Category Archives: Uncategorized

Your TV listing may be lying to you. It may tell you that at 6 AM, they're running a show called Hero 108. This is a shameless lie. What they're now running in that time slot is a half-hour of vintage Warner Brothers cartoons…Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, etc.

And it may further be misinforming you by telling you that at Noon, they're airing two half-hours of Codename: Kids Next Door. Another shameless falsehood. Instead, what they're really running there is a whole hour of vintage Warner Brothers cartoons.

I tell you this, first of all because I believe in Truth…and secondly, in case you have kids who need to be introduced to the loveliness of Looney Tunes and the magnificence of Merrie Melodies but who won't watch anything that isn't on Nick or Cartoon Network. Tell 'em it's a brand-new show. Apart from the occasional catch-phrases from Jerry Colonna and Ralph Kramden, they'll never know the difference except that these cartoons are funny.

Hey, Stu Shostak has a real good show for tomorrow as he welcomes the two gents in the photo below. The fellow on the left is Jerry Eisenberg, who in addition to being a fine fellow and an amazing artist is one of the last veterans of the early days of Hanna-Barbera Studios who's still upright and interviewable. Jerry is a second-generation cartoonist, his father Harvey having been one of the great illustrators of "funny animal" comic books and animation designers, including extensive work with his pal Joe Barbera on the MGM Tom & Jerry cartoons and on the early days of Huckleberry Hound and The Flintstones. Jerry's career overlapped his old man's, starting at MGM, segueing to Warner Brothers and then to Hanna-Barbera where he became one of the key designers of their shows in the mid-sixties and into the seventies. He's also a very clever, funny fellow.

Also clever and funny is my longtime amigo Scott Shaw!, who began designing and doing layout for Hanna-Barbera in the seventies and is also an expert at what came before there. So is another talented guy, Earl Kress, who'll be serving as Stu's co-host helping to interview Jerry and Scott tomorrow on Stu's Show. I'm guessing they'll most be talking about Jerry's work and that Scott will have to come back for another broadcast to do justice to his long, amazing career in cartooning. Currently, Scott's many projects include writing and drawing comic books of The Simpsons.

In other words, Stu has Too Much Show tomorrow. If you'd like to bite off a chunk of it and learn much about the history of Hanna-Barbera, tune in Stu's Show when it comes to you live via the Internet at 4 PM Pacific. That's 7 PM on the East Coast and 5:30 AM in Rangoon, for all of you Rangoonians out there. It runs for two hours and they'll be gone faster than you can say "Ricochet Rabbit." The program repeats all week but you'll enjoy it most if you're listening in as it happens. Just go to Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time and click where they tell you to click.

My "take" on the whole matter in Wisconsin is that what the Republicans in the State Senate are doing has (alas) little to do with improving the financial health of the state. It has to do with using that stated goal as an excuse to kick organized labor in the ass and neutralize its power to stand up not just for the workers it represents but for the general interests of the lower and middle class.

I think the whole thing's already boomeranging on them by energizing the opposition to that kind of agenda. It looks like several of the folks who supported this are going to find themselves in recall elections. They may not care since large corporations will probably reward them handsomely once they're out of office…but if any of them do honestly care about serving the people, they oughta be worried, especially Wisconsin State senator Randy Hopper. You need to worry when the signatures on the petition to recall you include those of your maid and your wife.

About once a year, I go to an elementary school classroom somewhere and attempt to recruit innocent, unsuspecting children to the wicked life of creating cartoons. I basically spread two messages. One is that it's at least possible to make a living writing and/or drawing. And the other is that if you want to be able to do these things well, you need to practice, practice and practice some more. Based on past experiences, I think young folks are too quick to say "I can't do that" (whatever it is) if they can't achieve professional standards within the hour.

I'm not particularly out to convert anyone to that occupation but I do think school should expose children to more possibilities…and maybe if they are, they'll find some good probability in there and pursue it to good effect. Besides, I would have loved it back when I was in third grade if a guy who writes cartoons and comic books had come to my classroom, preempted an hour of Arithmetic to show us cartoons and draw my favorite characters on the blackboard. Which is what I did yesterday at a third grade class in West Hollywood.

I dragged my friend Mickey Paraskevas along to assist. Mickey is a fine illustrator of childrens' books…and a big thrill ran through the building (and a smile across Mickey's face) when it was discovered they had several of his books in the school's library. I taught the kids how to draw Charlie Brown and Garfield and Mickey Mouse and Spongebob Squarepants. Mickey taught them how to draw the Ferocious Beast from his books and TV show, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Some of the drawings the kids did were pretty darned good and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if twenty years from now, someone comes up to me at a convention or someplace and says, "I'm a professional cartoonist now and it all started when you and Mickey Paraskevas came to my class." Even if that never happens, I think some kids got the idea that you can learn how to develop some sort of skill and then use it to good advantage.

We started with the screening of a Garfield episode I wrote and then I got down to the basics of how cartoons are drawn. I am not a great artist but in a way, that helps in this kind of situation. When my pal Sergio Aragonés draws, I don't think you can learn a damned thing. It goes by so fast and it comes so much out of instinct that the process is largely invisible. When I draw, it looks humanly possible and the wires show. It's like a sleight of hand magician doing it slowly enough that you can see how it's done. Also, what the kids produce doesn't compare that unfavorably to what I do up there at the black or whiteboard.

The thing I've learned doing this — though I can always use the reminder — is how important these characters are to kids that age. They went nuts when I drew Scooby Doo on the blackboard and they oohed and ahhed when I explained that the person who does the voice now of Scooby is also now the voice of Garfield. That's Frank Welker…and Frank, if you're reading this page and you tell me you do: One little girl then asked me, "Isn't he also the voice of Fred?" Some of these kids really know their cartoons.

At one point near the end, as a kind of grand finale, I started drawing cartoon characters and they had to guess who I was drawing. I was halfway through Daffy Duck when all of the young'uns behind me were chanting "Donald Duck! Donald Duck!" I decided that rather than make them all wrong, I'd make it Donald Duck…so I added the sailor hat and rounded out the head and…sure enough: Donald Duck. Sort of. For what it's worth, their two favorite characters in the world seem to be Spongebob and Bugs Bunny, not necessarily in that order. They really know Bugs…although when I drew Yosemite Sam, almost no one knew who that was and my drawing wasn't that bad. I realized later that they probably know Bugs more from the merchandise than the cartoons, and there isn't much Sam merchandise out there.

Anyway, it was a fun day and I thank Mickey again, and I'll go back and do it for another third grade class at this school as soon as there is one. (Note to Self: Before you do, learn how to draw Dora the Explorer…and someone else on the Spongebob show besides Spongebob.)

If you've heard about the "sting" operation that got a couple of NPR execs ousted, you need to read this. It was like the same hoaxster's assault on ACORN, a case where tapes were deceptively edited, a triumphant "Gotcha!" was announced and the truth never caught up with the initial story that wrongdoing had been exposed.

I know why this fellow James O'Keefe does this kind of thing. I don't know why mainstream journalism falls for his con jobs, gives them front page status and then buries the reality of what happened on page B-18. And I really don't know why people are thrown under the proverbial bus just because a lying weasel managed to make them look bad.

By the way: I happen to be in favor of cutting off government funding to NPR, not because it's biased (I don't think it is and neither do a number of Conservatives) but because I think that's just not something that tax dollars should go for. I don't like the idea though that it or any institution can be defeated by fraudulent — and I'll put it in quotes because what these guys do really isn't — "journalism."

Last Friday, I took my mother to lunch. At one point, I was in line to use the men's room and there was one person waiting ahead of me — an employee of the restaurant at which we were dining. Killing time, I glanced around and noticed a hand-chalked sign on the wall next to us. It said at the top, "Celerate the season!"

I sometimes go through life proofreading the world around me. I always try to do it in an amused (as opposed to critical) way. I mean, it's wrong…but what the hell harm does it do? Still, people are usually grateful when you point this kind of thing out so I read it aloud and told the guy ahead of me in line, "Looks like someone owes your customers a "B!"

He chuckled and seemed very, very happy that I'd pointed this out. He whipped out a BlackBerry, took a snapshot of the sign and told me, "The guy who lettered that is my boss. Next time he gets on my case about making a mistake, I'm just going to have to show him that! Thanks!"

Among my favorite things on the web are Kliph Nesteroff's interviews of veteran comedians and comedy writers. He just posted Part One of an interview with Steve Rossi and before that, he had a great chat with writer Bill Persky. Matter of fact, while you're over there, check out any of his conversations with funny people.

Quite a few people have written to ask me to compile my own "Top 100 Comedy Movies" list but I'm not going to do that. I was faulting the voters in that other list for not knowing anything produced before 1974 or thereabouts…but I'd be just as deficient in that I'm not familiar with a lot of the comedy films of the last ten or fifteen years. I don't know if Will Ferrell has made any movies that are deserving of being on such a list. I just know that there's something wrong with a list that purports to name the best of all time and doesn't include Woody Allen, the Marx Brothers, Stan and Ollie, Keaton, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Producers, anything by Blake Edwards or Billy Wilder, etc.

One of my favorite episodes of the original Twilight Zone was "Escape Clause," written by Rod Serling. You may remember it. David Wayne played a hypochondriac who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal life. Nothing can harm him. Nothing can kill him. And what he does with this newfound invulnerability is to go around, putting himself into life-threatening situations like hurling himself in front of a speeding train and drinking poison, ratcheting up the jeopardy in search of a thrill that does not come. Eventually, of course, he takes it too far and achieves the self-destruction that was hard-wired into his soul.

So, uh, where is Evanier going with this? Believe it or not, this is a post that's sort of about Charlie Sheen…only it isn't. People keep e-mailing me to ask what I think of his recent exploits, including his assertion that he keeps "winning" even though he was fired last week from a $2 million-per-episode job on a hit series and that an awful lot of his industry and audience thinks he's a lunatic.

I don't know Charlie Sheen and I'm real skeptical of anyone's psychoanalysis of someone they've never met…so like I said, this is not about him. It's more like my answer to the question, "Why do some rich and famous folks do things like this? I think Rod Serling gave me a lot of the answer.

If you achieve success in this world, you can react to it in two ways. One is to accept and enjoy it. The other is to resent that it doesn't solve every single problem in your life and that it can actually create new ones. What was key to Mr. Serling's teleplay was that David Wayne's character was a neurotic before he traded off his soul…and gaining eternal life didn't take away that neurosis. It just made it worse because he couldn't even worry about catching a cold any longer. He was an unhappy man and he just needed something to be unhappy about.

People who make millions per week like Charlie Sheen did sometimes embrace the magic spell that has come over them but sometimes, they just plain don't know how to do that. They've lived on the window ledge so long that they need a little struggle in their lives…need to understand how far the super powers extend and to find out if there's a Kryptonite out there for them. David Wayne had to test his immortality. Some rich 'n' famous folks need to test their success and play with it, seeing just how far they can push it before someone hauls off and slaps them across the puss. That's the only way they think they'll understand it. There's also usually a lot of guilt involved. They just get away with so many things they know in their hearts they shouldn't get away with.

One time in Vegas back in my Blackjacking days, I shared a table with a player who started with $500 and within two hours had it up to around $10,000. I was winning too but not like that. I think I started with $200 and when I hit $500, I quit…but I stayed around long enough to see the guy lose the entire ten grand and believe me, it wasn't easy. He had to make riskier and riskier bets to do that.

Later, I was talking with a wizened casino veteran about gamblers like that. We were standing in the casino at Bally's — then, maybe the largest and most lavish in town — and my friend gestured to the room in general and said, "They build places like this off guys like that." Then he added, "Some people are just like that. They don't play to win. They play to see how high they can fly before they crash and burn."

Here's a quick look at the history of Popeye. A lot of folks don't know that it was once the cleverest comic strip in the newspaper and that it had very little to do with spinach and beating up guys named Bluto or Brutus. Not that there's anything wrong with the Max Fleischer cartoons but…well, they're wonderful in their own way. Elzie Segar's original comic strip was wonderful in a different way.

I never get upset over "Top 10" or "Top 100" or "Top Any Number" lists and you shouldn't be bothered by a survey conducted by a website called College Humor to determine the 100 Best Comedies of All Time. I am kinda curious if the respondents just haven't seen any movie made before 1974 (I think the oldest one on there is Blazing Saddles) or if they really think five Adam Sandler movies are better than anything the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Billy Wilder, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Lemmon, W.C. Fields, Peter Sellers, Buster Keaton or Woody Allen ever did. Those folks are unrepresented but Will Ferrell has four on the list, two of them in the top ten.

Does anyone really think Spaceballs is one of the greatest comedies of all time and The Producers isn't in the top hundred? I'll bet there wasn't even a single person who worked on Spaceballs who thinks that. Hey, does anyone even think that National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is better than National Lampoon's Vacation?

I do like the part that says Anchorman is Will Ferrell's Citizen Kane. Yeah, I can see the parallels. And it is interesting to me that even Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin are somewhat passé with these voters. Each got but one or two films on the list, far from the top.

Oddly, the top pick is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is at least a few decades back and a reasonable choice…though I personally think The Life of Brian (which they have at #45) is a much better movie.

Life of Brian might have been my pick for Numero Uno…or maybe The Producers, A Night at the Opera, The General or one of around ten other movies that are absent from this list. Phil Conley sent me this link and said, "At least half of the movies on this list are ones I'd have to be paid to watch." Admittedly, I haven't seen all of them either but apparently none of the voters have seen anything made prior to Richard Nixon's resignation. And come to think of it, if they'd released that as a feature, it would have been my first choice.

I really like this photo that someone took with my camera at a New York Con. The guy on the left is Charlie Kochman of Harry N. Abrams Books. He's the editor/exec responsible for my book on Jack Kirby and for that great collection Abrams put out of Al Jaffee's Tall Tales cartoons. The fellow on the right is, it would seem, me.

The man between us is Al Jaffee, who is 90 years old today and still doing what he does best…creating silly pictures for MAD magazine. I always liked Al's work and in all my days of reading MAD and researching MAD and writing about MAD and talking about MAD with most of the key people who've created its contents, I've never met anyone who didn't like Al Jaffee's work. I haven't even met anyone who didn't like Al Jaffee the human being, which is amazing. I mean, you figure: The guy's that talented and beloved, there have got to be at least a few people jealous of him. If there are, I sure haven't found them. He's not only a great talent but a great gentleman as well. Those two things don't always go together but with Al, one seems like an extension of the other.

Anyway, I like this photo because it shows me next to the wonderful Mr. Jaffee and maybe, just like guilt by assocation, someone will think that some of what's great about him is rubbing off on me. I wish. But what I really like about this photo is that you can fold the right third of it over the middle third and make Al Jaffee completely disappear. If you're viewing this on an iPad, try folding it over and see if I'm not right.

Happy 90, Al. And congratulations on becoming middle-aged.

Wednesday evening, Turner Classic Movies is running The Projectionist. If you've never seen this movie, see this movie. If you have seen this movie, you're going to want to see it again. It's on at 11:30 PM in most areas but check your listing to make sure before you set a DVR or VCR or even tune in to watch it live.

The Projectionist was made for about a dollar-eighty in 1971 and it stars Chuck McCann, Rodney Dangerfield and Ina Balin. Chuck plays a film projectionist who lives way too much of his life in fantasy, imagining himself as the heroes of the movies he runs. It makes for a funny but touching story with Chuck giving one of the greatest performances you'll ever see. And in case you care, it was Rodney Dangerfield's motion picture debut.

I don't want to write much more than that because I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Just watch this one. It's been a cult favorite for years and if you tune in, you'll probably find yourself joining the cult.

Some on Las Vegas message boards are reacting with a mixture of shock and dismay at the news that the Sahara Hotel, which first opened in 1952, will close May 16. Its owners haven't decided what to do with the place but they say "…at this point, the continued operation of the aging Sahara was no longer economically viable."

I don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone. The number of people who want to go to Las Vegas and gamble is not an infinite resource. With hotel after hotel opening, there have to be ones that fail because supply exceeds demand. The Sahara has long been a likely candidate to lose out in that competition.

First of all, it's old. It's not old and beautiful. It's not even old and quaint. It's just old. It's located way down at the end of The Strip, convenient to almost nothing. It has no restaurants that have distinguished themselves and its buffet has received consistently bad reviews for decades. No big stars have played its showroom in a long time. Its gaming is not known for better-than-other-hotels odds. It is cheap but so are a lot of hotels that don't have its negatives. Its brand name has a lot of history but so do a lot of hotels that don't have its negatives. Besides, no one pauses as they make their lodging selections to say, "I've just got to stay someplace where Sinatra hung out fifty years ago." About the only thing the Sahara has that some others do not is a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail…the one nobody rides.

In brief, I can't think of a single reason why anyone would want to go there except maybe that it's a part of Vegas history…but if that's what you crave, other parts (like the Flamingo, Caesars and even the Tropicana) are better bets. Sinatra gamboled and gambled at them, too.

It's true we are losing Old Vegas. The Desert Inn, where my parents were married sixty years ago this month, is gone, displaced by the Wynn. The Sands is gone and so are the Frontier and the Stardust and the original Aladdin and several others…but it was the same with all of them. They'd evolved into hotels that couldn't compete; that couldn't offer you anything you couldn't get down the block cheaper and/or better. But actually what we're losing in most cases are the names of these places. Everything else was gone long ago. For example, when the Desert Inn was demolished, everything from the original structure had long since been replaced, some of it many times over. It was like the story of the guy who claims to be selling George Washington's ax…but he admits that the handle has been replaced several times over the years and so has the blade. No piece of it remains that George ever touched but somehow it's still George Washington's ax.

The Sahara will be torn down…maybe not by its current owners, maybe by the next ones or the ones after. Along the way, it might be refurbished so totally that it won't bear any connection to the Sahara as it was when I played Blackjack there in the eighties, let alone when the Rat Pack played the Congo Room in the sixties. On one message board, I saw someone say, "We're losing our heritage." No, we lost that long ago. What we're losing now are some shabby businesses that couldn't keep up and which have some vague connection — sometimes in name only — to a long gone era.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is undergoing major revisions under a new director and a new book writer. The current version will play for another month or so and I'm curious to see if attendance will go up (because people want to see this much-talked-about version while they can) or down (because this version has been declared seriously broken). The show will close on April 17 so the changes can he rehearsed and then it will resume previews on May 12 and actually open on June 14. Obviously, those last two dates are subject to change.

I hope they pull it off. I know there are folks out there who think expensive spectaculars are choking Broadway, making it impossible to do a "little" show. I have no doubt theater would be better off if there wasn't so much money riding on every effort but I think Spider-Man is already an example of why huge budgets need to be avoided. It will forever remind producers that a $10 million budget can easily turn into a $20 million one and a $30 million one and eventually, $65 million. (Closing for a month will drive the total $$$ gamble up further.) Even if it's eventually profitable — and it has a long way to go before that will seem possible — few will want to take that risk.

I have nothing but the obvious to say about the horrible news out of Japan. This kind of thing depresses me…and also makes me angry in a way Hurricane Katrina made me angry. Money couldn't have prevented Katrina just as it can't stop an earthquake…but it can make things better in the rescue/rebuild phase. If we wasted less money on foolish wars and silly political battles, we could have more to save lives, minimize suffering and put a lot of things back the way they were.

As I do when things of this tragic sort happen, I'm reminding you all about my favorite charity, Operation USA. There are many good ones out there but I'm quite certain that the cash I donate to Operation USA couldn't do any more good in anyone else's hands. Send what you can spare…and if you were thinking of donating to this website, send it to them instead.