Category Archives: Uncategorized

Comedy Central broadcasts each episode of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report several times a day. Can anyone here explain why the second broadcasts of each are now starting at eight minutes past their announced times? On my satellite dish, the first broadcasts are supposed to be at 8:00 PM and 8:30 PM, and the second ones at 11:00 PM and 11:30 PM. Lately, the second broadcasts have been more like 11:08 PM and 11:38 PM. What's running over and why?

Sorry I haven't posted more lately. I spent today in a recording studio directing the first three shows of the second season of The Garfield Show, an animated series I work on which runs in many countries. America, I hear, will soon be one of them. We had a fine cast today. We have our regulars — Frank Welker (as the cat), Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert and Jason Marsden. We have our semi-regulars — Audrey Wasilewski, Julie Payne, Laura Summer and David L. Lander. And today, we had as guest stars, Stan Freberg, Laraine Newman and Jack Riley.

Whenever anyone asks me the secret of directing cartoon voices, I tell 'em it's easy. Hire a cast like that, tell 'em which microphones to use and get out of their way. It's hard work but enormous fun. Having grown up listening to Stan Freberg records (and having purloined much of my sense of humor from the man), I still find it a little unbelievable to be working with him.

Anyway, that kept me busy today, and prepping for the session kept me busy yesterday. But I'm back now.

Oh, yeah. I've also been spending time hassling with my health insurance company. I was already for reform and public options and all sorts of other things that Fox News thinks are the Communist takeover of America. As if to cement my opinion, my provider has suddenly decided to stop covering one prescription medication I've been taking for two years now. With them, it's ten bucks a month. Without them, it's $320. My doctor is confident he can persuade them to cover it…but I have to wonder what folks who can't afford insurance, or can't get it due to pre-existing conditions, do if this drug becomes a necessity. And is this really the best use of my doctor's time?

A few folks have written me about what I wrote yesterday about comic book letter pages. I apologize if I underestimated the effort some put into assembling letter columns in the eighties. Paul Levitz noted that he wrote scripts for a lot of the comics for which he also wrote letter pages; that he was not just "some guy in the office." That's quite true. Long before he was head honcho at DC, Paul may have set the industry record for whipping up more letter pages than anyone else — and I say "may" because I have no idea how many E. Nelson Bridwell did. I'm guessing one of those guys is the champ and the other is first runner-up. (Paul also writes to remind me that when our pal Steve Gerber went to work at Marvel, he produced some of the best letter pages ever done in the ersatz Stan Lee style. They weren't signed with Stan's name but the editorial voice was supposed to suggest it was Stan himself answering your mail…and Steve was very good at it.)

Still, even if it happened a bit later than I suggested, there was a time when letter columns went away, which is a shame. I remember the utter thrill I got the first time I saw one of my letters in print. It was a copy of Aquaman and I was fourteen…and while the letter was childish and I (of course) didn't get paid for it, it was still something I wrote that someone has put into print in a real, sort of, magazine. Long before then, I'd decided I wanted to be a writer if and when I grew up so I can't say that it started me on that road. But standing there in the drugstore, seeing my words and name in print, my chosen career suddenly seemed a bit more possible. In fact, I felt more like a Writer that day than I did the last few times I worked for Disney.

I'm just going to post this press release…

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ — An amateur home movie has been discovered recently which apparently contains the last known film images of comedy legend Stan Laurel, once celebrated as half of the most famous comedy duo in the world: Laurel & Hardy.

The rare and historic eight millimeter film, which captures a playful Laurel displaying his trademark impish smile while scratching his head, is just two minutes in length and was taken at his Santa Monica apartment by James and Irene Heffernan, a Los Angeles couple who were acquainted with the film comedian in his final years.

According to Laurel's daughter, Lois Laurel Hawes, the film was made in late December of 1964, just two months before his death. A letter from Laurel to the Heffernans, dated January 15, 1965, mentions their yuletide visit when, apparently, the footage was shot.

Also featured in the brief home movie segment is Laurel's honorary "Oscar" award for Lifetime Achievement which was presented to him by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) in 1961.

Apparently lost and forgotten for decades among the numerous entertainment and travel home movies made by the active couple during the 1960s, this final footage of Laurel was not known to exist until several months ago and has never been viewed publicly.

However, the film's present owner plans to arrange for the landmark footage to be seen by Laurel & Hardy fans worldwide on June 16, 2010, which happens to be the comic's date of birth. According to actor/producer Tyler St. Mark, who purchased the remarkable footage from the Heffernan estate, "Stan Laurel performs a special gesture at the end of the film clip which was clearly intended for his millions of fans worldwide and so we will help him deliver his message 46 years later – on the 120th anniversary of his birthday."

I'm always eager to see anything relating to Laurel and/or Hardy…but I'm especially wondering what Stan's "special gesture" is.

Back when there was a lot more hollering about Gay Marriage than there's been lately, some comic fans tried to rustle up a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego by attendees of the Comic-Con down there. As I explained here, I'm all for letting consenting adults marry or just hang out with the consenting adults of their choice, regardless of race or gender, but I'm not big on boycotts. I don't think they usually accomplish much of anything except maybe to make the boycotters feel like they're doing something.

Lately, I'm getting e-mails saying I should stop shopping Whole Foods Market because of an op-ed against "Obamacare" in The Wall Street Journal by the CEO of that chain. (And by the way, I think it would do us all a world of good if more of the health care situation was debated by folks who can't afford to buy the Mayo Clinic.)

I'd been thinking of curtailing my Whole Food purchases before that because, frankly, I'm tired of paying double the prices at Gelson's for meat that's not any better and maybe a little worse. I also keep getting produce and prepared meals at Whole Foods that taste they like were prepared by one of those experts who "styles" food for advertising photos, painting fake gloss on the Fuji apples and daubing the bananas with Turtle Wax. But I won't be taking my biz elsewhere because of Mr. Whole Foods' opinion piece…and I doubt that many other folks will, no matter how much he offends them. In times of anger, people in this country may swear they're not going to patronize a certain business or buy a certain product…but if it's what they want or it's cheaper or it's closer, that's what and where they buy.

Getting back to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, where again I stayed this last Comic-Con — and was treated quite nicely, by the way — the threatened boycott in '08 was because its CEO, Doug Manchester, was donating large sums to ban Gay Marriage. He said that he felt it was his duty as a Catholic…and of course, he's right that the Catholic church frowns on that kind of thing.

Of course, as this article notes, the Catholic church also frowns on divorce and that isn't stopping Mr. Manchester from leaving his wife of 43 years. They're currently in the midst of one of those messy millionaires' severances where both sides fight over six and seven figure properties and holdings, with much soiled laundry hung to flap in the breeze.

I don't think this is funny or a reason to gloat or anything of the sort. It's sad when a marriage goes sour and people suffer…just as it's sad when two people who love each other are denied the right and dignity to have their union respected. I just have to point out that "my duty as a Catholic" sometimes, like threats of boycotts, only goes as far as is convenient. And while we're at it, let's remember that despite the Neanderthal talking points, Gay Marriage is not what's threatening Heterosexual Marriage. I dunno what broke up the Manchester marriage but I don't think it was same-sex wedlock…unless Mrs. Manchester was furious at her hubby for spending their money to push Proposition 8.

By the way, I think I mentioned it here before but I'm curious what the divorce rate will turn out to be like for Gay Marriage. Will it be the higher, lower or the same as for mixed couples? For your information, the divorce rate in this country for straight marriages is between 41 and 50% for first marriages, 60 to 67% for second marriages and over 73% for third marriages. And that's just Larry King.

You know what's missing from comic books these days? Letter columns. In my day (read this sentence in the voice of Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man, who I think was him imitating Lionel Barrymore), comics had letter columns and readers would write in and either point out errors or ask questions or critique the previous issue. And then the editor (or someone impersonating the editor) would reply…and it made for a nice interaction. Julius Schwartz's in his DC books were especially good, while over at Marvel, the ones composed by Stan Lee (or sometimes, "Stan Lee") were as much a part of some books' appeal as the stories, themselves.

That all started to go away in the seventies. For a while, we had letter columns but it wasn't the editor who handled them. It was some kid in the office…some assistant to the assistant or something. In a few books, it was even me. That wasn't as much fun as engaging in a dialogue with the actual editor or even someone pretending to be him. Then at some point, comics just stopped having letter columns at all. Groo the Wanderer, which I work on, was one of the last holdouts. We had a letters page long after most comics didn't bother.

I used to jest that this was because we truly cared about our readers, whereas other comics didn't. That caused an editor at one of the companies to get real, real angry at me…though apparently not angry enough that he decided to prove me wrong and add letter pages to his comics. That, he did not do. Soon after, I stopped doing the joke not because I feared him but because when Groo shifted from monthly publication to the intermittent mini-series format, I stopped receiving a steady flow of letters. I suppose I could have made some up. A lot of letter pages used to do that…more than you'd imagine. But I have integrity I haven't even used yet.

Well, I've decided it's high time to get back into the letter column business. We have a new Groo mini-series starting and I'm cobbling up a letters page for it. Wanna see your name and letter in Groo? Send both of those things to letters@groothewanderer.com. I'll repeat that address for those of you who are slow of mind: letters@groothewanderer.com. It pays nothing and if you heckle us, we heckle you back…and we have home court advantage so watch it.

A recurring, too-occasional theme on this blog is how writers can protect themselves from getting swindled, burgled, fleeced, taken, exploited, cheated and generally ripped-off. It's a big problem and it requires a lot of policing and advising and warning. In 1998, the Science Fiction Writers of America set up Writer Beware, a website intended to help educate writers — new ones, especially — to some of the pernicious practices that may be employed to get them to pay to have their writing published (instead of the other way around) or at least to not be paid when their writing is published.

Thanks to the efforts of author Lee Goldberg, who is probably too busy trotting 'round the globe to writers' conferences to have lunch with his ol' pal Mark, the Mystery Writers of America group has joined the battle, throwing support behind Writer Beware. Good for all of them.

Remember: The way this is supposed to work is that you write it and they pay you to publish it. You do not pay to have it published. You do not pay to have it agented or critiqued or submitted or anything of the sort. They pay you and they pay you on an agreed-upon amount on an agreed-upon schedule and in real money. No matter how badly you want to see your work in print.

Carolyn was just sent a link to a site that features photos of live rats playing tiny musical instruments. How could I not post such a thing?

Every so often, someone writes to ask me what web hosting service I use for this weblog and the other sites I maintain…and they also want to know how happy I am with them. As you can see in the margin over on the right, it's Dreamhost. How happy am I with them? Well, I've been there since October of '98 and have never thought of going elsewhere. What does that tell you?

There are occasional outages and tech problems but that's true of any web hosting company. Every problem I've had at Dreamhost has been fixed promptly and with a real sense of someone on the other end who was trying to help. I can't imagine what any other outfit could offer that would wrest me away from where I am now. Maybe service that was just as good plus Creamy Tomato Soup.

I even make a few bucks through my web hoster. If you sign up with them by clicking through one of my Dreamhost banners, I get a tiny cut. So here's another one of those banners…

Writers Guild elections tend to be messy and argumentative and there are times when we seem more interested in clobbering each other than in besting those we should be uniting against. I have a certain respect for anyone who wades into WGA politics just for the sheer selflessness it requires. No matter how reasonable or moderate you are, there will be times when you're a Democratic Congressman addressing a town hall full of Glenn Beck fans.

It's campaigning time for the next election and it comes down to one slate versus another. One has Elias Davis as its presidential candidate; the other has John Wells. Both men have long histories of Guild service and anyone who tells you that either would destroy the WGA is engaged in hysterical hyperbole.

Davis and his cabinet have been endorsed by Larry Gelbart in a much-circulated open letter. I respect the hell out of Mr. Gelbart as a writer and as an advocate for writers, and I'm also backing the Elias crew. I do think though John Wells scores some solid points in his rebuttal to it.

For what, as they say, it's worth: I think it's true, as Larry says, that the years John Wells was our president were years when the guild was too timid and should have been more militant. What I'm less sure about is how much of that was John and how much of it was the mood of the membership at that time. There's only so much any leader can do to drag unwilling, bickering combatants into battle. I'm pretty much a hawk on Guild negotiations but I'm not willing to write off the view that there are times when we just aren't "together" enough to go that route, and it's better to get what we can get via non-confrontational discussions. In that context, John Wells just might be an ideal Chief Exec.

But I also think that an approach of that kind can only serve us in the short run and in times of weakness. Moreover, being non-confrontational almost always leads to the kind of rotten offers that sooner or later make confrontation mandatory. In a very real sense, every time the WGA has found itself in a position where a strike was necessary, it was necessary because Management thought it could exploit a perceived unwillingness to strike…so strike we must. Or at least, we have to make it clear that we will walk if they try to force a package of rollbacks and bad terms on us.

The last negotiation was one such period of necessity. We'd been too accepting and we paid for it. We had to go on strike to prove we wouldn't roll over and take what was truly a dreadful offer. Striking or acceptance were the only two options open to us and striking was the lesser evil.

Fortunately, through the wisdom and courage of our wartime prez Patric Verrone and his administration, the WGA got its act together…and I thought they handled a bad situation about as well as humanly possible. Given the spectacular collapse of the Screen Actors Guild in its subsequent negotiation, and given that the studios have obviously not abandoned their wish-dream of keeping all the revenues from New Media and not sharing, it would be insane for us to to forsake the momentum we've established. The best guy to keep that up and running is Elias Davis.

One other point. If you read the above links or other discussions of WGA politics on the 'net, you will do yourself a favor to remember the following. Ignore (do not even read) messages that are not signed by someone who at least appears to have signed a real name. Folks who sign themselves "Working Writer" may be unemployed gardeners. Six people in a row hiding behind pen names may all be the same person agreeing with himself. An anonymous person who claims to be working on a hit TV series may be working at Baja Fresh. It's not so much that they're lying but to get a sense of the "electorate" by reading those messages is like trying to gauge the mood of America from the people who phone in to Talk Radio. They're not the most representative. They're just the angriest.

Less than three hours ago, I asked here if someone could recommend a piece of software I need. Several folks, the first of whom was Steve Billnitzer, suggested dbpoweramp Music Converter. I'm using it now and it seems like exactly what I need, especially since I downloaded some extra codecs. Thanks, all.

In the past here, I've plugged the heck out of Zero Hour, a one-man show in which the one man is my buddy Jim Brochu playing Zero Mostel. A great evening in the theater. If you're in New York between November 14 and the end of January 2010, you have a chance to see it. See it.

I'm looking for a piece of PC software that can do the following. You specify a directory and it goes through that directory (and maybe any sub-directories) and automatically converts all the .m4a and .wma files to .mp3 files.

I saw something of the sort a while ago but foolishly did not obtain it then. I can't find it or anything like it now. Anyone here have a thought?

The schedule of programs on the C-Span website is always a mess. It's a great batch of channels but they have a dreadful website. Anywho, I don't know how it is on everyone else's screen but on mine, shows always overlap and run into each other and it's hard to tell what's on at what time…which matters a lot with a channel like C-Span that's forever deciding what to put on or changing their minds about it at the last minute.

And the way they overlap or truncate names can be annoying, as you can see from the actual screen capture above. I have a pretty low opinion of George W. Bush but even I wouldn't call him that.

I used to have a friend who would jokingly quote the maxim, "A lie is as good as the truth if you can get anyone to believe it." Funny how I keep thinking of that as I read about this whole "Death Panels" nonsense.

End-of-life Counselling is a very good idea, not only for the government but for the person whose life may be ending soon. If someone wants to make the case against things like Living Wills and Advanced Directives, I wish they'd speak up and make it honestly…but I don't think anyone does.

Newt Gingrich certainly doesn't. As noted here, just a few months ago, he was saying that it "empowers patients and families to control and direct their care." He also noted how much money it would wind up saving our health care system while simultaneously doing better by the folks receiving that care.

Sarah Palin certainly doesn't. In April of '08 as governor or Alaska, she signed a proclamation for a "Healthcare Decisions Day" to note "the need to plan ahead for health care decisions, related to end of life care" and went on to "encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives."

As far as I can tell, no Republican leader does. The 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill which the G.O.P. wrote and passed overwhelmingly contained funding for such counselling.

But we're now in that wonderful realm where you campaign by deliberately misrepresenting the opposition's position. Democrats have sometimes done this by claiming that some G.O.P. proposal would destroy Medicare or Social Security, thereby panicking older voters into shunning it. Some Republican or Insurance Company stooge (not that there's much separation there lately) looked at the Health Care Reform proposals, noticed the same end-of-life counselling provisions and thought, "Hey, we can pass this off as giving the government power to kill your grandparents!"

The Republican leaders spreading this manure don't believe that. In fact, once this country passes whatever kind of Health Care Reforms it winds up passing, there will probably be a bill to reinstate whatever part of the provision gets dropped, and the reinstatement will probably be co-sponsored by Republicans. But right now, folks like Chuck Grassley obviously think it's a dandy way to stall the bill and weaken the parts of it that they really think should be weakened…so they're willing to go along with this lie. And it's a sad fact for everyone that lying seems to be working. That just means there'll be more of it — from everyone.

According to a new report, income inequality — the gap between the richest Americans and the poorest — is greater than it has ever been.

In other news, more stupid people are planning a demonstration because they're afraid this country is turning Socialist on them.