Category Archives: Uncategorized

Californians may or may not vote next election to legalize marijuana. The polls show the "yes" votes running slightly behind and of course, there's the worry that many marijuana users will be too wasted to get to their polling places. In any case, Mark A.R. Kleiman says the outcome won't matter because federal law says the stuff's illegal and federal law supercedes state law. This thing qualified for the ballot months ago and there have been an awful lot of articles and debates about it by now. I'm not sure I've heard anyone raise the point Mr. Kleiman raises…but don't you think someone should have?

I'm voting to legalize pot. I've never used it. I've never even used tobacco. But in all these years of hearing the topic debated, I've never heard anything approaching a coherent explanation as to why vodka is legal but marijuana isn't. And in my world at least, I've seen more lives ruined by vodka than marijuana. If the measure passes, the legal system can deal with it…and at least we can be amused to hear it's all being taken to a Higher Court.

Hey, whatever happened to Roosevelt Grier? (And never mind the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. How'd he survive The Thing With Two Heads?

Here's one of those rare opportunities to get yourself a great piece of artwork and do a good deed at the same time. The late Russ Manning was a fine artist and a fine gentleman. Most comic fans know his work drawing the comic book of Magnus, Robot Fighter, and the comic book and strip of Tarzan, and the newspaper strip of Star Wars. He only did the last of these for a brief time before failing health forced him to hand it off to others.

Fewer know that Russ was equally proud of his community work. He lived in an outlying, rather rural section of Orange County in California where he was an officer in the local Volunteer Fire Department. It was not uncommon when you were talking to Russ on the phone to suddenly hear an alarm going off in his end of the call. He'd immediately say, "Gotta go" and hang up on you, then dash off to go rescue some neighbors' property. Not uncommon at all. And I don't know about you but I respect the hell out of a guy who does stuff like that.

Russ passed away in 1981. Recently, his widow (a very sweet lady) has been having medical problems and therefore financial problems. Friends and family members have been helping out and you can help. At the Comic-Con next week, there will be several originals from the Star Wars newspaper strip in the Art Show and they'll be up for auction or even direct sale. They were drawn by Russ with the help of talented aides, especially Rick Hoberg…and they are extremely rare. He didn't do that many and the few that have been let out went swiftly into private collections of rabid Manning (and Star Wars) fans. So this might be your only chance to get one…and like I said, you can also do a good gesture at the same time.

You may recall that I spent much of last March, as I spend most recent Marches, eating Creamy Tomato Soup at my local Souplantation. They have it every March and then usually for one week in October. One week in October is probably when you will next find me at my local Souplantation.

So one day last March, I was sitting there eating Creamy Tomato Soup when a gentleman approached me to say hello and thank me for recommending my favorite soup here. He was Bill Freiberger, a top writer-producer who's worked on a wide array of shows including The Simpsons, Herman's Head, Pee-wee's Playhouse, Get a Life and Greg the Bunny. He's currently working on Warren the Ape, which is seen on MTV. He told me that he'd just written an episode in which the Souplantation's Creamy Tomato Soup was mentioned. I told him to let me know when it airs.

Well, he just let me know it airs this coming Monday evening at 10:30, which probably means different times in some time zones. He also let me know that while the Souplantation is much-discussed, the reference to Creamy Tomato Soup got cut. I plan to watch anyway and so should you.

Kliph Nesteroff, who brought us that great article recently about Woody Woodbury, strikes again. He interviewed and wrote about Rusty Warren, who was kind of the First Lady of Bawdy Comedy Records. There's a talent deserving of wider recognition.

Remember that item about the canned sandwich? Well, read this. Looks like the guy behind them may wind up in a can somewhere, himself.

Back here, we told you how a revered (and huge) book shop in Long Beach, California was closing after many, many years. I'm not sure precisely when Acres of Books did finally close its doors but they were reopened the other day for a great close-out sale.

Someone needs to know the answer to this puzzler: When was the first time that someone referred to Superman as "The Big Blue Boy Scout?" I was asked and I didn't know. Do you? Drop me an e-mail if you think you can help.

The Emmy nominations are out and the big news for some is that Conan O'Brien's short-lived Tonight Show got one, whereas Mr. Leno's did not. I suspect the following…

• That while it may have been some voters' way of flipping the bird to Mr. Leno, most were more interested in flipping it to — in order of ascending targets — Jeff Zucker, NBC and network programmers in general.
• That the voters who voted the Coco ballot were voting for him being cancelled, not for what he actually did on the program…or maybe just for what he did on the program its last week or so.
• That Mr. Leno is not bothered much, if at all, about this. He's used to it by now. (Jay is, I'm told, more bothered when reporters say he's never been nominated or won. He was nominated a number of times, albeit a while back, and his Tonight Show won for Best Musical or Variety Series in '95.)
• That Mr. Letterman is more upset that his show wasn't nominated.
• And that Mr. Stewart and The Daily Show will win in that category…or if he doesn't, a Mr. Colbert will.

I came across one site which said that this will have some impact on whether Jay survives on The Tonight Show. It will have none whatsoever. It didn't have any impact that he wasn't nominated for 10+ years. The only thing that will matter there is if (a) the numbers go up and down and (b) if a more promising alternative seems to be possible.

One of these days, I'll have to write a piece on the Emmy Awards. In Hollywood, there is one sense in which they mean a lot because everyone loves to get awards, if only for the potential career/salary boost. In another sense, I don't think anyone really thinks the process is configured to select the best…and the more you know about how that process works, the less likely you are to believe that.

Unless, of course, you win one in which case you might briefly convince yourself that the system is momentarily, and only in your category that year, infallible. But like the Oscars, no one can really say for sure what any particular "win" means…and one seems to care about that.

The other day here, I linked to a letter from Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman to cartoonist Garry Trudeau. This brought the following message from the fine comic book creator, Paul Chadwick…

I know you're a fellow Watergate aficionado so you might find this interesting.

After resigning, Ehrlichman moved his family back to Bellevue, Washington, where his daughter Jody became a classmate of mine. Nevertheless, I was startled to find this villain from my newspapers appear as a guest speaker in my American History class. To talk about Watergate? No. To recount his experiences as a navigator on American bombers flying missions over Germany in WWII.

He was so charmingly self-deprecating, casting himself not as a war hero but as a terrified kid struggling to do his job, that I couldn't help liking the guy. His modesty, intelligence and depth messed with my political cosmology. It made me a follower of his subsequent tribulations, if not exactly a fan.

After all, he actually put into writing — checking a box next to "approve", if I recall correctly! — his go-ahead for Liddy's crew to burgle the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, looking for private agonies with which to destroy the whistleblower. A dirtier political trick is hard to imagine.

I remember that after his divorce, Ehrlichman gave up on his legal appeals and simply reported to prison. He wrote novels, producing a decent Washington potboiler, The Company, that was made into a TV miniseries with Jason Robards playing a Nixon-like President Richard Monckton. I recall the scene where Monckton laughs with raspy glee at his mechanically elevating desk on Air Force One, supposedly installed by LBJ. I wonder if that bit was true.

Ehrlichman also, I recall, wrote an article for an art collector's magazine about art in the Nixon White House. He recounted an anecdote about being seated next to painter Andrew Wyeth at a state dinner. He boned up on Wyeth's work in order to make conversation. But Wyeth had learned Ehrlichman practiced Land Use law before working for Nixon, and spent the dinner discussing a zoning dispute in which the artist was entangled.

He eventually remarried, tried to syndicate a radio commentary (I never heard it, and I was seeking it out), and Wikipedia tells me he worked for an Atlanta hazardous materials firm. It also has this tidbit:

Shortly before his death, Ehrlichman teamed with novelist Tom Clancy to write, produce, and co-host a three hour Watergate documentary, John Ehrlichman: In the Eye of the Storm. The finished, but never broadcast, documentary, associated papers, and videotape elements (including an interview Ehrlichman did with Bob Woodward as part of the project) is housed at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, at the University of Georgia in Athens.

Now that apologia would be a treat for us Watergate geeks.

Google results seem to suggest that Ehrlichman's immortality rests on his poetic comment on the Oval Office tapes about how it would be a good distraction from the widening Watergate scandal to let FBI director-appointee L. Patrick Gray's confirmation hearing drag on — that they should leave Gray "twisting slowly, slowly in the wind." Fair enough, but that line came first from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, describing a hanged man.

A well-read fellow, Ehrlichman.

Well, nobody ever said he was stupid…although he may have seemed so when he appeared at the Watergate hearings and tried to justify some of the things he tried to justify. In all my readings, Ehrlichman always came off as a smart, efficient fellow who played the Washington game precisely the way he believed it was supposed to be played, and certainly the way Nixon wanted it to be played. In many ways, he went to prison because someone had to, and even Nixon's greatest enemies weren't about to put him behind bars. I do think the man broke the law and I have no problem believing the theories that he specifically ordered the infamous Watergate break-in.

But in his post-prison appearances, he did come across as a bright, sympathetic guy…at least when he wasn't trying to justify past behavior. His Watergate book, Witness to Power, was a mixed bag. He dumped on Nixon but must have known a lot more than he included. At least it felt like he was attacking his former boss just enough to sell books, not enough to give historians a true, unfiltered peek into the Nixon White House. I never read his roman à clef novel but I made it through much of the mini-series made from it and thought it was just dreadful with Robards struggling to portray Nixon without portraying Nixon. Richard Monckton? Yeah, that couldn't possibly be the same guy, could it?

Thanks, Paul. I've only had the opportunity to meet two Watergate figures. One, on a couple of occasions, has been John Dean who struck me as the smartest of the bunch — the one who figured out first that the jig was up and it was time to make a clean breast of it and turn state's evidence. The other was Charles Colson. I met him soon after he got into his Christian Fellowship line of work and sat horrified through a lunch where he talked about how much money there was to be made off anything that could be properly marketed to that audience. I'll have to write about that lunch one of these days.

Forty years ago today, I attended my first comic book convention. It convened at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City…a building which is still hosting comic conventions. I've stayed there a few times since 1970 and it hasn't, sad to say, changed all that much. (It was built in 1919 as the Hotel Pennsylvania. It changed ownership in 1948 to become the Statler Hilton and later went through another name or two before reverting to the Hotel Pennsylvania. Every year or two lately, they announce it will soon be demolished and replaced by something bigger and better…but it's still right where it's always been. It also still has the same phone number it's had since the thirties when seven-digit phone numbers were introduced: PEnnsylvania 6-5000.)

Perhaps you're wondering why, since I've lived in Southern California all my life, my first comic book convention wasn't a San Diego Con. That's because forty years ago today, there hadn't been any multi-day comic conventions in San Diego…or anywhere else in this state. The first one in San Diego, which was called the Golden State Comic-Con, was held August 1-3 of 1970. It became an annual affair which has since morphed into the Comic-Con International.

A few days before the 1970 New York Con, my then-partner Steve Sherman and I flew to New York and checked into the Statler Hilton. A day or two later, our friend Mike Royer flew back and joined us in a hotel room barely large enough for one of us. We were there about ten days, during which we attended the con. Between that and our visits to comic book company offices, I — a lifelong comic book reader — managed to meet a pretty high percentage of the writers, artists and editors whose work I'd been following for years.

Our first day in Manhattan, Steve and I spent the day at the offices of DC Comics, which were then located in an austere building at 909 Third Avenue. Among the folks I met in person that day were Julius Schwartz, Carmine Infantino, Dick Giordano, Nelson Bridwell, Joe Kubert, Murray Boltinoff, Sol Harrison, Neal Adams, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Robert Kanigher, Murphy Anderson, Gerry Conway, Denny O'Neil, Mary Skrenes, Mark Hanerfeld, Mort Weisinger, Sal Amendola and Byron Preiss. Julie Schwartz took us to lunch at a restaurant where the food wasn't very good but the waitresses wore short skirts and would bend over often.

The next day, we had an 11 AM appointment to go to Marvel and meet Stan Lee and the folks in the famed Bullpen. Around 10, someone called from the office and said Stan had an emergency appointment and like it or not, we were rescheduled for 2 PM. With several hours to kill, Steve and I went wandering around New York and something amazing happened at the corner of Madison Avenue and E. 52nd Street.

We were touristing about when we heard someone yell, "Mi amigos!" We looked and there, having spotted us from across the intersection, was famed cartoonist Sergio Aragonés. This was many years before Sergio and I became good friends and frequent collaborators. I think I'd met him twice in Los Angeles and wouldn't have dreamed he'd remember me at all, let alone recognize me across a busy New York street. We scurried over to say hello to him and explained we were in town for the upcoming convention and to visit comic book company offices. He said, "Are you going to visit MAD Magazine?" We said it hadn't occurred to us but yes, certainly, we'd love to visit the MAD offices. "Where are they?"

He pointed to the building we were standing in front of and said, "Right here! Come…I will give you a tour." As we walked into the lobby, I held the door for a little, sad-faced man who was walking out with an art portfolio. I later realized it was Wally Wood.

Sergio took us upstairs gave us a grand tour. We met William Gaines, Al Feldstein, Nick Meglin, Jerry DeFuccio, John Putnam and others of the Usual Gang of Idiots. Artist Angelo Torres was there and Production Manager Leonard Brenner let me hold and examine the original art to the first issue of MAD. I remember Sergio saying, "You may look at it but you cannot keep it." And I replied, "Hey, if I had a gun, I could keep it!"

That afternoon, we went to the Marvel offices, which were located at 635 Madison. The official address of the company was 625 Madison but the comic book division was squirreled away — hidden in a futile attempt to avoid fannish invasions — in a building down the street. In surprisingly-cramped offices, we met not only Stan Lee but also John Romita, Marie Severin, Roy Thomas, Larry Lieber, John Verpoorten, Herb Trimpe, Frank Giacoia and Bill Everett. The following day, Steve and I spent a few hours with Steve Ditko in his studio.

The high point of the trip — the convention — commenced on Friday, July 3, forty years ago today. That morning, I met in person, my pen-pal of several years, Tony Isabella. We went to breakfast with Al Williamson, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin and spent the day meeting other folks in the comic industry, as well as fellow fans I knew through correspondence and the fanzine network. The latter group included Martin Pasko, Alan Brennert, Gary Groth, Martin Greim, Guy Lillian and Bob Beerbohm. Over the three days of the con, I also met Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Jim Steranko, Joe Sinnott, Gene Colan, Archie Goodwin, Tom Sutton and a few dozen others. It was a three-day conference but so much happened and so much was new and exciting that it felt like three weeks. Today, a four-day con in San Diego feels like it's over in about four hours.

That con and many others in New York were run by a gentleman named Phil Seuling who, for reasons I explained here, was very important in the history of the American comic book. Since then, I have probably attended somewhere around 200 comic book conventions, including many that were larger and more professionally-run. Not to take anything away from any of them but just as there's something special about your first love or your first kiss or your first anything, there's something special about your first comic book convention. At least there was for a guy like me. It was like landing on a distant planet, realizing it was where you belonged and instantly fitting right in. I later worked with many of the people I've namedropped here and some are still good friends.

I'm sure you had some days in your past when you could almost feel your life changing for the better. Mine changed that week in New York…but it really changed forty years ago today, high atop the Statler Hilton.

Nobody can write an Oscar review like Ken Levine.

I love the magazine and institution, Consumer Reports, though I often forget to check their site before I buy. I'm a subscriber there and I forget. I also forget to recommend them to you because even a non-subscriber can get plenty of info over there. They continue to do what they've always done, which is to purchase products — they do not accept freebees or review samples — and test them and report. They are often blunt to the point of telling you not to buy some safe-sounding brand name about which you might otherwise say, "Oh, that's a well-known company…how bad can their product be?"

In truth, when they review an item with which I'm familiar, their observations do not always coincide with mine. But I always learn from their reports and an informed me is a better me. The last two times I bought a new car, their advice just in that department saved me more loot than I will ever spend on subscriptions to Consumer Reports.

They have a great piece up right now and I think you can all access it. They reviewed fifteen products usually sold with impulse TV ads and informercials — the Slap Chop, the Snuggie, the Magic Jack, the ShamWow, etc. Most did not fare well in their trials but a few did. Read all about 'em right here…and don't forget to bookmark the whole site and consult it when you make a purchase.

Forgot to mention that Friday tickets sold out a few days ago for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Four-day passes were gone some time ago, as were tickets for Saturday. You can still buy a ticket to go on Thursday or Sunday…but you won't be able to for very long.

Over on this page, someone who signs their name "Film Preservationist" has posted another view of this matter where CBS is refusing to release certain episodes of The Jack Benny Program from its vaults. I'm not taking sides here and I'd be more comfy if we knew who "Film Preservationist" was. But I thought since I linked to one side of this discussion, I should note the other.