Caricaturist Supreme Tom Richmond has drawn a terrific art print of six guys who've played James Bond…even George Lazenby. And hey, what's the big deal about George Lazenby? I mean, the guy only played 007 in one more movie than I did.
Anyway, it's a great drawing…great enough that you might want to order a signed print by Mr. Richmond, whose work you know so well from MAD. You can order one from this page of his website…and I'll bet some of you (the smarter ones) are going to do just that.
Hey, remember back in 1996, Dana Carvey briefly had a prime-time sketch comedy show? I barely recall it but I think my reaction to it was on the order of, "Boy, these people are talented and boy, they don't know what this show is about yet." Here's an oral history that makes me want to see those shows again.
Here's a quiz with ten monologue jokes. Your mission? Determine which were told by Letterman and which were told by Leno. You got the premise?
We have here a message from George Wyman that I received yesterday…
Thank you for telling us that today is the 50th anniversary of Fantastic Four #1 going on sale. I'm sure there's a reason for this but could you explain to me why it says November on the cover?
Sure. What you need to understand is that magazines are distributed via a system whereby unpurchased product is returnable. Your local newsstand (assuming you even have a local newsstand) gets in 25 copies of the new issue of Cream Cheese Monthly. Over the course of the month, they sell 11 copies. When the new issue of Cream Cheese Monthly comes in, they ship back the remaining 14 copies and they get credit for them.
When this procedure was devised, it became standard to put the off-sale date (i.e., the date when it would be time to return unsold copies) on the cover. This also, in theory, made the magazine seem more au courant to potential purchasers. Let's say an issue went on sale the third week of May. That meant it would still be the current issue throughout much of June…but publishers feared that if buyers saw May on the cover when it said June on the calendar, they might think, "Oh, this is last month's issue. I probably already bought this." Or maybe they'd figure the contents were out of date — old news, expired coupons, etc.
So they'd put the date of the following issue on the cover for these two reasons. Crafty publishers might decide to try and gain a bit more sales advantage by padding the date even further. In so doing, they hoped newsstands would keep an issue on sale even longer…and comic book publishers pushed this as far as they could. They'd have a bi-monthly comic come out in January, which meant it went off-sale in March…but they'd put April on the cover or even May or June if they thought they could get away with it. More time on the racks could mean more copies sold before the unsold copies were yanked off and returned.
Most newsstands didn't fall for this. In fact, at times when a retailer didn't have enough display space for all the comics that were coming in, he might return unsold copies of, say, Detective Comics well before the printed off-sale month or even before the next issue arrived. One newsstand where I bought comics in the sixties had so little room that nothing stayed on sale for more than a week. When the new comics came in, the operator would clear out and return all his unsold product to make way for the new. But some newsstands were large enough (or their proprietors inattentive enough) that the post-dating kept some books on the racks a little longer. In any case, it didn't hurt the publisher to advance the date like that.
The first issue of Fantastic Four hit the stands on August 8, 1961. It was a bi-monthly so the next issue would come out in or about the first week of October. In the hope that some dealers would not return their copies when that next issue arrived, Marvel then had all their dates advanced a month…ergo, November. This also helped a bit when a comic was cancelled. If no next issue arrived to displace it, the last issue might really stay on the stands until its cover date.
It doesn't matter as much with comics these days since most are sold via non-returnable means but it's still a custom in magazine distribution. The current issue of Newsweek — the one with the glassy-eyed picture of Michele Bachmann on the cover — is cover-dated August 15.
Ten Peanuts characters you've probably forgotten.
Here's a nice profile of Jerry Lewis. I don't guarantee the history but the portrait of him today seems to be reasonably accurate.
Hmm — I think I'll post a message from Joey B. (probably not Joey Bishop) and then respond to it…
I've never been to Comic-Con in San Diego. I keep hearing it's packed and you can't walk down the aisles and it's really noisy and everyone is shoulder to shoulder for four days. I'm claustrophobic and crowds scare me. What do you have to say to someone like me?
I say it's kind of like driving on the freeway. There are times when it is hard to get anywhere except via baby steps…but you put up with it because it's worth the inconvenience to get where you're going. Not every part of the con is that way but a few are and the experience is too often characterized by, for example, the videogaming sections. They're noisy and the exhibitors do things to attract masses to their booths — masses that spill over walkways where you'd like to trod.
Actually this year, the main impediment to getting around seemed to be folks in costumes staging photo ops right where congoers were trying to walk. I appreciate that some people spend a lot of time and money on dressing up as some character but that does not entitle them to stop all traffic so they can pose for attendees with cameras or phones with cameras…which is, of course, everyone these days. The posers all seem to think they are so entitled, especially if they're an attractive woman in a sexy outfit and/or they're brandishing a weapon.
I have to tell you that I don't find it all that hard to get through that maze of humans. Now admittedly, I'm 6'3" and kinda large in other directions as well and I have a badge on that says GUEST…but I don't think that's it. I think I've just decided not to let the mass of humanity stop me from getting to places where I wanna be. In that room, I scan the turf ahead of me and quickly chart alternate routes when the real estate before me seems heavily congested. I have this new G.P.S. feature in my car that tells me when there's slow going ahead and it suggests detours. Apply a little of that strategy to your convention hall navigation and you'll get places faster and with fewer delays.
If crowds scare you…well, maybe you shouldn't come. Or maybe you should try to get over that reticence because you'll miss a lot of great experiences in life…and yes, I know that's easier to say than to do. Increasingly as I get older, I find that some things that annoy me can be best handled by accepting and even embracing them, rather than to bitch and moan about that which is not going to be changed one bit by my bitching and moaning. This of course doesn't work with everything but it works with a lot of things that I used to let stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Often, I can even find a way to appreciate that which I used to complain about. My attitude about the crowds is like: Yes, they make it hard to get places but many of those people are attractions unto themselves and there's also something exhilarating in being among so many folks having such a good time.
One tip: Few conventions are as jammed as the biggie in San Diego. You might try a smaller one before you swan-dive into the deep end of the shark tank. You might also heed the advice a friend once gave me about Disneyland. Understand before you get there that you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to wait in a lot of lines, you're not going to see or do everything you want to see or do, and that the crowds are part of the fun. If you can go into Comic-Con with that mindset, you may be able to have a very good time. The reason it's so packed is that most folks do.
Here's one of the many reasons I do my blog: I ask questions, I get answers. An awful lot of you have pitched in and helped find the address of the Slate Brothers nightclub. It was located at 339 N. La Cienega Blvd. I'll post evidence and more that I've learned about the place later today.
This comic book appeared on newsstands…
Here's a question that I'm hoping someone can help me with. I read a lot about the history of comedy and also about the history of Los Angeles. For years, I've been hearing about a night club called the Slate Brothers that figured big in a lot of careers. Lenny Bruce played there. Don Rickles played there. In fact, legend has it that Rickles became a star there the night Frank Sinatra brought some friends in and Rickles, up on stage, spotted him and said, "Make yourself at home, Frank. Slug somebody." Sinatra laughed, it made all the papers and Rickles was on his way.
Okay. So it always says the Slate Brothers club was located on La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Technically, only about four blocks of La Cienega (the stretch between Olympic and San Vicente) are in Beverly Hills but folks tend to throw the Beverly Hills designation around rather casually and apply it to places outside the legal boundaries. Anyway, where on La Cienega was Slate Brothers? What was the address and what's there now? I've asked this of performers who played there and gotten vague, "I'm not certain" replies. Anyone know for sure?
The New York Times opinion page gets hacked.
Leonardo diCaprio is currently the highest-paid movie star in the world…but who is the highest-grossing movie star? That is to say, who's appeared in movies that have collectively grossed the most money?
The answer might surprise you. Hell, it surprises me and I work with the guy all the time. Here's an article that explains it and here's a chart that lists all the grossers in order. You will notice on the chart, by the way, that Stan Lee, because of his cameos in Marvel-based movies, is #19, placing him right behind Johnny Depp.
Actually, every day is Stan Freberg Day around here. I constantly quote him and sing snatches of his brilliant comedy records and try to apply a little of what I learned from the guy about how to look at the world through a wall of satiric skepticism. When people ask my mother if I got my sense of humor from her, she usually answers, "No, I got mine from Mark and he got his from Stan Freberg." That is almost not a joke.
Today is Stan's birthday and since you can Google him and find out in five seconds how old he is, I might as well give you the number: 85. I worked with him last week in a recording session and though we've done a lot of them, it still gives me a little tingle when the receptionist tells me, "Stan's here" and — sure enough — in walks the guy whose records I played as a kid, over and over and over and over and over and over and over. If you'd told me then that I'd someday know that man, it would be like you told me I'd someday meet Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Well, not exactly. Stan is way funnier than either of them…and more amazing.
I hope he and his wonderful wife/partner Hunter have a very nice Stan Freberg Day. And many, many more.
The Creepiest Celebrity Masks of All Time. The Dick Cheney one is especially creepy because it actually looks like him.
From Kevin Greenlee comes this…
I bring a perhaps unique perspective to the Jerry Lewis Telethon. After laughing at its excesses for many years, I had a daughter who was diagnosed with a form of M.D. As it turns out, I was a carrier of the condition and have gone on to develop it myself. Since then, the people at MDA have been a tremendous help to my family, in ways large and small. Hopefully, Jerry's fans won't let their displeasure at his ouster stop them from making a generous donation to a truly worthy charity.
Jerry tends to be a divisive figure among families in my situation. No one denies he's done a tremendous amount of good but he's done much of it in less than ideal ways. People with M.D. (even adults like myself) are referred to as his "kids" and our lives in general are portrayed in the most pathetic possible fashion. Surely you can understand why many people would not much relish having their lives held up for a nation's pity in such degrading and infantilizing ways.
Perhaps I'm mistaken but I suspect that the increasing chorus of complaints about that sort of thing from within the MDA community likely paid a key role in convincing the folks who run things that it was time for him to go.
I'm guessing it was a minor factor but a factor, nonetheless. Hey, I have a story that I should probably stick in here…
In 1981 (I think it was), I had to turn down the chance to be a writer or maybe the writer of Jerry's telethon. A director I'd worked with, Artie Forrest, was producing and directing the telethon and he made the offer, then arranged for me to meet with some official — I forget his title — within the MDA organization. There had recently been some unfortunate (for the telethon) press reports of folks with M.D. who felt as you did; that perhaps funds could be raised without making them all into sad little poster people. My job, if I could juggle another commitment so I could work on the telethon, would include trying to balance two competing concerns. One was the dignity of those living with M.D. The other was a mawkish sales pitch that the telethon organizers had learned was effective in making the phones ring. I gather that in any situation where the two matters clashed, the latter would always trump the former.
That scared me off a bit from working on the show…though the reason I ultimately didn't do it was that I couldn't move that other commitment. Another thing that scared me was Jerry. I'd worked with him a few months earlier and when I mentioned that to the MDA fellow, he asked, "How'd the two of you get along?" I said, "Well enough, especially after he realized that I could name every one of his movies. But he did strike me as rather — shall we say? — thin-skinned."
The MDA official corrected me. He said, "Jerry is not thin-skinned. He's no-skinned. He does all this material ridiculing other people and then he gives interviews where he attacks people he's mad at. But if you tell him you don't like his tie, he acts like you kicked him in the stomach." We talked a bit about how that might have impacted, for ill but also sometimes for good, his performing…and also how he kept making news with controversies and too-candid remarks.
Anyway, I didn't do the telethon and I'm still kinda sorry. Despite the meager pay and the near-certainty that Jerry and I would have had ugly moments, I still respect the hell out of his career and the efforts he's put into raising all that cash. And I would have liked to see if I could have found a way to make the sales pitch without depicting folks with M.D. in a degrading light. I don't for a minute think I could have managed it but it would have been interesting to try.