Category Archives: Uncategorized

If I look different to you today, it's probably because I'm on my backup computer. Since this looks to be a very busy week, what with the convention and all, naturally my hard disk had to crash, which it did at around 3 AM this morning. It looked at me, looked at the list of things I need to get done, decided this would be the perfect time and quit dead on me. They do that deliberately, you know.

Fortunately, I have this clever system of backups that ensures I lose nothing when this happens and can move over here to the backup with very little loss of data. Unfortunately, I still have to shlep my main computer over to my techno-wizard friend today because what's wrong with it seems to be beyond my only-goes-so-far expertise. Near as I can tell, the thingamabob is out of alignment with the whatzis. In fact, I'm hoping we don't need to do a low level reformat of the whatzis.

All of this means you may not see a lot of posting here for a while…an announcement I make with great trepidation. Because two-thirds of the time when I say it, someone really important dies and I'm back here doing obit postings…and we've sure had enough of those lately.

In other news: As you all know, Stan and Hunter Freberg are making their first-ever appearance at the Comic-Con and folks are really excited. As well they should be. Is there any devout fan of Freberg who's attending who'd like to donate a couple of hours to helping me help them? I'm especially looking for someone who's going to be there by late Wednesday and can help set up for Preview Night. Drop me a note.

And there seems to be a slight chance that Gene Colan will be at the con after all. He has a doctor's appointment this afternoon and maybe, just maybe, they'll clear him to go. Stay tuned for the verdict, probably later today.

Okay, I'd better go get the main computer over to my computer expert, who's over in the Palms area. If you're anywhere near there and in need of the number of someone who can fix or build a PC for you, I've got just the guy. Write me for his contact info. I'm heading over there now, just as soon as I put on some pants. That's usually a good idea.

The man in the photo above left is actor Bill Daily, star of I Dream of Jeannie and the even-bigger-hit TV series, The Bob Newhart Show. And somewhere here, I have pics on Bill on other shows, always being very funny. The man at right is actor Jack Riley, who's also done a million things but is probably best known for that same Newhart series, as well as hundreds of commercials and cartoons and movies and…well, both men have done an awful lot.

They'll be discussing their careers on Wednesday on Stu's Show, the anchor program of Shokus Internet Radio. Stuart Shostak will be interviewing them and taking your phone calls live between the hours of 4 PM and 6 PM Pacific Time, which translates to 7 PM to 9 PM on the East Coast and to other times in other places. Jack's been on before but this is Bill's first time so I'm guessing the emphasis will be on him. Sound like something we'll all want to listen to.

How you do such a thing: This is not a podcast. It's like any radio. You have to listen when it's on. When it's on, go to the website of Shokus Internet Radio and click where you're told to click, damn it. The show reruns every day until the following Wednesday but you'll enjoy it more if you listen when they're there. And listen to the station at other hours, too. Stu has some darn good stuff on and you can tune in, minimize the window it's in, then do other things on your computer while you listen. I often do.

The weather forecast for San Diego during the con is trending a few degrees warmer than what I posted a week ago here. Click here for the latest info.

And it's still going to be 108° in Las Vegas.

If'n you're in San Diego and you need to get to the Convention Center, you have a number of options. Walking ain't bad. Driving and expecting to find a place to park is.

The convention has set up a series of shuttle bus runs from many of the major hotels. This page (a PDF file) will show you where they run and how often. Also, I know people who drive but don't even try to park at or around the Convention Center. They try to park at or near some hotel on the shuttle route.

(If one is hungry and low on cash, the Blue line can take you over to Broadway, where there seems to be one of almost every fast food restaurant in the world…though not In-and-Out. The nearest In-and-Out Burger is four miles from the Convention Center and probably not worth the trip. By the way, two Five Guys outlets are soon to open in San Diego but sadly, not in time for this convention.)

The taxi service in San Diego is pretty decent…and maybe this won't particularly amuse you but I love that almost every cab is from a different "company," most of which only have the one taxi. They have some very colorful names. My friend Jake finds it cheaper to stay at a fairly remote hotel and pay for a taxi each day to take him to and fro, as opposed to paying for a hotel close to the festivities.

They also have these things called "pedal cabs," where a sweaty teenager on a bicycle carts one or two passengers around for what are sometimes rather bumpy, inertia-challenging rides. These are not necessarily dangerous but I take a hard look at the driver before I commit and give him or her a kind of mental field sobriety test. You also need to negotiate the fee up front…which will usually be a bit higher than a car-style cab. And the drivers of the pedal cabs work so hard and seem so needy that I usually feel it appropriate to tip big.

If you're coming in via choo-choo to the Amtrak Station, you could hike to the Convention Center. It's about three-quarters of a mile. Then again, you'll be doing tons of walking once you get inside so maybe you'd like to save your feet for that.

Lastly, San Diego has an excellent trolley line that can pick up or deposit you right across the street from the Convention Center. This page will show you where it goes. The Convention Center is near one end of the Orange Line.

One last tip and this really doesn't go under this topic but I have no place else to put it: Go outside. The Convention Center is built on a harbor and if you go out the back way, out onto one of the terraces, there's a spectacular view and there's real air, as opposed to whatever that gaseous substance is they recycle inside. The con can easily get to you with the noise and the excitement and the women walking around in Red Sonja costumes and especially the noise of folks with sound systems trying to attract people to their booths. People think I have a lot of clout with this convention. I don't…and I offer as proof that I don't that there are still exhibits with microphones and amplifiers and obnoxious pitchmen trying to lure you to their displays. If I did have any clout, those people would all be sharing a room with Phil Spector, mumbling about their Walls of Sound.

You may enhance your convention experience, as great as the hall can be, to every so often venture outside and look at a seagull…although when I tried it last year, the gull was wearing a badge and he asked me if I could help him get Neil Gaiman's autograph.

The great comic book illustrator Gene Colan has found it necessary to cancel his appearance at the Comic-Con International this year. As I understand it, it's for medical reasons but not necessarily serious ones. Gene merely needs some tests which have to be performed next week and his doctors have advised him not to subject himself to the strenuous trip at this time. We'll miss seeing him and his lovely mate Adrienne at the convention and will assume he'll be fine for it next year.

This means that the Spotlight on Gene Colan, which was scheduled for Friday at Noon, will not take place. Drat. Gene was also to appear on the Golden Age Panel on Thursday but that will go on without him. Matter of fact, I shrewdly scheduled seven panelists instead of the usual six because I sensed this might happen. So we'll proceed with Ramona Fradon, Jerry Robinson, Russ Heath, Jack Katz, Leonard Starr and Murphy Anderson, and though we'll miss Gene, we'll have a fine time.

An old op-ed piece by Walter Cronkite on why he turned down Bobby Kennedy's suggestion that he [Cronkite] run for the Senate.

I braved the warmth of Burbank today and went out to the Hollywood Collectors Show, a crowded autograph event loaded with famous folks. Let me see if I can quickly run through a list of those I talked with…

In no particular order: Billy West, Marty Krofft, Maurice LaMarche, Jack Riley, Bill Daily, Pat Harrington, Greg Evigan, Jerry Maren, Bob Bergen, Billie Hayes, Anson Williams, Donny Most, Phil LaMarr, Rob Paulsen, Tom Bosley, Edie McClurg, Henry Winkler and I know I'm leaving a couple folks out. Those are just celebs who were there to sell and sign. In the aisles, also wandering around, I talked with Jason Marsden, Chuck McCann, Wally Wingert, Stephen Cox, Dave Shelton, Chad Frye and again, I'm leaving people out. Most (not all) of those in the first group will be there tomorrow if you want to swing by and get a signed photo or some other piece of memorabilia.

The two big themes this show were Happy Days (much of the cast was present) and James Bond. George Lazenby was there, and I guess he qualifies even though he's only done one more film as 007 than I have. Richard Kiel, who was the villain in several, was present. And they had a whole bevy of Bond Girls, some of whom still looked like Bond Girls, even though they last Bonded with Mr. Connery. There was much excitement by some to see Davy Jones of The Monkees…and a lot of folks were stopping by to tell the Futurama cast that someone would have to be brain-dead to think they could do that show with new actors.

A note to the promoters: At one point, I came across a group of your guests and they were discussing how much it might cost to pay Lou Ferrigno (another guest) to go over and deck the guy on the P.A. system. Other than that, everyone seemed to be having a very good time.

While you're at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, you're going to swing by the booth (#501) of the Van Eaton Galleries and pick up a signed copy of June Foray's autobiography. Remember that she's only going to be there late Friday afternoon and intermittently on Saturday and Sunday.

And while you're there, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of Mark Arnold's new book, Created and Produced by Total Television. Total is the company responsible for King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, Underdog and a few other shows of the sixties, and Mark has written a must-have book for anyone who recalls those programs. Based on extensive research and interviews, it tracks the history of this little-known studio and also offers up generous amounts of scripts, storyboards, merchandise and other visual material to tell its story.

They'll have copies at the Van Eaton booth. If you don't make it to the con, do yourself a favor and order one on Amazon via this link. You can also order June's book from Amazon with this one but if you can wait a week or so, I'll direct you to a site that will allow you to order hers autographed. That's worth waiting for, right?

I have so much to do that I've decided to call up the folks who run the Comic-Con and ask them if they'd mind postponing it for a couple of weeks. I'll get around to this on Monday and I'm pretty sure they'll do it for me. I mean, why wouldn't they?

But just in case there's some odd reason why they can't, here's the schedule again of events with which I'll be involved…

A brief history of the hamburger.

You might enjoy this 2001 audio interview with Walter Cronkite, conducted by radio whiz Paul Harris.

One wonders what Walter Cronkite would think of a newsroom that's reporting on the death of a legend and can't spell the legend's name right. They fixed it a few minutes later but I had to roll the TiVo back to make sure I'd seen what I thought I'd seen. And then I had to do a frame grab so you could see it.

About the time Oliver Stone's film JFK came out, I was in a group that was listening to Roger Ebert hold court outside a screening of another movie. Ebert was discussing the Stone film however, and stridently voicing an opinion with which I happen to disagree; that there was a conspiracy, as yet uncracked, and that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. As if to prove his case with utter finality, Mr. Ebert asked, "Can you name one respected researcher or journalist who believes Oswald alone killed Kennedy?" From back in the crowd, several voices (one of them, mine) yelled, "Walter Cronkite."

There were quite a few other names that could have been hurled, including folks who'd spent years studying the case…but no names that would have had quite the same impact. It caused a brief silence in the conversation, a look from Ebert like he'd just been flattened and then a rapid change to a new topic. No one could argue that Walter Cronkite wasn't a respected journalist.

Whether he should have been or not, I dunno. That "most trusted man in America" bit was an advertising slogan, not something we all voted on. He may well have been the most trusted because everyone heard he was the most trusted. If he was, he at least never seemed undeserving. In times of crisis — and there were too many on his watch — he was a soothing, steady presence on our TV sets: No melodrama, no sensationalism…just the news, delivered in masculine, fatherly calm. It's hard to say if he or anyone could do that in today's more competitive, tabloid-influenced news industry but he deserves credit for doing it then and doing it so well.

And he was also a huge fan of the comic strip, Peanuts. That counts for a lot with me, too.

We're in for weeks, maybe months of obits and practically every one will reference his famous sign-off line, "And that's the way it is." I'd like to append, sadly, "…and will never be again."

So you may have heard that the popular animated series Futurama is going back into production for new episodes. This is so. You may also have heard that the entire voice act is being replaced. This is almost certainly not so, though the production company has announced that they'd welcome submissions of voice demos by folks who think they can do the characters. Allow me to explain…

What this all means is that members of the voice cast (Billy West, Maurice LaMarche and others) are asking for certain amounts of money higher than Fox wishes to pay. Fox no doubt thinks (or for the purposes of negotiation, is taking the position) that the amounts are insane and astronomical. This is unlikely. All these actors have wise and experienced agents who know how profitable Futurama has been in the past and how much loot it will likely gross in the future, and what would be a fair price for its vocal stars.

The company does not want to replace those actors. Those actors helped make the show popular enough that it's still a viable commodity. Moreover, the company looks to wind up with a huge library of Futurama episodes — the old ones plus the new ones — which can rerun together for all eternity and be packaged together in mega-DVD sets. They want the same actors so Philip J. Fry will still be the same Philip J. Fry and so on.

They want those actors and have, in fact, arranged to have most of them at a panel at the Comic-Con in San Diego a week from tomorrow. But they'd like those actors for less money because that will mean more money for the company. That is why they're soliciting replacements, not because they want replacements but because they want to plant the seed of fret; to make the actors and their reps wonder if maybe, just maybe, Fox is crazy enough to actually replace the whole cast with cheaper folks so they'd better grab the latest of what have probably been several final offers.

It's hard to believe Fox could be lunkheaded enough to change casts, especially given the way they're going about it. If they really did want to replace everyone, the way to do it would be to quietly talk with the top voice agents about the top voice talent. Imagine if you had to replace Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock…and imagine you weren't even looking to introduce a new character in his stead. You had to find a new guy to play Jack Donaghy, for God's sake. You wouldn't make a big, public show of it and invite guys who work at Target Stores to make and send in auditions. You'd realize Baldwin can't be replaced like that, if at all. He's too integral a part of why that show is making you Godzilla-sized piles of cash, and that it's foolish to risk the franchise with someone else in the role. Just as it would be foolish to lose Billy West as Fry if there was any possible way to make a deal with him. When it comes down to money in this town, there almost always is.

If you're an aspiring cartoon voice actor who thinks "This is my break," think something else. They'll get thousands of submissions and it's unlikely that anyone with hiring capacity will ever listen to any of them. This is, like I said, not the way to really find a replacement. It's just a showy means of intimidating the actors and their agents…a way which costs the studio nothing. They don't even have to book time in a recording studio or have producers sit and listen to auditions. The whole idea is to be able to say to Billy West's agent, "Hey, we've got three thousand demos from guys who can imitate your boy's voice." But I know Billy's agent. He's been at this a long time and he knows how to not be intimidated and to arrive at a reasonable deal.

That's how these things end up, 96% of the time. What happens in 2% of such cases is that someone gets their ego in a tizzy and forgets that the goal is to make a deal, not to make the other guy bleed. So the bargaining explodes and everybody loses.

The other 2% of the time, it works the same way it works when a friend of yours says, "Don't pay those high garage prices. I got a guy who can fix your car cheap." So you get it fixed cheap and you honestly think you're saving money…all the way until the moment you try to shift gears while going up a slight incline and your axle shatters and your tires roll away. That's pretty much how it would go if they dumped the cast of Futurama. Which is why they won't do that.

A number of cartoonists and comic strip fans have mailed me (via paper mail, which amazingly still exists), a page that shows the actual size of newspaper comic strips over the years…how they've gotten smaller and smaller. There's no effective way for me to reproduce it here but it's quite amazing, seeing how they've diminished in size and therefore stature. If there's a person out there today who could do what Winsor McCay did in Little Nemo or what Walt Kelly did in Pogo, it almost wouldn't matter. The canvas is just too tiny to hold much of a painting.

Obviously, most newspapers are in trouble and they're condensing everything, not just the funnies. Obviously too, more and more will be folding up or trying to morph into some sort of web-only presence…and some of those that endure will dump comics in order to become leaner and meaner. I'm not even sure what kind of argument could be made as to why they shouldn't do this. I feel it's wrong but I can't explain why.

To some extent, the contraction of newspaper comics snowballed out of anyone's control. Over the years, economy drives and paper shortages occasionally caused papers to print their strips a notch smaller. This led to cartoonists simplifying their work, using fewer and bolder lines and making their lettering larger. And this, in turn, led to more newspapers deciding they could print the strips even smaller. Right now, if you put me in charge of a comic strip page and I took the bold step of taking strips back to their old size…well, some of those strips wouldn't look that wonderful. They aren't being drawn for that format.

I have no answer for this. I don't think anyone does. Garry Trudeau, who for contractual reasons has been less affected than some, made a good comment this week in Doonesbury. But the downsizing continues. It's made me not want to read any strips in the newspaper. If I read them on a website, I can at least enlarge the image to a more dignified, readable size.