Category Archives: Uncategorized

If you have a lot of time to spare and an urge to be a British spy, go read this.

Nice obituary in the New York Times. It contains the shocking revelation that Sues was gay.

Take a look at these clever alterations that Kerry Callen made on four old comic book covers. Great work.

Had dinner the other night at a Five Guys — a little hamburger with raw onions, ketchup and nothing else. I had a bottle of water with it and ate about a third of an order of french fries made from potatoes from Stevco Farms in Sugar City, ID. A "regular" order of fries at Five Guys is about enough to feed a minyan but I've figured out how to keep it manageable for one. I don't like potato skins on fries…or on anything. I seem to have trouble digesting them. So at Five Guys, I just eat the fries that come from the centers of the potatoes and therefore have no trace of skin on them. It whittles the order down by about 66%. If you like skin on your fries, meet me at a Five Guys some time and you can have my rejects.

For some reason, it annoys the heck out of some people that I occasionally mention Five Guys here. Apparently, this blog is so compelling that you absolutely have to read every item here and can't just skip down to the next one if I write about something that doesn't interest you or if, like one person who felt he had to write and tell me this, you never liked Laurel and Hardy.

The reason I write of Five Guys is that I'm amazed it's becoming darn near the only "fast food" chain I patronize. I have changed…not for reasons of health, though that would be a fine reason in and of itself. But I find I just don't like most of those places anymore. In most cases, I assume it's me but I do think, for example, that something has changed about In-N-Out in the last few years. Their burgers used to be wonderful but now they taste very ordinary to me to the point where I am no longer tempted.

I was never particularly tempted by Burger King or Carls Jr. Those were places you ate when you were stuck in an airport and it was either one of them or going hungry. At times, I'd opt for hungry. McDonald's is okay. KFC, I've given up on. Remember how great it was about three corporate owners ago? Today's product is nothing like that…and nothing like food. The last time I said that here, I received the following from a gentleman who works in this industry but who asked that I mention neither his name or his employer…

The reason for the decline in fast food quality is very simple. Management, and this seems to go for every chain these days, is obsessed with keeping labor costs at an absolute minimum. There are whole departments that study employment laws and minimum wage laws and figure out loopholes and tricks to pay as little as possible. This has forced the food preparation division to continually figure ways to make the process so idiot-proof that absolutely anyone with a pulse can be hired at 1 PM and be making your burgers or chicken by 1:30. There is no learning curve because there's not enough to learn.

Most of the training they receive in fact is not even about food prep but about procedures and decorum. For food prep, they're taught to take this and put it there and push this button. More and more of it comes to the outlet precooked or partially cooked. In the glory days of Kentucky Fried Chicken you write about, there had to be at least one employee of the store who learned how to cook the chicken and make some judgment calls about when something was done or done properly. Unfortunately, that person might ask for more money or for days off so they had to change the process to eliminate him or her.

The secret of great food in a great restaurant is a great chef. The secret of profitable food in a fast food joint is no chef.

I suspect that's some of the problem right there…but I also think my tastes are changing, especially since I cut my sugar consumption back to a trickle.

Lastly I should add that there's one other fast food chain that I kinda like — Chick-Fil-A. Unfortunately, the more I hear about the owners' anti-gay sentiments, the more I think I'd feel bad about giving them my patronage. I like their sandwiches but not that much…

That's Michael, not Sarah. Michael Palin of Monty Python fame has been reading excerpts from his diary on BBC Radio. Whoops! — I just fixed a typo where I said he'd been reading excerpts from his dairy. Well, that would be entertaining, too. Anyway, you can go listen to several of them at this link…but hurry. They're only online for a limited time.

The Authors Coalition of America is an organization that collects and then distributes royalty payments from other countries for American authors and creators. In some cases, they collect money for someone and then don't know where to send it. Here's the latest list of folks they're looking for and it includes a number of cartoonists and comic book folks.

I have already alerted Sergio Aragonés that he's on there. In fact, most of the living comic book people seem to have heard about it…but there are a number of deceased writers and artists there like Gil Kane, Wally Wood and Reed Crandall. If you are in touch with the heirs or estates of such people, let 'em know they have money to claim. It may not be much but it is money. And don't thank me for this. Kurt Busiek told me about it and suggested I let the world know…or as much of the world as reads my weblog.

Every so often, I stick something up here because it's a piece of history (albeit the sort of trivial history usually covered in this blog) and I want to get it on the 'net so it's at least out there. I'm going to tell you about a cartoon special from the past, not because it's important but because I may be the only person alive who remembers it. Matter of fact, I even forgot all about it for a while…and I wrote it.

In 1979, the Ruby-Spears animation studio produced a two-hour weekly series called The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Hour. That's not the show no one remembers but I have to tell you a little about that endeavor before I get to the "lost" program. The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Hour was originally supposed to be a half-hour of just Plastic Man and I wrote several episodes when it was going to be just that. Then ABC decided to add in those other elements and expand the series before it debuted. There would be new segments of Fangface, a Ruby-Spears show that had been produced for the previous season, plus there would be additional Plastic Man segments and half-hours of two new properties — Mighty Mann & Yukk and Rickety Rocket.

It was an impossible workload for what was then a new, small studio and everyone was working overtime-plus. Not only were airdates looming (the first episode would be broadcast Saturday, September 22) but there was a decent-sized chance that the Animation Union would go out on strike on August 7. Not wanting to chance that a labor action would disrupt delivery dates, Joe Ruby (co-head of the studio) called me in and said, "If we have to, we can get scripts storyboarded and designed outside the union's jurisdiction but we have to get the scripts done before the strike. Can you write six episodes of Rickety Rocket in three weeks?" Usually, we had two weeks to write one script.

I was young and foolish in those days. I'm still foolish but not foolish enough to say yes to a question like that now…but I was then. I wrote six half-hour scripts in three weeks along with other assignments I had at the time, including a variety show for Sid and Marty Krofft. On August 7, not having slept the night before, I drove the sixth of these scripts out to the Ruby-Spears Studio, all the time hoping the strike was not happening…or at least not happening yet. I had enormous quarrels with that union at the time, some of which ended up before the National Labor Relations Board…but I was not going to cross any picket line. Fortunately, there was none outside the building when I got there at 1:45. What I did find was Mo Gollub — a fine gentleman and artist, as well as the president of the union — outside, pulling picket signs out of the trunk of his car. I asked, "Is the studio on strike?"

He said, "Not yet. We're going out at two."

I said, "Any reason I can't hand in a script now?"

He said, "None whatsoever." So I ran inside, delivered the last Rickety Rocket script and then came out and helped Mo finish unloading the picket signs. By 2:05, I was carrying one.

The strike only lasted about a week. The day after it ended, Joe Ruby called me in again. ABC, he told me, had just (like, that morning) decided they wanted a prime-time episode of Plastic Man that would air Sunday evening, September 16…a week before the new season started. It would include plugs for all the shows on ABC Saturday morning that year…and there might even have to be a plug or two for something in the ABC prime-time lineup. We had about a month to get the thing written, recorded, designed, animated and edited…which is not by any stretch of the imagination humanly possible. But we were going to do it anyway.

Joe said, "We'll need a finished script by tomorrow. ABC realizes that every day is critical if we're going to make our air date so they're going to waive the outline stage. You and I can just talk out an idea and if we agree on a plot, you can go right to script. Let's take a look at that list of Plastic Man premises you came up with before we started production on that series." He had it out on his desk. Several — proposals we'd done — were crossed-out on it. The best one that wasn't crossed-out said something like, "An evil villain with a head shaped like a candle is committing crimes to lure Plastic Man into his wax museum where he wants to immobilize our hero in wax and put him on permanent display." Joe picked that one, then called in Jerry Eisenberg, who was the show's producer and also the best (and fastest) designer of characters in the building. He told Jerry to start on sketches of the villain. Jerry asked, "What's his name?"

I thought for ten seconds and said, "Mr. Wicks."

Jerry wrote down "Mr. Wicks" on a pad and said, "What's he like?"

I said, "I don't know except that he's nasty and he has a head shaped like a candle…maybe skin that looks like candle drippings and hair on the top that looks like a wick." In under a minute (I told you he was fast) Jerry did a drawing that was perfect…and very much like what the character would look like when it got on the screen. So we had the character designed. One step down, eight thousand to go…and not enough time to do most of them.

Joe spotted Alan Dinehart in the hall and called him in. Alan cast the voices and directed the recording of them and Joe told him to book the necessary actors for a Thursday session. There would be, he explained, a new villain named Mr. Wicks to cast. Alan asked what he sounded like. Good question.

I had just seen Hans Conried in something and had been thinking how terrific he was…so I told them to try and book Hans Conried. Then I called my agent and told him to talk to the Ruby-Spears business department and settle on my fee and I went out and got in my car and drove home. By the time I was at my typewriter — yes, typewriter — the deal had been made. I cancelled plans for that evening and went to work. There was one thing that made it easier. Usually, a half-hour prime-time animated show would feature about 22 minutes of animation. Since this show would feature a number of plugs and clips to promote other show, the animated parts of "Louse of Wax" (as I titled it) only had to run about 16 minutes.

The next day around 4 PM, I brought the script in…finished, I hoped. Joe needed to get it over to the network before everyone left for the day and didn't think he had time to read it. He looked me square in the eye and said, "Is it okay to send it over? You didn't put anything weird in it, did you?" I swore to him there was nothing weird in it, though I silently wished there had been. He gave the order to have the script copied "as is" and messengered over to ABC.

Alan Dinehart walked in and said that Hans Conried was out of town. "He'll be back Monday but I don't think we can wait until Monday." I'd written it with Hans in mind so I suggested we book Walker Edmiston and have him do one of his many voices that was like Conried's but not so close as to infringe on that actor's proprietary rights.

The network had minor notes, I made the changes the next day and on Thursday, it was recorded…with Walker Edmiston playing Mr. Wicks. Then the artists went to work. I have no idea how they did it but the Sunday night before the new schedule debuted, Plastic Man and the ABC Saturday Morning Sneak Peek aired on ABC. We had two sequences in which Plastic Man talked to a large monitor on his plane and on the screen in live-action was Michael Young, a gent who was then the host of ABC's popular Sunday morning series, Kids Are People Too. In one, he introduced clips from all the new ABC Saturday morning shows. In the other, he chatted with an actor named Jimmy Brogan who was starring in (and there to plug) a new ABC prime-time sitcom called Out of the Blue.

The half-hour passed quickly. All the shows that had to be promoted were promoted…and Plastic Man saved the day and foiled the insidious Mr. Wicks. The following Saturday morning, production delays caused the two-hour Plastic Man show to have to debut in a for-one-week-only 90-minute version so they filled the gap by rerunning the preview special there…and then it disappeared. And by that I mean no one has ever mentioned it to me again, ever. Not once. I later became friends with Jimmy Brogan and I told him I'd written the parts he wasn't in and that I actually had a copy of the show on tape. He had no idea what I was talking about. He barely remembered Out of the Blue.

It has never been rerun and when they put out the Complete Plastic Man DVD, it was not included. Why? Because no one there knew about it and when I was interviewed for the DVD, I plumb forgot to tell them about it. At times, I feel like I'm in an episode of Outer Limits where Martians invaded the Earth, then wiped out the memories of everyone on the planet so they wouldn't recall the invasion…but they missed one guy who remembers. I am that guy.

But I have proof it existed. I not only found that horribly-drawn TV Guide ad above but I actually have a video of the special which I taped off the air. It went onto a 3/4" videocassette (the old pre-Betamax professional format) and I've transferred it to DVD. The two frame-grabs here came from it. It would not surprise me if this was the only copy of the show in existence.

It's not something in which I take a lot of pride…except maybe that I got my end of it done as was required. So it doesn't break my heart that it wasn't on the DVD set and that no one recalls it. In later years, I wrote (and sometimes produced) several of those Saturday Morning preview specials for other networks. I had previously done the 1978 one for NBC. Later, I did the one for ABC in 1983 and the ones for CBS in 1984 and 1985…and I think I did one other. The Plastic Man one was the only one that was animated but they were all done at the last minute. Some day here, I'll tell you about some of the others.

I embed video links here. If the wrong one appears in the little window, it probably does not mean I embedded the wrong one. It means you need to refresh your browser and maybe close it down completely and open it again. Sorry about this. The Internet hasn't been quite as healthy since Steve Jobs died.

A teenage girl in Kansas sent a Tweet that said Governor Sam Brownback sucked. Governor Brownback responded to that insult by sucking even more.

Barney Frank retiring from Congress? Someone give that man a time slot on MSNBC or CurrenTV.

Here are two pieces you might enjoy by our pal James H. Burns. This one is about the odd Thanksgiving tradition of watching the movie, King Kong. And this one is about a fellow named Chris Steinbrunner who was responsible for that tradition and for a lot of other things that film and s-f fans should be grateful for. I never knew Chris but we kinda/almost crossed paths a few times and I only heard good things about him.

If you're buying the new Stephen Sondheim book, Look, I Made a Hat (that's an Amazon link), you don't need an excerpt. But if you aren't, you might like to read this excerpt about critics and awards.

I am always recommending Stu's Show to you folks here. It's a weekly Internet radio program hosted by my chum Stu Shostak and on it each week, he spends two hours (sometimes, more) chatting with folks of varying importance in the world of television. Sometimes, he's working the high end with Ed Asner and Rose Marie and June Foray and other names you've heard of. Sometimes, he has me on. No matter who it is, it manages to be very interesting and a lot of fun, and I enjoy listening to his podcasts while I sit here and work.

As I tell you ad nauseam, you can hear Stu's Show two ways. You can listen live on Wednesdays for free…and this coming Wednesday, his guest will be Peter Ford, son of actor Glenn Ford. Or you can download any show (he's done 254 of them) for a measly 99 cents and listen to it over and over at your leisure. I think this is a great deal but it's gotten even better. From now through the end of 2011, you can pay for three shows and get a fourth for free! Go to the archives at at the Stu's Show website, put four shows in your shopping cart and the software will charge you for three. Or put in eight and get charged for six. Or put in…well, you can probably do the math on this one.

If I may, I'd like to recommend a couple. Stu's interview with Shelley Berman in 2008 (Program #90) was outstanding and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in comedy (especially stand-up or improv) or just the life of a performer. His chat with Stan and Hunter Freberg in 2010 (Program #169) was great despite the presence of an annoying co-host. His conversation with Lana Wood in 2010 (Program #158) was not only interesting but is now timely as Lana discussed her suspicions about the death of her sister, Natalie Wood. Go browse there and you'll find chats with Pat Harrington and Joe Alaskey and Kaye Ballard and Monty Hall and hundreds of others…even the star of today's video link here, Pamelyn Ferdin. This is a great time to buy shows, especially in multiples of four. Go for it.

Just got an e-mail from Kermit. He says no. I think he's been with Disney too long.

I really like the Muppets but I have the feeling I'm being frog-marched in to see this film.

Dear Kermit —

If I promise to go see your movie soon, could I read about something else on the Internet?

Your friend,
Mark