Category Archives: Uncategorized

The New York Times once had a deserved reputation for accuracy. That is no longer so. One reason is the flawed Iraq reporting by Judith Miller. Another is the long string of stories written or co-written by a reporter named Jeff Gerth…stories which turned out to be largely untrue. Eric Boehlert goes over some of these.

This is a commercial for an animation gallery but it's also four minutes of Mel Blanc telling how he created the voices of the classic Warner Brothers characters.

Well, actually, these are what I call the "talk show" versions of how those voices came to be, as opposed to the actual stories. Mel was a great self-promoter, and I don't mean that at all in a bad way. The man raised his craft to a high level and also a visible one, doing interviews and appearing on television to remind people that actors spoke for cartoon characters. With the possible exception of Jim Backus, Mel was the only "celebrity" known for that job in the forties, fifties and even into the sixties.

During that time, there was little or no scholarship about cartoons…no books wherein one could learn the history of the Warner Brothers studio, for instance, nor was there anyone else on the interview circuit talking about it. The nature of talk shows and interviews causes people who are asked the same questions over and over to develop short, funny responses that they repeat over and over, usually to the delight of interviewers and audiences. When Mel went on with Johnny Carson, what was expected of him was not a precise history of the development of Porky's voice. What was desired was a brief and humorous anecdote…so he developed one about deciding that a pig's grunt might be similar to a human stutter. For years, there was no one around to point out that Mel did not invent the idea of Porky stuttering; that Mel was the second voice of Porky Pig and that the first guy had given him a stuttering voice which Mel started by replicating and eventually making his own. (Porky's first voice was done by a man named Joe Dougherty. He was hired because he was an actual stutterer, meaning that the cartoon's directors and gag men were the ones who decided the pig should have a speech impediment.)

In the late sixties and since, there have been people around who've researched the history of the cartoons, and some of Mel's colleagues from those days also were getting interviewed…so Mel, being a smart guy, didn't push the "talk show" anecdotes in every venue. He recognized when he was in front of an audience that expected the real story and knew the difference, and there are some wonderful interviews around where he goes into great and accurate depth about how he did what he did. This is not one of those interviews but it's entertaining, anyway. Everything Mel did was entertaining…

Comedy legend Mort Sahl will be honored on June 28 at the Wadsworth Theater in West Los Angeles with a special one-night benefit/tribute, the line-up for which sounds like a veritable Who's Who of comedy. I haven't seen any official list anywhere but the names that have been mentioned include Richard Lewis, Kevin Nealon, Paula Poundstone, Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, Albert Brooks, Shelley Berman, Jay Leno, Bill Maher, David Steinberg, Jack Riley and Robin Williams, along with taped tributes by Woody Allen, Sydney Pollack and Clint Eastwood. I'm guessing Clint will be the funny one.

I also haven't seen any official announcement of where one obtains tickets but I found them for sale on Ticketmaster and they ain't cheap. On the other hand, if most of those people are there, it might well be worth it.

Here's the final nag to catch me and my comrade Earl Kress as we guest today on Stu's Show, the star program on Shokus Internet Radio, which is part of the awesome Live365 network of web-based broadcasting. Our genial host Stuart Shostak will be chatting with us about cartoon shows of the sixties, and we'll be taking your phone calls and Stu will ask some lame trivia question which you can call in to answer and win a pretty nice prize. Matter of fact, I might just sneak out during the program so I can call in on my cell phone and win the prize.

And speaking of answering questions! Last time Earl and I were on, we had a Mystery Guest! During the show, we called Doug Young, the veteran cartoon voice actor you know best as the voice of Doggie Daddy on the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon series. We not only called Doug on the program and chatted with him but we made it into a game show: We had our host Stu guess who the Mystery Guest would be. It took him eight questions but he got it.

This afternoon, we put Stuart to the test again! During the show, we will be phoning a great performer from the world of animation voicing…and I'll give you (and Stu) the hint that this person has also distinguished him- or herself in other areas, as well. At the beginning of the show, Earl and I will challenge our host to guess, game show style, who we'll be phoning. Then later on, we'll phone this person for a brief interview.

Who will it be? You'll have to tune in to find out. You can do this by going to this website at 4PM Pacific (7 PM Eastern) and selecting an audio browser. That will enable you to listen to Shokus Internet Radio…something you oughta do every hour of the day, not just when Mark and Earl are on. It's free and there are a lot of weird and wonderful things to be heard on Stuart's station. We'll be on for two hours and I hope you'll log in and listen.

We are now 58 days from the start of this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Scary, huh? We're still a few weeks from announcing all the peachy panels and events I'll be hosting there but you can figure on a return of Quick Draw!, a couple of Cartoon Voice panels, spotlights on some of the Golden Age comic guests, the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, a Groo panel, the Golden/Silver Age Panel…and since I'm for some reason a Guest of Honor, there may even be a spotlight panel on me. I hope they don't expect me to interview myself.

If you've never attended one of these gatherings before — or even if you have — I recommend taking the time to read Tom Spurgeon's excellent list of tips and suggestions for the con. I did a small one up which is posted here but Tom's is much better, even if it is for 2006. You should also read his recently-posted update.

I would echo and update one thing Tom mentions: He suggests that if you're stuck for a room, you take a gander at Travelaxe. I concur…and I'd mention that Travelaxe has been redesigned. It used to be a piece of free software that you could download to your PC (no Mac version, sorry) and then it would search various travel sites for the best deal. You can still do it that way but they now have an online version that involves no downloading of software. It may not find you a reasonably-priced room within fifty miles of the Comic-Con but it's handy for all sorts of hotel needs elsewhere, all year.

A year and a half ago in Beverly Hills, I saved the life of Stan Lee when he walked in front of my car and I braked to a stop in time to not hit him. I told you about that here.

About an hour ago in Beverly Hills, I was driving along and a man talking on a cell phone stepped out onto the street where he shouldn't have…and I did a fast brake manuever and avoided hitting him. I thought for a second it was Stan again. The man's posture and silhouette reminded me of Stan and this was about half a block from Stan's office…

…but it wasn't Stan. It was, I swear to God, Larry King.

On this blog, we've occasionally made mention of two friends — Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin. Jim and Steve live together and perform in musical theater and collaborated on a hit play about the relationship between two gay men who live together and perform in musical theater, and I don't want to leap to conclusions but I'm starting to get the faint suspicion that Jim and Steve might actually be gay. It's just a suspicion at this point.

Between them, Jim and Steve know every human being who has ever performed in a play or musical and shown the slightest bit of talent. They knew the late, already-missed Charles Nelson Reilly and back in 2000, when they went to dinner at his home, Steve took along his omnipresent video diary camera. Here's three minutes of that visit. It may give you a bit of an idea what C.N.R. was like. It might even cause you to suspect that he also was…well, never mind.

Back when Ronald Reagan first proposed his missile defense shield program, which some later called "Star Wars," a number of prominent scientists and space technicians said, quite simply, "It will never work." So far, it hasn't. We've poured billions and billions of dollars into it and it not only hasn't worked, it hasn't even yielded a reason to think it might someday work. The folks behind it — who in most cases have been paid quite well over the years and seem to consider that aspect of the project a success — have even tried rigging the tests to get a positive result and even the rigged outcomes aren't particularly encouraging.

The latest test was yet another fiasco. They couldn't even get the target missile in position, let alone send an interceptor missile to take it out. The people behind it are trying to spin this as proof that we really, really need the missile defense shield program. The new logic goes something like this: The fact that we can't get a target missile into the right position proves that the enemy might not get their real missiles into the right place and they might threaten an unintended target…so to protect that unintended target, we must have a working missile defense shield program.

It's not unlike the logic of The Surge: If violence in Iraq goes down, it proves The Surge is working because it's bringing down the level of violence. And if violence in Iraq goes up, it proves The Surge is working because it's drawing out the violent elements. The important thing is not to succeed. It's to never admit someone had a bad idea.

This coming Wednesday, my unindicted co-conspirator pal Earl Kress and I will be back on Stu's Show, the cornerstone program on Shokus Internet Radio, which is part of the teeming Live365 network of web-based broadcasting. Our topics this time will include, I am told, Beany and Cecil, David Seville, Milton the Monster, Batfink, Hanna-Barbera's cartoon interpretations of Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello, as well as a host of other stuff including De Patie-Freleng, Ruby-Spears, and what it was like for some of us to write for those studios. There will also be your live call-in phone calls and trivia questions with prizes and a whole lotta fun.

It all begins at 4 PM Pacific Time (7 PM Eastern) and runs for two hours. You can listen by going to this website then and selecting an audio browser. (Note: If you log in just before the show starts, there's a slight chance that you'll get bumped off when the show starts. If that happens, just log right back in and it shouldn't happen again. There's some sort of glitch in the Live365 software that occasionally does that when a station switches from pre-recorded programming to live.)

I'll nag you again about this tomorrow.

I'm going to jump all around in my report on my trip last week and today, I'm going to jump to the topic of Fast Food. In a way, this ties in with that long post I wrote last week about my weight loss surgery.

In the last few years, I've been increasingly disappointed in the quality of…well, now that I think of it, "fast food" isn't quite the right label. The kind of thing I'm thinking about is more like "pre-fab restaurant food." The fact that it's fast or even served in what we think of as a "fast food" ambiance isn't the problem. When I'm alone, I like eating swiftly and getting on to the next phase of my life. Running from meeting to meeting, it was handy to duck into a McDonald's or Sizzler and grab a quick meal.

But more and more, even before I significantly altered my eating habits, I was enjoying places like those and Arby's and KFC less and less. KFC has become especially awful and I don't think it's just me changing and losing my taste for deep-fried batter. I recall liking their food a lot back in the seventies, even back when Colonel Sanders was still alive. He was decrying how the company that had acquired his business had ruined the chicken, making it cheaper to prepare and simpler for a teenager earning minimum wage. The man whose face was on the bucket said it was lousy fried chicken and while I concurred it wasn't as good as it had been, it was still my best dining alternative at times.

I can't imagine what he'd think of the product today…and please remember I am not comparing it to gourmet foods made by a world-famous chef and priced much higher. I'm comparing it to what I used to get in the same garish-colored buildings a few decades earlier. There are health reasons not to patronize KFC and there are moral reasons having to do with the processing of their hens…and I don't have to even begin to sort those out because I stopped for a simpler reason: The chicken was, to me, inedible.

That's the most extreme example but I've also noticed a worsening of the cuisine, if you can call it that, at Arby's and Wendy's and McDonald's…and also at places that sorta resemble a real restaurant like Denny's or Sizzler or Fuddrucker's or Ihop. It isn't that they're chains. It's that they've configured — or in some cases, reconfigured — their product for consistency and ease of preparation. If there are people in the kitchen who know how to cook, they certainly don't have much room to flex those muscles. It's less a matter of freshness and more a matter of assembly.

There are, of course, exceptions. We have two West Coast chains that I like a lot — Koo Koo Roo and In-N-Out Burger, though I fear for both. Koo Koo Roo was acquired not long ago by the Fuddrucker's people and there's been a subtle drop in the quality since then. Meanwhile, the family that owns In-N-Out is currently undergoing some sort of upheaval and there are rumors they will soon abandon some of their principles and procedures in the interest of massive expansion.

Actually, I wouldn't mind losing the wonders of In-N-Out if someone would open a Five Guys outlet in my area. Five Guys is a Virginia-based chain that's now all up and down the East Coast. On our trip, Carolyn and I went to one in the firm's home state and I had one of the best hamburgers I've ever eaten and — probably — The Best French Fries. Like In-N-Out, they use real potatoes that are peeled on the premises, as well as beef that's never been frozen. Like In-N-Out, that's almost all they serve…and the food is surprisingly inexpensive. I've paid twenty bucks for a burger elsewhere that wasn't a tenth as good as what Five Guys (and for that matter, In-N-Out) sells for a tiny fraction of the price.

The secret to Five Guys fries seems to be not only the fresh spuds but that they fry in peanut oil. Some places don't, in part because they don't want to lose customers who are allergic to peanuts…or sued if someone has an attack and blames it on the meal. It has been claimed that commercial-grade peanut oil will not cause an allergic reaction in most people but everyone I know with a peanut sensitivity steers clear of goobers in any form. (In-N-Out uses plain vegetable oil.) Five Guys seems to have decided to just write off that section of the population in order to achieve the best french fry possible. In fact — and I'm guessing this is a deliberate move to alert such patrons — every Five Guys has big tubs around of peanuts in the shell and they're free for the nibbling. If that was the idea, it's pretty darned clever.

On the trip, I also had my first Chick-Fil-A sandwich…and I believe they also fry in peanut oil. Their fries are nothing special but I thought the sandwich was pretty good. The chicken tasted frozen and as I look over their website, it appears as if they're trying to give the impression that it isn't frozen chicken when, in fact, it is. Still, it was pleasant and the light batter on the fried breast was quite good. This chain is in Southern California but not in any location where I tend to travel so it was new to me. In fact, I was so new to Chick-Fil-A that it didn't dawn on me until I heard another patron ask for one that its name is pronounced, "chick filet." Duh.

None of this, obviously, is the healthiest food in the world for you. I have a friend who, even as you read this, is dispatching a hysterical e-mail to me decrying the ingestion of anything involving beef, frying or a server who wears a paper hat. He's probably right in some sense but I'm never going to eat the way this friend thinks everyone should eat…and I also don't eat much of this kind of food nowadays, especially when I'm home. The best I can do, for when I'm on the road, is to ferret out the better places and when I find one, pass it along.

I also don't think I'll be eating as many french fries in the next few months as I would have, had I not been introduced to Five Guys. It's the same as after the first time I had steak at Peter Luger's restaurant in Brooklyn. After that, I didn't eat steak as often elsewhere. I'd been spoiled. In fact, there's probably a great advertising slogan in there for some chain that stresses freshness: "Our food isn't spoiled so you will be."

Funny man, that Charles Nelson Reilly. And popular. He had an astounding career on Broadway and an even more impressive one on television, much of it playing himself on talk shows and game shows. He also did kid shows (Uncle Croc's Block and Lidsville) and commercials and he directed and did cartoon voices and just about everything. He had the reputation of being cranky and very difficult and occasionally out of his ever-lovin' mind…but all the same, he was quite beloved by those who knew him.

Not long ago, he toured for a time in an autobiographical one man show that I, alas, never got to see. It's the basis of a new documentary film about him and I've embedded the trailer below, plus there are more clips to watch on this website…

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor at at Boston University who was usually described as a Conservative before he began speaking out and writing articles against the War in Iraq. Recently, his son was killed fighting in that action. On this Memorial Day, he reflects on his son's sacrifice and his own.

…but then you probably never knew I was gone. My friend Carolyn and I spent the last week in Washington, D.C. and Virginia. Two days in our nation's capital isn't much…though I think it's twice as long as John McCain was there in the month of May. I told people I was going there to impeach Alberto Gonzales because, well, someone has to. Alas, I never saw him or anyone else worth impeaching…although the Night Manager at the hotel in Virginia came close.

Carolyn wanted a couple of luggage racks for our room — you know, the kind you unfold and put your suitcase on. The Night Manager was shocked that we didn't have them and swore he'd find a couple and send them up. He didn't. We kept asking about them. He kept saying he'd get right on the matter. Finally, after the fourth or fifth time we asked, he sent someone to go to vacant rooms, grab up two luggage racks and take them to us. This person reported back to him that the other rooms didn't have luggage racks, either. It turns out this hotel doesn't have luggage racks in its rooms.

The Night Manager phoned to tell me this, voluntarily adding, "Boy, you learn something new every day. I've worked here two years and I never knew we don't have luggage racks. I've never gotten around to going in any of the rooms."

Go ahead. Tell me that isn't an impeachable offense.

Getting back to D.C.: If you think this website spends too much time canonizing dead people, you should see Washington. You can't take two steps without running in to a memorial to someone…especially war dead. There was something odd and sad about how much of the town is about soldiers who've died in the service of their country.

We took a bus tour and learned nothing about the inner workings of our government but the various tour guides (they swapped off) kept telling us over and over how John Adams used to go skinny-dipping in the Potomac in its less polluted days. One of the guides rattled off a list of semi-interesting nuggets of trivia but every other sentence he uttered was, "And that's just a little historic fact you can take back home with you." And about every twelfth historic fact he divulged was that John Adams liked to go skinny-dipping in the Potomac. I think that gives us all a better appreciation of our heritage.

I'm tired and there's unpacking to do so I'm going to knock off here, go to sleep and write more in the morning. In fact, I may serialize my report. Forgive any typos. Mark is weary.

Is there life after death? I don't know and neither do you. But there is one kind of immortality. According to this article, MySpace "won't delete a profile for inactivity, and it also won't let anyone else control a deceased member's profile." So you can kind of write your own online memorial or otherwise continue to communicate with the world. This applies to soldiers going off to fight in Iraq, too.

Cartoon time! The Max Fleischer studio made Gulliver's Travels in 1940. It wasn't the greatest animated feature ever made but it was reasonably popular…and a big reason was a character named Gabby. The Fleischer Brothers promptly spun him off into his own series of short cartoons and they made nine of them, of which this was the third. It's called All's Well and they spend most of the cartoon singing a tune of the same name which was also introduced in Gulliver's Travels. After Mr. Disney's success introducing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" in the first Three Little Pigs short, there were many animated attempts to use cartoons to "plug" a song into best-selling status…none, of course, as successful. This was just such an attempt and I don't think it's a coincidence that, like the Big Bad Wolf song, "All's Well" is one of those "Don't worry, everything will be fine" songs that America seemed to need in the thirties and early forties.

Gabby was voiced by Vance "Pinto" Colvig, who was also the voice of Goofy and several other memorable characters during his Disney years…including Practical Pig in the Three Little Pigs cartoons. He later originated the role of Bozo the Clown. It sounds like his voice was sped a bit for Gabby, which they didn't do often at Fleischer's because they liked to record the voices to picture after the animation was done. The baby voice sounds a lot like Mae Questel but I think it's Margie Hines. Here's the film — which, by the way, was released on January 17, 1941…