City are drastically underestimating how much most people would hate that.

Speaking of Room 6BCF at the convention: There's a guy on an Internet forum who for some reason seems to live to piss on everything everyone does. A lady posted that she loved the Cartoon Voices panel I moderated on Saturday in that hall and that the place was "packed." The pisser — who I don't think was even there — responded that it wasn't; that there were loads of empty seats. One of our panelists, superstar voice actor Neil Ross, took this photo from the stage just before we started. If this isn't packed, I don't want to be in a room that is…

And remind me: I still have to tell the story about what happened on that panel with Amber Jones, AKA "Amber the Fangirl." You may be able to spot her and her father in the second row in that photo. She's the one grinning and holding up two fingers.

While I'm at it: Some other "I love to complain" person — I think on Facebook — complained about the presentation of the Bill Finger Award at the Friday night award ceremony.  They were irate that when Athena Finger (granddaughter of Bill) and I presented, I didn't give Athena the opportunity to say anything.  There are two things wrong with this complaint, one being that I opted out of making the presentation this year because my injured foot didn't allow me to make it over to the hotel where the trophies were being handed out.

I prevailed on my friend (and a fellow Finger Award judge) Charlie Kochman to take my place and I handed him the speech I'd prepared which clearly indicated a place where Athena could have made whatever remarks she wanted to make if she wanted to make any remarks.  Before the presentation, Charlie asked her and she declined…and I just called her to verify that.  Some people just want to find things to criticize.

And there's nothing wrong with that if/when you know what you're talking about…but you don't have to be too eager.  I have a lot of e-mails here asking me to elaborate further and write about the controversy engendered by formal Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Roy Thomas claiming a co-creator credit for the character Wolverine.  I said what I had to say in a series of posts that began with this one and I had a civil exchange of e-mails with Roy about it that ended with us remaining friends but agreeing to disagree.

Let's find something we can all agree on, huh? I'll try this: "Simone Biles is awesome." Anyone want to fight over that?

Here are two more numbers from Guys and Dolls but neither is the one you're sick of. First is "The Oldest Established," which is sung near the top of the show by all the gamblers including Nathan Detroit, played here by Nathan Lane in the 1992 Broadway revival directed by Jerry Zaks. I saw this production and it was really good. In fact, years later I saw a touring company of it in Las Vegas with Frank Gorshin (!) as Nathan Detroit and Jack Jones (!!) as Sky Masterson and it was still really good, although Nathan Detroit kept lapsing into impressions.

In this video, you may also recognize the gent in the purple suit playing Benny Southstreet. That's J.K. Simmons.

Here's the thing about Guys and Dolls that some of you may not know. When the show was first being assembled in 1950, the first actor signed — before the script and songs were even completed — was Sam Levene as Nathan Detroit. Mr. Levene was then a huge star on Broadway and it was a major coup to get him…though they soon found there was one big problem: He couldn't sing. Quite a few musical numbers were written for his character and quite a few musical numbers were then either dropped or reassigned to other characters because Levene couldn't perform them.

They were still glad to have him because he was (reportedly) very funny in the role — so much so that when Levene finally left the show, Abe Burrows — who wrote the book — found it necessary to add some more jokes to Detroit's part to compensate. But Levene wound up with only one number in the show when it premiered — "Sue Me." For the other numbers he was in, like this one, he was given no solo lines and was ordered to mouth the words but not sing.

Over the years, people who could sing have played the part — Frank Sinatra in the movie, of course — and they're given a little more to vocalize. Here, Nathan Lane gets to sing a bit of "The Oldest Established." Sometimes, Mr. Detroit is added in inappropriately when they sing the title song. Sometimes, a stage production will include "Adelaide," a song written by composer Frank Loesser for the movie. But it can be a frustrating role for someone who can sing. I was told by a performer in that Las Vegas production that when Frank Gorshin was approached, he initially refused to sign unless Nathan Detroit was given the "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" number but signed anyway when the producers refused.

Here's our first number from that 1992 revival…

And now here from the recording session for the cast album, Nathan Lane sings "Sue Me" with Faith Price, who played Adelaide. And you'll see a little of Jerry Zaks, the director…