Category Archives: Uncategorized

The New Yorker has posted online a number of articles that appeared in that publication and discussed the works of Kurt Vonnegut. Here's John Updike on Vonnegut, James Atlas on Vonnegut, and Susan Lardner on Vonnegut.

The Mann National Theater in Westwood Village is closing this week. It opened March 27, 1970 and one of the first movies it offered — and the first I saw there — was the Mike Nichols movie of Catch 22. A bunch of my friends went to a matinee and I would describe our reaction to the movie as mixed, leaning towards the negative. But there was one scene we liked a lot. It was the one early in the film with Paula Prentiss removing her clothing. We all agreed that was filmmaking at its finest, and that we had to stay for enough of the next showing to see it again.

So we stayed…and after our favorite scene was over, we all got up to leave. So did about eighty other males in the theater, all of whom had remained in their seats after the previous showing for the same reason. If Mike Nichols had had the presence of mind to make that scene last ninety minutes, I think we'd all still be there.

I feel a certain sense of personal loss hearing that the National is closing. I spent a lot of my life back then in Westwood Village and watched them build the place. Westwood was a great "date" community back then with plenty of restaurants, movie theaters and stores to browse. Often, we'd dine at the Hamburger Hamlet and then walk over to the National. After the movie, it was one block to Wil Wright's Ice Cream Parlor or two to a shop called Golden Star that served great made-on-the-premises sorbets and ices. Those were, as we nostalgists call them, the days.

It's probably not surprising though that the National's closing. At 1,100 seats, it was just too big and probably too unprofitable to occupy so large a plot of prime, expensive real estate. The last time I was in it was for the world premiere of Sin City two years ago. It didn't dawn on me then that its management was considering closing the theater but now that it's been announced, I'm thinking, "Oh, yeah…it did seem a bit shabby." It was probably a matter of either shutting down or spending a few million to refurbish and maybe carve the National into a bunch of smaller theaters.

It's not old enough to mourn as one of those great old movie palaces that are works of art, themselves. Truth to tell, the National always struck me as an ugly, uncomfortable house in which to see a movie. But I did have many a great evening that included a visit there…and I'm sorry to see a reminder of those evenings going away.

Since the lawyers have been slow at getting the Garfield cartoons removed from YouTube, I can link to another one I wrote. This is called "Mistakes Will Happen" and if you're ever writing a cartoon show and you want to get the animators pissed at you, just decide it would be fun to do a cartoon that's intentionally full of errors.

Actually, I just made a mistake in the previous sentence. I don't know how the animators felt about this one since they were in Taiwan. But the people at the American studio who had to concern themselves with budgetary matters had a lot of problems, and I believe the line producer had to keep going back and having the animation crew insert mistakes they'd accidentally left out. People got very confused over which mistakes were mistakes and which mistakes were supposed to be there and when he said, "This is wrong," it sometimes meant "this is right," which of course meant it was wrong but not in the way it was supposed to be wrong. I kinda like it when the production process gets to be as silly as the cartoons.

In addition to the usual voice people (Lorenzo Music, Gregg Berger and Thom Huge), this one features a line by Garfield's creator, Jim Davis. He does the voice on the police radio. I also have a line. That's me saying, "Garfield cartoon, take two." Hope you enjoy what you're about to see as soon as you click. If not, it was a mistake to post this.

Someone who signs himself "JonesR" writes to ask…

Do you know any history of the collaboration of Parker and Hart (I'm checking the obit as I write this). Because I was always curious as to, well, at least, who wrote and who drew, and if they may have both at times done either.

I figured that Hart did the character designs, then pretty much let Parker run with it. Parker may have had a history of providing gags to B.C. Or Hart may have given gags to Wizard of Id in the same sense that the Mort Walker crew might work out the gags on three different strips running, or the way some of the Simon/Kirby work seemed to leave the casual reader with a sense of not really being quite sure who may have been doing what.

My understanding is that Parker did no writing. Hart had a team of helpers — friends, assistants, gag writers, whatever you want to call them. Hart acted as Head Writer for a squadron that wrote both strips. The gags for Wizard of Id were sent to Parker and it was his job to get them drawn, which he did with increasing help over the years. The gags for B.C. were drawn by Hart with a little assistance.

Initially, the characters for Wizard were designed by Hart, Parker and a few others all sitting around a hotel room with ample drawing paper and liquor. Thereafter, sketches were exchanged by mail, fax or occasionally in person.

As anyone who's worked in a collaborative situation will tell you, there are times when contributions blur and even the guys who did the work aren't sure who contributed what. In gag-writing, it's not at all uncommon for Mutt to come up with a joke and Jeff to rephrase it and both guys to think they wrote it. I'll bet a lot of the jokes in both strips fall into that category.

The Hogan's Alley site has up a good interview with Hart in which he talks about his work, including much about the team that aided him with the writing. This chat is about thirteen years old and my understanding is that some of the aides changed in that time, plus Parker handed off more and more of the drawing duties on The Wizard of Id to others. But the modus operandi remained pretty much the same.

You might want to take a look at this extensive Washington Post poll about what the people of this nation (or at least the ones polled) think about Bush and Congress and the war and all the major issues that concern most people and don't involve American Idol. The numbers aren't so good for Bush or Congress, but it's the Congressional numbers that have me a bit puzzled. I think there's a key question that isn't being asked here.

If someone says that they disapprove of the way Democrats in Congress are doing their job with regard to Iraq, what does that mean? Does it mean they think the Democrats have been too aggressive in stopping the war or not aggressive enough? That's a big difference and it's the most important issue facing Congress (and maybe the country) today. But for some reason, those who feel the Democrats in Congress should do more in this regard are being lumped in with those who feel they should do less. I'm guessing, based on the other answers, that most of the disapproval is because they aren't doing more…but that's just a guess. It would be nice if the pollsters broke it down for us.

Last Friday, I was a guest on the Time Travel radio show. Today, you can download an MP3 file of it (it's inside a ZIP file for some reason) from this page. Beware if you go there to get it. The site plays creepy music.

This runs two and a half minutes and may be of interest only to folks who live in or around Los Angeles.

One of the last surviving "chains" of the old style coffee shop is Du-Par's. There are three of them left, down from a one-time peak of, I believe, eight or so around the Southland. The original one was in the famed Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax in L.A., and that one's still there, having recently reopened after a two year closure for remodelling. From the outside, it doesn't look all that different. (An observation: You can sometimes spot a long time Angeleno when they refer to the place as "Du-Par's Farmhouse." But it hasn't had that name since the early sixties.)

We used to say that at a Du-Par's, you could get excellent breakfasts, okay lunches, pretty awful dinners and, for dessert, some of the best pies in town. The pies were — and I guess still are — baked right on the premises. I have to guess here because even though I live within walking distance of one, I haven't been to a Du-Par's in years; not since the chain was taken over by new owners. Interestingly, the new proprietors are of the family that used to operate two other great L.A. coffee shop chains — Tiny Naylor's and Biff's. I'll have to get to a Du-Par's soon and report back on if the breakfasts are still great and the dinners are still poor.

Someone — I have no idea who — put together this little montage of stills from Du-Par's history. I believe most of the images are from the Farmers Market location. It's our thing for you to click on for today.

We said back here that the Critierion company would soon be announcing a DVD release of the Billy Wilder film, Ace in the Hole (aka The Big Carnival). Well, it's been announced. No release date yet but we're hearing June or July.

A week after the death of Johnny Hart — who wrote and drew B.C. and wrote The Wizard of Id — we have word of the death of Brant Parker, who drew the latter. Parker was 86 and had been ailing for several years. He stopped drawing The Wizard of Id completely in 1997 but the strip had featured much work by assistants — mainly his son Jeff — for years before that. Jeff is expected to carry it on. Brant was also involved for a time with the newspaper strips, Crock, Goosemeyer and Out of Bounds.

I'm afraid I know very little about Mr. Parker beyond what you can get from obits like this one. But everything I said about Johnny Hart being funny applied to The Wizard of Id, a strip that was very popular in this country and wildly so in Australia. I used to have a friend down there who'd send me the reprint books that they put out in that country — huge, wonderful volumes that caused you to laugh out loud every page or two. I wish we had collections like that of the strip here.

Here's a message from Don Porges…

On your 2:21 pm posting: you're painting with a terribly broad brush, and it follows jarringly on the heels of the Colbert posting, in particular this of Colbert's: "Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us."

I think you're expressing a cynicism (that isn't typical of you, from what else I've read) that all political debate is just opportunism, and that it is inappropriate to take the bloodiest school shooting in history and use it to talk about those elements of gun policy that someone sincerely believes contributed to it. I disagree, presuming that we're talking about people arguing in good faith. I can certainly understand you not wanting to invite a swarm of gun control emails, and perhaps your sarcastic both-sides-be-damned approach seemed like a way of avoiding that.

Nevertheless, "referring" to both sides at once, by abstracting away any actual position and turning to phrases like "whatever you believe," comes across as spitting on the concept of having a position, or believing that it matters. You also seem to show contempt for the idea that one side might actually be right, even though both sides continue to behave in the "same" manner by persisting in arguing for their side.

The point of the discussion that I'm sure is playing out on blogs and on TV is not to "honor the memory" of those who died. Their survivors will not be spending the next several days hitting refresh on their RSS readers to follow the discussion, or watching cable news. If I strongly believe that implementing my position would save 32 more lives in another event, the time to argue for it is now, not later, and I think that can be done without disrespecting the dead.

Finally, that bit about "you may even be glad all those people were shot": that's another thing that's worse, not better, from naming no names, or sides of the issue. Maybe you've been watching cable news all day, and someone you've seen deserves it, but from out here, it's just a terrible accusation looking for a target.

I think you're reading a lot into my remarks that I didn't say and don't believe, starting with any criticism of having a position or believing that it matters. Obviously, the deadliest shooting spree in our nation's history matters. How could anyone think it didn't matter? Having a position therefore matters.

You disagree with me "presuming that we're talking about people arguing in good faith." There's the problem right there. The kind of thing I was talking about — pouncing on the issue to further one's view of gun control, particularly under the guise of honoring the dead — does not strike me as arguing in good faith. It strikes me as opportunism…exploiting the tragedy while it's hot, while people can still be manipulated by their emotions. If there is a reasoned argument to be made here, it will be valid when there aren't fresh bodies to use as selling points. And the time to make it is all the time…because this problem will always be with us until we do something about it. Which is not going to happen.

I wasn't really saying anything beyond that but since you've got me going here, I will: I don't think the solution is anywhere in all the Internet postings I read this afternoon in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. They all fell into the predictable, extreme positions of "we need less guns" versus "we need more guns." As long as the debate ping-pongs between those positions and those people control the issue, nothing will change.

I don't believe that in every issue, both sides are always wrong. Often, one side is right. In the quite-serious matter of the Iraq War, one side sure seems to me to be right and getting righter. But in this particular matter — the ongoing, constant issue of guns in America — I think neither side is right; not in the sense of doing anything to lessen the chance of more incidents like today's. They've effectively paralyzed this issue to the point where each new bloody massacre is an occasion for a lot of yelling and posturing and donation-collecting, much of it justified in the memory of the victims…but no meaningful changes.

Those would have to come from the middle…but the middle doesn't have a voice in this discussion. It never has, and as each mass murder further empowers the extremes, the chance of that voice ever being heard goes increasingly from slim towards none. Whenever the next "deadliest shooting spree in our nation's history" occurs, it will occur under the exact same set of gun laws we have today.

I know that sounds like cynicism. If you'd like to convince me it's not realistic, then tell me what changed after the last "deadliest shooting spree in our nation's history." Or the one before.

This runs a little under three minutes and it asks the musical question, "How many times can a politician avoid answering the same question?"

The politician is Michael Howard, who at the time of this interrogation was the Home Secretary in Great Britain. There was a controversy in 1997 when a report was about to come out about prison conditions and in particular, a series of escapes. Derek Lewis, who was in charge of the prison system, said that Howard had threatened to overrule him on a controversial decision. This would have been quite improper.

In the following clip, newsman Jeremy Paxman keeps repeating a question that Howard pretends to answer and doesn't. I wish more American journalists would do this but I'm afraid that if they did, no one who needs to be interviewed would ever consent to it. Paxman doesn't get an answer but apparently the interview so embarrassed Howard and created pressure on him that a few days later, he issued a statement denying that he'd issued the threat. He claimed he hadn't answered it on Paxman's show because he didn't recall and needed to check his records.

In any case, you probably won't care about the issue at hand but you might recognize the techniques of Answer Avoidance…

Fred Kaplan explains John McCain's stance on the Iraq War. It pretty much comes down to backing the George W. Bush plan in order to get the Republican nomination and then — in the unlikely event that he does — retreating from that position so that he has a shot at winning the election. I can't think of any politician who's ever disappointed me more.

At least 31 people are dead and many more have been wounded on a Virginia college campus when a guy with a gun went on a shooting spree.

I think we can best honor the memory of the victims by using the tragedy to lobby hard for our particular views on Gun Control. Whatever you believe, just insist that this proves you're right. Hey, if you can use it to swing a little public sentiment in your direction, you may even be glad all those people were shot.

I mentioned recently here that my one-time love of Woody Woodpecker cartoons flowed from the drawing lessons that the character's "boss," Walter Lantz, used to give on his cartoon show. Let me expand on that and mention a book that I suspect figured big into the lives of many folks my age who got into animation or drawing. Around 1958 (though possibly before), the Whitman Publishing Company brought out Walter Lantz Easy Way to Draw, a "how to" cartooning book written clearly and properly for a young audience.

I doubt Mr. Lantz (seen above in the photo at left) had much to do with its contents. The book is credited to Frank McSavage and Norm McGary, two artists who worked a lot for Western Printing and Lithography, publishers of Whitman books and tons of coloring books, games and puzzle books featuring Woody and the rest of the Lantz menagerie. Western also created and printed the Lantz-licensed comic books published at the time by Dell…and this was such a lucrative relationship for Lantz that he seems to have surrendered a lot of control of his properties to Western. The designs of his characters were constantly changing on screen and when Western standardized them for their books and magazines, Lantz recognized that those artists (McSavage, especially) knew what they were doing and adjusted his films and the other merchandise to match. He also employed McSavage and McGary directly from time to time.

Easy Way to Draw is a great book and my copy, which I must have gotten soon after it came out, moved me to sit for hours and attempt to replicate the drawings it featured. There was a concise, understandable explanation of the principles of animation along with step-by-step diagrams on how to draw Woody and his pals. Lantz had all these characters like Homer Pigeon that I didn't really know that well…and as an avid reader of Walter Lantz comic books and watcher of Walter Lantz TV shows, if I didn't know them, no one did. But I learned to draw them about as well as a kid my age could have learned to draw them and I'm sure it made me like them more. One day in school — I don't remember exactly why — I did a big drawing of Homer Pigeon on the blackboard. All of the kids in class were impressed, even though none of them knew who it was, either. Alas, these skills had limited value. When I got a little older, I learned you couldn't attract girls by showing them how you could draw Wally Walrus.

I'd wager big that I'm not the only person in my age bracket who was encouraged in a career towards drawing and/or animation by this book. It appears to have been kept in print for some time even if that meant dropping chapters and slapping a more "modern" cover on it, which they did. Still, you don't see a lot of copies around because it encouraged its owners to draw right in the book or cut out certain pages. So either you loved the book enough to despoil your copy or you loved it enough to keep it in pristine condition and never want to part with it. I'm in the latter category. I wonder if anyone's done a "how to draw cartoons" DVD or computer program that is now having the same impact on the nine-year-old Future Cartoonists of America.

Over on Salon — where you may have to watch a brief ad to get in — Glenn Greenwald has a weblog post that I suspect rolls out a new set of "talking points" against the Iraq War. It's that the war is becoming overwhelmingly unpopular among Americans (that part's true) and that the folks lobbying for The Surge and "staying the course" are really only interested in keeping it going over there so they don't have to admit how much of a disaster their plan has been. I think Greenwald's focusing too much on the pundits supporting the war and not enough on the guy in the Oval Office who actually keeps us there (i.e., The Decider). But I think there's something to the view that it's more about not being wrong than it's ever been about being right.