My good friend and occasional collaborator Steve Rude was arrested last night in connection with an ongoing dispute he'd been having with some neighbors. I do not know any more about the incident than that but I do know that Steve is one of the finest artistic talents in and around the comic book community these days. I also know that in my dealings with him over many years, he has always been a man of great honesty and heart. And I further know that he has had money problems since a decision he made a few years ago. Put simply, Steve decided to not take the job offer that paid best and to instead work on projects he cared about and just kinda hope that they yielded sufficient cash to live on.
So far, they haven't so this morning, his website announced a sale to raise money for bail and legal fees. I would hope he's made bail by now but even if he has, there will be legal fees to pay. This means you have one of those great opportunities to simultaneously help out a deserving guy and get yourself a great bargain. Go to his website and buy something. In fact, while you're there, buy several somethings.
Sometime back, I told you how happy I was with my virus checker program thingie, AVG. I would like to update that remark by telling you I recently got rid of it.
I had a problem with it. I called their Tech Support folks and they suggested I upgrade from plain ol' AVG Anti-Virus to AVG Internet Security. I spent the loot, upgraded and the problem went away. When it came time to renew AVG Internet Security, I paid for the renewal. When the program updated itself soon after, it suddenly had all sorts of new features, including turning off Windows Firewall (which had never failed me and which generally receives higher marks from reviewers) and replacing it with AVG Firewall. The many aspects of AVG Internet Security began slowing my computer down and there didn't seem to be an easy, permanent way of turning all of them off. And when I did succeed in turning one off, I got a lot of angry messages that said, "You Are Not Fully Protected!!!" or words to that effect.
I called Tech Support again and I had a conversation that pretty much went like this…
ME: How do I turn this feature off?
THEM: You can't.
ME: Well then, how do I turn this feature off?
THEM: You can't.
ME: Well, is there anyway to turn this feature off?
THEM: You can't.
And so on. The Tech Support guy had nothing to suggest other than that I try upgrading to an even more expensive, elaborate version of AVG. He couldn't guarantee it would run better on my system than what I had but it was worth a try. I replied that my problem seemed to be that AVG was doing too much, not enough, and asked if for what I'd paid them, I could just downgrade to plain ol' AVG Anti-Virus. He said no, they're separate programs and if I want the simpler version, I'll have to pay for a whole new installation.
AVG is off my computer and out of my life. I'm now running the free version of Avast, which seems to be doing everything I want except that it occasionally pops up little ads for non-free products. I'll let you know if I keep on liking it.
For this season, the Magic Castle up in Hollywood has been ballyhooing "The Magic Castle is on fire" and they arranged some elaborate lighting effects that made it kinda look a little like the ancient and lovely building was in flames. Well, this afternoon reality caught up with the advertising campaign and a real fire erupted in the attic. It seems to have been knocked down now and the destruction does not appear to have been too severe. I'm guessing the greatest damage will be the lost revenue because the Castle will be closed tonight, its busiest night of the year.
Here's a rerun of an item I posted here a few years ago…
At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I really don't like Halloween and never have. Even as a kid, the idea of dressing up and going from house to house to collect candy struck me as enormously unpleasant. I did it a few times when I was young because it seemed to be expected of me…but I never enjoyed it. I felt stupid in the costume and when I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked.
And of course, absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?
My trick-or-treating years were before there were a lot of scares about people putting razor blades or poison into Halloween candy. Even then, I wound up throwing out just about everything except those little Hershey bars. So it was wasteful, and I also didn't like the dress-up part of it with everyone trying to look maimed or bloody. I've never understood why anyone thinks that's fun to do or fun to see.
I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple bags of leftover candy myself. The last few Halloweens, I've switched to little boxes of Sun-Maid Raisins, which are a lot healthier if I get stuck with them. Maybe I ought to switch to candy corn. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone eating it. And if no one comes, I could just keep it around and not give it out again next year.
The only thing that's changed since I first wrote that is that my sweet tooth has disappeared to the point where I don't even like Sun-Maid Raisins. I've stocked up on little packages of peanut butter crackers to give out if any kids show up…which is highly unlikely. And also I've received plenty of e-mails from liars who are trying to get me to believe they like candy corn.
The second installment has been posted of my three-part chat with my pals Paul Dini and Misty Lee. It's their popular weekly podcast, Radio Rashy, which you can hear at their website or on iTunes or many other places. In this chapter, we talk about some of my encounters with great magicians and I tell the tale of how I met my longtime friend and collaborator, Sergio Aragonés. It's fun and it's free.
Last night in Costa Mesa, there was to be a one-performance-only program that sure sounded interesting to me: Stephen Sondheim would be interviewed and a few of his songs would be performed by Christine Ebersole and Brian Stokes Mitchell. I almost got tickets but then I was invited to speak at the CAPS Banquet (see previous posting) and that's why I wasn't there. Mr. Sondheim had another reason to not be there: The big storm in the East closing down airports. What happens when you have a sold-out auditorium of folks who are there to hear Stephen Sondheim and there's no Stephen Sondheim? Read all about it.
Last night, the Comic Art Professional Society had its annual banquet and the honoree was longtime MAD contributor Al Jaffee. Boy, what a popular selection that was. Al and his lovely wife Joyce were flown out on the CAPS dime, put up at a nice (I trust) hotel and are being wined and dined for the weekend. One of the speakers last night was Tom Gammill, who writes for The Simpsons. Tomorrow, Al and Joyce are being chauffeured over to the Simpsons offices because all the writers and producers there are dying to meet the guy.
Al is 90 years old, though he could pass for…oh, maybe 75. He began his career in comics in 1941 and in that first year began writing and drawing for Timely Comics and its editor, Stan Lee. Stan, a past recipient of this award himself, appeared in last night's program via a pre-recorded video. Jaffee hooked up with MAD in 1955, writing his first article for issue #25 and then writing and drawing one for #26. Amazingly, there was someone else in the room last night who was in MAD even before Al. Russ Heath, last year's CAPS honoree, was present.
Jaffee left MAD almost immediately after those first sales because Harvey Kurtzman left. Al followed Harvey to other ventures but when those failed to ignite, Jaffee returned to MAD as a writer (only) in 1958 and then began drawing also for them in 1963. Last night's speakers discussed his career and when I got to the podium, I discussed why Al wrote for MAD but didn't draw for them for five years.
MAD publisher William M. Gaines liked working with a little "family" of freelancers. He liked having the same guys in every issue. It didn't matter as much with writers — some of them came and went, some stayed forever — but most of the guys who drew for MAD stayed a long, long time. They did not have any formal contracts but there was an understanding that if they remained exclusive to MAD (i.e., didn't work for direct competitors), they would routinely receive a certain amount of work.
After editor Al Feldstein had finished assigning X number of pages to Mort Drucker and Y number to Bob Clarke and Z to Wallace Wood (etc.), there were no openings for anyone else, no room for Jaffee art. So Al wrote…and he wrote very well. Al also didn't have that much time to draw anyway since he was doing his newspaper strip, Tall Tales, from 1957 to 1963.
About the time that strip ended, there was a rare exodus among the MAD artists. Several different stories have been told about why Wally Wood stopped drawing for the publication but they all involve alcohol and we needn't go into them here. The point is that Wood ceased to be a regular contributor about the time Jaffee had more time on his drawing board. His first "new" art for MAD appeared in issue #76, cover-dated January of 1963.
And another new artist popped up in MAD in the same issue. That was the first issue to feature the cartoon stylings of Señor Sergio Aragonés.
The circumstantial evidence led me to a conclusion that I announced in my speech last night: If Wally Wood had gone to A.A., we would not have been honoring Al Jaffee last evening. And Sergio wouldn't have a career at all.
Which is, of course, a joke — at least in Jaffee's case. His drawing skills could not have been denied a place in MAD for much longer. Soon after in issue #86, he inaugurated the MAD Fold-In — that thing you saw in the inside back cover and you didn't really want to fold your issue and ruin it a little but you couldn't resist seeing the way the picture and the text under it changed when you did. I have friends who began buying two copies of every issue — one to fold, one to keep — and I can't believe it didn't boost the magazine's circulation a bit.
In 1968, there was a brief worry that the feature would have to end. In 1965, the rising cost of printing forced MAD to go from 25 cents, as it had been since 1955, to 30 cents. Just three years later, costs went up again and it had to go to 35 cents. Gaines fretted that readers would think they were being gouged by a new price hike so soon after the last one. Feldstein, who had long felt that MAD needed to upgrade its "package" a bit, suggested they print the inside covers in color instead of black-and-white so the buyers would feel they were getting a little something more for their money.
Gaines agreed but there was a concern: Jaffee had been working his magic — crafting drawings which turned from one image to another when folded — in black-and-white. How could he do that with the added complication of color? Well, they asked Al and he said "I'll try" and he had no problem making the next one work in color. Or the next one. Or the one after that…and so on. My God, he's still doing them. Almost every issue. At age 90. In color and just as good as they ever were.
And I think David took this one, too.
As stunning as the Fold-Ins have been, my favorite Jaffee contribution to MAD was his invention of a feature called "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," which commenced in #98. On several occasions, David Letterman has been quoted as saying his entire career is nothing more than that — snappy answers to stupid questions. The photo above is me right after I got Al to sign a piece of original art from my collection. Yes, I own the originals to the first installment of "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions." It's not only a prize I treasure, it's the guiding philosophy of so much of my life.
The banquet hall last night was full of other folks to admire. Along with Sergio and Russ Heath, there was Mell Lazarus and June Foray and Cathy Guisewite and Jerry Eisenberg and Floyd Norman and Scott Shaw! and Stan Sakai and Tom Luth and Max Pross and Bill Morrison and I don't know why I started listing attendees because now someone will be miffed that I didn't include them. So I'll just say that I intentionally left out the name of the most important, talented attendee and everyone can assume I mean them.
The main thing though of course was that Al Jaffee was there. He seemed to be having a very good time and not just because he was missing all the snow back in New York. Before the ceremony, his wife Joyce was amazed at the crowd and at the lush setup for the event and she asked me, "Do you think he really deserves this?" I couldn't think of a snappy answer at that moment but after all the speeches and all the love that was demonstrated for Al, I think she realized it was kind of a stupid question.
Here's a list of the Fastest Growing Occupations in America. I'm surprised to see that "Phone Solicitor Who Phones Mark Evanier at Inconvenient Times" did not make the list.
If you click on an embedded video here and the wrong one plays, try refreshing your browser. If that doesn't work, try closing the browser and opening it again. If that doesn't work and you have another browser on your computer, try opening the video in the other one. And then if that doesn't work, write me and tell me I've screwed up because perhaps I have. But the last few all play fine on both my computers.
Speaking of those two guys in the photo below: The new DVD set of Laurel and Hardy films has been released. I haven't received mine yet but friends who have are writing raves or endorsing reviews like this one. If you want to order a copy of this set, here's an Amazon link.
This afternoon, Stu Shostak is welcoming another great friend of mine to his show — actress Judy Strangis. I've known Judy since she did the lead voice on a 1981 cartoon series I worked on called Goldie Gold. But I feel like I knew her before that because I always tried to catch her on every TV show she was on…and she was on a lot of them including The Twilight Zone, Batman, Bewitched and her long run on Room 222. She was also, of course, Dynagirl on the 1976 ElectraWoman and DynaGirl feature for Sid and Marty Krofft.
And she was in dozens of other shows and hundreds of commercials. Here she is selling Barbie dolls that back in '76. You will notice she is cuter than the product — and she still is…
I'll sure be listening when she guests today with Stu. The show can be heard live and for free at 4 PM Pacific Time. That's 7 PM Eastern Time and other times in other climes. It runs two hours and Stu will also be talking with Sam Nelson of the Ozzie & Harriet bloodline about his campaign to save that classic show from extinction and obscurity. You can hear it all live at the Stu's Show website at the proper time. If you miss it, fear not. Shortly after the live webcast, the entire program can be downloaded from that site for a measly 99 cents. That's a bargain but try not to miss it in the first place.
