Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sometimes, a news story is just so stupid, you aren't sure you aren't reading The Onion. Case in point.

Sidney Blumenthal on how the Bush administration did and didn't anticipate their problems in post-war Iraq.

I am informed by (so far) "Garrett," Pierce Askegren, Ryan Mead, Mike Zeidler, Merlin Haas, Craig Wiener, Jim Guida, Hurricane Heenan, Ed Coyote, Don Porges, Johnny Achziger and some guy named Marv Wolfman that once upon a time, a Three Musketeers bar consisted of three sections of nougat — one chocolate, one strawberry, one vanilla. The "musketeer" connection to such a confection was that in advertising, three musketeers would use their expert swordsmanship to trisect the candy bar so that each could have the section with his favorite flavor. Over the years, the bar turned into one chocolate-filled lump but the name remained. I don't understand why you change a product that much and don't rename it but, hey, there are plenty of things in this world I don't understand. Like all these people who claim they like candy corn.

Speaking of candy corn, several of you sent me links to this article over at The Onion. That's only part of it.

My friend Carolyn was just reading this here weblog and she pointed out a funny typo that I made which I'm not going to correct. In the previous message here, I referred to a certain candy bar as "Three Mouseketeers." That's wrong. Actually, the candy bar I never liked was named "Three Musketeers" — and by the way, I never understood why they called it that. What in the name of Douglas Fairbanks do musketeers have to do with "whipped, fluffy chocolate nougat covered in rich milk chocolate?" The name "Three Mouseketeers" is stuck in my head because it was a wonderful little comic book feature, written and drawn by the great Sheldon Mayer. It debuted in 1944 in a DC comic called Funny Stuff and it wasn't until 1956 that the three mice — Patsy, Fatsy and Minus — received their own book. It was, like everything else Mr. Mayer did, a very funny funnybook.

At the time, Mr. Disney's Mickey Mouse Club was the number one kids' show on television and one wonders if someone at DC decided to launch the comic figuring that the name "Mouseketeers" (which was what they called Annette and Cubby and all the rest) now had some extra appeal in the marketplace. By then, Mayer was doing his acclaimed comic, Sugar and Spike, and for a while, he attempted to do both books. Eventually though, the workload was too much for him and he reluctantly gave up the Mouseketeers as it was less of a personal work — though it is said he still felt like he was giving up one of his children. An artist named Rube Grossman handled the mice thereafter, sometimes writing his own stories, sometimes drawing scripts by Sy Reit. I thought they did an adequate job of aping and occasionally equalling Mayer's work but the readers apparently sensed the difference as sales promptly plunged to cancellation levels. Years later, DC revived the title with Mayer reprints but it got lost amidst a line of super-hero and war comics. That was a shame because it was a good comic book — and a much better treat than that awful candy bar.

I have 18 messages from people who claim they love candy corn. These people lie.

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 Three Mouseketeers 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.

Over at Comic Book Resources, Budjette Tan is beginning a series on the Filipino comic book artists who flooded into the U.S. industry in the seventies. Here's a link to Part One.

Over at the N.P.R. site, we find an interview with Gary Larson, cartoonist of The Far Side.

Here are two more messages on this subject of whether you have to be dead to get on a postage stamp and if so, for how long. This first one comes from someone who signs his message, "MichaelRbn"…

I think the reason for the timing of the ten year rule is actually pretty simple. If you read the information provided in the Postal Service website to which you previously linked, it appears that it was part of the transition that occured circa 1970 when the old Post Office Department was converted into the new U.S. Postal Service. Part of the reasoning for that change was an attempt to remove some of the worst aspects of political patronage from what was considered an antiquated Cabinet Department and have the Post Office become an efficient modern corporate entity. Now, it is not my intent to defend that thesis here and now. It's fairly irrelevant to the question at hand. But a side benefit of the change was supposed to be to minimize the situation which existed where often times Congress would pass resolutions (or even laws) requiring the Post Office to print stamps for a favored industry, cause or person. And there are often instances where the ten year rule is used to fend off campaigns for stamps to be issued immediately after some momentarily popular individual's death. I doubt very much anyone deliberately created the rule to slight Martin Luther King, Jr. (who was honored along with RFK with a stamp right after the ten year period elapsed in 1979).

And this one comes from David Goehner…

Yep, there are kids pictured on the "Great Depression" stamp from the 1930s "Stamps of the Century" set who were indeed alive when the stamp was issued in 1998. The stamp uses the famous 1936 picture taken by Dorthea Lange of Florence Owens Thompson with three of her children. Through some brief online searching, I located a fellow named Roger Sprague, who is a grandson of the woman pictured and apparently offers himself for lectures about the Depression. He confirmed that two of the children were still alive when the stamp came out (but didn't specifically clarify whether or not they are still alive, although since he mentioned the date of death of just one of the children, it seems reasonable to assume that the other two are still alive today). Roger also offered some insight regarding how the stamp people got around the "people who are still alive" issue. Here are a couple of lines from his message to me this morning:

At the time the stamp was issued, both Katherine and Norma were living. If you look at the photo again, you will see a baby in my grandmother's arms near the lower right. This child is my aunt Norma, age 1 year. Katherine is the child on my grandmother's right shoulder, and my mother Ruby is on her left shoulder. My grandmother, Florence, died in Sept. 1983 at age 80, my mother, Ruby, died in Feb. 1990 at age 60. Congress was lobbied to allow for the photo to be turned into a stamp even though two of the persons were still living. Actually, the only living person whose "face" appears in the photo is my aunt Norma's, and no one, I'm sure, would recognize her from it.

So it looks like the score is now one clown and two kids who have appeared on a U.S. postage stamp while they were still alive.

Not much to add to this except that I continue to be amazed at how much info comes in when I post a question here. Thanks to all who wrote. And now I have to go mail some bills using stamps with a picture of an eagle on them. Wonder if that eagle is still alive…

Michael Kinsley writes a rebuttal to the rebuttal.

I'm getting a lot of e-mail about this stamp thing. Here's a message from John Hedegor who seems to know what he's talking about…

I have been reading with interest your items concerning postage stamps that seemed to represent waivers to the rule that people have to be dead for ten years before their likenesses are allowed on stamps (Presidents excepted). However, I must clear up a misconception here: the "ten years" rule was not adopted by the CSAC (Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee) until some time in the late 1960s. Until then, there were no limitations concerning a person's appearance on a postage stamp (so long as that person was deceased). During the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. issued many memorial stamps to those who had recently died; besides Disney and Hammarskjold, these included
Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay (1957), Ernst Reuter, mayor of (West) Berlin (1959), former Senators Robert Taft and Walter George (1960), Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1960), Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (1962), Eleanor Roosevelt (1963), and in 1965, Winston Churchill and Adlai Stevenson.

Unfortunately, I do not know precisely when the "ten years" rule went into effect, but since no memorial stamps for non-Presidents have been issued since Disney's in 1968, I will assume it was around 1968 or 1969, when the Post Office underwent a series of reorganizations. Surely King and Robert Kennedy would have been honored had the rule not been in effect then.

Also, Harry McCracken is quite correct that the likeness of circus clown Lou Jacobs was used for the American Circus stamp of 1966. But since his face was used a symbol of circus performers in general, and not as a commemoration of Lou Jacobs specifically, it was acceptable. Many living people have posed, or had their likenesses used for, postage stamps. Other examples include the Drug Abuse prevention stamp of 1971 (a young woman slouched in agony), and, going much further back, the Arbor Day stamp of 1932 (a little boy and girl planting a tree) and a Los Angeles Olympics stamp of the same year (a runner on his mark).

Unlike McCracken, I do collect stamps (as you can tell!) and I hope the above helps to clarify things somewhat.

Yes, it does. And I suppose my lingering curiosity is what it was that prompted someone to say, "We need a ten year rule." Now that you mention it was enacted in the sixties, I seem to remember someone once charging that they instituted the policy to avoid the controversy that would might have erupted had they issued a Martin Luther King stamp then. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case but I wonder what it was.

Kenny Ausubel discusses how certain politicians spin anti-environmental policies to make them seem pro-environment.

Here's a rebuttal to Michael Kinsley's earlier article on stem-cell research.

If you're interested in the art of lettering comic books, there are a number of articles and interviews over at Richard Starkings' Balloon Tales site. Of particular note should be this roundtable discussion in which a number of industry professionals discuss whether comics should be lettered in upper and lower case or ALL CAPS.

According to this report, there are people out there who are complaining that the new Looney Tunes DVD doesn't include such fave WB cartoons as One Froggy Evening and What's Opera, Doc? This is a silly criticism, and one that I suspect is not as widely-held as the news report would have us believe.